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Trump assassination task force issues subpoenas for ATF testimony
WASHINGTON, D.C. (KDKA) — The House task force investigating the July 13 assassination attempt on President-elect Donald Trump issued subpoenas on Monday to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for testimony from two ATF employees regarding the response to the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting.
The subpoenas follow letters from the task force’s chairman, Rep. Mike Kelly, Republican of Pennsylvania, and Ranking Member Jason Crow, Democrat of Colorado, seeking documents and testimony on Oct. 3 and Nov. 6.
A shooter opened fire at Trump’s July 13th rally in Butler, wounding Trump when a bullet grazed his ear. A rally-goer was killed and two others were wounded before Secret Service snipers shot and killed the gunman, later identified as a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man. Since then, Trump won the presidential election and will be headed to the White House in January.
In a release from Kelly’s office, the task force said the ATF had not produced any requested documents or made any personnel available for interviews with the task force, and the ATF made its first set of documents available less than an hour after served the subpoenas for depositions.
One of the two subpoenas for depositions was issued to an agent who participated in the agency’s response to the shooting in Butler, the release said. The other is for testimony from a supervisory agent, according to the media release.
Excerpts from Kelly’s letters to the two ATF employees stated that the task force “specifically outlined seventeen requests for document production, even going so far as to note which were the priority items. In addition, the Task Force identified three categories of requests for transcribed interviews with relevant ATF agents.”
The bipartisan House task force said last month that the incident was “preventable,” detailing in a report that there were communication and planning shortcomings.
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H&R Block and Intuit drop on a report that Elon Musk’s DOGE may develop a new tax-filing app
H&R Block and Intuit shares dropped on Tuesday after the Washington Post reported that President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, which is run by billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, is looking at developing a free app for people to file their taxes.
The publication cited two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, in reporting that the leaders of the incoming administration’s DOGE discussed the idea of crafting a mobile app to file income tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service.
H&R Block shares tumbled 8.2%, while Intuit shed 5.1% on Tuesday. As the dominant players in tax preparation, H&R Block and Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, generate billions in revenue annually by offering online and in-person services.
The Biden Administration in March rolled out a pilot Direct File program through the IRS in 12 states. It allows qualified taxpayers file directly through a federal portal. Additionally, the IRS provides services through its Free File program for those who made an adjusted gross income of $79,000 or less.
More than 100,000 taxpayers used the new Direct File program to file their taxes this year, which marked the first time the system was in operation, according to the Treasury Department.
The DOGE, which has been directed by Trump to slash government spending and cut federal regulations, criticized the complexity of the U.S tax code in a Nov. 16 post on X, the social media service owned by Musk.
“In 1955, there were less than 1.5 million words in the U.S. Tax Code. Today, there are more than 16 million words,” its X account wrote. “Because of this complexity, Americans collectively spend 6.5 billion hours preparing and filing their taxes each year.”
Intuit and H&R Block also have free filing options.
That said, the Federal Trade Commission earlier in the year barred Intuit from advertising its popular TurboTax product as free when most people have to pay to use it. The FTC in February filed an administrative complaint against H&R Block, alleging it marketed its tax-prep products as free yet deleted the data as a way to pressure them to pay for pricier services. Both companies said they’d appeal.
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Washington — President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he has selected Dr. Mehmet Oz — a celebrity heart surgeon who hosted a daytime television show — to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The agency falls under the Department of Health and Human Services and oversees Medicare, the federal portion of the Medicaid program, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the federal health insurance marketplace. Trump has selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of Health and Human Services. Both positions require Senate confirmation.
“America is facing a health care crisis, and there may be no physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to make America healthy again,” Trump said in a statement. “He is an eminent physician, heart surgeon, inventor, and world-class communicator, who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades.”
The president-elect said Oz will work with Kennedy, if he is confirmed, “to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake.” He also indicated there may be cuts to CMS, writing that Oz “will also cut waste and fraud within our country’s most expensive government agency, which is a third of our nation’s healthcare spend, and a quarter of our entire national budget.”
Oz was defeated by Democratic Sen. John Fetterman in the 2022 Senate race in Pennsylvania after receiving Trump’s endorsement.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
