WASHINGTON, Aug 13 (Reuters) – The seizure of classified U.S. government documents from Donald Trump’s sprawling Mar-a-Lago retreat spotlights the ongoing national security concerns presented by the former president, and the home he dubbed the Winter White House, some security experts say.
Trump is under federal investigation for possible violations of the Espionage Act, which makes it unlawful to spy for another country or mishandle U.S. defense information, including sharing it with people not authorized to receive it, a search warrant shows. read more
As president, Trump sometimes shared information, regardless of its sensitivity. Early in his presidency, he spontaneously gave highly classified information to Russia’s foreign minister about a planned Islamic State operation while he was in the Oval Office, U.S. officials said at the time.
But it was at Mar-a-Lago, where well-heeled members and guests attended weddings and fundraising dinners and frolicked on a breezy ocean patio, that U.S. intelligence seemed especially at risk.
The Secret Service said when Trump was president that it does not determine who is granted access to the club, but does do physical screenings to make sure no one brings in prohibited items, and further screening for guests in proximity to the president and other protectees.
The Justice Department’s search warrant raises concerns about national security, said former DOJ official Mary McCord.
“Clearly they thought it was very serious to get these materials back into secured space,” McCord said. “Even just retention of highly classified documents in improper storage – particularly given Mar-a-Lago, the foreign visitors there and others who might have connections with foreign governments and foreign agents – creates a significant national security threat.”
Trump, in a statement on his social media platform, said the records were “all declassified” and placed in “secure storage.”
McCord said, however, she saw no “plausible argument that he had made a conscious decision about each one of these to declassify them before he left.” After leaving office, she said, he did not have the power to declassify information.
Monday’s seizure by FBI agents of multiple sets of documents and dozens of boxes, including information about U.S. defense and a reference to the “French President,” poses a frightening scenario for intelligence professionals.
“It’s a nightmarish environment for a careful handling of highly classified information,” said a former U.S. intelligence officer. “It’s just a nightmare.”
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An aerial view of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home after Trump said that FBI agents raided it, in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S. August 9, 2022. REUTERS/Marco Bello/File Photo
The DOJ hasn’t provided specific information about how or where the documents and photos had been stored, but the club’s general vulnerabilities have been well documented.
In a high profile example, Trump huddled in 2017 with Japan’s then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at an outdoor dinner table while guests hovered nearby, listening and taking photos that they later posted on Twitter.
The dinner was disrupted by a North Korean missile test, and guests listened as Trump and Abe figured out what to say in response. After issuing a statement, Trump dropped by a wedding party at the club.
“What we saw was Trump be so lax in security that he was having a sensitive meeting regarding a potential war topic where non-U.S. government personnel could observe and photograph,” said Mark Zaid, a lawyer who specializes in national security cases. “It would have been easy for someone to also have had a device that heard and recorded what Trump was saying as well.”
The White House press secretary at the time of the Abe visit, Sean Spicer, told reporters afterward that Trump had been briefed about the North Korean launch in a secure room at Mar-a-Lago. He played down the scene on the patio.
“At that time, apparently there was a photo taken, which everyone jumped to nefarious conclusions about what may or may not be discussed. There was simply a discussion about press logistics, where to host the event,” he said.
It was in the secure room at Mar-a-Lago where Trump decided to launch airstrikes against Syria for the use of chemical weapons in April 2017.
The decision made, Trump repaired to dinner with visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping. Over a dessert of chocolate cake, Trump informed Xi about the airstrikes.
In 2019, a Chinese woman who passed security checkpoints at the club carrying a thumb drive coded with “malicious” software was arrested for entering a restricted property and making false statements to officials, authorities said at the time.
Then-White House chief of staff John Kelly launched an effort to try to limit who had access to Trump at Mar-a-Lago, but the effort fizzled when Trump refused to cooperate, aides said at the time.
(The story adds dropped word “been” in paragraph 16.)
The man accused of carrying out a stabbing attack against “Satanic Verses” author Salman Rushdie has entered a not-guilty plea in a New York court on charges of attempted murder and assault.
An attorney for Hadi Matar, 24, entered the plea on his behalf during an arraignment hearing. Matar appeared in court wearing a black and white jumpsuit and a white face mask. His hands were cuffed in front of him.
Matar, of Fairview, New Jersey, was formally charged with attempted murder in the second degree and assault in the second degree, Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt said in a statement Saturday. Matar was arraigned Friday night and remanded without bail, he said.
Matar is accused of attacking Rushdie on Friday as the author was being introduced at a lecture at the Chautauqua Institute.
Rushdie suffered serious injuries in the attack and remains hospitalized. Rushdie’s agent said Friday night that the author is currently on a ventilator and cannot speak. He said Rushdie will likely lose an eye, adding that the nerves in his arm were “severed” and his liver was “stabbed and damaged.”
This still image from video shows Hadi Matar, 24, of Fairview, N.J., at left, being escorted from the stage as people tend to author Salman Rushdie, center right, at the Chautauqua Institution, in Chautauqua, N.Y., Friday, Aug. 12, 2022.
/ AP
“We are working closely with State Police, our local police agencies and federal law enforcement partners to fully develop the evidence,” Schmidt said Saturday. “We have been in touch with our counterparts in the State of New Jersey where the attacker is from to share information and assist them in helping us to better understand the planning and preparation which preceded the attack so that we and the different agencies involved can determine what, if any, additional charges should be asserted.”
Matar was born in the United States to Lebanese parents who emigrated from Yaroun, a border village in southern Lebanon, Mayor Ali Tehfe told The Associated Press.
His birth was a decade after the publishing of “The Satanic Verses” — Rushdie’s 1988 novel that drew death threats from Iran’s leader decades ago.
The motive for the attack was unclear, State Police Maj. Eugene Staniszewski said.
An official from Iran-backed Lebanese armed group Hezbollah told Reuters on Saturday the group doesn’t “know anything” about the suspect and decline comment.
Matar, like other visitors, had obtained a pass to enter the Chautauqua Institution’s 750-acre grounds, Michael Hill, the institution’s president, said.
The suspect’s attorney, public defender Nathaniel Barone, said he was still gathering information and declined to comment. Matar’s home was blocked off by authorities.
WNY News Now captured video of Matar being transferred to the Chautauqua County jail late Friday night from the New York State Police barracks in Jamestown.
“The Satanic Verses” was viewed as blasphemous by many Muslims, who saw a character as an insult to the Prophet Muhammad, among other objections. The book was banned in Iran, where the late leader Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a 1989 fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death.
