Anonymous woman claims Herschel Walker pressured her to have abortion and drove her to clinic – as it happened

We are less than two weeks away from the 8 November midterms, and here’s where things stand: Joe Biden is growing more unpopular. Democrats’ chances of keeping control of the House of Representatives are slim, while predictions for the new Republican majority are expanding. And Senate control is coming down to a handful of races, including Pennsylvania, where the Democratic candidate struggled in last night’s debate. In Georgia, a new poll showed Republican Herschel Walker trailing in voter support, while his campaign is contending with a new allegation that the abortion foe paid for another woman to undergo the procedure.

Elections were not the only sources of news today:

• Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, was ordered to appear before a special grand jury investigating election meddling in Georgia. Meadows’ lawyer says he plans to appeal.

• Trump’s legal team received a subpoena compelling the ex-president’s testimony before the January 6 committee, but he may still challenge it in court.

• A Michigan jury convicted three men of charges related to plotting to kidnap the state’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer.

• Twelve GOP candidates to oversee voting in states nationwide deny the outcome of the 2020 election, presenting a threat to democracy. Arizona is home to one of the most high stakes of these races.

Speaking of people in legal trouble in Washington, reports have emerged the Democratic senator Robert Menendez is under federal investigation – again.

“Senator Menendez is aware of an investigation that was reported on today, however he does not know the scope of the investigation,” an advisor to the New Jersey lawmaker told Semafor, which first reported on the inquiry. “As always, should any official inquiries be made, the Senator is available to provide any assistance that is requested of him or his office.”

The investigation is being handled by prosecutors in New York, who have issued one subpoena in the case and contacted people connected to the senator, according to Semafor.

Menendez represents a reliably Democratic state, and is not up for re-election until 2024. Federal prosecutors brought corruption charges against him in 2015 over accusations Menendez accepted gifts and campaign funds from a Florida eye doctor in exchange for using his clout in Washington on the doctor’s behalf. The case collapsed three years later after a jury deadlocked on the charges, and prosecutors decided not to retry Menendez.

Lawyers for Donald Trump have accepted a subpoena compelling him to sit for a deposition before the January 6 committee next month, but he may still choose to challenge the summons, Politico reports.

At what was likely its final public hearing earlier this month, the bipartisan House panel voted unanimously to subpoena the former president, saying he can resolve unanswered questions about the deadly insurrection at the Capitol. Their summons requires him to provide documents they requested by 4 November, and sit for a deposition by 14 November.

Reports have indicated the former president is open to speaking to the lawmakers. But Politico notes that Harmeet Dhillon of the The Dhillon Law Group, which is representing Trump in his dealings with the January 6 committee, has retweeted posts attacking the lawmakers’ work on Twitter.

Herschel Walker responded to the unnamed woman’s claim this afternoon that he paid for her to have an abortion by saying, “it’s a lie”.

That’s the same answer he gave last week when pressed on reports he paid for another woman to undergo the procedure.

ABC News has video:

Attorney Gloria Allred has publicly presented some of the evidence her unnamed client has to substantiate the account of her relationship with Walker.

These include greeting cards from Walker to the woman, and a photo of Walker in bed in the woman’s hotel room:

Using the pseudonym Jane Doe, the woman accusing Georgia’s Republican senate candidate Herschel Walker of paying for her to have an abortion recounted in an emotional statement how he “pressured” her to go through with it.

“I was confused, uncertain, and scared,” the woman, who declined to reveal her name and face, said at a press conference.

Walker, who was married at the time but had told Doe he was going to seek a divorce, gave her money to pay for the procedure. Doe said she was “confused, uncertain, and scared,” and when she want to a clinic, “I simply couldn’t go through with it. I left the clinic in tears.”

Doe then recounted how Walker drove her again to the clinic and waited for her until the procedure was finished.

“I was devastated because I felt that I had been pressured into having an abortion,” Doe said. She described herself as “naive,” and said Walker “took advantage of me.”

