(NEW YORK) — Prosecutors on Monday told the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s federal classified documents case that a limited gag order was necessary to prevent the former president from inviting a “violent act” on the law enforcement agents involved in the case.
As assistant special counsel David Harbach attempted to demonstrate that Trump was aware of the “predictable response of some of his supporters” when he made false statements about FBI’s August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago — including a campaign statement that President Joe Biden was “locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger” — Judge Aileen Cannon challenged the prosecutor to produce evidence and justify the constitutionality of the proposed gag order.
“The most important thing is it talks about an event that is central to this case in utterly misleading terms,” Harbach argued. “The government is at a loss to conceive any possible reason Mr. Trump would say something so false … and inviting of retributive violence.”
“Where on the attachments do you see a call for violence?” Cannon responded after criticizing prosecutors for not producing ample evidence of a pattern of conduct from Trump’s other criminal and civil cases.
Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 40 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials after leaving the White House, after prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information and took steps to thwart the government’s efforts to get the documents back. Trump has denied all charges and denounced the probe as a political witch hunt.
Cannon pressed Harbarch on the argument that a modification of Trump’s release conditions — rather than a standalone gag order like in the former president’s federal election interference case — would avoid issues related to the First Amendment.
“Do conditions of release still need to comport with the Constitution?” Cannon asked. “The First Amendment is in the Constitution.”
Cannon also expressed skepticism about the impact of Trump’s statements on the law enforcement officers, highlighting that any public filings included redactions for the names and identifying information of law enforcement agents. Harbach responded by arguing that some agents were previously doxed, and described Trump’s recent statements as “beyond irresponsible.”
Harbach argued that there is “ample danger between now and trial … that some sort of violent act will occur” because of Trump’s conduct, and said that Cannon needed to impose the restrictions on Trump’s speech to protect the integrity of the proceedings. When Cannon suggested waiting until trial to impose any restrictions on speech, Harbach argued immediate action was necessary.
“That die has already been cast … by defendant’s conduct,” Harbach said.
The first hour of the hearing grew contentious at times, as Cannon pushed Harbach for evidence and details.
“I don’t appreciate your tone,” Cannon told Harbach at one point. “I expect decorum in this courtroom at all times.”
“I didn’t mean to be unprofessional. I apologize for that,” Harbach later said
The request for a gag order by the special counsel follows a month of escalating rhetoric from Trump about federal agents’ use-of-force policy during their August 2022 search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate for classified documents.
In a filing last month, Smith argued that Trump’s statements that law enforcement officers were “complicit in a plot to assassinate him” were intentionally false and misleading, and “put a target on the backs of the FBI agents.”
Trump’s defense attorneys responded to the request by claiming that prosecutors have failed to demonstrate that Trump’s statements resulted in any material threats or harassment against law enforcement.
Echoing the former president’s defense against the limited gag order in his New York criminal hush money case, Trump’s lawyers wrote that the proposed gag order — which they describe as a “shocking display of overreach and disregard for the Constitution” — amounts to political interference by limiting Trump’s statements ahead of this week’s presidential debate and the Republican National Convention in July.
“[T]he motion is a naked effort to impose totalitarian censorship of core political speech, under threat of incarceration, in a clear attempt to silence President Trump’s arguments to the American people about the outrageous nature of this investigation and prosecution,” defense lawyers said in a June filing.
The gag order hearing, being conducted by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, follows a continuation this morning of Friday’s hearing in which defense attorneys are seeking to have the documents case dismissed on the grounds that Smith was unlawfully appointed as special counsel.
‘False and extremely dangerous’
Trump’s recent public statements related to the Mar-a-Lago search, during which agents found more than 100 documents with classified markings, have emphasized the use-of-force policy in place during the raid, which Trump has repeatedly associated with “Biden’s DOJ.”
Prosecutors argue that law enforcement employed the Department of Justice’s standard use-of-force policy, which allows the use of force “when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.”
In filings, Smith also emphasized that the search was scheduled in the off-season when Trump and his family were not present at Mar-a-Lago and that it was conducted with coordination with Secret Service and Mar-a-Lago staff — and that Trump’s lawyer was notified before the search was executed.