Iran’s theocratic government and its state-run media assigned no rationale for Friday’s assault. In Tehran, some Iranians interviewed Saturday by the AP praised the attack on an author they believe tarnished the Islamic faith, while others worried it would further isolate their country.
An AP reporter witnessed the attacker confront Rushdie on stage and stab or punch him 10 to 15 times as the author was being introduced. Dr. Martin Haskell, a physician who was among those who rushed to help, described Rushdie’s wounds as “serious but recoverable.”
Event moderator Henry Reese, 73, a co-founder of an organization that offers residencies to writers facing persecution, was also attacked. Reese suffered a facial injury and was treated and released from a hospital, police said. He and Rushdie had planned to discuss the United States as a refuge for writers and other artists in exile.
A state trooper and a county sheriff’s deputy were assigned to Rushdie’s lecture, and state police said the trooper made the arrest. But after the attack, some longtime visitors to the center questioned why there wasn’t tighter security for the event, given the decades of threats against Rushdie and a bounty on his head offering more than $3 million to anyone who killed him.
Rabbi Charles Savenor was among the roughly 2,500 people in the audience for Rushdie’s appearance.
The assailant ran onto the platform “and started pounding on Mr. Rushdie. At first you’re like, ‘What’s going on?’ And then it became abundantly clear in a few seconds that he was being beaten,” Savenor said. He said the attack lasted about 20 seconds.
Dramatic video of the aftermath of the attack was posted on social media.
New video shows the chaos moments after notable author Salman Rushdie was stabbed. Police units were on stage within seconds.
Another spectator, Kathleen James, said the attacker was dressed in black, with a black mask.
“We thought perhaps it was part of a stunt to show that there’s still a lot of controversy around this author. But it became evident in a few seconds” that it wasn’t, she said.
Amid gasps, spectators were ushered out of the outdoor amphitheater.
The stabbing reverberated from the tranquil town of Chautauqua to the United Nations, which issued a statement expressing U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ horror and stressing that free expression and opinion should not be met with violence.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday’s attack, which led an evening news bulletin on Iranian state television.
From the White House, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan described the attack as “reprehensible” and said the Biden administration wished Rushdie a quick recovery.
“This act of violence is appalling,” Sullivan said in a statement. “We are thankful to good citizens and first responders for helping Mr. Rushdie so quickly after the attack and to law enforcement for its swift and effective work, which is ongoing.”
“Our thoughts are with Salman & his loved ones following this horrific event,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul tweeted after the attack.
Rushdie has been a prominent spokesman for free expression and liberal causes, and the literary world recoiled at what Ian McEwan, a novelist and Rushdie’s friend, described as “an assault on freedom of thought and speech.”
“Salman has been an inspirational defender of persecuted writers and journalists across the world,” McEwan said in a statement. “He is a fiery and generous spirit, a man of immense talent and courage and he will not be deterred.”
PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel said the organization didn’t know of any comparable act of violence against a literary writer in the U.S. Rushdie was once president of the group, which advocates for writers and free expression.
After the publication of “The Satanic Verses,” often-violent protests erupted across the Muslim world against Rushdie, who was born in India to a Muslim family.
At least 45 people were killed in riots over the book, including 12 people in Rushdie’s hometown of Mumbai. In 1991, a Japanese translator of the book was stabbed to death and an Italian translator survived a knife attack. In 1993, the book’s Norwegian publisher was shot three times and survived.
Khomeini died the same year he issued the fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death. Iran’s current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, never issued a fatwa of his own withdrawing the edict, though Iran in recent years hasn’t focused on the writer.
The death threats and bounty led Rushdie to go into hiding under a British government protection program, which included a round-the-clock armed guard. Rushdie emerged after nine years of seclusion and cautiously resumed more public appearances, maintaining his outspoken criticism of religious extremism overall.
In 2012, Rushdie published a memoir, “Joseph Anton,” about the fatwa. The title came from the pseudonym Rushdie used while in hiding. He said during a New York talk the same year the memoir came out that terrorism was really the art of fear.
“The only way you can defeat it is by deciding not to be afraid,” he said.
Anti-Rushdie sentiment has lingered long after Khomeini’s decree. The Index on Censorship, an organization promoting free expression, said money was raised to boost the reward for his killing as recently as 2016.
An AP journalist who went to the Tehran office of the 15 Khordad Foundation, which put up the millions for the bounty on Rushdie, found it closed Friday night on the Iranian weekend. No one answered calls to its listed telephone number.
Rushdie rose to prominence with his Booker Prize-winning 1981 novel “Midnight’s Children,” but his name became known around the world after “The Satanic Verses.”
Widely regarded as one of Britain’s finest living writers, Rushdie was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2008 and earlier this year was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honor, a royal accolade for people who have made a major contribution to the arts, science or public life.
Organizers of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, which opens Saturday in Scotland and is one of the world’s largest literary gatherings, are encouraging guest authors to read a sentence from Rushdie’s work at the start of their events.
“We are inspired by his courage and are thinking of him at this difficult time,” festival director Nick Barley said. “This tragedy is a painful reminder of the fragility of things we hold dear and a call to action: We won’t be intimidated by those who would use violence rather than words.”
The Chautauqua Institution, about 55 miles (89 kilometers) southwest of Buffalo in a rural corner of New York, has served for more than a century as a place for reflection and spiritual guidance. Visitors don’t pass through metal detectors or undergo bag checks. Most people leave the doors to their century-old cottages unlocked at night.
The center is known for its summertime lecture series, where Rushdie has spoken before.
At an evening vigil, a few hundred residents and visitors gathered for prayer, music and a long moment of silence.
Last year, officials with the National Archives discovered that Mr. Trump had taken a slew of documents and other government material with him when he left the White House at the end of his tumultuous term in January 2021. That material was supposed to have been sent to the archives under the terms of the Presidential Records Act.
Mr. Trump returned 15 boxes of material in January of this year. When archivists examined the material, they found many pages of documents with classified markings and referred the matter to the Justice Department, which began an investigation and convened a grand jury.
In the spring, the department issued a subpoena to Mr. Trump seeking additional documents that it believed may have been in his possession. The former president was repeatedly urged by advisers to return what remained, despite what they described as his desire to continue to hold onto some documents.
In an effort to resolve the dispute, Mr. Bratt and other officials visited Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., in early June, briefly meeting Mr. Trump while they were there. Two of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, M. Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, spoke with Mr. Bratt and a handful of investigators he traveled with, people briefed on the meeting said.
