Infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday touted the results of trial examining an experimental drug treatment for the novel coronavirus, calling it “good news” as he spoke in the Oval Office alongside President Donald Trump.
A randomized, international trial of the drug remdesivir had resulted in “quite good news,” shortening the period patients experienced symptoms and potentially slightly reducing the mortality rate, according to Fauci, a member of the White House’s coronavirus task force and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which sponsored the trial.
“What it has proven is that a drug can block this virus,” Fauci said, calling the development “very optimistic.”
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The trial had 1,063 patients spread across 22 countries, including the U.S., and the first participant was an American who had been quarantined on the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship wracked by the virus that was docked in Japan earlier this year, according to the NIAID.
It had not yet been peer-reviewed but was being submitted to a journal for review, Fauci said as he previewed the results. Experts interviewed by ABC News urged caution until the full data was released.
Fauci said the data so far showed the drug, made by the biotech company Gilead Sciences, had “a clear-cut, significant positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery.”
For those who took the drug, Fauci said, it took less time to recover, averaging 11 days compared to 15 days for those in a control group who received a placebo.
Fauci said the data represented “a very important proof of concept” — showing that a drug could, in fact, “block” COVID-19.
He also said the mortality rate trended lower for those who took the drug — 8% compared to 11% for those who did not — although he noted that trend was not yet statistically significant, and the results will undergo further analysis.
Announcing the results was accelerated because of the ethical obligation to let patients in trial control groups know about this drug “so that they can have access,” Fauci said.
Moving forward, he said, “this will be the standard of care.”
The president, who in the past repeatedly encouraged COVID-19 patients to seek out a different, anti-malarial drug despite no strong evidence it helped, said that the results of the remdesivir trial were “good news.” Trump has praised remdesivir in the past, too.
“It’s a beginning, it means you build on it,” Trump said Wednesday. “I love that as a building block — you know, just as a building block, I love that. But certainly it’s a positive, it’s a very positive event from that standpoint.”
Remdesivir, which is delivered through an intravenous infusion, was initially developed by Gilead to treat Ebola. Although initially promising, it didn’t prove as effective as other Ebola treatments, so research was halted.
However, laboratory studies found remdesivir might work against SARS, a close cousin to the virus that has caused the current COVID-19 pandemic. Because of its promise, governments around the world acted quickly to set up formal studies to answer the question: Does remdesivir help patients with COVID-19 get better faster?
Experts said today’s results were hopeful but that more study was needed.
“The news about remdesivir might get us jumping for joy today but we need to see the data and continue to study this for a definitive answer,” Jay Bhatt, an ABC News contributor who was until recently the chief medical officer of the American Hospital Association, noting the “rigor” of the study did give him “hope.”
William Schaffner, a professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University and expert on infectious diseases, told ABC News the results were “very encouraging.”
“These are the first data from a controlled trial,” he said. “Even though the trial had to be truncated, this data would indicate we have a drug that can benefit patients. It’s not a miracle drug, but seems to reduce hospitalization duration and death rates. These are very, very important.”
Sony Salzman, Angela Baldwin and Dr. Chloë E. Nunneley contributed reporting.
The man allegedly stole nine stimulus checks totaling more than $12,000.
April 29, 2020, 9:14 PM
4 min read
4 min read
A Brooklyn man was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly stealing nine coronavirus relief checks from the mail.
The nine checks totaled more than $12,000, according to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday in Brooklyn Federal Court.
Feng Chen, 31, allegedly was spotted going through the mail at several residential buildings and at a medical office in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, early Tuesday, according to the complaint.
Feng was charged with possession of stolen property and criminal trespass at the state level, and with mail theft at the federal level.
“For many families, these stimulus checks are a lifeline in these difficult times and anyone who tries to cut that lifeline will face the full weight of the law,” Richard P. Donoghue, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement. “This office will vigorously prosecute all those who seek to take advantage of the public health crisis.”
The U.S. Postal Inspection Service has issued a warning about the potential theft of stimulus checks and asked law enforcement services to “exercise increased vigilance.”
The IRS started mailing out the checks from the historic $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus relief package last week.
Approximately 70 million Americans are expected to receive stimulus payments in the mail. Those earning up to $75,000 in adjusted gross income will receive $1,200, with payments declining for those earning up to $99,999. Parents also are scheduled to receive $500 for each qualifying child. Anyone making at least $100,000 is ineligible.
The IRS has rolled out a “Get My Payment” tool to allow people to track the status of their payment and submit direct deposit information to avoid waiting for a paper check.
The public can report suspected coronavirus fraud by calling the National Center for Disaster Fraud hotline (1-866-720-5721) or emailing disaster@leo.gov.
The acting Navy secretary said Wednesday he has ordered a broader investigation into the circumstances of the spread of the novel coronavirus aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, effectively delaying a decision on the Navy’s recommendation that Capt. Brett Crozier be reinstated as the ship’s commander.
The announcement of a broader investigation comes days after the Navy’s top leadership had recommended the unprecedented step of reinstating Crozier to command of his ship, and Defense Secretary Mark Esper requested the written results of the Navy’s initial inquiry.
“After carefully reviewing the preliminary inquiry into the events surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71), the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Mike Gilday, provided me with his recommendations,” said James McPherson, the acting Secretary of the Navy in a statement.
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“Following our discussion, I have unanswered questions that the preliminary inquiry has identified and that can only be answered by a deeper review,” said McPherson..
