House Main Street Caucus Chairman Mike Flood, R-Neb., will refer Democratic colleague Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., for a House Ethics Committee investigation, he first told Fox News Digital.

It is the latest move in the GOP-led fallout over Omar’s response to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist who was shot and killed in Utah during a college campus speaking event last week.

‘I will be filing tomorrow … a complaint with the Committee on Ethics in the House of Representatives with 18 very concerning incidents and/or behaviors and/or statements that, on their face, reflect poorly on the House of Representatives,’ Flood said of Omar.

The top of the list of complaints will include the progressive Democrat’s ‘obnoxious, insulting and dismissive comments following the assassination of Charlie Kirk,’ he said.

‘Second, harboring illegal immigrants. I believe in February of this year that Omar hosted a workshop advising Somalians on how to avoid being deported after protecting the laws of the United States,’ Flood continued of his points. ‘No. 3, she’s used TikTok for mixed official and campaign content, which specifically violates other House rules.’

Flood was one of four House Republicans to help Omar narrowly avoid being censured by the House on Wednesday evening.

Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., moved to force a vote on censuring Omar over her reaction to Kirk’s killing, but the move was quashed when four Republicans and all Democrats voted to table the measure.

Flood said at the time of his vote, ‘Ilhan Omar’s statements and social media posts are reprehensible and should be referred to the Ethics Committee. The appropriate time to consider a censure motion would be after ethics reviews her conduct.’

He told Fox News Digital on Thursday that initiating an ethics investigation would make a censure ‘far more credible.’

Flood pointed out that he similarly voted to table a censure threat against Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., for her conduct outside a New Jersey ICE facility before the ethics committee could issue a report on the matter.

‘And so I have gathered enough information, starting yesterday, before I voted to table, understanding that this was an issue,’ Flood said.

He also disagreed with the other three House Republicans who all said Omar’s comments were protected by the First Amendment.

‘This isn’t a free speech issue. This is a ‘Have you demonstrated that you are behaving at all times in a manner that reflects credibly on the House?’’ Flood said.

Omar specifically faced backlash over an interview with progressive news outlet Zeteo, in which she criticized Kirk’s past commentary and Republicans’ reaction to the shooting. She later accused Republicans of taking her words out of context, and she called Kirk’s death ‘mortifying.’

She previously told Zeteo days after Kirk’s assassination that he had ‘downplayed slavery and what Black people have gone through in this country by saying Juneteenth shouldn’t exist.’

‘There are a lot of people who are out there talking about him just wanting to have a civil debate,’ the ‘Squad’ member said. ‘There is nothing more effed up, you know, like, than to completely pretend that, you know, his words and actions have not been recorded and in existence for the last decade or so.’

She later posted on X amid the backlash, ‘While I disagreed with Charlie Kirk vehemently about his rhetoric, my heart breaks for his wife and children. I don’t wish violence on anyone. My faith teaches me the power of peace, empathy, and compassion. Right-wing accounts trying to spin a false story when I condemned his murder multiple times is fitting for their agenda to villainize the left to hide from the fact that Donald Trump gins up hate on a daily basis.’

Omar also reposted a video on X, where others not associated with the congresswoman said, ‘Don’t be fooled, these people don’t give a single s— about Charlie Kirk. They’re just using his death to further their Christo-fascist agenda.’

The Minnesota Democrat’s colleagues have vehemently defended her against Mace’s censure and Republican criticism.

Fox News Digital reached out to Omar’s office for a response to Flood but did not immediately hear back.

Hunter Biden was involved in discussions about pardons toward the end of his father’s White House term, a source familiar with Jeff Zients’ interview with the House Oversight Committee told Fox News Digital on Thursday.

Zients met with House investigators behind closed doors for over six hours — the final former Biden administration official to appear in House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer’s probe into ex-President Joe Biden’s use of the autopen.

Comer, R-Ky., is also investigating whether Biden’s top aides covered up signs of mental decline in the former president, and whether executive decisions signed via autopen — including myriad clemency orders Biden approved — were executed with his full awareness.