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What we consider before using anonymous sources. How do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.
Mr. Corcoran and Ms. Bobb showed Mr. Bratt and his team boxes holding material Mr. Trump had taken from the White House that were being kept in a storage area, the people said.
According to two people briefed on the visit, Mr. Bratt and his team left with additional material marked classified, and around that time also obtained the written declaration from a Trump lawyer attesting that all the material marked classified in the boxes had been turned over.
There, they met with Mr. Trump’s lawyer Evan Corcoran and examined a basement storage area where the former president had stowed material that had come with him from the White House. Mr. Bratt subsequently emailed Mr. Corcoran and told him to further secure the documents in the storage area with a stronger padlock.
Then federal investigators subpoenaed surveillance footage from the club, which could have given officials a glimpse of who was coming in and out of the storage area, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
During the same period, investigators were in contact with a number of Mr. Trump’s aides who had some knowledge of how he stored and moved documents around the White House and who still worked for him, three people familiar with the events said.
At least one witness provided the investigators with information that led them to want to further press Mr. Trump for material, according to a person familiar with the inquiry.
Federal officials came to believe this summer that Mr. Trump had not relinquished all the material that left the White House with him at the end of his term, according to three people familiar with the investigation.
Last Friday, the Justice Department applied for the search warrant. Early on Monday morning, F.B.I. agents arrived at Mar-a-Lago.
A new poll finds white adults are more than twice as likely as others to get sizable financial help from parents or grandparents. By contrast, Black adults are more likely to give money to elders.
Tracy J. Lee for NPR
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Tracy J. Lee for NPR
A new poll finds white adults are more than twice as likely as others to get sizable financial help from parents or grandparents. By contrast, Black adults are more likely to give money to elders.
Tracy J. Lee for NPR
Angela Chevaux and her husband have made a good living in York, Pa. She’s an insurance claims supervisor and he’s in construction. But still, a recent inheritance from her father-in-law has been life-changing. He left them a retirement account, a life insurance policy, an annuity — and her husband and his brother inherited an old farmhouse in a secluded spot with a pond.
“We were able to buy the property — the other half — out from his brother at a decent price,” Chevaux says.
She figures they paid about half what the appraised value would have been.
A recent inheritance has allowed the Chevaux family of York, Pa., to pay down a mortgage and student loan debt. That kind of generational wealth transfer is far more common for white families than for others.
Via Angela Chevaux
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Via Angela Chevaux
A recent inheritance has allowed the Chevaux family of York, Pa., to pay down a mortgage and student loan debt. That kind of generational wealth transfer is far more common for white families than for others.
Via Angela Chevaux
They’re renovating the farmhouse to live in and are selling their own home, saying goodbye to 11 more years of payments.
“We’ll be mortgage-free at [ages] 50 and 59!” she says with a laugh.
Her father-in-law also left Chevaux’s 24-year-old son a money market account.
“He had given our son some money towards college before he passed,” she says. “So then this allowed him to pay off the rest of his college debt.”
Her son is a financial adviser and has invested the rest of his inheritance, with plans to use it to help buy a house.
The family’s financial fortunes show one way that America’s stark racial wealth gap has persisted — and even widened — over generations. White adults are more than twice as likely as Black and Latino households to get sizable financial help from parents or other elders. That’s according to a new poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
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Dorothy Brown, a tax law professor at Georgetown University, wishes more white families would talk about these intergenerational benefits.
“Because you have Black Americans who are doing everything they were told is right and not getting ahead,” she says. “And they’re scratching their heads wondering, ‘How come I’m not doing better than I am? How come I’m not doing better than the guy in the cubicle next to me?’ “
The new poll finds 38% of white adults say they’ve gotten at least $10,000 in gifts or loans from a parent or older relative. Only 14% of Black adults receive similar gifts or loans. The share is 16% for Latinos and 19% for Native Americans.
Brown says this divide reflects generations of segregation and racism, especially in housing policies. Racially restrictive covenants barred white people from selling or renting their homes to African Americans or other minority groups. And Federal Housing Administration policies supported such restrictions.
“So if your grandparent got a home that was FHA insured, it was a result of their being white,” she says. “You don’t think about that, but it was.”
The racial wealth gap is also evident in lots of other questions in the poll.
“When people talk about the American dream, it’s here,” says Robert Blendon, a Harvard professor emeritus of health policy who worked on the poll.
A large number of Black, Latino and Native American adults say they want to move to better housing and expect their children to go to college, but they don’t have the money to pay for those things.
“These minority communities are … going to have to borrow everything in a very risky environment for that,” Blendon says, “and they don’t have anything to at least help defray some of the costs.”
What’s at stake, he says, is the ability to make the choices that can help families, and future generations, move ahead.
For Black Americans, wealth is more likely to flow up
For African Americans, especially, tax expert Brown says the generational wealth transfer is actually more likely to go the other way — children helping parents who suffered under Jim Crow.
Theodore Bailey and his wife, Audrey, live in Marana, Ariz. He’s among many college-educated Black Americans who provide extensive financial support to family, something research finds contributes to the persistent racial wealth gap because it diminishes funding for inheritances.
Via Theodore Bailey
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Via Theodore Bailey
Theodore Bailey and his wife, Audrey, live in Marana, Ariz. He’s among many college-educated Black Americans who provide extensive financial support to family, something research finds contributes to the persistent racial wealth gap because it diminishes funding for inheritances.
Via Theodore Bailey
That’s the story of Theodore Bailey, who’s 76 and remembers a tough childhood in segregated Nashville.
“My father died when I was 3 years old,” he says. “My mother was a single mother with four sons.”
His dad died while he was a military cook in World War II, which led to a major break for Bailey. As a war orphan he was able to go to college on the GI Bill, and that launched a successful career as an engineer and missile designer. From early on, Bailey sent money to help his mother get by.
“I knew she was struggling, you know. And at the time, I didn’t have a whole lot to spare, but I’d send her whatever I could,” he says.
Now retired in Arizona, Bailey says he’s always helped family. That includes supporting a brother who lost a job, sending grandchildren to college, and being there for others along the way.
“Oh,” he says with a chuckle, “there’s always cousins and nephews and things that want to borrow money, and a lot of times they don’t pay back.”
Research shows family help like this seriously depletes the wealth of college-educated Black Americans. Bailey says he’s now having to cash out more of his IRA than he’d like to in this bad market, to meet his own expenses.
He’s not sure how much there will be left to pass on to his children and grandchildren.