“Therefore, I am directing Adm. Gilday to conduct a follow-on command investigation,” he said. “This investigation will build on the good work of the initial inquiry to provide a more fulsome understanding of the sequence of events, actions, and decisions of the chain of command surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt.”
The announcement means there will be a delay on any decision regarding Crozier’s future as well as any other potential actions that might result from the investigation into the spread of the virus aboard the ship.
Nearly 1,000 sailors among the ship’s crew of more than 4,800 have tested positive for COVID-19 and one sailor died from complications from the disease. On Wednesday, the Navy’s Seventh Fleet announced that hundreds of sailors who had been quarantined on Guam would reboard the ship to swap out with sailors who had remained on board to disinfect the ship.
The launching of a broader investigation comes after a meeting on Friday where McPherson and Gilday met with Esper to discuss the results of the Navy’s initial inquiry.
A U.S. official told ABC News that at the meeting Gilday had recommended to Esper that Crozier be reinstated to the command he lost a few weeks ago after writing a letter to Navy leadership requesting more help in stemming the spread of coronavirus aboard his ship, but no final decisions resulted from the meeting.
Through a spokesman Esper later announced that he would review a written copy of the Navy’s inquiry before proceeding with any next steps.
A senior Defense official told ABC News the Navy’s inquiry is focused on more than just Crozier — it’s examining the complex timeline of communications and response efforts by Navy officers across different commands to help address the coronavirus outbreak on the carrier as it approached a scheduled port of call in Guam. Modly had criticized Crozier for leaving the impression that the Navy was not already speeding up efforts to find adequate quarantine facilities on the island for the more than 4.,800 sailors on the carrier.
Speaking of the Navy’s initial review into the matter the official said “the Secretary wants to ensure that the report is thorough and can stand up under the rightful scrutiny of Congress, the media, the families and crew of the Theodore Roosevelt, and the American people.”
Should Crozier eventually be reinstated, Navy officials believe it would be the first time a ship’s commander has been reinstated to command after having beenrelieved because of a loss of confidence.
Crozier was relieved of command three weeks ago by Modly, who said the ship’s captain had shown “poor judgment” in writing a letter asking for more Navy assistance to stem an outbreak of the novel coronavirus on his ship.
Modly said the letter, later published in a newspaper, created unnecessary worries for the families of sailors aboard the ship and made it sound as if the Navy wasn’t already making preparations to find quarantine facilities for the crew on Guam.
Modly resigned a day after he made controversial remarks in Guam to the crew of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt about their fired captain, for being “either too naïve or too stupid” to not think his letter would have become public.
According to the Navy’s latest figures, the peak number of Roosevelt crew members who tested positive for COVID-19, peaked at 955 sailors, nearly 20% of the 4,865 sailors aboard.
Chief Petty Officer Charles Robert Thacker Jr., 41, an aviation ordnanceman from Fort Smith, Arkansas, died from complications from the coronavirus two weeks ago.
Crozier has also tested positive for the virus and remains in self-isolation on Guam after experiencing mild symptoms and remains on Guam. .
In Crozier’s letter, published by the San Francisco Chronicle, he requested that 10% of the crew remain aboard the carrier to carry out essential services and that the majority should be placed in quarantine on Guam, where the ship remains in port.
As it turns out, more than 85% of the ship’s crew was eventually taken off the ship and placed in quarantine, approaching the number Crozier initially requested.
Despite the number of novel coronavirus cases surpassing one million in the U.S., President Donald Trump on Wednesday continued to push to reopen the country, with new numbers out that show the country’s economy shrank nearly 5% in the first three months of this year, the biggest quarterly decline since the Great Recession.
“This is going away,” Trump said, rejecting the idea of a ‘new normal’ in America. “I want to go back to where it was.”
Earlier, Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards of the hard-hit state of Louisiana visited the White House Wednesday morning, as GOP Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis did one day before him, and said that testing in his state is going well, while more governors look to lift restrictions before the weekend.
With the White House social distancing guidelines set to expire Thursday, Trump told reporters that they’ll likely be “fading out” as Vice President Mike Pence said they’re largely already incorporated into the new reopening guidelines for states.
The president continued to tout the country’s testing capacity as “superior” on Wednesday but walked back his assertion that the U.S. will hit 5 million tests a day “very soon” — claiming he never said that, when he had said it at an East Room event on Tuesday.
Dr. Anthony Fauci also attended the Oval Office meeting and shared what he called “quite good news.” In clinical trials for COVID-19 treatments, Fauci said mortality rates have tended “better” with the drug remdesivir, adding that’s it’s “opening the door to the fact that we now have the capability of treating.”
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Here are Wednesday’s most significant developments in Washington:
Fauci said mortality rates have tended “better” with the drug remdesivir than in placebo groups, calling it “good news” for treatment
Trump met with Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana in the Oval Office this morning
Trump says virus ‘is going away’ and that he sees ‘new normal being what it was three months ago’
Pence has a call with governors and meat industry leaders, faces backlash for not wearing a mask to the Mayo Clinic Tuesday
In a reversal, House lawmakers will not return to Washington next Monday, citing health concerns amid the pandemic; Senate set to return
Here are the latest developments in the government response:
Trump: Coronavirus ‘is going away,’ announces trip to Arizona for next week
President Trump sat down at a roundtable meeting with industry executives Wednesday afternoon, and even as the U.S death toll surpassed 60,000 lives, chose
to take an optimism tone, looking forward to what he said would be the country’s economic revival, stressing that more governors are looking to lift restrictions and more well-off businesses are preparing to reopen.