Zients told investigators that Hunter was involved in some of those pardon discussions and attended a few meetings on the subject with White House aides, the source said.

It’s not clear how much say Hunter had in those meetings, or if he was involved in discussions about his own controversial pardon.

The former president issued a ‘full and unconditional’ pardon for his son in early December, just under two months before leaving office. 

That’s despite Biden and his staff denying the possibility of such a move on several occasions.

Biden approved nearly 2,500 commutations on Jan. 17, just days before leaving the White House, setting a record for most clemency orders ever granted by a U.S. president — more than 4,200 in total — and the most ever in a single day.

Weeks earlier, he issued pardons for several family members, including Hunter.

It had been previously reported by NBC News and other outlets that Hunter sat in on White House meetings with Biden’s aides in the wake of the former president’s disastrous June 2024 debate against then-candidate Donald Trump.

Zients is the final former Biden aide expected to appear before the House Oversight Committee in its autopen probe.

The source familiar with his sit-down told Fox News Digital that Zients ‘admitted that President Biden’s speech stumbles increased as he aged.’

‘He also noted that the president’s difficulty remembering dates and names worsened over time, including during the administration,’ the source said.

A second source familiar with Zients’ comments to the House Oversight Committee defended his comments. 

‘As chief of staff, Jeff’s job was to ensure that the president met with a range of advisors to thoroughly consider issues so that the president could make the best decisions,’ the second source told Fox News Digital.

‘Throughout Jeff’s time working with him, while President Biden valued input from a wide variety of advisors and experts, the final decisions were made by the president and the president alone,’ the second source said.

‘Jeff had full confidence in President Biden’s ability to serve as president and is proud of what President Biden accomplished during his four years in office.’

Fox News Digital reached out to Zients’ attorney and the law firm of Abbe Lowell, who was known to have defended Hunter previously, for comment but did not immediately hear back.

The recently launched ‘GenAI’ tool for U.S. service members and Department of War workers is a ‘critical first step’ in the future of warfare, according to a military expert.

This month, the Pentagon announced the launch of GenAI.mil, a military-focused AI platform powered by Google Gemini. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said the platform is designed to give U.S. military personnel direct access to AI tools to help ‘revolutioniz[e] the way we win.’

On Monday, the Department of War also announced that the Pentagon is further integrating Elon Musk’s xAI Grok family of models into the GenAI platform, allowing employees to use xAI safely on secure government systems for routine work, including tasks involving sensitive but unclassified information.

In an interview with Fox News Digital, Emelia Probasco, a Navy veteran, former Pentagon official and senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, explained that the tool will help train Department of War service members and civilians on the use of artificial intelligence in their everyday workflow, preparing them for further integration of AI in military matters.

Probasco said the tool will have a ‘big impact’ on the everyday functioning of the Department of War.

‘Prior to the rollout of this new website and having Gemini 3 available to the force, folks were either using sort of a tool that wasn’t as capable … or even worse, they were sort of going to their home computers and trying to do various things on their home computers, which they’re not supposed to do, but it was probably happening,’ Probasco explained. ‘Now they’ve got a more secure environment where they can experiment with these tools and really start to learn what they’re good for and what they’re not good for.’

While Probasco said she does not believe the tools, such as the GenAI platform, ‘fully changes war,’ she thinks ‘it’s the critical first step in training so that we know how to use it well.’

She said that the Department of War has ‘made it very clear in the past year that they want to forge ahead and be innovative and try new things and adopt AI.’

The GenAI tool, Probasco said, gives the department a type of sandbox to experiment with for still bigger innovations to come.

‘There are responsible people in the department who are trying to figure out what is the best use of this tool. Let’s try lots of experiments in sort of sandboxes or in safe places so that when a conflict comes, we are ready and ahead, frankly, of any adversary who has started to play with the tools,’ she explained.

Probasco said the Department of War understands that adversaries such as China are also developing and experimenting with artificial intelligence. Indeed, this month, President Donald Trump announced he would be partially reversing a Biden-era restriction on high-end chip exports, permitting Nvidia to export its artificial-intelligence chips to China and other countries.

