Who is Trump’s treasury secretary pick, Scott Bessent?
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(WASHINGTON) — Scott Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager who has helped fundraise for Donald Trump, is the president-elect’s choice to lead the Department of Treasury.
Bessent has advised Trump on economic policy and has been a frequent presence at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club over the last two weeks.
The announcement for the job, which needs Senate approval, was supposed to come earlier but had been stalled due to intense infighting among Trump’s top advisers — including transition co-chair Howard Lutnick — about who should get the job.
“Scott is widely respected as one of the World’s foremost International Investors and Geopolitical and Economic Strategists. Scott’s story is that of the American Dream,” Trump said in his announcement statement.
Bessent, 62, has been involved in financial firms for over 35 years.
Born and raised in Conway, South Carolina, Bessent graduated from Yale University in 1984.
After graduating from Yale in 1984, Bessent went to work for different investment companies.
He worked for Democratic megadonor George Soros from 1991 to 2000, where he was a managing partner. Later, he returned to Soros Fund Management (SFM) – the private investment firm that manages assets for the Open Society Foundations – as chief investment officer from 2011 to 2015.
Bessent has also been associated with Brown Brothers Harriman, The Olayan Group, Kynikos Associates and Protégé Partners.
Economists from both sides of the aisle believe Bessent is a middle-of-the-road pick.
Bessent made large donations supporting Trump and served as an economic adviser. He has also made several television appearances on behalf of the president-elect.
Bessent spoke at a conference run by the Manhattan Institute in June, where he laid out a three-point economic plan that he intended to propose to Trump.
“Well, I might even advise him to campaign on three arrows,” Bessent said. “It would be 3% real economic growth, and how do you get that? Through deregulation, more U.S. energy production, slaying inflation and forward guidance on competence for people to make investments — so that the private sector can take over from this bloated government spending.”
Bessent, who is gay, resides in New York City with his partner and two children.
As the highly anticipated treasury pick lingered, Elon Musk threw his support behind Howard Lutnick over Scott Bessent.
“Would be interesting to hear more people weigh in on this for @realDonaldTrump to consider feedback. My view [for what it’s worth] is that Bessent is a business-as-usual choice, whereas @howardlutnick will actually enact change,” Musk wrote on X. “Business-as-usual is driving America bankrupt, so we need change one way or another.”
(WASHINGTON) — As Americans head to the polls this Election Day, trust that their vote will be counted accurately and that the democratic process is safe from interference is vital, experts said.
But with early voting well underway and just days before the remainder of the 2024 presidential election ballots are cast, unfounded conspiracy theories about the safety of voting machines loom over the fight for the White House.
The 2020 election saw former President Donald Trump sparking some distrust in the voting system that was purported by some fellow Republicans, supporters and media outlets.
Despite voting machine conspiracy theories, such as internet hacking and widespread physical tampering, being debunked, misinformation about the democratic process is ubiquitous on social media and fodder for some of the recent lawsuits filed by RNC-aligned groups in key swing states.
Elon Musk — a major Trump backer and the owner of X — recently continued to stoke voting machines falsehoods, telling the crowd at a town hall in Pennsylvania, “The last thing I would do is trust a computer program, because it’s just too easy to hack,” Musk said.
However, multiple reviews into 2020 voter fraud claims and a landmark defamation lawsuit between Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News found the vote-rigging conspiracy theories, and Trump’s assertion he won the election over President Joe Biden, to be unfounded.
In April 2023, Dominion reached a nearly $800 million settlement with Fox for spreading the false theories across the conservative news stations’ platforms.
Additionally, state and federal courts dismissed more than 60 lawsuits across six states from Trump and his allies aiming to overturn the 2020 election results.
“There was no credibility to those claims,” Lauren Cristella, the president of Committee of Seventy, a nonpartisan government watchdog organization in Philadelphia, told ABC News.
“I am confident that our elections are free, fair, safe and secure, and that the systems we have in place, the checks and balances that we have in place, are working,” Cristella added.
So, how do voting machines work? And what security measures are in place from the federal level to the community level to ensure that every vote is counted and free from interference?
Before Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris vie for America’s vote on Nov. 5, experts said understanding the security measures that follow ballots from the polls to the count can bring clarity and comfort to the process.
What voting machines are used in the election?
While election officials use technology for voter registration, tallying, and, in some cases, vote-casting, the system is largely centered around paper ballots.