The president was notably dismissive of the idea of a new normal where people are wearing masks and have to space out in public gatherings, instead saying he wants the country back to where it was before the virus struck.
“I see the new normal being what it was three months ago,” Trump said. “I think we want to go back to where it was, I mean, when I look at a baseball game, I want to see people right next to each other. I don’t want to see four seats in between every person so that the stadium becomes 25% of its original size. No. I want to see the NFL with a packed house. I don’t want to see NFL with three seats in between people.”
“I want to go back to where it was. That’s where we’re going to be. Look, this thing will pass, and when it passes, that’ll be a great achievement,” the president continued, despite no vaccine against the virus.
Although experts predict a vaccine is still roughly a year away, and the virus will likely never go away and might even come back in the fall, the president asserted it will eventually be eradicated.
“Again this is going away. This is going away. I think we’re gonna come up with vaccines and all, but this is going away. And when it’s gone, we’re going to be doing a lot of things,” Trump said.
To emphasize that message, Trump also revealed he is traveling to Arizona next week — though it wasn’t clear for what purpose — and said he “hopes” to have rallies again before the November election, citing “a tremendous pent up demand.”
“I’m going to Arizona next week, and we look forward to that. And I’m going to, I hope, Ohio very soon. And we’re going to start to move around and hopefully in the not too distant future, we’ll have some massive rallies, and people will be sitting next to each other,” Trump said.
“I can’t imagine a rally where you have every fourth seat full,” he added. “I hope that we’re going to be able to do some good old fashioned 25,000 person rallies, where everyone’s going wild because they love our country, expect that to happen.”
Trump says current WH social distancing guidelines will not be extended
The White House social distancing guidelines, initially enacted for 15-days and then extended for another 30, will not be renewed once they expire Thursday, April 30, President Trump said Wednesday in an Oval Office meeting.
“They will be fading out. Now the governors are doing it. I’ve had many calls from governors,” Trump said, explaining individual governors can determine the guidelines that are best for their states. “They are explaining what they are doing. I am very much in favor of what they’re doing. They are getting it going. We are opening our country again.”
White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx diplomatically backed the president up and expressed confidence that “every governor is adapting.”
“We have been very encouraged to see how the federal guidelines have helped inform or at least provide a framework for governors in moving forward all the way through from what they now call either phase zero all the way through phase three,” Birx said.
It comes one day after a key forecasting model used by the White House raised its death toll to nearly 73,000 lives by early August, up 5,000 lives from last week as more states look to reopen, and the model adapts to human behaviors.
Fauci touts promise of remdesivir in announcing findings of new study
The nation’s top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci touted the potential promise of the drug remdesivir to treat the novel coronavirus in announcing the findings of an NIH study, calling it “good news” as he spoke in the Oval Office alongside President Trump.
A randomized, international trial of the drug remdesivir resulted in shorter periods of patients experiencing symptoms and a slightly reduced mortality rate, according to Fauci, a member of the White House’s coronavirus task force and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which sponsored the trial.
“What it has proven is that a drug can block this virus,” Fauci said, calling the development both “very optimistic” and “highly significant.”
“The bottom line,” Fauci said, is that this is “opening the door” to the ability to better treat patients with the virus. “What it has proven is that a drug can block this virus,” he added.
Explaining why the government is making this announcement early, Fauci said there is an obligation to make this information available to those who have been in the placebo treatment group.
“Whenever you have clear-cut evidence that a drug works, you have an ethical obligation to immediately let the people who are in the placebo group know, so that they can have access,” he said.
President Trump called the drug’s promise a “very positive” event that can be built upon.
“I think it’s the beginning. I think Tony explained it really well. It’s a beginning. It means you build on it. I love that it’s a building block. As a building block, I love that. Certainly it’s a positive, it’s a very positive event from that standpoint,” Trump said.
The government’s announcement comes after another new study showed that some patients treated with remdesivir saw signs of improvement and raised no safety alarms, but medical experts have also urged caution that more studies are needed.
ABC News’ Ben Gittleson and Jordyn Phelps
Trump administration asks intelligence agencies to investigate whether China, WHO hid information on coronavirus
Two administration officials confirm to ABC News that the White House ordered intelligence agencies to review communications intercepts and other data to see whether China and/or the World Health Organization concealed information early on about the emerging coronavirus.
White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement: “As the president has said, the United States is thoroughly investigating this matter. Understanding the origins of the virus is important to help the world respond to this pandemic but also to inform rapid-response efforts to future infectious disease outbreaks.”
— ABC News’ Jordyn Phelps and Ben Gittleson
Commerce Department: US economy shrinks nearly 5% in first quarter
The real gross domestic product (GDP) the broadest measure of goods and services produced in the economy, shrank 4.8% in the first quarter of 2020, ending a record streak of expansion, according to a preliminary estimate released by the Commerce Department on Wednesday.
This is the first decline since 2014 and the worst quarterly contraction since the Great Recession.
It’s among the first economic indicators to show the impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic on the U.S. economy.
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow, while talking to reporters on the White House North Lawn Wednesday, candidly acknowledged it won’t recover in the second quarter either but be “significantly worse.”
“Next quarter is going to be much worse,” Kudlow said but added that he expects a “snapback” in the second half of the year.