The H200 chips are high-performance processors made by Nvidia that help run artificial intelligence programs, like chatbots, machine learning and data-center tasks. 

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill voiced that they are split over the decision, with some seeing the move as a dangerous concession and others as strategic.

Either way, Probasco said ‘we have lots of evidence’ that China ‘is doing rapid experimentation [with AI] across all domains of warfare.’

‘And it’s not, can I use a chatbot, but rather, ‘Can I gather up lots of information to start to target individuals for espionage?’ For example, [and], ‘Can I use data to create more sophisticated cyber-attacks?’’ she explained.

‘There is this sort of dynamic of a race between the two sides trying to figure out how to adopt it,’ she explained.

Though important, Probasco said the GenAI tool is ‘not going to necessarily be the weapon system that gains [the U.S.] an advantage.’

She assured the AI tool that will truly give the U.S. a military advantage ‘is underway,’ but said ‘that’s not the sort of thing you just roll out for every service member to use.’

‘It’s important to remember that using a chatbot to help you think through certain problems or do talking points is not what’s going to win the war. There are much more sophisticated military systems that use generative AI; they use other kinds of what’s called ‘good old-fashioned AI.’ There are lots of other techniques that militaries need to use,’ she said.

‘Those are already in the works, and they’ve been in the works for years,’ Probasco explained, adding, ‘That’s not going to be rolled out in a big public announcement where everybody can play with it.’

Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest is very much like a circus, and I mean that in the best possible way. A circus can travel anywhere, put up its tents and put on a show.

The scale of last weekend’s event in Phoenix was nothing short of monumental, with 31,000 in attendance. That isn’t so far off of the estimated 50,000 souls who went to the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

To put it bluntly, TPUSA, along with other organizations, are capable of producing a much-needed midterm convention and a city like Phoenix, which hosted the conservative confab admirably, is exactly where it should be held.

As I’ve written in this column before, a midterm GOP conventionmidterm GOP convention, though a tad unconventional as a concept, is exactly what Republicans need to put Trump and his policy wins front and center before the electorate.

John and Lucy, a couple in their 40s who I met at the event, told me it was their first AmFest.

‘The energy is amazing,’ Lucy said. ‘I didn’t know what to expect, but I didn’t expect this.’

John concurred, saying, ‘This is like a rock concert, fireworks and loud music, I think it gets everyone pumped up.’

The atmosphere at AmFest was a whizzing and whirring technicolor explosion of light and sound, all resounding toward the goal of forwarding the conservative movement.

There is little doubt that 10 minutes at a pulsating and intense live event like Amfest – or a Trump rally – is worth 10 days of on-screen ads. It hits attendees in each of their five senses, and 50,000 may not sound like much, but that’s a veritable army to send back home in an off-year election.

One eager young conservative I met, Matt, who is studying finance in grad school and sports what might now be called the TPUSA mustache, told me, ‘I’d totally go to a midterm convention. Hell, I’d just go for the parties.’

That may sound a bit shallow to some, but it also sounds like exactly the kind of positive energy that a winning political movement needs.

When it comes to the question of where to hold a midterm convention, Phoenix can teach would-be convention planners a lot about the key question of location, location, location.

In places like New York City or Chicago, AmFest would have brought out hundreds of protesters, including many of the dangerous Antifa variety. Even vastly smaller events like a recent Mom’s For Liberty conference in Philadelphia attracted angry mobs.

In Phoenix, I never saw more than a dozen or so, and they were far more silly than menacing.

It’s worth noting that the local news channels did choose to focus almost as much attention on this bedraggled band of apparently unemployed naysayers as they did the tens of thousands inside the event.

Funny that.

But around the clean and very pretty downtown of soft light and perfect temperatures, one felt little to no resentment or pushback at the sudden flood of red MAGA hats and sparkly Trump outerwear. Everything was cool.

I asked one of my Uber drivers, a longtime Phoenix resident, why he thought the city was so welcoming in this way.