In a rare public rebuke, the FBI issued a statement last month to confirm that law enforcement used standard protocols related to use of deadly force during the raid, adding that, “No one ordered additional steps to be taken and there was no departure from the norm in this matter.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland also described accusations that the DOJ authorized Trump’s assassination as “false and extremely dangerous” and added that the same policy was in place during the search of President Biden’s home during the investigation into his retention of classified documents.
Threats against law enforcement
Prosecutors have emphasized that the proposed gag order against Trump would be narrowly limited — solely prohibiting Trump from falsely speaking about “FBI agents intending to murder him and his family” — in order to protect the safety of law enforcement officials.
To illustrate the threat against law enforcement officials, prosecutors claimed that Trump’s rhetoric encouraged a supporter to make threats to an FBI agent associated with the Hunter Biden case, including threatening that supporters would “hunt you down” and “slaughter you” if Trump does not win the 2024 election.
Prosecutors also argued that a Trump supporter attacked an FBI field office in Cincinnati with an AR-15 and a nail gun in August 2022 after the raid on Mar-a-Lago — an attack which prosecutors say was partially inflamed by Trump’s comments on social media after the raid.
Defense lawyers wrote that Trump has engaged in his “constitutionally protected campaign speech” and that prosecutors have failed to prove that Trump’s statements have directly resulted in threats or harassment.
In addition to highlighting two examples of threats or violence, prosecutors broadly argued that Trump’s inflammatory language about the raid has created a “combustible atmosphere” that poses an immediate risk to law enforcement.
“No court would tolerate another defendant deliberately creating such immediate risks to the safety of law enforcement, and this Court should not wait for a tragic event before taking action in this case,” prosecutors said in a filing last week.
Trump’s other gag orders
Trump has generally been unsuccessful in challenging the gag orders imposed in his other criminal and civil cases, occasionally securing stays of the orders but failing to overturn the orders as unconstitutional.
New York’s highest court declined to take up Trump’s challenge to the gag order in Trump’s civil fraud case, which prohibited Trump from making comments about judicial staff.
Last week, the same court declined to immediately consider Trump’s challenge to the gag order in his New York hush money case — which prohibits Trump from making statements about jurors, witnesses, and others involved in the case — after determining that “no substantial constitutional question is directly involved” in Trump’s challenge. A mid-level appeals court last month found that the gag order “properly weighed petitioner’s First Amendment Rights against the court’s historical commitment to ensuring the fair administration of justice.”
Trump also unsuccessfully challenged the gag order in his federal election interference case that prohibited from making statements about prosecutors other than Smith, witnesses, and courthouse staff.
“Given the record in this case, the court had a duty to act proactively to prevent the creation of an atmosphere of fear or intimidation aimed at preventing trial participants and staff from performing their functions within the trial process,” a panel of Court of Appeals judges in Washington, D.C., wrote in an order last year upholding the gag order.
(NEW YORK) — More research is emerging to show how much more severe wildfires have become in recent decades.
The frequency and magnitude of extreme wildfires — the ones that cause the most damage to ecosystems, society and the climate — appear to have doubled over the past 20 years, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
Researchers at the University of Tasmania in Australia used satellite data from 2003 to 2023 to identify active hot spots and calculate the summed intensity of a fire event.
“Extreme wildfires are on the rise,” Calum Cunningham, a professor of pyrogeography at the University of Tasmania and author of the study, told ABC News via email. “Surprisingly, this finding hadn’t been shown until now, owing to the relatively short length of global satellite datasets.”
The team found the increase in extreme events was mostly driven by more intense fires in temperate coniferous forests — which are forests made up of trees that have needle-like leaves — and boreal forests, which are a subset of coniferous forests, including in North America and Russia. This is likely related to the increased aridity in these forests over recent years due to climate change, researchers said.
In boreal forests, where the increases were the largest, large amounts of carbon have been released by extreme fires, threatening to create a feedback effect that further magnifies warming, Cunningham said.
The Nearctic and Australasia/Oceania regions were most affected by extreme events, researchers said. In addition, the six most extreme years for these escalated wildfires have occurred since 2017, the study found.
The rise in extreme wildfires “certainly [carry] the fingerprints of climate change,” Cunningham said, adding that he was shocked by the magnitude of the increases.
“Many of these extreme events occurred in years with record heat and dryness, when fuels become extremely dry, allowing them to burn at very high intensities,” he said.