For former Vice President Joe Biden, a virtual town hall focused on women’s issues Tuesday was a chance to try and burnish his credentials with a crucial constituency without veering into uncomfortable territory.
The carefully stage-managed Biden campaign event included an announcement of support from Hillary Clinton and pre-screened questions from female supporters. It enabled Biden to reach out to women with no risk of broaching an increasingly tough subject — the sexual assault allegation leveled by a former aide that circulated for weeks on social media and into the mainstream press, with a forceful push from President Trump’s supporters and aides.
The accusations first surfaced publicly in late March, raised by Tara Reade, 56, a California woman who once served as an entry-level Senate staff assistant in Biden’s Washington office during a brief period in 1993. Reade alleged that Biden aides asked her to hand-deliver a gym bag to him in a senate office building. And when she did, she alleges Biden moved in close, pinned her against a wall, slipped his hand under her skirt and penetrated her with his fingers.
While Biden has not directly responded to the accusation, a senior campaign adviser swiftly and publicly denounced it.
“This absolutely did not happen,” said Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s communications director earlier this month.
Slowly, over the ensuing weeks, the allegation lingered, and with help from conservative pundits, is fast becoming a test for Biden. How he handles it holds the potential to affect the 2020 race — the first presidential contest of the #MeToo era.
Sexual assault and misconduct allegations figured prominently into the 2016 presidential campaign for President Trump as well as the confirmation process for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. And even as both men vehemently denied allegations leveled against them, the episodes helped crystallize the anger of the #MeToo movement.
Biden, who has been accused of being inappropriately handsy with women in the past, has made outreach to female voters a priority, taking the unusual step of committing early to selecting a female running mate as he tries to contrast himself with Trump. As he attempts to mount his presidential challenge in the midst of a global pandemic, the stakes could not be higher.
As Biden himself has left the allegations un-addressed, Reade has expressed frustration that her account of an unwanted advance by her then-boss is not garnering a broader reaction.
“I don’t have an agenda with this, I don’t want to be a political football,” Reade told ABC News not long after she leveled the allegations. It’s a sentiment she reiterated in continued correspondence ever since. “It was just getting my story out. What I wanted was justice, to have that muzzle taken off my mouth.”
For Biden, a challenge
The case has presented a political and personal challenge for the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. A year earlier, Biden worked to navigate around other allegations against him, which he argued were the innocent byproduct of outdated social norms and his desire to connect with constituents.
The March 2019 allegations began when a series of women came forward to accuse Biden of physical contact that made them feel uncomfortable, such as unwanted hugs, kisses on the head, and standing uncomfortably close. Reade was among that initial group of seven accusers. None of the women, including Reade, alleged assault at that time. Biden sought to address the group of allegations in a video posted online.
“I’ve heard what these women are saying,” he said at the time. “Politics to me has always been about making connections, but I will be more mindful about respecting personal space in the future. That’s my responsibility and I will meet it.”
A year later, when Reade went public with the fresh allegations, the campaign was quick to try and separate her assertions from the others, saying in a campaign statement that Biden “firmly believes that women have a right to be heard — and heard respectfully.”
“Such claims should also be diligently reviewed by an independent press,” the Biden campaign statement said. “What is clear about this claim: It is untrue.”
These new allegations from Reade surfaced with virtually no corroboration or paper trail, as is the case with many sexual assault allegations. They appear to reflect an evolving narrative from Reade, who had earlier limited her complaints about Biden to allegations he inappropriately stroked her neck and twirled her curly hair between his fingers. Reade later told ABC she resisted stepping forward sooner with the assault claims because she feared media blowback if she did.
In early 2020, Reade felt her concerns had not been resolved. She brought her initial allegations of harassment to the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, which is administered by the National Women’s Law Center. The group, which advocates for victims of workplace sexual harassment, declined to get involved, citing concerns that doing so would run afoul of its non-profit tax status, according to Uma M. Iyer, spokesperson for the center.
“A nationwide storytelling campaign involving a candidate for elected office, close to an election – regardless of who that candidate is – would run afoul of those strict rules and jeopardize our legal standing,” Iyer said in a statement to ABC News. “If Ms. Reade were to come back to us today for further connections to attorneys, or assistance not contingent on funding, we would happily do our best to help her.”
Reade’s neighbor: ‘If you need me to come forward, I will’
The situation has evolved since March 25, when Reade went public with her assault allegations during a podcast appearance. The following day, ABC News spoke with Reade. As has been the case with others who have come forward after a long silence about an alleged assault or harassment, it quickly became a question of her word against the word of the accused.
Her allegations carried many of the hallmarks of this type of complaint – the conspicuous lack of physical evidence and heavy burden of proof placed on the accuser.
Reade says she undertook an effort to find corroboration. She referred ABC News to a friend who had worked with her on Capitol Hill in 1993. The friend, who asked not to be identified, said she could not remember all the details – “enough to write a screenplay.” In three conversations over the past month, the friend said she did remember that Reade told her Biden put his hand up her skirt during an unwanted encounter — and how angry, confused and shaken that had left her.
ABC News then spoke with Reade’s brother, Collin Moulton, who said his involvement was “relatively peripheral, because we were both adults at the time and living our own lives.” He said he remembered Reade had mentioned experiencing “harassment at work” from Biden during her brief stint in his office. Moulton said he recalled advising his sister to try and push past it, something he later regretted. Moulton initially said he only heard her account of the assault this spring.