“I invested in them, putting them through college and so forth,” he says. “I’m hoping they can take care of themselves.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — With inflation raging near its highest level in four decades, the House on Friday gave final approval to President Joe Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act. Its title raises a tantalizing question: Will the measure actually tame the price spikes that have inflicted hardships on American households?
Economic analyses of the proposal suggest that the answer is likely no — not anytime soon, anyway.
The legislation, which the Senate passed earlier this week and now heads to the White House for Biden’s signature, won’t directly address some of the main drivers of surging prices — from gas and food to rents and restaurant meals.
Still, the law could save money for some Americans by lessening the cost of prescription drugs for the elderly, extending health insurance subsidies and reducing energy prices. It would also modestly cut the government’s budget deficit, which might slightly lower inflation by the end of this decade.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded last week that the changes would have a “negligible” impact on inflation this year and next. And the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model concluded that, over the next decade, “the impact on inflation is statistically indistinguishable from zero.”
Such forecasts also undercut the arguments that some Republicans, such as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy have made, that the bill would “cause inflation,” as McCarthy said in a speech on the House floor last month.
Biden himself, in speaking of the legislation’s effect on inflation, has cautiously referred to potentially lower prices in individual categories rather than to lower inflation as a whole. This week, the president said the bill would “bring down the cost of prescription drugs, health insurance premiums and energy costs.”
At the same time, the White House has trumpeted a letter signed by more than 120 economists, including several Novel Prize winners and former Treasury secretaries, that asserts that the law’s reduction in the government’s budget deficit — by an estimated $300 billion over the next decade, according to the CBO — would put “downward pressure on inflation.”
In theory, lower deficits can reduce inflation. That’s because lower government spending or higher taxes, which help shrink the deficit, reduce demand in the economy, thereby easing pressure on companies to raise prices.
Jason Furman, a Harvard economist who served as a top economic adviser in the Obama administration, wrote in an opinion column for The Wall Street Journal: “Deficit reduction is almost always inflation-reducing.”
Yet Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who was a top economic adviser to President George W. Bush and later a director of the CBO, noted that the lower deficits won’t kick in until five years from now and won’t be very large over the next decade considering the size of the economy.
“$30 billion a year in a $21 trillion economy isn’t going to move the needle,” Holtz-Eakin said, referring to the estimated amount of deficit reduction spread over 10 years.
He also noted that Congress has recently passed other legislation to subsidize semiconductor production in the U.S. and expand veterans’ health care, and suggested that those laws will spend more than the Inflation Reduction Act will save.
In addition, Kent Smetters, director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, said the law’s health care subsidies could send inflation up. The legislation would spend $70 billion over a decade to extend tax credits to help 13 million Americans pay for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
Those subsidies would free up money for recipients to spend elsewhere, potentially increasing inflation, although Smetters said he thought the effect would likely be very small.
While the act could have the benefit of increasing the savings of millions of households on pharmaceutical and energy costs, it’s unlikely to have much effect on overall inflation. Prescription drugs account for only 1% of the spending in the U.S. consumer price index; spending on electricity and natural gas makes up just 3.6%.
Starting in 2025, the act will cap the amount Medicare recipients would pay for their prescription drugs at $2,000 a year. It will authorize Medicare to negotiate the cost of some high-priced pharmaceuticals — a long-sought goal that President Donald Trump had also floated. It would also limit Medicare recipients’ out-of-pocket costs for insulin at $35 a month. Insulin prescriptions averaged $54 in 2020, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
“This is a historic change,” said Leigh Purvis, director of health care costs at the AARP Public Policy Institute. “This is allowing Medicare to protect beneficiaries from high drug prices in a way that was not there before.”
A study by Kaiser found that in 2019, 1.2 million Medicare recipients spent an average of $3,216 on drug prescriptions. Purvis said recipients who use the most expensive drugs can spend as much as $10,000 or $15,000 a year.
The legislation authorizes Medicare to negotiate prices of 10 expensive pharmaceuticals, starting next year, though the results won’t take effect until 2026. Up to 60 drugs could be subject to negotiation by 2029.
Holtz-Eakin argued that while the provision may lower the cost of some Medicare drugs, it would discourage the development of new drugs or reduce new venture capital investment in start-up pharmaceutical companies.
The Inflation Reduction Act’s energy provisions could also create savings, though the amounts are likely to be much smaller.
The bill will provide a $7,500 tax credit for new purchases of electric vehicles, though most EVs won’t qualify because the legislation requires them to include batteries with U.S. materials.
And the legislation also significantly expands a tax credit for homeowners who invest in energy-efficient equipment, from a one-time $500 credit to $1,200 that a homeowner could claim each year. Vincent Barnes, senior vice president for policy at the Alliance to Save Energy, said this would allow homeowners to make new energy-efficient investments over several years.
But for all Americans, including those who aren’t homeowners, the impact will likely be limited. The Rhodium Group estimates that by 2030 the bill’s provisions will save households an average of up to $112 a year as gas and electricity becomes cheaper as more Americans drive EVs and houses become more energy- efficient.
FBI agents who searched former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home Monday removed 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked as top secret and meant to be only available in special government facilities, according to a search warrant released by a Florida court Friday.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation agents took around 20 boxes of items, binders of photos, a handwritten note and the executive grant of clemency for Mr. Trump’s ally Roger Stone, a list of items removed from the property shows. Also included in the list was information about the “President of France,” according to the three-page list. The list is contained in a seven-page document that also includes the warrant to search the premises which was granted by a federal magistrate judge in Florida.
Every House Democrat on Friday voted to pass the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) over uniform Republican opposition, sending the multibillion-dollar climate, health and tax bill to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law.
The package, which similarly passed the Senate on Sunday along party lines, was approved around 6 p.m. by a vote of 220-207.
Democrats in the chamber were seen celebrating what they are sure to champion as a legislative achievement — which aims to make prescription drugs and health insurance cheaper while raising taxes on the wealthy, cutting the deficit, investing in clean energy and curbing climate change — ahead of a contentious midterm cycle, when they will be up against the president’s low approval ratings and other headwinds.
Biden soon tweeted his reaction to the House passage: “Today, the American people won. Special interests lost.”
“With the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in the House, families will see lower prescription drug prices, lower health care costs, and lower energy costs,” he wrote, and said he planned to sign the bill next week.
Total party unity in both chambers is a major feat for Democratic leadership, which has struggled for months to unite the caucus around one cohesive strategy. The party has been attempting since Biden took office in January 2021 to pass a social spending bill, which eventually became the IRA, a much slimmed-down version of the multitrillion-dollar plan Biden first backed.