A warming climate will be even more conducive to extreme wildfire events, highlighting the need for emergency planners to adapt and prepare for more devastating infernos in the future. Exponential increases in extreme fire activity will undoubtedly increase should global temperatures continue to rise, Cunningham said.
“If the atmosphere continues to warm and dry, as expected, then it’s likely fire [behavior] in some ecosystems will continue to worsen,” Cunningham said.
The new study adds to the growing body of research with similar findings.
In the U.S., the frequency of extreme fire risk has grown 20 times over recent decades, according to a report published by Deep Sky, a Canadian carbon removal project developer, earlier this month.
Levels of widespread extreme fire risk that used to occur once every 100 years are now expected to occur every five years, the report found.
The regions found to be experiencing the most increases in extreme fire weather are central Colorado and northern New Mexico, according to the report. Central California is facing staggering increases in extreme fire weather.
Last year, Canada experienced a record-breaking fire season, and wildfires have already begun to sweep through the West.
The path forward must include significant action to slow and reverse climate change as well as local-scale land management to implement strategies to reduce fire intensity, Cunningham said, adding that better evacuation protocols and hardening of existing buildings to make them more resilient to fires will all be necessary in the future.
Culture’s Biggest Night has just gotten a little bigger. Added to the lineup of the BET Awards 2024 is Grammy-winning actor and recording artist Will Smith. He’ll be taking the stage to debut a brand-new song.
“From his start as a rapper to The Fresh Prince to being a box office king as one of the Bad Boys, Will Smith is truly a global icon, and we are honored to welcome him back to grace the BET Awards stage,” Connie Orlando, EVP of specials, music programming & music strategy at BET, said in a statement. “We look forward to Will adding to yet another defining night for the culture that is not to be missed.”
Will, who stars in the recently released Bad Boys: Ride or Die, joins performers GloRilla, Ice Spice, Latto, Ms. Lauryn Hill & YG Marley, Muni Long, Sexyy Red, Shaboozey, Tyla, Victoria Monét and BET Amplified stage performer Tanner Adell.
Taraji P. Henson will serve as host, and Usher will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award.
The BET Awards 2024 will air live on BET on Sunday, June 30, at 8 p.m. ET.
President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden participate in the first presidential debate in Cleveland, OH, Sep. 29, 2020. (Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — President Joe Biden and Donald Trump return to the debate stage Thursday for the first time in four years — but this time under a significant new set of rules.
ABC News spoke with experts on how that could help — or hurt — each candidate — and what difference it could make for American voters watching the showdown.
The two rivals will face off in a studio at CNN’s Atlanta headquarters in prime time on Thursday for the first presidential debate of the 2024 election.
While it won’t be the first time Biden and Trump have gone toe-to-toe on policy (the two sparred twice in 2020) it will look a lot different from debates past because of the guidelines established by CNN and agreed upon by both campaigns.
The candidates’ microphones will be muted unless it’s their turn to speak. There will be no live studio audience to react to zingers or other “moments” during the 90-minutes, a first since the 1960 debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.
There will be two commercial breaks, though Trump and Biden won’t be able to consult with their teams during them. The candidates are not allowed any props or prewritten notes, and will only be given a pen, paper and water.
A CNN coin flip won by Biden means he will stand at a lectern on the the right-side of the stage while Trump will be on the left, though Trump will get the last word by delivering his closing statement second.
Overall, experts told ABC News the rules could make for a more substantive, issue-focused debate rather than the raucous personal attacks and talking over each other that defined the first Biden-Trump matchup.
Still, they said there is more than enough room for the buzzy theatrics that have defined modern presidential debates.
“Despite the fact that these rules are pretty strict, we’re going to see some fireworks,” Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston, told ABC News.
“How will Joe Biden handle a kind of off-the-leash Donald Trump? How bold will Trump be?” Rottinghaus said. “This is really a clash of personalities, and as much as it was in 2020, I think you’ll see those factors as important in this debate as any other.”
Many of the debate conditions were set out by the Biden campaign when it challenged Trump last month to participate in two debates before November. The campaign posted a video baiting Trump to agree, which he and his team did almost immediately.
Several experts said they believe the format will in fact benefit Biden.
“I can’t think of a better scenario for Joe Biden,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley. “Whereas, Trump plays better in front of a crowd. A shut-off microphone for Trump with no audience seems to me a demotion from his grandiose campaign style.”