After the initial interview in late March, Moulton texted ABC News later that day to “clarify” his account, saying he remembered his sister telling him in 1993 that Biden had “more or less cornered her against the wall” and ‘put his hands ‘up her clothes.’”
Moulton and Reade both said they remembered that she told her mother about the assault. Reade said her mother, who died in 2016, encouraged her to go to the police, but she decided against it.
In an interview with Business Insider published Monday, a former neighbor of Reade’s, Lynda LaCasse, said Reade shared a similar account when the two were neighbors in California in the mid-1990s. In an interview with ABC News Tuesday, LaCasse said that Reade had called her last month, and reminded her of that long-ago conversation. “Oh yea, I remember that,” Lacasse told ABC she had said to Reade. “If you need me to come forward, I will do that.”
LaCasse told ABC News, she couldn’t recall all of the details, but said she remembered Reade telling her about an alleged assault by Biden. That account, LaCasse said, included several of the same details Reade came forward with recently – including the allegation Biden had put her against a wall and penetrated her with his fingers.
LaCasse, who described herself as an avid Biden supporter who plans to vote against Trump, said she remembered encouraging Reade to file a police report after their conversation in the mid-1990s. Reade did not.
“I don’t know if you can prove something like this,” LaCasse told ABC News. “The only way to actually prove something is to have scientific evidence and there’s not that, after this length of time. So I don’t know. That said, I do believe her.”
The Business Insider report also quoted another woman who identified herself as a former co-worker of Reade’s. Lorraine Sanchez said she also remembered that Reade complained at the time that a former boss had harassed her, and that she had been fired after raising concerns. In the news report, Sanchez did not recall if Reade offered any further detail about her alleged mistreatment, and did not recall Biden being named.
Reade’s supporters have also recently pointed to another data point they believe helps corroborate her account — an August 1993 segment from “Larry King Live.” For several weeks, Reade told reporters that she remembered her mother calling into the show and lamenting what allegedly occurred between the senator and her daughter. But Reade said she could not remember when the show had aired.
Then, an organization called the Media Research Center, which describes itself as “America’s premier media watchdog” with a mission “to expose and neutralize the propaganda arm of the Left: the national news media” announced it believed it had found the episode. During the broadcast, a caller says her daughter had left a job where she had “problems” with her “prominent senator” boss, “could not get through” with them, and chose not to go public, “out of respect” for the senator.
The broadcast never identifies Reade or Biden. Reade told ABC she recognized the caller’s voice as her late mother’s.
On April 9, as media scrutiny and social media attention grew, Reade announced she had filed a police report with the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC, saying she was a victim of sexual assault in 1993. The public report does not name Biden, but Reade told ABC News the report is about him.
The case cannot legally be pursued — it is well past the 3-year statute of limitations, police told ABC News, and law enforcement officials described the matter as inactive. But filing a false police report may be punishable by a fine, and up to 30 days in jail.
Biden’s team disputes account
Biden has never been asked directly about the allegations by a reporter. On Tuesday, the Huffington Post asked potential Biden running mates about the entire matter. Only one of them, Stacey Abrams, the former Democratic nominee of governor of Georgia, responded.
“I believe women deserve to be heard, and I believe that has happened here,” Abrams told HuffPost in an email. “The allegations have been heard and looked into, and for too many women, often, that is not the case. The New York Times conducted a thorough investigation, and nothing in the Times review or any other later reports suggests anything other than what I already know about Joe Biden: That he will make women proud as the next President of the United States.”
Some of those who have served alongside Biden or worked for him have gone further, saying outright they believe Reade’s account is untrue.
While Reade alleges that she shared concerns about inappropriate behavior with her supervisor in Biden’s Senate office, one of the aides she said she spoke with, Marianne Baker, refutes it. Baker said in a statement provided by the Biden campaign that she had “never once witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct, period – not from Ms. Reade, not from anyone.”
Others who Reade said she briefed about her allegations have also disputed her recollections. Dennis Toner, who was serving as a senate aide in Biden’s office at the time, told ABC News he considers the allegation “preposterous.”
“I just know Joe Biden and this is so far removed from his character,” Toner said. “One, I don’t remember her. Two if anyone had approached me with this allegation, I would remember the day.”
Another former Biden aide who Reade said she informed was Ted Kaufman, who was Biden’s chief of staff at the time and was later appointed to Biden’s senate seat in 2009.
“She did not come to me, I would have remembered if she had, and I do not remember her,” Kaufman told ABC News. “I would have well remembered her if she had come to me with this.”
Reade said she had filed a written complaint about the matter. Following that, she said she had a meeting with Toner and Kaufman. Reade says she remembers the men scribbling notes during the meeting. But she says she did not retain a copy of her own complaint, and does not know what might have happened to any notes. Files from Biden’s senate papers have been donated to the University of Delaware, but under conditions of the donation, they will not be made public until two years after he “retires from public life,” according to the university’s website.
Trump campaign gets behind Reade
In the 27 years since the incident allegedly occurred, Reade has had a varied career. She has served as an aide to a Democratic state senator in California, she has advocated for survivors of domestic violence, and describes herself as an actress, writer and poet. In 2018, Reade wrote Medium posts in support of Russian President Vladimir Putin, praising his “genius” and leadership acumen. Those have since been deleted, but archives of the post remain accessible. Reade has said the writing was grist for a novel she was working on.