The more than $700 billion package includes the nation’s most extensive investments ever in new climate initiatives; allows Medicare to negotiate some drug prices; and extends Affordable Care Act subsidies while reducing the federal deficit with a 15% corporate minimum tax and with an excise tax on corporate stock buybacks.
Despite the legislation’s name, Republicans have pointed out, it will have only a negligible effect on inflation in the short term, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found.
But the CBO said it would reduce federal budget deficits by $102 billion over 10 years.
At a press conference ahead of the vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was questioned on whether the bill could actually tame high — but slightly cooling — inflation in the next months.
“Well, you have to get started,” Pelosi said, noting that inflation is caused by many factors, like the COVID-19 supply chain crunch and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The House GOP leader, Kevin McCarthy, on Friday called the bill “misguided” and “tone deaf.” He spoke on the House floor for about 50 minutes ahead of the vote, mostly blasting the widespread use of proxy-voting for the bill’s passage and the IRA’s boosted IRS tax enforcement measures, which supporters say will actually target the wealthy who shuck their tax bills.
“Democrats more than any other majority in history are addicted to spending other people’s money,” McCarthy said.
Over half of the House voted by-proxy, which prolonged the bill’s passage by designating a certain member to cast in-person votes on behalf of absent lawmakers.
The IRA passed the Senate on Sunday without a single Republican supporter. Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie breaking vote after a 16-hour “vote-a-rama” that saw a slew of proposed amendments by both parties — and saw Senate Democrats forced to make last-minute adjustments to the bill’s tax provisions.
On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the IRA “one of the most comprehensive significant pieces of legislation that has passed the Senate and the Congress in decades.”
“While much of D.C. was focused on the Senate vote earlier this week, the White House was just as focused on the House at the same time,” a White House official told ABC News, noting that the administration had been in contact with House leadership throughout the week.
Staff was also talking with individual members about the legislation, answering any questions and sending materials every day, the official said.
From his summer vacation on Kiawah Island, South Carolina, Biden twice video-conferenced with his staff who worked on the IRA, according to the White House.
“The president called House members throughout the week; we had members at the CHIP signing and PACT Act signing which was another opportunity for POTUS to touch base with members on IRA,” the official said. “White House staff also worked hard to refute Republican attacks on the bill and go on offense because of what Republicans were opposing.”
ABC News’ Justin Gomez, Molly Nagle and Trish Turner contributed to this report.
Cincinnati shooting suspect Ricky Shiffer was shot dead by police on the side of an interstate highway hours after he attempted to breach a visitor’s entrance at an FBI field office in the city.
The 42-year-old, of Columbus, Ohio, fled the scene of the attempted attack on Thursday morning before a standoff and shootout took place hours later. The FBI confirmed his death at 3.45pm following an exchange of gunfire.
Officials are investigating Shiffer’s ties to the US Capitol riot and right wing extremism as he appears to have claimed that he was present in Washington on 6 January on Truth Social, a pro-Trump social media site.
Federal agents were already looking into Shiffer’s ties to the Capitol attack before the FBI standoff, the New York Times reports.
Shiffer also appeared to support former US president Donald Trump’s unfounded claims of a stolen election in 2020 and responded to social media posts by pro-Trump figures such as congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and Donald Trump Jr.
On Tuesday, the FBI carried out a search at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida as part of an investigation into the mishandling of White House documents, sparking anger among his supporters. The raid was referenced in Shiffer’s social media posts this week.
The GOP attack on the FBI shows no signs of stopping
The party that once stood staunchly for law-and-order has dramatically reversed course, stirring up opposition to the FBI and tapping into political grievances and far-right conspiracies that fed the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
It’s all part of the GOP’s election year strategy to harness voter outrage over the unprecedented search, quickly and unequivocally set in motion as Trump hosted a dozen Republicans for dinner of steak and scallops at his private Bedminster club the day after the FBI action.
Police are investigating Ohio FBI attack’s links to ‘violent extremist’ groups
A law enforcement official told ABC News on Friday that Shiffer was being investigated as a “suspected domestic violent extremist” and that his social media history was under investigation following the attack on an FBI office on Thursday.
Investigators are also looking at whether or not Shiffer had ties to far-right extremist groups such as the Proud Boys, whose members have been charged with taking part in January 6, as per the Associated Press.
Shiffer appeared to call for the killing of FBI agents “on sight” in posts on Truth Social, the social media platform set-up by Donald Trump, in the days before the attack, NBC News reported on Thursday.
The 42-year-old served in the Navy on a nuclear submarine and later in the National Guard, Military.com reports.
The Ohio man enlisted in the Navy soon after high school, The Washington Post reports.
Shiffer grew up on a small family farm in Perry County, Pennsylvania, near the Susquehanna River, the oldest of four siblings. More details can be found in our full report.
FBI agent warns that rhetoric from GOP attacking agency could lead to more attacks
Attacks from Donald Trump and leading Republican politicians are creating a dangerous climate of anti-law enforcement sentiment in the US, according to a former FBI agent.
“All of this rhetoric is being thrown around without any consideration for possible consequences,” Frank Montoya Jr, a retired FBI special agent who led the bureau’s field offices in Seattle and Honolulu, told The Associated Press on Friday.
“All that does is stir up that minority within the base that aren’t satisfied with just words, they actually want to act it out.”
As Bevan Hurley has reported, ex-FBI officials are worried the Ohio attack could act as a rallying cry for others bent on violence against the agency.
Anger at the FBI continues to build on Truth Social, the social media platform founded by Donald Trump.
As of Friday afternoon, the top hashtags on the site were #EndTheFBI, #DefundTheFBI and #FBIcorruption, NBC News reports.
Ricky Shiffer was among the angry Truth Social users attacking the FBI, after the agency searched the former president’s home in Mar-a-Lago.
A post on Truth Social from an account appearing to belong to Shiffer seemed to confess to the attack.
A Truth Social page allegedly belonging to Ricky Shiffer
“If you don’t hear from me, it is true I tried attacking the FBI, and it’ll mean either I was taken off the internet, the FBI got me, or they sent the regular cops,” the update reads.
According to an analysis from The Washington Post, Shiffer appeared to be one of Truth Social’s most prolific posters, sending out 374 messages in the week before the FBI shooting, most of them pro-Trump conspiracy theories.
Ohio gunman had ‘lead foot’ and minor arrests on record
More details have begun to trickle in about Ricky Shiffer, the Ohio man who tried to shoot up an FBI office in Cincinnati on Thursday before being killed by police after a daylong police standoff.