Mitchell McKinney, director of the University of Missouri’s Political Communication Institute, agreed that the various rules “really do play into Biden’s advantage.”
Trump’s bombastic style made for memorable moments in the 2016 cycle when he lashed out at his Republican primary opponents and later lurked behind Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
The first 2020 debate between Biden and Trump spiraled into near-constant interruptions and candidates speaking at the same time. At one point, Biden turned to Trump and told him, “Will you shut up, man?”
Some microphone muting was implemented for their second and final debate, which turned out to be more civil.
There are still questions about how CNN’s rule about microphone muting will work in practice on Thursday.
Biden and Trump will be given two minutes to answer questions posed by moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, followed by one-minute each to respond and rebut. A red light will warn each candidate he has five seconds remaining. When their allotted time is up, the light will turn solid red. It’s unclear if a candidate’s microphone will be cut off if he’s still speaking.
It also remains to be seen whether the speaking candidate’s microphone will pick up efforts to interrupt by his opponent — even though that candidate’s mic would be muted.
“The attempt to control that, I think, is a good thing,” Alan Schroeder, a professor emeritus of journalism at Northeastern University who has written several books about presidential debates, told ABC News. “I don’t know in practice how that will work.”
Some experts said the more subdued setting could be good for Trump in that it could rein in some of his more inflammatory conduct — which was not popular with viewers in 2020.
“There’s a risk that no audience could make Trump look and act more like a normal candidate,” said Rottinghaus. “If there was an audience, he would definitely ham it up and would play to them, which oftentimes leads him astray.”
The CNN debate will be the first of two debates this cycle, and marks the earliest debate in U.S. history. The second will be hosted by ABC News on Sept. 10.
“I think it’s going to be an historic and epic debate,” Brinkley said. “The fact is that with Trump and Biden, it’s the first time ever that we’ve had two people that have been president going at each other.”
(NEW YORK) — As Ryan Watson, an American tourist who had been charged with bringing ammunition to Turks and Caicos in April, boarded a plane after his release, he had only one thought on his mind.
“To know that I was on a plane headed home, that’s a prayer answered,” Watson said in an interview that aired Monday on ABC News’ Good Morning America.
A judge last week fined Watson $2,000 for four bullets discovered in his luggage as he landed in the country in April, with the judge citing “exceptional circumstances” to avoid a potential minimum sentence of 12 years in prison. Watson would face 13 weeks imprisonment if he commits a crime in Turks and Caicos in the next nine months, the court said.
Watson, a father of two from Oklahoma, was arrested on April 12 while returning with his wife from a trip to Turks and Caicos to celebrate several friends’ 40th birthdays.
There is no constitutional right to carry firearms in Turks and Caicos. The country prohibits anyone from keeping, carrying, discharging or using an unlicensed firearm or ammunition.
Watson speaking on GMA recounted his experience in Turks and Caicos, saying he would like awake at night, worrying about what might happen if he were put in prison.
“Like if things did go sideways, what my kids would look like when I did come out,” he said. “As a parent, that’s just not an easy thing to think about.”
He said his kids had been the first thing he thought of as he learned that he was facing more than a decade in prison if found guilty.
“Our kids first I mean, first and foremost, I initially and instantly think our kids aren’t going to have parents,” he said on GMA. “That was really hard to imagine.”
(NEW YORK) — Active shooter incidents in the U.S. declined by 4% from 2022 to 2023, according to new statistics released by the FBI on Monday.
In 2023, the FBI designated 48 shootings as “active shooter incidents,” compared to 50 in 2022, according to the FBI’s 2023 Active Shooter Report.
Last year also saw the number of those killed decrease from 313 in 2022 to 244 in 2023, according to the report. The shooters were largely male.
The FBI says from 2019 to 2023, there were 229 active incidents, which is an 89% increase from the previous five-year period.
The deadliest active shooting incident in 2023 was the Lewiston, Maine shooting, which left 18 dead in October 2023 after a gunman opened fire in two locations in the small Maine town.
California had the largest number of active shooting incidents with eight. The locations of the shootings were open spaces, places of businesses and education centers.
Law enforcement engaged in 12 incidents that resulted in the deaths of 13 law enforcement officials, the report said. In 58% of the incidents, the shooter had no connection to the location of the shooting, per the FBI.