Beginning in April, the Trump campaign and the president’s conservative supporters have become increasingly aggressive in promoting Reade’s story in social media. The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., tweeted this week about Monday’s Business Insider report: “Yikes! A former neighbor of Joe Biden’s accuser Tara Reade has come forward to corroborate her sexual assault account,” he wrote.
Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale also took to Twitter, mocking an earlier Biden tweet in which he encouraged victims of sexual assault to speak out. “I nominate Tara Reade,” he wrote.
The subject carries added sensitivity because President Trump was accused more than a dozen times of sexual assault and misconduct during the 2016 campaign, allegations he has vehemently denied. At a low point of his campaign, Trump had to confront a video in which he boasted of grabbing women between their legs.
“I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything…Grab ’em by the p—-. You can do anything,” he said in the now-infamous 2005 “Access Hollywood” recording.
Reade says she has no political agenda in coming forward with her story now. She calls herself a “hardcore Democrat,” though she told ABC News it’s hard to watch Biden on the stump now.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio vehemently condemned a large funeral for an Orthodox Jewish rabbi Tuesday night amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, and received staunch criticism in return for his comments.
In a series of tweets, de Blasio wrote that his “message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed.”
The mayor said he instructed the New York City Police Department to immediately summon or “even arrest” those who gather in large groups. New Yorkers have been told to maintain social distancing, or keeping 6 feet away from others, to stop the virus’s spread.
“This is about stopping this disease and saving lives. Period,” de Blasio wrote.
The funeral on Tuesday night was for Rabbi Chaim Mertz, who died from COVID-19 , according to The Yeshiva World. More than 2,500 people in the Orthodox Jewish community were in attendance, police said.
The mayor’s comments drew ire from some, who criticized him for singling out the entire Jewish community and invoking arrests.
No arrests were made at the funeral, according to police, but 12 summons were issued.
Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, a nonprofit, called his comment “bad judgment.”
“You’re inviting the antisemitic targeting of Jews & ordering a dangerous escalation of policing, all at once,” according to a tweet written by the organization.
Brad Lander, a New York City Council member who represents the 39th District in Brooklyn, responded to the mayor on Twitter, writing it was a “really bad response.”
“Both for stereotypically lumping together & singling our the Jewish community for criticism AND for threatening arrests, as though over-policing is the solution,” he wrote.
Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, said there are more than 1 million Jewish people living in New York City.
“The few who don’t social distance should be called out — but generalizing against the whole population is outrageous especially when so many are scapegoating Jews,” Greenblatt wrote on Twitter.
De Blasio responded to the criticism at his daily briefing on Wednesday. While he apologized for offending anyone, he said he did not regret calling out the funeral.
“I spoke last night out of passion. I could not believe my eyes,” the mayor said. “It was deeply, deeply distressing.”
He also refuted the notion that the funeral was similar to the New Yorkers who have been gathering in parks.
“It’s not like people gathering in the park. … It was thousands of people. Can we just have an honest conversation?” the mayor said, adding that he would not tolerate any anti-semitism.
Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said members of the Jewish community in Williamsburg contacted police Tuesday afternoon about Mertz’s death and what to expect for a memorial. Shea said a plan was in place, but he did not detail what that plan was. He also said that officers were at the scene “in the unlikely event that large numbers came.”
When large crowds did surface, the commissioner said they were dispersed in a short time.
“What happened last night simply cannot happen,” Shea said at the briefing.
Calls to the synagogue that Mertz led were not answered. The secretary for the synagogue, however, said in a statement to The Yeshiva World that the synagogue regrets that the funeral “ended in chaos and in controversy.”
The secretary, Jacob Mertz, noted while the synagogue came up with a plan to have streets closed and encourage social distancing, it “didn’t pan out.”
“As said, we thought that the procession will be in accordance with the rules, and we apologize that it turned out otherwise,” he said in the statement. “It also hurts that this led to singling out the Jewish community, and for that we apologize to all Jewish people. Health and live takes precedence to anything else, and we shall all follow those rules.”
ABC News’ Aaron Katersky contributed to this report.
Record-breaking temperatures are expected to continue in the Southwest.
April 29, 2020, 1:07 PM
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In the last 24 hours, there were more than 240 damaging storm reports from Texas to Illinois. These storms also produced a tornado north of New Orleans and just east of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
In Oklahoma, Texas and Missouri, winds gusted up to 70 to 80 mph, producing numerous power outages.
Some of the storms brought larger than baseball-sized hail to the Sooner State.
This same storm system that brought the severe weather to the Plains will move east Wednesday and will bring a chance for damaging winds to the Southeast, including Atlanta, Birmingham, Alabama, and New Orleans. A few isolated tornadoes are possible.
As this storm system moves east Thursday and Friday, it will bring flooding rain from the Carolinas to New York state.
As of Wednesday morning, eight states on the East Coast are under flood alerts.
Some areas of the East Coast could see up to 3 to even 4 inches of rain on Thursday and Friday, where flash flooding is possible.
Meanwhile in the Southwest, the historic heat wave continues.
Palm Springs, California, tied a record at 106 degrees and Las Vegas tied a record high of 97 degrees Tuesday.
And now the forecast even hotter for some Wednesday. If Vegas hits 101 degrees, this would the first triple-digit temperature recorded in April in the city’s history.
The all-time April record high for Phoenix is 105 and the city could tie it or break it Wednesday.
And Death Valley could reach into 110s for the second day in a row.