“Most significantly, and the reason I am here today, is because he has publicly taken the position that he is ‘about life’ and against abortion under any circumstances, when, in fact, he pressured me to have an abortion and personally ensured that it occurred by driving me to the clinic and paid for it,” the woman said.

She noted she was an independent and voted for Donald Trump twice.

“I do not believe that Herschel is morally fit to be a US senator,” she said. “And that is the reason why I am speaking up and providing proof.”

Jane Doe found out she was pregnant in 1993, her attorney Gloria Allred said.

When she told Herschel Walker, he “clearly wanted her to have an abortion, and convinced her to do so. Our client alleges that Mr. Walker gave her cash to pay for the abortion,” Allred said.

Doe went to a clinic in Dallas, Texas to have an abortion, but could not go through with it. When Walker found out, Allred said he was upset.

“He pressured her to go back to the clinic within the next day to go through with the abortion,” her attorney said. “The following day, Mr. Walker drove her to the clinic and waited in the parking lot for hours until the abortion was completed… Then he drove her to the pharmacy to pick up medications and supplies… And then he drove her home.”

“In the days following the abortion, Mr. Walker began to distance himself from our client. She was very distraught because she felt that Mr. Walker had pressured her into having an abortion. She left Dallas and she did not return for more than 15 years because she was so traumatized,” Allred said.

“Mr. Walker professes to be against abortion, even though he paid for and pressured our client to have an abortion,” Allred said, noting that Walker was married at the time he saw Doe, but said he was going to seek a divorce.

“Our client feels that Mr. Walker is a complete hypocrite and does not deserve to be a United States senator from the state of Georgia,” Allred concluded.

Attorney Gloria Allred has started the press conference where she’s introducing a woman using the pseudonym Jane Doe, who says Georgia’s Republican senate candidate Herschel Walker paid for her to have an abortion.

“Today my client, also known as Jane Doe, will come forward for the first time to share her truth about Herschel Walker, a man with whom he had a romantic and intimate relationship for a number of years,” Allred began.

The woman began dating Walker in 1987, said Allred, and saw him for a number of years. The attorney said she had a receipt from a hotel stay from when Doe went to visit Walker in Minnesota. She also played a voicemail from Walker to the woman, in which he tells her he loves her.

Is Mike Lee, the Republican senator representing deep-red Utah, in trouble? His conservative colleague Ted Cruz thinks so.

Lee is not facing a Democrat this year, but rather an independent: Evan McMullin, who has surprising momentum in a state that hasn’t sent anyone but a Republican to the Senate in more than four decades.

Texas’s Republican senator Cruz thinks that Democrats’ tactic of staying out of the race in favor of McMullin might actually work:

McMullin was last heard from in 2016, when he stood as an independent against Donald Trump and managed to syphon the support of a few Republicans who abhorred their party’s nominee. This year, Utah’s other Republican senator, Mitt Romney, declined to endorse either McMullin or Lee, saying he considered both friends. Lee recently went on Fox News to press Romney for his backing.

Nonetheless, most polls show Lee ahead in the state, though a couple have McMullin leading.

We’re a few minutes away from a press conference where attorney Gloria Allred says she will introduce a woman whom Georgia’s Republican senate candidate Herschel Walker paid to have an abortion.

The woman would be the second to come forward and say that Walker, who supports a national ban on abortion without exceptions, helped her afford the procedure. The woman’s identity and face won’t be revealed publicly, Allred said.

Walker is in a close race for Georgia’s senate seat, which is currently occupied by Democrat Raphael Warnock. Polls have lately showed Warnock with an advantage, though an internal survey for the Walker campaign just released puts the Republican ahead:

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds two in five US voters fear violence or intimidation at polling stations during the midterm elections. Two thirds of voters responding to the poll feared violence from rightwing extremists after the elections, if the results do not go their way.

A Republican party fueled by Donald Trump-supporting election deniers seems poised to retake the US House and maybe the Senate, and to win key state races including posts which involve the overseeing of elections.

