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Continuing his threats of legal action, Trump railed Monday against the Biden administration over the border wall material sales, saying he has spoken to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and other Texas officials about a potential restraining order.
Congress last year required the Biden administration to dispose of the unused border wall pieces. The measure, included in the massive National Defense Authorization Act, allows for the sale or donation of the items to states on the southern border, providing they are used to refurbish existing barriers, not install new ones. Congress also directed the Pentagon to account for storage costs for the border wall material while it has gone unused.
“I’m asking today, Joe Biden, to please stop selling the wall,” Trump said.
The Department of Defense, however, said that further sales can’t be blocked because all the excess border wall material has already been distributed. Most was provided to other federal agencies and state governments, as required by defense legislation signed on Dec. 22, 2023. The rest was sold to GovPlanet, which buys and auctions off government surplus.
While Trump described the handover between Biden and his incoming team as “a friendly transition,” he also took issue with efforts to allow some members of the federal workforce to continue working from home. Trump said that if government workers don’t come back into the office under him, they will be dismissed.
Trump also weighed in on Adams, who is facing federal fraud and corruption charges. Asked whether he would consider pardoning Adams, Trump said, “Yeah I would.”
“I think that he was treated pretty unfairly,” Trump said, while at the same time acknowledging he doesn’t “know the facts.”
Adams has been accused of accepting flight upgrades and other luxury travel perks valued at $100,000 along with illegal campaign contributions from a Turkish official and other foreign nationals looking to buy his influence. He has pleaded not guilty. Multiple members of his administration have also come under investigation.
Adams, who insists he did nothing wrong, told reporters Monday that his attorney was “going to look at every avenue to ensure I get justice.”
Trump was pressed repeatedly on the future of vaccines, amid concerns over his decision to choose the anti-vaccine advocate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which regulates the shots.
Trump again declined to dismiss the long-debunked theory that vaccines cause autism and said Kennedy would be examining that already well-studied question.
But he also assured the public that one of the most successful vaccines would not be barred by his administration.
“You’re not going to lose the polio vaccine,” he said, calling himself “a big believer in it.”
“That’s not going to happen,” he said.
Outgoing Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who had polio as a child, had said Friday that Trump’s nominees seeking Senate confirmation should “steer clear” of efforts to discredit the polio vaccine, calling them not just uninformed, but “dangerous.”
Trump also weighed in on the mysterious drone sightings over parts of New Jersey and the eastern U.S. that have sparked speculation and concern over where they are coming from.
Taking a conspiratorial tone, Trump insisted, without offering evidence, that, “the government knows what is happening.”
“Our military knows and our president knows and for some reason they want to keep people in suspense,” he said, refusing to say whether he had been briefed on the sightings.
White House spokesperson John Kirby said later Monday that there is no indication that the drones pose a public safety or national security threat, and that he would say so if that weren’t the case. While he acknowledged frustrations, he stressed that there are more 1 million legal drones in the country.
“Having closely examined the data,” he said, “we assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and even stars that were mistakenly reported as drones.”