Wednesday will be the hottest day for Vegas and Phoenix but even hotter weather is expected tomorrow in Tucson, Arizona, where it could get close to their all-time hottest April temperature of 104 degrees.
After years of growth, COVID-19 has brought the economy to a screeching halt.
April 29, 2020, 12:36 PM
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The U.S. economy shrank 4.8% in the first quarter of 2020, ending a record streak of expansion, according to a preliminary estimate released by the Commerce Department on Wednesday.
The real gross domestic product (GDP) is among the first economic indicators to show the impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic on the U.S. economy.
In the fourth quarter of 2019, real GDP increased 2.1%.
The government attributed the decline in the first quarter partly to “stay-at-home” orders issued by governors in March.
“This led to rapid changes in demand, as businesses and schools switched to remote work or canceled operations, and consumers canceled, restricted, or redirected their spending,” the government said.
Economists were expecting a decline in GDP of about 3.5% to 4%. This is the first negative GDP since the 1.1% decline in Q1 of 2014 and the largest decline since the recession in Q4 of 2008 when GDP dropped 8.4%.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought huge swaths of the economy to a screeching halt.
Non-essential businesses have been forced to shutter, and some 26 million people have lost their jobs and filed for unemployment amid the crisis, according to the Department of Labor.
In just over a month, the pandemic wiped out all the job gains since the 2009 recession.
Earlier this month, the International Monetary Fund released its 2020 World Economic Outlook, projecting the global economy will contract by 3% as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, a steeper decline than the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
The group forecast that the cumulative loss to the global GDP from 2020 to 2021 as a result of the pandemic could be approximately $9 trillion, or more than the economies of Japan and Germany combined.
Gita Gopinath, the economic counsellor and director of research at the IMF, referred to the contraction as “the Great Lockdown” in a blogpost, saying it will be “the worst recession since the Great Depression, and far worse than the Global Financial Crisis.”
“This is a truly global crisis as no country is spared,” Gopinath wrote. “Countries reliant on tourism, travel, hospitality, and entertainment for their growth are experiencing particularly large disruptions.”
The Ritz-Carlton on Peachtree Street in Atlanta’s downtown boasts well-appointed suites with skyline views, chic amenities and a cocktail bar that slings $17 juleps. Before the coronavirus pandemic forced the hotel to close its doors, a standard room could go for between $440 and $650 a night.
To offset the financial impact of the virus, the hotel applied for a potentially forgivable loan through the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which has been billed as a lifeline for small and independent businesses. Though it is neither small nor independent, Atlanta Ritz-Carlton received over $3 million from the program, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company that owns the property, a real estate investment trust (REIT) called Ashford Hospitality Trust, also owns 116 other hotels that applied for loans through the same program. So far, filings show Ashford Hospitality Trust has received $38 million altogether. And the company that oversees Ashford Hospitality Trust — Ashford Inc. — also applied for loans through PPP. It was granted more than $13 million.
Established by the sweeping $2.2 trillion CARES Act, the PPP was intended to provide relief to a wide swath of businesses with 500 or fewer employees, and relaxes that size restriction for applicants in the hotel and restaurant industries. Many say those broad terms have allowed much of the $349 billion already allocated through the program to wind up in the coffers of big companies with access to other financial support. But another vague stipulation—that applicants certify in good faith that “current economic uncertainty makes the loan necessary to support your ongoing operations”—could mean some recipients are in for a day of reckoning.
The devil in the lack of detail
The Trump administration has touted the PPP as a success for small businesses.
“The vast majority of these loans—74% of them—were for under $150,000, demonstrating the accessibility of this program to even the smallest of small businesses,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a joint statement with the Small Business Administration.
That statistic doesn’t tell the entire story. Large, publicly traded companies can be comprised of a smattering of smaller entities. In some cases, these holdings can qualify for PPP loans. And because the entity is smaller and the maximum size of a PPP loan is based off of monthly payroll costs, the total is lower. But they can add up quickly. For instance, Ashford Hospitality has applied for 13 loans for less than $150,000 through the LLCs linked to its various properties.
Moreover, the Small Business Administration typically doesn’t loan money to “passive companies,” or businesses that make money from rental property (as REITs do) or other investments instead of selling a product or service. The SBA, however, makes a narrow exception for certain passive companies that lease to eligible small businesses.
In the case of the PPP, lobbying groups have pushed the Treasury Department and the SBA to confirm that REITs are eligible for the loans, but the uncertainty has opened the door for both the trusts and their holdings to apply. And, unlike other outlets for assistance established by the CARES Act, PPP funding comes with fewer strings attached.
“We think that the PPP will be of interest to our REIT clients because it should be a resource for tenants and borrowers to obtain funding that is expressly designed to be used to pay rent and debt service,” the law firm Clifford Chance said in a briefing last month. “Additionally, REITs may wish to use funding under the PPP for their own payroll expenses. Although the amount of a loan, under the PPP, is limited to $10 million, the PPP does not subject borrowers under the program to the restrictions on dividends, compensation and share buybacks that will apply to recipients of funding under the Federal Reserve programs.”
What is clear is that while the hotels under Ashford Inc.’s umbrella received PPP loans, the company also applied for loans on behalf of 10 of its LLCs that are not directly linked to those properties. The LLCs include hotel consulting and management services, real estate advisory services, a software company and a number of entities without clearly outlined business functions.