“In nearly all places across the country, about 98% of voters, when they cast their ballot, there is going to be a paper record of their vote,” Derek Tisler, who serves as counsel in the Brennan Center for Justice’s elections and government program, told ABC News.
Historically, there have been five types of voting machines used in the U.S.: hand-counted paper, mechanical lever machines, punch-card machines, scanned paper ballots and direct-recording electronic devices, according to the MIT Election Lab.
Going into the 2024 election, optical scan paper ballot systems are widely used to tally physical ballot votes, which can be likened to the technology used to score a standardized test, according to MIT.
Voters mark their ballots in a private voting booth and then it is scanned as it’s being deposited in the ballot box, with the votes being tallied at the end of the day.
Direct recording electronic systems utilize buttons or a touch screen to record votes, often with a paper ballot record for audits or a recount.
And ballot-marking devices and systems, which are entirely electronic, are primarily used to accommodate voters with disabilities.
There are 10 different voting system manufacturers that have been tested and approved by the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC), including Clear Ballot, Dominion Voting Systems and Election Systems & Software (ES&S), to name a few.
The road to approval includes stress tests on the equipment and checks for software flaws, making sure the machines have the basic functionality, accessibility and security capabilities required of these systems, according to the EAC.
“So every voting system, including ours, goes through a certification process in accredited test labs,” Chip Trowbridge, the chief technology officer of Clear Ballot, told ABC News.
“Every change, no matter how big or how small, if it’s a source code or software change, has to be reviewed,” Trowbridge said.
Individual states and local jurisdictions also have certification processes for voting machine manufacturers that vary based on location, according to Trowbridge.
What safety measures are taken to protect voting machines?
One of the first lines of defense against tampering is the physical security of voting machines, according to Ted Allen, an integrated systems engineer professor at Ohio State University and member of the MIT Election Lab.
Leading up to Election Day and after votes are cast, the machines are stored in secure locations with access limited to election officials, Allen told ABC News.
At polling locations, voting machines are constantly under surveillance, with election officials and security personnel trained to ensure that no unauthorized access is possible, according to Allen.
“The paper, the chain of custody of the equipment and the chain of custody of the ballots are all generally, very carefully studied and controlled,” Allen said.
The 2020 election, however, did see a few individuals being charged for with tampering with voting machines.
Tina Peters, a Republican election official in Colorado, was sentenced to nine years in prison for leading a security breach of the county’s election system after being inspired by false and baseless claims of voting fraud.
She was convicted for giving an individual access to the election software she used for her county. Screenshots of the software appeared on right-wing websites.
In Georgia, bail bondsman Scott Hall was charged in relation to the alleged breach of voting machine equipment in the wake of the 2020 election in Coffee County.
Hall and several of his co-defendants allegedly “entered into a conspiracy to intentionally interfere” with the 2020 election results and “unlawfully” access voting machines in order to obtain data, including images of ballots.
Hall pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties. He will get probation and has agreed to testify moving forward, including at the trial of other co-defendants.
While no system is ever completely impervious to threats, voting machines are protected by a range of technical and procedural measures that make them extremely difficult to hack.
A spokesperson for Election Systems & Software, Inc., told ABC News, that outside of physical controls, the company’s voting equipment adheres to secure practices for the creation, transfer and storage of important election files and data.
Using encryption and digital signing for data, cryptographic modules that meet the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) and creating encrypted USB flash drives programmed for that specific election all prevent tampering by unauthorized agents, according to ES&S.
Do voting machines connect to the internet?
A key safeguard in making voting machines difficult to hack is the lack of internet access during the voting process.
The machines used to scan ballots at a voting precinct are incapable of having any Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, radio or network connection at all, according to Trowbridge.
“Those systems absolutely cannot have any network,” Trowbridge said. “In fact, if you look at the machines from Clear Ballot, the only wire that comes out of them is a power cord.”
Central scanning equipment is networked, according to Trowbridge, but the technology is on an air-gapped network that is completely separate from the public internet.
This significantly reduces the risk of remote hacking or unauthorized access from external sources, he said.
Even if a hacker attempts to access a voting machine, they would need to physically tamper with the machine itself, which may be more challenging due to the physical security measures.
Looking to Nov. 5, Derek Tisler emphasized there are always checks and balances available in the process to make sure that there is no one individual who could disrupt anything.
“Public trust is so essential to the democratic process, and that is why elections are transparent,” Tisler said.