‘Nobody is uptight about politics. Everyone has weird ideas, we have weird politicians,’ he told me, laughing at his own joke for moment before adding, ‘It’s always been like this.’

Phoenix is not the only prime location for a midterm convention. Oklahoma City is another, as is Nashville. These are thriving places with better than average governance that truly do highlight the accomplishments of the Trump administration.

JD VanceJD Vance told the crowd at AmFest, ‘Why do we penalize corporations that ship American jobs overseas? Because we believe in the inherent dignity of human work and every person who works a good job in this country.’

The best place to sell that very popular message is in the smaller American cities where the jobs are being created, not one of the great metropolises still clinging to the dream that one day everyone can just work for the government.

As of now, the GOP has somewhere just north of seven months to put together a midterm convention, but the good news is that it is also flush with campaign cash. And the conservative movement has organizations like TPUSA that are capable of coming together to pull it off.

If Republicans want to hold onto Congress and give Trump a runway for his final two years, then their first priority for the coming fall should be to bring the circus back to town.

As President Donald Trump rolls out his TrumpRx proposal to cut prescription drug prices, economists are raising questions about what happens when prices are capped and whether short-term savings for consumers come at the expense of future medical breakthroughs.

On Friday, Trump announced deals with nine pharmaceutical companies to lower prices on certain medications for Americans, along with $150 billion in promised new investments in domestic manufacturing and pharmaceutical research.

The announcement builds on the administration’s Trump Rx initiative, a government-run portal designed to steer consumers toward lower-cost prescription drugs offered directly by manufacturers. The program is central to Trump’s effort to tie U.S. drug prices to those paid in other wealthy countries, a policy known as ‘most favored nation’ pricing.

But economists caution that price-lowering agreements don’t eliminate costs and often shift them elsewhere, particularly into reduced drug development, delayed innovation, or higher prices in other parts of the market.

Michael Baker, director of healthcare policy at the American Action Forum, said government price setting shifts costs rather than eliminating them.

‘At the most basic level, government price setting only limits what patients pay for a drug — usually reflected in an out-of-pocket or co-insurance payment,’ Baker said. ‘This does nothing to address the overall cost of the drug, which someone still has to pay, nor does it lower the cost associated with development.’

As a result, Baker said, patients ultimately bear those costs through tighter coverage rules, fewer treatment options or reduced future innovation.

‘Patients will experience far less of the crown jewel of the U.S. healthcare system that they are currently accustomed to receiving,’ he added.

Economists say the effects of permanent price caps would also be felt upstream, in research and development.

‘We know for sure that if drug prices are capped permanently below the levels the firm would have set, that will lead to lower incentives for R&D to discover new drugs and bring them to market,’ explained Mark V. Pauly, professor of healthcare management at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Pauly added that the impact is expected to be negative, but its scale — including how many drugs might never be developed and their potential value — remains highly uncertain.

‘I do not know the answer, but I know for sure no one else does either,’ he added.

Others argue the administration’s approach avoids the most damaging forms of price control.

Ed Haislmaier, an expert in healthcare policy and markets at The Heritage Foundation, said recent agreements appear to involve companies trading lower prices for benefits such as expanded market access or relief from other costs, including tariffs.

‘In such cases, companies are likely calculating that revenue losses from lower prices will be offset by revenue gains from more sales,’ Haislmaier told Fox News Digital.

‘The kind of government price controls that are most damaging to innovation are ones that limit the initial price a company can charge for a new product. That is the situation in some countries, but fortunately not yet the in the United States,’ he added.

Ryan Long, Paragon’s director of congressional relations and a senior research fellow, suggested that pricing pressure abroad could force foreign governments to shoulder a greater share of drug development costs.

Long said this strategy would lead ‘to lower prices for American consumers without sacrificing U.S. leadership in biopharmaceutical innovation that leads to new treatments and cures.’

I’m writing today about anger.

And I’m ticked off about it.

I actually think it’s America’s biggest problem right now. Half the country hates the other half of the country. And vice versa.

There are online mobs ready to pounce on any available target. That could be loathsome human beings, like the remorseless madman who killed Charlie Kirk.