Ashford Inc. says it has carefully managed its applications to avoid “double dipping.” But it is still in violation of the PPP’s purpose, according to Dennis Kelleher, the president and CEO of Better Markets, a nonprofit founded in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis that promotes tighter regulation on Wall Street.
“Taxpayer money is not intended for the already rich private equity sponsors, hedge fund titans and REIT managers with Park Avenue penthouses and Greenwich, Connecticut, mansions,” Kelleher said. “There is no similarity between them and the suffering of small businesses on Main Street. It’s not comparing apples to apples. It’s comparing an apple to an elephant.”
But in the case of REITs, it’s desperation—not greed—that has pushed them into pursuing PPP loans, said Chip Rogers, the CEO and president of the American Hotels & Lodging Association, a hospitality industry trade group.
“Everyone is in survival mode right now,” Rogers said. “They’re doing anything they possibly can to stay afloat.”
Rogers also argued that the size and type of company that receives the loan ultimately doesn’t make a substantial difference.
“The resources are being used to do one of two things—that is pay employees or keep the businesses afloat so that the employees have a job at the end of the day,” Rogers said.
What comes next?
When Congress approved $310 billion more in funding for the PPP, the SBA released updated guidance saying borrowers must assess “their ability to access other sources of liquidity,” adding, “It is unlikely that a public company with substantial market value and access to capital markets will be able to make the required certification.”
Kelleher agrees. “I find it hard to believe that any actual financial analysis of these companies could genuinely satisfy a certification of necessity,” he said.
Still, Ashford Inc. insists the PPP loans were a last resort.
“Although our companies are publicly listed, they do not have access to this volume of emergency funding from the capital markets that we believe we need during this crisis due to their relatively small market capitalizations,” Ashford Inc. said in a statement to ABC News.
The company also noted that many other hotel owners, as well as other public companies and private equity groups, have applied for assistance through PPP.
The SBA has now explicitly prohibited private equity firms from participating in the program.
ABC News reached out to more than a dozen publicly traded REITs to inquire if they or any of their holdings applied for PPP loans. Although some of the companies own hotels that received loans through the program, only one REIT responded to ABC’s request—Chatham Lodging Trust. The company confirmed it had applied for loans for all 40 of its properties but the money would not cover any of the operational costs associated with the REIT itself.
Last month, before the PPP was established, Chatham Lodging Trust detailed other steps it was taking to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in a release to its investors, noting it would preserve approximately $64 million on an annual basis by suspending dividends and taking other steps to increase its cash liquidity position to approximately $55 million.
The SBA is allowing borrowers to return funds which may have not been “necessary” to sustain their businesses by May 7 without penalty. Mnuchin also announced Tuesday that the government will audit any business that takes out a loan over $2 million before it can be forgiven.
Juleanna Glover, a public affair adviser to corporations and board member of the Biden Policy Institute, said that audit may be just one of the probes companies will face.
“This is going to be one of the most thoroughly overseen programs in the coming months because it is so ripe for exploitation,” Glover said. “It’ll be federal prosecutions, it’ll be congressional investigations and it will be national and local media.”
But Kelleher says that the delay in oversight will continue to jeopardize the intended recipients of PPP loans, regardless of how many times Congress re-ups funding.
“It’s always going to be limited,” Kelleher said. “Therefore, every dollar that’s pocketed by an undeserving financier is literally taken out of the pocket of the Main Street small business in need.”
After public backlash, a number of big businesses who received PPP loans said they will return the funds. According to data analytics from FactSquared, 251 public companies have been approved for loans through the program; 15 have announced they will give the money back. Ashford Inc. is not one of them. The company said in a statement, “We plan to keep all funds received under the PPP … any funds for which we are determined to be not qualified will be returned according to the requirements of the program.”
But for now, Ashford Inc. and its subsidiaries are seeking more money from the government stimulus program. Its latest SEC filings show loan applications for more than $50 million.
They allegedly tried to entice an investor with photographs of boxes of masks.
April 28, 2020, 1:30 AM
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The latest COVID-19 fraud case involves two purported personal protection equipment (PPE) dealers who are under arrest in California on charges they tried to scam an investor out of millions of dollars.
Donald Allen and Manuel Revolorio cast themselves as sellers of scarce protective equipment and tried to entice the investor with photographs of boxes of masks, according to federal prosecutors in Brooklyn who brought the case.
Allen and Revolorio created a website for their company, International Commerce and Investment Group, and claimed to have contracts and agreements to sell millions of masks that they didn’t actually own, according to the FBI.
“The alleged behavior here is nothing short of a betrayal of fellow citizens — both those serving on the front lines, and the communities who need those essential workers able to safely serve,” said FBI Assistant Director Bill Sweeney.
The investor, who was asked to wire $4 million, became suspicious and went to the authorities, according to the complaint. He then agreed to follow the instructions of the FBI when he went to inspect the merchandise, the complaint went on to say.
“As alleged in the complaint, the defendants sought to take advantage of the urgent national need for life-saving personal protective equipment through a fraudulent scheme designed to line their own pockets,” said Richard Donoghue, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
Allen, 62, of Riverside, California, and Revolorio, 37 of Rancho Cucamonga, face wire fraud charges.
“The defendants in this case allegedly created an elaborate scam to defraud their victim, going as far as to wrap and label empty boxes and try to pass them off as containing actual personal protective equipment,” said COVID-19 Hoarding and Price Gouging Task Force head Craig Carpenito.