The FBI attack wasn’t Shiffer’s first encounter with law enforcement.
In 2004, he got a speeding ticket in Minnesota, after driving 50 mph in a 30 mph zone in his red Ford Mustage, NBC News reports.
“I have a lead foot,” he reportedly told officers.
That’s certainly true. Records show he got speeding tickets in Ohio, Hawaii, and Florida.
A year before the Minnesota incident, however, Shiffer had his most serious brush with police.
In July of 2003, he was arrested in Moorhead, Minnesota, and pleaded guilty to “obstructing legal process.”
Old acquaintances say Ricky Shiffer had an ‘anger issue’ and ‘got picked up by the wrong crowd’
Now that officials have identified Ricky Shiffer of Ohio as the man who attacked a Cincinnati FBI office on Thursday, those who knew the gunman, who was killed by police, are starting to share their recollections.
Ian McConnell was Shiffer’s neighbour in the Greystone Apartments complex in Columbus, Ohio, where Shiffer lived between 2017 and 2020.
“We knew he was a bit off,” McConnell said. “He had a little bit of an anger issue about his car, but who doesn’t?”
The former neighbour said he was shocked to learn what happened to Shiffer, who moved away from Columbus with stated aspirations to live out West.
“It was a shock to us he wound up in Cincinnati,” Mr McConnell said. “I’m afraid this is coming two years too late and Ricky got picked up by the wrong crowd.”
Family members remember Ricky Shiffer as “very intelligent but quiet person.
Family members are speaking out about Ricky Shiffer, the Ohio man shot by law enforcement after attacking an FBI post on Thursday.
Shiffer grew up on a small family farm in Perry County, Pennsylvania, near the Susquehanna River, the oldest of four siblings, The Washington Post reports.
An unnamed family member told the Post that Shiffer was a “very intelligent but quiet person.”
“He had quite a memory on him,” they said. “It was full of facts and information when he would talk about something. He knew a lot about farm equipment.”
“He was quiet, maybe a little awkward, but you could tell he was a very smart kid. He had some brainpower,” the family member added.
Suspect called for “1775” as “solution” in reply to Marjorie Taylor Greene
Social media accounts thought to belong to FBI shooting suspect Ricky Shiffer have come under scrutiny since his death on Thursday following a shoot-out with officers and an attempted attack on the bureau’s office in Cincinnati.
One tweet seen by NBC News suggested that in May, Shiffer responded to a tweet by pro-Trump congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene by referencing the need for a repeat of “1775” – in apparent reference to the beginning of the American Revolutionary War.
Shiffer reportedly wrote: “Congresswoman Greene, they got away with fixing elections in plain sight. It’s over. The next step is the one we used in 1775.”
Ms Greene had tweeted: “I know they are trying 1984, but I’m feeling 2016 vibes”. Those comments were in apparent reference to false claims made by Donald Trump that Democrats stole the 2020 US election.
Tweets show suspect’s support for Proud Boys, reports say
Analysis of the FBI attack suspect’s social media history by Huffington Post suggests he also tweeted about support for the Proud Boys, the far right militia group connected to January 6.
“We have multiple scenarios. The future one is much larger, consistent with [climate change],” he said. “In the historical scenario, the lesser one, certain parts of the Sierra Nevada see 50 to 60 inches of liquid-equivalent precipitation … but in the future event, some places see 70 to 80 and a few see 100 in a 30-day period. Even places like San Francisco and Sacramento could see 20 to 30 inches of rain, and that’s just in one month.”
We regularly answer frequently asked questions about life during the coronavirus crisis. If you have a question you’d like us to consider for a future post, email us at goatsandsoda@npr.org with the subject line: “Weekly Coronavirus Questions.” See an archive of our FAQs here.
So you had dinner – indoors – with a friend and the next day got a call from your dining companion: “I hate to tell you – but I’m now testing positive for COVID.” Uh oh, did you catch it from your friend?
Or you wake up in the middle of the night with a scratchy throat, a cough and a feeling that your head is going to float off your neck. Could it be COVID?
In both these scenarios, the question about whether or not you have COVID can be answered by a self-test or a PCR test. Many people opt for the self-test option since you can now easily pick up self-tests and get an answer in 15 minutes in the comfort of your home.
But if you take an at-home test and it’s negative … are you really in the clear?
That’s a question the CDC and the FDA are addressing in guidance issued yesterday on COVID protocols. And there’s a little bit of confusion.
The CDC says that if you were exposed to COVID, “instead of quarantining” you should wear a “high-quality mask for 10 days and get tested on day 5. If that test is negative, the CDC thinks you’re good to go. And if you think you are sick and that it might be COVID-19, “isolate” until you get test results. The CDC states: “If your results are negative, you can end your isolation.”
The FDA, however, now says that one negative test isn’t enough. Here’s what the FDA advised in a “safety communication” released on August 11: If you have symptoms, you should take another test 48 hours later. If you don’t have symptoms, you should take three tests, each 48 hours apart. Only if all those tests are negative should you consider yourself to be COVID-free.
And the FDA isn’t the only one to think repeat testing is the way to go. Infectious disease experts agree that the only way to be sure you don’t have COVID after a negative home test, is to test again – either with another home test or a more sensitive PCR.
Okay… so why am I being asked to redo my home tests if they’re negative?
We get it, repeat testing isn’t the most convenient thing. The problem is that those home tests aren’t especially sensitive at the beginning of a COVID infection.
“There is a recognition that [at-home rapid antigen tests] are less sensitive than PCR tests,” says Dr. Apurv Soni, professor at the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine. “But it’s not that they don’t work, it’s just that we need a better understanding of what an effective testing regimen should be.”
The FDA made its recommendations based on a yearlong study it did in collaboration with the NIH and University of Massachusetts School of Medicine that was released preprint on medRxiv on August 6.
That study showed that if you take a home test on the day you get a COVID infection, there’s a good chance it’s going to come back negative – meaning you could be infectious but a home test won’t yet show it.
“The data very convincingly show” that if you take another test or two, you can be pretty sure if you have COVID or not, says Soni, who was the lead author on that paper.
Soni says, “If you are concerned about having an infection and you have symptoms, you should take two tests 48 hours apart. If you do not have symptoms, you should take three tests, one every 48 hours. That’s it.”
So why aren’t home tests great at picking up COVID infections? I thought that’s what they were supposed to do.
