Trump admin live updates: Trump pardons former entertainment exec indicted by own DOJ

President Donald Trump is scheduled on Thursday to participate in a trilateral meeting with the presidents of Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda at the White House and later hold a signing ceremony for a peace and economic agreement with the African leaders at the US Institute of Peace in D.C.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at a press briefing on Monday that the signing will be for a "historic peace and economic agreement that [Trump] brokered." The president consistently touts the peace pact between these countries as one of the “eight wars” that he claims to have stopped.

The decadeslong conflict in Central Africa stems back to the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and, according to the Foreign Policy Research Institute, violence perpetrated by dozens of armed groups in the eastern DRC has cost more than 6 million lives since 1996. The conflict surged in 2022, when Rwandan military forces entered the DRC to provide support to the March 23 Movement, a rebel group also known as M23, and its insurgency against the Congolese military.

The foreign ministers of the DRC and Rwanda signed a peace deal brokered by the Trump administration in Washington in late June of 2025.

Though the agreement was widely celebrated, the prospects for peace were quickly questioned because the deal didn’t include all warring factions. Trump’s own advisers have acknowledged that fighting has not ended and that further diplomacy is needed to fully implement the pact.

-ABC News’ Isabella Murray

The State Department announced Wednesday evening that the former U.S. Institute of Peace building has been renamed after President Donald Trump "to reflect the greatest dealmaker in our nation's history."

“Welcome to the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. The best is yet to come,” the social media post reads.

The renaming comes as Trump has sought to establish himself as a peacemaker and openly lobbied for a Nobel Peace Prize (which he was not awarded this year).

The president often claims that he’s "ended eight wars."

On Thursday, Trump will host a trilateral meeting with the presidents of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda at the White House, before using the newly renamed building as a backdrop for the signing ceremony of a peace and economic agreement with the two leaders.

-ABC News' Meghan Mistry, Isabella Murray and Fritz Farrow

President Donald Trump has pardoned Tim Leiweke, a former entertainment executive who was indicted just months ago by the Department of Justice for allegedly orchestrating a bid-rigging scheme.

The pardon, dated Dec. 2, was posted online by the DOJ. Trey Gowdy, a close ally of Trump, represented Leiweke in the matter. A source familiar with the matter told ABC News that Gowdy has actively pushed the administration to drop charges or grant Leiweke a pardon.

A federal grand jury indicted Leiweke in July "for orchestrating a conspiracy to rig the bidding process for an arena at a public university in Austin, Texas."

“As outlined in the indictment, the Defendant rigged a bidding process to benefit his own company and deprived a public university and taxpayers of the benefits of competitive bidding,” the head of DOJ's antitrust division, Abigail Slater, said in a press release at the time. “The Antitrust Division and its law enforcement partners will continue to hold executives who cheat to avoid competition accountable.”

The circumstances surrounding the pardon are unclear. And the White House has not provided an explanation as to why Trump would issue a pardon to someone his own Justice Department investigated and indicted just months earlier.

Leiweke has a track record of slamming Trump, calling him the "world's single greatest con man" in a now-deleted social media post in 2024.

In a 2023 social media post, Leiweke also praised former Vice President Mike Pence "for standing up and fighting for our Constitution and due process."

-ABC News' Katherine Faulders

Trump was asked about the pushback from Minnesota leaders over his anti-immigrant rhetoric and attacks on Somali immigrants.

The president continued his criticism of the community, the majority of whom are naturalized U.S. citizens, according to the U.S census, and took aim again at U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar.

Trump said Omar, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, "shouldn't be allowed to be a congresswoman."

"Go back to your own country," Trump later said.