Or it could be a deranged person at a lower level, like the crazed, screaming woman who stole a Phillies home run ball from a 10-year-old kid. Or the man who brought his assistant and side squeeze to a Coldplay concert and was outed by the Jumbotron — which turned more serious when both were fired.

Can a country withstand so much rage?

Passion is good. Railing at people you don’t know, not so much.

The irony is that the vast majority of these people wouldn’t say such things to you on the street. Then they’d have to deal with your reaction. 

But in the dark expanse of social media, they can spew all kinds of garbage, curse like sailors — especially if they’re hiding behind screen names. That should be punishable by the death penalty — okay, maybe I’m getting too worked up here.

Some public figures harness anger as a political tool. In private, Donald Trump can be funny and charming. But his constant battles–with the media, law firms, universities, big cities, Democrats, judges, prosecutors, critics, adversaries, allies around the world–are fueled by his sense of grievance. Just read his Truth Social page.

I first began covering Trump in New York in the 1980s, and he was the same way. He would pick fights with the likes of Leona Helmsley, knowing it made good copy.

But I could also argue that without the contempt he has for people and institutions who stand in his way, the president wouldn’t be driven to accomplish all that he has in the past eight months.

Elon Musk clearly has the same anger-management issue, having declared ‘the left’ to be ‘the party of murder.’ 

So do such Democrats as Adam Schiff, who relentlessly hammered Kash Patel at a hearing this week, ‘You want the American people to believe that? Do you think they’re stupid?’ And so does the FBI director, ‘You are the biggest fraud to ever sit in the United States Senate, you are a disgrace to this institution, and an utter coward!’

But we all know the game. In our echo-chamber world, you have to be harsher and angrier than the last person to break through the static and have your sound bite featured on cable or X or podcasts. So these institutions reward outrage, faux or otherwise.

Silicon Valley giants make their money from engagement, and nothing fosters engagement like pissed-off people.

The last few Democratic presidents haven’t been purveyors of anger. (putting aside what they’re like behind closed doors). Joe Biden was so secluded we barely heard from him–we now know why–and was a backslapper and conciliator. Barack Obama was all about the audacity of hope. Bill Clinton ran as a southern moderate against the ‘brain-dead’ politics of both parties.

You have to go back to LBJ to find a Democrat who relished beating the crap out of others, based on his years of threats and arm-twisting as Senate majority leader. ‘Ah got Hubert’s pecker in my pocket,’ he would say, and other variations on that quote.

He also said this about disloyal lawmakers: ‘I want him to kiss my ass in Macy’s window at high noon and tell me it smells like roses.’

What has been truly sickening, in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s heartbreaking murder, are the sickos who flooded social media to celebrate his demise. 

Professors, teachers, journalists and many others have been fired for such conduct, though they had no need to vent their fury online. They didn’t know Kirk. Who would want to employ someone so heartless that they don’t care about his wife, and the children, 3 and 1, who have to grow up without him?

No wonder I’m angry. This is disgusting and pathetic.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that this is one of the most famous lines in movie history, delivered by the sweating, wild-eyed anchor played by Peter Finch: 

‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’

Former Sen. Joe Manchin, I-W.Va., said he spoke more with President Donald Trump in the first two years of Trump’s term than with former President Barack Obama during Obama’s eight years in office.

In his new book, ‘Dead Center: In Defense of Common Sense,’ released this week, Manchin outlined a cordial working relationship with Trump and a far chillier, less active back and forth with Obama.

Manchin, who switched from the Democratic Party to become an Independent before retiring from the Senate last year, wrote that he considered Trump a fellow ‘outsider’ when he arrived in Washington, D.C., for his first term and lauded him as the ‘most engaged president I ever worked with’ since former President Bill Clinton.

‘From the start, President Trump had an open line of communication with me,’ he wrote. ‘I spoke to him more in the first two years of his presidency than I did to President Obama during all eight years of his time in office.’

He noted, ‘If you want to have influence with Donald Trump, you have to be the last person he talks to about a topic,’ and said he would jokingly ask that the president ensure he was the last person he called.