Okay, so now that we know officially know that a single at-home rapid test isn’t particularly great at detecting an early case of COVID, the question is: Why not?
“We’re more immune to the virus than we were in 2020,” says Soni. “So the way your body reacts to the virus is different than it was in 2020. Antigen tests [home tests] are really good at detecting infection when the viral load is above a certain threshold.” But because of the various degrees of immunity most people now have, “the rate at which the viral load increases in your body is slower.”
After another few days though, the amount of virus in your body will probably be high enough to be picked up by a home test.
Does the FDA recommendation to repeat test have anything to do with omicron or the new subvariants?
The good news is that it doesn’t seem like omicron is having any effect on the sensitivity of the tests. “The currently known variants do not affect the result of the rapid test,” says Meriem Bekliz, postdoctoral researcher in emerging viruses at the University of Geneva.
Bekliz is the lead author on a paper published on August 8 in Microbiology Spectrum showing that there’s not a difference in how a home test picks up the delta variant and the first subvariant of omicron, BA.1.
But what about the new BA.4 and BA.5 variants? New research shows that those variants are particularly adept at evading your immune system, but are they just as good at evading detection from your at-home rapid tests?
“The rapid home antigen-based tests can detect [all the] omicron subvariants,” says Dr. Preeti Malani, professor of medicine at the University of Michigan. “The home tests do not rely on the spike protein, which is where the mutations occur in variants.”
The spike protein is what our immune system looks for to identify and neutralize COVID. It’s what many of the vaccines are based on. And its why changes in the spike protein have allowed new variants of COVID to somewhat evade detection by our vaccine-primed immune systems.
The home rapid antigen tests detect a different protein, the nucleocapsid. And all of the omicron subvariants have the same version of the nucleocapsid. What does that mean? “Theoretically, there should be no difference in detection sensitivity between omicron BA.1 and its sub-variants [including BA.4/BA.5],” Bekliz says.
What if after two tests 48 hours apart, I’m still sick and still testing negative?
So yeah, maybe you just don’t have COVID. “There may be an alternative virus or even a bacterial infection like strep throat, causing illness and not COVID,” says Malani.
Still, two negative tests 48 hours apart isn’t 100% definitive. “Besides repeating the home test, you can also consider testing with PCR,” Malani says.
PCR tests are more sensitive to lower viral loads than the at-home rapid antigen tests. So if you take a PCR test while sick and it comes back negative, then you can be fairly comfortable knowing it’s not COVID.
However, just because you don’t have COVID doesn’t mean you are OK to head into the office. “If you are ill, whether due to COVID or some other virus, you should stay away from others,” says Malani.
So does this really mean if I have dinner with a friend who then tells me they have COVID that I need to test three times over six days?
This is where things get a bit tricky. Even Soni admits that testing for that long, “is a little impractical.” But he also says: “If you do repeat a test [ahead of whatever social event you want to go to] that gives you the highest confidence that you’re not infected and therefore not passing infection on to others.”
The FBI has cited violations of the Espionage Act as a catalyst for its document seizure, and reported uncovering materials marked “top secret/SCI.” Among them was a grant of clemency for famed Trump associate Roger Stone.
FBI released documents that reveal the Justice Department is investigating Trump for violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice and criminal handling of government records.
But what is the Espionage Act, and why was it created?
The Espionage Act of 1917, enacted just after the beginning of World War I, makes it illegal to obtain information, capture photographs or copy descriptions of any information relating to national defense, with the intent for that information to be used against the United States or for the gain of any foreign nation.
Is the Espionage Act still in effect?
Many significant chunks of the Espionage Act of 1917 remain in effect and can be used in the court of law. In its modern iteration, the act has been used to prosecute spies and leakers of classified information.
The Espionage Act was passed to bolster the war effort. Enforced by President Woodrow Wilson’s attorney general, the law made it illegal to share any information that could interfere with the war or stand to benefit foreign adversaries. It was meant as a safeguard against spying.
At the time those found guilty could be fined up to $10,000 and serve up to 20 years in jail, according the The History Channel.
Is espionage a state crime?
Most espionage crimes are investigated by the CIA or FBI, making them matters of federal jurisdiction and resultant in federal charges.
What was the Sedition Act of 1918?
Passed as an amendment to the Espionage Act of 1917, the Sedition Act made it prosecutable by law to make false statements that interfered with the war effort, insult or abuse the U.S. government, flag, constitution or military; and interfere with the production of war materials, according to The History Channel. It was also a crime under this act to advocate, teach or defend the former behavior.
The Sedition Act was was repealed by Congress in 1920 on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment.
This is both a philosophical and legal question. In it’s strict definition, espionage is the practice of spying – usually to obtain confidential intelligence either of a military or political nature.
Cornell Law School describes espionage as “the crime of spying or secretly watching a person, company, government, etc. for the purpose of gathering secret information or detecting wrongdoing, and to transfer such information to another organization or state.”
What is an example of espionage?
One famous example is that of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the couple convicted in a conspiracy to share atomic intelligence secrets with the Soviet Union.
They were executed at New York’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility in June 1953. The couple is particularly famous for being the first citizens convicted and executed for espionage during peacetime, The History Channel reports.
What is CUI Basic?
CUI stands for Controlled Unclassified Information and refers to a subset of CUI in which the authorizing law, regulation or government-wide policy does not set out specific guidelines for handling or dissemination, according to The National Archives.
What are declassified documents?
Declassified means essentially to remove the previously prescribed “top secret” label.
Classified documents refer to the kind of material that government agencies have deemed so sensitive to national security that access must be controlled and restricted, Jeffrey Fields, associate professor of the practice of international relations at USC, wrote in an article for The Conversation.
There’s an elaborate procedure to declassify documents, Fields wrote, though the president has the power to declassify anything at any time in accordance with provisions of the Atomic Energy Act.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin’s Republican Assembly leader on Friday ended a 14-month, taxpayer-funded inquiry into the 2020 election by firing his hand-picked investigator. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’ firing of Michael Gableman came just three days after the lawmaker narrowly survived a primary challenge from an opponent endorsed by former President Donald Trump and Gableman.
While Gableman found no evidence of widespread fraud during his inquiry, he had joined Trump in calling for lawmakers to consider decertifying the 2020 election — something Vos and legal experts say is unconstitutional and impossible.
Vos announced the investigation last year under pressure from Trump and chose Gableman, a conservative former Supreme Court justice, to lead it. But as the investigation progressed, Vos’ relationship soured with both Gableman and Trump.