Kathy Boockvar, a former top election official in Pennsylvania who now advocates for secure elections, told Reuters: “Our country is based on democracy. We should be excited about election day.”

The Reuters/Ipsos poll also found that “among the registered voters … 43% were concerned about threats of violence or voter intimidation while voting in person, [a fear] more pronounced among Democratic voters, 51% of whom said they worried about violence, although a still-significant share of Republicans – 38% – harbored such concerns.

Reuters added: “About a fifth of voters – including one in 10 Democrats and one in four Republicans – said they were not confident their ballots would be accurately counted.”

Some further reading: Ed Pilkington’s interview with Adrian Fontes, running for secretary of state in Arizona against a rightwing election-denying opponent, Mark Finchem…

Ed Pilkington, our chief reporter, has filed his report on the fallout from Tuesday night’s potentially momentous US Senate debate in Pennsylvania…

As the dust settled over Tuesday night’s sole televised debate in the crucial US Senate race in Pennsylvania, pundits were starkly divided over the impact of the Democrat John Fetterman’s struggles with speech in his recovery from a stroke.

The Pennsylvania lieutenant governor raised the issue of his auditory processing disorder, which makes it difficult for him to understand certain spoken words, in his opening remarks in the debate with his Republican rival, the former TV doctor Mehmet Oz.

“Let’s also talk about the elephant in the room – I had a stroke,” Fetterman said.

Fetterman used closed captioning to help deal with his speech difficulties. Questions and answers were transcribed in real time and beamed through large screens in front of both candidates.

Reporters present in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, noted that Fetterman occasionally struggled to articulate his views in the hour-long debate. The Philadelphia Inquirer said that he “spoke haltingly and at times mixed up his words”, remarking that “his speaking has been much smoother in stump speeches on the campaign trail and in a recent interview with the Inquirer than during the back-and-forth” of the debate with Oz.

Rightwing news outlets and commentators were much harsher, with several calling for Fetterman to drop out of the race. John Podhoretz, a conservative columnist with the New York Post, described the Democratic candidate as “impaired” and said “it is an act of personal, political, and ideological malpractice that Fetterman is still contesting for the Senate”.

Full story:

Joe Biden spoke at the White House earlier, announcing an effort to remove “junk fees”, charges made by banks for services including overdrafts, or when a cheque turns out not to be valid.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, US banks charged customers around $15bn in junk fees every year.

Appearing with Biden, Rohit Chopra, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said: “We’re making progress. Banks across the country are cutting and even eliminating fees, saving families billions. This morning, the CFPB announced more actions to combat illegal and unexpected junk fees. One on surprise overdraft fees, and another on surprise depositor fees.

“We’re putting companies on notice about their obligations under law. We’re taking enforcement actions like one against a large bank for charging illegal overdraft fees. And customers will see hundreds of millions of dollars in refunds. We also sued a payments company for cramming $300m in extra fees on families who were just trying to sign up their kids for YMCA camps, or were just registering for a charity walkathon in their community.

“And we’re going to continue by finding ways to reduce burdens of other fees like the billions and penalties charged by banks and credit card companies through new rules and guidance. This is real money back in the pockets of American families is good for them. And it’s good for businesses that follow the law.”

Biden said his administration would “lower the cost of everyday living for American families, to put more money in the pockets of middle-income and working-class Americans, to hold big corporations accountable”.

There are, of course, less than two weeks to go before midterms election day, 8 November. Biden’s approval rating is falling and Democrats fear a battering at the ballot box, with Republicans poised to take back the House and maybe the Senate.

Saying “one of the things that I think frustrates the American people is the world’s in a bit of disarray”, Biden told reporters: “A lot of you come from backgrounds like I came from, we’re not poor, just regular folks. But that matters. It matters in your life … So anyway, I’m optimistic, it’s gonna take some time. And I appreciate the frustration in American people.”