‘He’d laugh, and we’d talk it out,’ he said.

He recalled his 2018 election campaign in the wake of Trump’s dominant, 40-point win in the state. Trump told Manchin that he was being pressured to campaign against him and promised he wouldn’t. Ultimately, Trump visited the state five times, but Manchin still came out on top.

He was later invited to the Oval Office to meet with Trump, where, in front of then-Vice President Mike Pence and Ivanka Trump, the president ‘blurted to his other guests, ‘I told you we couldn’t beat him,’’ Manchin wrote.

Manchin’s relationship with the former president goes back to his time as governor of West Virginia, when Obama was still a senator. The two worked together on a coal deal in Illinois that had previously excluded West Virginia.

During the 2008 election cycle, he said he invited both then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Obama to come to West Virginia to campaign, but said Obama shook off the invitation and told him, ‘Let’s be honest with each other —­ my demographics don’t work well in your state.’

‘But he didn’t come, and that night belonged to Hillary,’ he wrote. ‘She made the most of her visit and won the primary by 41 points.’

He said their relationship became even chillier when Obama launched his ‘war on coal’ with a push for green initiatives that targeted fossil fuels and states like West Virginia.

Manchin argued that the Democratic Party had grown dismissive and lost touch with the working class as a means to reshape their agenda through a progressive lens. That led to a seismic shift in West Virginia’s political alignment, from Democratic to now largely Republican, he said.

And in the process that began when Obama won in 2008, he said that rural states like his felt ‘overlooked and undervalued.’

‘But that’s exactly how Democrats handled West Virginia, and no one embodied that disconnect more than President Obama,’ he wrote.

Fox News Digital reached out to Obama’s office and the White House for comment but did not immediately hear back. 

The House voted Wednesday to advance a resolution honoring slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, clearing the way for floor debate later this week.

Lawmakers voted in favor of advancing the measure and a bill to avert a government shutdown in a joint mechanism known as a ‘rule vote.’

The rule was adopted in a 216 to 210 vote along party lines. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who is known to be opposing the federal funding bill, was the lone lawmaker from either side to vote ‘present.’

Massie explained to Fox News Digital that he vehemently supports the Kirk resolution, but opposed an unrelated provision in the rule that blocks Congress’ ability from weighing in on tariff policy.

‘I’m a cosponsor of the Kirk resolution, and obviously I will vote for it, but shamefully they turned off Congress’s ability to vote on tariffs with this rule,’ Massie said.

Rule votes are procedural hurdles that commonly tie together unrelated pieces of legislation that, if adopted, allow House lawmakers to debate each measure individually before respective votes. 

The current rule’s adoption means House lawmakers could vote on the resolution to honor Kirk on either Thursday or Friday.

A vote on the measure to avert a government shutdown – a short-term extension of current federal funding levels called a continuing resolution, or CR – is expected Friday morning.

It is not surprising that no Democrats supported the rule’s adoption on Wednesday; rule votes traditionally fall along party lines and have rarely seen bipartisan crossover, even if the legislation they include has wide support from both Republicans and Democrats.

And while Democrats are largely expected to buck the GOP-led government funding patch, the resolution to honor Kirk’s legacy is expected to get healthy bipartisan support.

The Turning Point USA founder was assassinated last week during a college campus speaking event in Utah.

The resolution to honor him, led by Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., lauded Kirk as ‘one of the most prominent voices in America, engaging in respectful, civil discourse across college campuses, media platforms and national forums, always seeking to elevate truth, foster understanding and strengthen the Republic.’

It also said Kirk’s ‘commitment to civil discussion and debate stood as a model for young Americans across the political spectrum, and he worked tirelessly to promote unity without compromising on conviction,’ and it called his killing ‘a sobering reminder of the growing threat posed by political extremism and hatred in our society.’

Both Democrats and Republicans have released statements condemning political violence in the wake of Kirk’s killing.

The latter measure that advanced on Wednesday evening, the CR, will keep government agencies funded at current levels through Nov. 21 of this year – if it’s passed by the House and Senate and signed into law by President Donald Trump.