(JOHNSTOWN, Penn.) — Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters she was “feeling very good about Pennsylvania” while campaigning on Friday in the key battleground state, even as both supporters and detractors came out for the occasion.
In an unannounced stop to Classic Elements, a cafe and bookstore in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Harris told reporters, “I am feeling very good about Pennsylvania, because there are a lot of people in Pennsylvania who deserve to be seen and heard.”
“I will be continuing to travel around the state to make sure that I’m listening as much as we are talking,” Harris said. “And ultimately, I feel very strongly that — got to earn every vote, and that means spending time with folks in the communities where they live. And so that’s why I’m here.”
She added, “We’re going to be spending a lot more time in Pennsylvania.”
Harris and former President Donald Trump remain locked in a tight race in Pennsylvania, with 538’s presidential polling average for Pennsylvania showing less than a percentage point between the candidates as of Friday afternoon.
Both campaigns will look to win the state, which Biden won by about a 1% margin in 2020 — four years after Trump won by slightly less 1%.
Before she spoke with the media, Harris chatted with the store’s owner while Democratic Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman and his spouse Giselle Fetterman looked on.
Harris spoke about a small business owner neighbor she had growing up who was a “second mother” to her. Harris also praised the staff for their work.
When Harris went into the main seating area of the cafe, a patron called out, “Kamala, we love you!” to which Harris responded, “I appreciate you, thank you” to applause and comments of “Madame Vice President.”
Speaking to the patrons, Harris said, “We’re doing it together. But I wanted to come to Johnstown … I wanted to come and visit this small business — you know, a lot of the work I care about is about building community, right? There are many ways to do that … one of them is our small businesses.”
But Harris encountered both supporters and detractors outside of the bookstore.
Near the bookstore, people behind temporary fencing held signs that were both supportive of Harris and supportive of Trump.
One person could be heard chanting “USA!” while another chanted “We’re not going back” — which can often be heard at her campaign events.
And one person could be seen holding up a sign that said, “Even my dog hates Trump.”
Earlier, when she landed in Johnstown, there was a large crowd gathered at the airport hanger; Harris was greeted by the Fettermans and Johnstown Mayor Frank Janakovic.
As the motorcade drove to the bookstore, some healthcare workers lined a street holding up middle fingers and a sign that said, “Harris sux.”
The visit came ahead of a Friday evening rally Harris is set to hold in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and amid a battleground-state swing by Harris, running mate Gov. Tim Walz, and others launched after the ABC News presidential debate on Tuesday.
(WASHINGTON) — Three people have been charged in an alleged Iran-linked plot to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump, an Iranian-American activist and two Jewish Americans living in New York, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Friday in New York.
Farhad Shakeri, Carlisle Rivera and Jonathan Loadholt are charged with murder-for-hire, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Rivera and Loadholt have been arrested, while Shakeri, who the FBI described as an “asset” of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is believed to be in Tehran.
The IRGC tasked Shakeri with surveilling and killing Trump to avenge the death of Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force, in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020, according to the complaint.
“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran. The Justice Department has charged an asset of the Iranian regime who was tasked by the regime to direct a network of criminal associates to further Iran’s assassination plots against its targets, including President-elect Donald J. Trump,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement announcing the charges.
Shakeri emigrated to the United States but was deported in 2008 after serving prison time for robbery, according to the Justice Department. While in prison, he met Rivera and Loadholt and hired them to target an Iranian American activist living in Brooklyn, according to the complaint.
The IRGC also tasked Shakeri with carrying out other assassinations against U.S. and Israeli citizens located in the United States, including Trump, the complaint alleges.
Shakeri informed law enforcement officials that he was tasked a month before the election with providing a plan to kill Trump, according to prosecutors. During the interview, Shakeri allegedly claimed he did not intend to propose a plan to kill Trump within the timeframe set by the IRGC.
He also stated he was tasked with surveilling two Jewish-American citizens residing in New York City and was offered $500,000 by an IRGC official for the murder of either victim, according to the complaint. He was also tasked with targeting Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka, the complaint said.
“Actors directed by the Government of Iran continue to target our citizens, including President-elect Trump, on U.S. soil and abroad. This has to stop,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement. “Today’s charges are another message to those who continue in their efforts — we will remain unrelenting in our pursuit of bad actors, no matter where they reside, and will stop at nothing to bring to justice those who harm our safety and security.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