Less than two weeks to go before the 8 November midterms and here’s where things stand: Joe Biden is growing more unpopular. Democrats’ chances of keeping control of the House of Representatives are slim, while predictions for the new Republican majority are expanding. And Senate control is coming down to a handful of races, including Pennsylvania, where the Democratic candidate struggled in last night’s debate, and Georgia, where voters appear disinclined to support the Republican.

Elections haven’t been the only source of news today:

• Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, was ordered to appear before a special grand jury investigating election meddling in Georgia. Meadows’ lawyer says he plans to appeal.

• A Michigan jury convicted three men of charges related to plotting to kidnap the state’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer.

• Twelve GOP candidates to oversee voting in states nationwide deny the outcome of the 2020 election, presenting a threat to democracy. Arizona is home to one of the most high stakes of these races.

New polling in Georgia from Monmouth University shows Herschel Walker trailing his Democratic opponent, senator Raphael Warnock.

The state’s race is considered one of the GOP’s best chances to oust a sitting Democratic senator, but Monmouth finds Warnock has the edge, with 39% of those surveyed saying they will “definitely” vote for him and 10% saying they will “probably” do so. There’s slightly less enthusiasm for Walker with “definitely” at 33% among voters and “probably” at 11%.

Warnock has a clear advantage in favorability, coming in at 51% among voters as opposed to Walker’s 43%. Monmouth notes that those figures have changed little over the past month, the time period when Walker was accused of paying for a woman’s abortion, even though he says he supports a national ban on the procedure, without exceptions.

“Walker’s path to victory is narrow, but it’s still there. He needs to get enough voters to overlook their misgivings about him to come over to his support or benefit from a turnout disparity among the two parties’ base voters. At this point, the latter option looks like his better bet,” director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute Patrick Murray said in a statement.

Georgia’s Republican senate candidate Herschel Walker backs a national ban on abortion without exceptions, but has been accused of hypocrisy after reports emerged he paid for a woman to end her pregnancy. His credibility problem may worsen later today, after a lawyer announced plans to introduce another woman who will say Walker paid for her abortion, Martin Pengelly reports:

The lawyer Gloria Allred was due on Wednesday to introduce to reporters a woman who alleges Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate for Senate in Georgia, took her to an abortion clinic to have an abortion.

Walker has voiced strict anti-abortion policies but has already been accused of paying for an abortion for another woman.

Allred said the woman now stepping forward, named as Jane Doe, would speak on Wednesday afternoon in Los Angeles.

The woman, Allred said, would “allege that she had a romantic, intimate relationship with Herschel Walker and that he drove her to an abortion clinic to have an abortion after she became pregnant as a result of her relationship with him”.

Allred also promised to reveal “some of Jane Doe’s evidence in support of her romance with Mr Walker”, and said her client would read a statement to reporters but would not reveal her name or her face.

A jury in Michigan has convicted three men on charges related to a plot to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer, the Associated Press reports.

The unsuccessful scheme was attempted by anti-government extremists and came after two other defendants were found guilty of similar charges in August.

Whitmer is standing for re-election in the 8 November polls against Republican Tudor Dixon.

Here’s more on today’s verdict from the AP:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Joe Morrison, his father-in-law Pete Musico, and Paul Bellar were found guilty of providing “material support” for a terrorist act as members of a paramilitary group, the Wolverine Watchmen.

They held gun drills in rural Jackson County with a leader of the scheme, Adam Fox, who was disgusted with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and other officials in 2020 and said he wanted to kidnap her.

Jurors read and heard violent, anti-government screeds as well as support for the “boogaloo,” a civil war that might be triggered by a shocking abduction. Prosecutors said COVID-19 restrictions ordered by Whitmer turned out to be fruit to recruit more people to the Watchmen.

“The facts drip out slowly,” state Assistant Attorney General Bill Rollstin told jurors in Jackson, Michigan, “and you begin to see — wow — there were things that happened that people knew about. … When you see how close Adam Fox got to the governor, you can see how a very bad event was thwarted.”