When he hired Gableman, Vos had said he was “supremely confident” in his abilities. By Tuesday night, Vos was calling him an “embarrassment.”
“After having many members of our caucus reach out to me over the past several days, it is beyond clear to me that we only have one choice in this matter, and that’s to close the Office of Special Counsel,” Vos said Friday in a statement issued first to The Associated Press.
Gableman, who has repeated Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen,” has said that Vos “never wanted a real investigation.” He and his attorney, James Bopp, did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.
His investigation had drawn bipartisan scorn, and his firing generated bipartisan praise.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has been highly critical of Gableman and the probe. Spokesperson Britt Cudaback reacted with one word: “Finally.”
“It was a good decision. It would have been a better decision six months ago,” said Republican state Sen. Kathy Bernier, chair of the Senate elections committee, who went on to add that she has “zero respect, for Michael Gableman.”
Vos said people with ongoing concerns about election integrity should focus on defeating Evers, who vetoed changes Republicans wanted. Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels supports disbanding the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission and has said he would have signed the bills Evers vetoed.
Michels’ adviser Chris Walker declined to comment on Gableman’s firing.
Vos hired Gableman to quell pressure he was feeling from those who believed Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election. President Joe Biden won Wisconsin by nearly 21,000 votes, an outcome that’s survived lawsuits, recounts, reviews, audits, in addition to Gableman’s own investigation.
Unhappy with how he was treated by Vos, Gableman’s public comments critical of the speaker increased as did Trump’s. In April, Gableman called for pressure to be put on Vos to extend the former justice’s contract. Vos did so — albeit with a pay cut from his initial $11,000 a month. Vos put the investigation on hold in May, pending resolution of ongoing lawsuits.
Their relationship reached a tipping point when both Trump and Gableman endorsed Vos’ primary opponent, leading to a tighter-than-expected race. Vos eked out with a 260-vote win. Vos said his victory showed lawmakers “don’t have to be a lapdog to whatever Donald Trump says.”
Gableman also faces legal trouble.
On Tuesday, a judge was to determine whether Gableman remains in contempt of court for not complying with the state’s open records law. Dane County Circuit Judge Frank Remington forwarded his contempt order to the committee that disciplines attorneys for possible further action, including suspension or repeal of Gableman’s law license.
That is one of six pending lawsuits related to the investigation.
The attorneys’ fees awarded so far has resulted in a total tab for Gableman’s investigation, all paid by taxpayers, that tops $1.1 million.
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, said he was glad Vos decided to shut down what he called a “colossal waste of tax dollars to promote the Big Lie.”
“What we knew before this started remains true today: our elections are free, fair, and secure, and the results of our elections reflect the will of the voters,” said Kaul, who has a pending lawsuit against Gableman.
Gableman has used the probe to raise his national profile. He gave the prayer at Trump’s Wisconsin rally this month and he’s been a regular on conservative talk radio, including an appearance where he disparaged how Wisconsin’s chief elections official dresses.
Gableman also faced criticism for scant expense records, confusing emails, meeting with conspiracy theorists including MyPillow executive Mike Lindell, and making rudimentary errors, including multiple spelling mistakes. For instance, in records released during the lawsuits, Gableman and his team routinely misspelled Vos as “Voss.”
Democratic state Sen. Melissa Agard said it was “past time” for Gableman to be fired.
“I’m glad that Speaker Vos has stopped the bleeding for these tax dollars going to a sham investigation,” she added.
The warrant shows federal law enforcement was investigating Trump for removal or destruction of records, obstruction of justice and violating the Espionage Act — which can encompass crimes beyond spying, such as the refusal to return national security documents upon request. Conviction under the statutes can result in imprisonment or fines.
The documents, unsealed after the Justice Department sought their public disclosure amid relentless attacks by Trump and his GOP allies, underscore the extraordinary national security threat that federal investigators believed the missing documents presented. The concern grew so acute that Attorney General Merrick Garland approved the unprecedented search of Trump’s estate last week.
The disclosure of the documents comes four days after Trump publicly confirmed the court-authorized search of his Mar-a-Lago home by the FBI, marshaling his political allies to unleash fierce criticism of federal investigators. But the details in the warrant underscore the gravity of the probe — an unprecedented investigation of a former president for mishandling some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets.
Trump has claimed since Monday that he has cooperated with investigators from the National Archives and FBI for months and that the unannounced search was an unnecessary escalation. But after several rounds of negotiations in which materials were recovered by the Archives, federal investigators came to believe Trump hadn’t returned everything in his possession.
The search warrant, signed on Aug. 5 by federal magistrate judge Bruce Reinhart, revealed that dozens of items were seized, most of them described in vague terms like “leatherbound box of documents,” “binder of photos” and “handwritten note.”
Other items on the list indicate the presence of classified material, describing them as “miscellaneous top secret documents” and “miscellaneous confidential documents.”
Stone’s attorney Grant Smith said that the longtime Trump ally “has no knowledge as to the facts surrounding his clemency documents appearing on the inventory of items seized from former President Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago.”
Shortly after 3 p.m., the Justice Department confirmed that Trump’s lawyers would not oppose the public release of the search warrant and underlying receipt of materials, which had already begun to circulate widely.
Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee have just offered some of the party’s first comments since last night’s report that Trump may have kept documents with details of nuclear weapons at Mar-a-Lago.
From the sounds of it, The Washington Post’s story hasn’t changed their view of the former president.
“President Donald Trump is Joe Biden’s most likeliest his political opponent in 2024 and this is less than 100 days from critical midterm elections. The FBI raid of President Trump is a complete abuse and overreach of its authority,” Elise Stefanik, the number-three House Republican, said at a press conference.
She and other lawmakers invoked old controversies such as the Hillary Clinton email scandal and Trump’s firing of FBI chief James Comey, as well as more recent matters such as Hunter Biden’s business dealings, to make the case that the bureau has a credibility issue.
“The American people are smart, and they have had enough. It is unfortunately why there is a fundamental lack of trust in these agencies, and the American people deserve answers,” Stefanik said. “A House Republican majority will leave no stone unturned when it comes to transparency and accountability into the brazen politicization of Joe Biden’s DOJ and FBI targeting their political opponents.”
As to the report regarding documents on nuclear weapons being found at Mar-a-Lago, Mike Turner, the top Republican on the House intelligence committee, called on attorney general Merrick Garland to make public the rationale for the raid.
“I’m asking the same questions you are and if there are rational answers for it, then he needs to come to this committee, disclose what the classified information is, disclose what the national security threat is, so that we know,” Turner said.
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