That bill includes a combined $88 million in added security funds for Congress, the judicial branch and the executive branch.

Conversations about boosting lawmaker security, in particular, had been ongoing but took on new urgency after Kirk’s death.

Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., sharply criticized Kash Patel’s tenure as FBI director Wednesday, telling reporters that he viewed Patel’s leadership as deeply partisan and a ‘terrible tragedy’ for the nation’s sprawling law enforcement agency. 

Speaking at a news conference alongside former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other House Democrats, Schiff took umbrage at Patel’s testimony one day earlier before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Schiff said further crystallized his concerns about politicization within the bureau.

The FBI ‘has been the premier law enforcement agency in the country, and the world, because they’ve been constantly professional and non-partisan,’ Schiff said Wednesday, noting the close working relationship he had with FBI agents during the years he spent as a federal prosecutor. 

‘It is a terrible tragedy, I think, for the men and women of the bureau to have such poor leadership that is replacing expertise with incompetence, that is replacing non-partisanship with the most rabid partisanship,’ Schiff told Fox News Digital. ‘And this is not unrelated to why we’re here today.’

His remarks come as Patel appeared on Capitol Hill Wednesday for a second day of testimony before the Senate and House Judiciary committees.

Both hearings were marked by sharp lines of questioning from Democrats, who grilled Patel on issues ranging from a flurry of FBI firings, the bureau’s handling of the Epstein files and concerns of politicization, among many other topics.

Schiff, in particular, pressed Patel on his tenure at the FBI, saying the bureau’s agents — mostly assigned to its 52 field offices across the country and loath to see their work politicized — wanted to know what, if any, marching orders Patel had received from President Donald Trump.

The heated back-and-forth devolved into a shouting match between the two as Schiff pressed Patel repeatedly on the firings of FBI agents and whether those individuals were removed for political reasons.

Patel, for his part, described Schiff as a ‘political buffoon.’ 

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Schiff said Patel’s appearance did little to assuage his broader fears of weaponization within the bureau.

‘You can’t have a vibrant democracy without the rule of law,’ he told Fox News Digital. ‘You can’t have the rule of law if you have a weaponized FBI and a weaponized Justice Department, and, sadly, that’s what we have here today,’ Schiff said.

He also weighed in on Patel’s remarks yesterday on the Epstein files, another issue that sparked intense criticism from lawmakers, after Patel claimed Tuesday that there was ‘no credible evidence’ that Jeffrey Epstein was trafficking women other than for himself. 

Schiff said it was a ‘startling claim,’ particularly from someone who had previously promoted the belief that Epstein maintained a vast client list of powerful people.

‘So, it was completely contradictory to everything he said in the past,’ he said. He also noted Patel’s ‘refusal’ to answer his questions on why Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche declined to press Ghislaine Maxwell further on the Cabinet members she identified as being ‘close’ to Epstein or having a relationship with him during a two-day interview in July.

‘Blanche refused to ask who they were and just ignored her comment,’ Schiff added. 

‘And this is, again, the kind of incompetence we’re seeing,’ he said. ‘Incompetence is probably the most polite thing I can describe, but it certainly looks like a cover-up.’

The Justice Department and FBI have struggled to quell the mounting public pressure on them to release more information related to the Epstein investigation, underscoring the story’s sticking power in a fast-moving news cycle and among Trump supporters, who have been some of the leading voices in demanding the information be released.

The U.S. on Wednesday once again took aim at Iran and targeted its Axis of Resistance by designating four Iraq-based militias as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

According to the State Department, the groups identified were Harakat al-Nujaba, Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada, Harakat Ansar Allah al-Awfiya and Kata’ib al-Imam Ali – all four of which were previously designated by the Department of Treasury as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT) in 2023. 

‘Iran-aligned militia groups have conducted attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and bases hosting U.S. and Coalition forces, typically using front names or proxy groups to obfuscate their involvement,’ Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in the statement.

According to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), the four groups are all backed by Iran and form the core of an umbrella organization known as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI), which gained prominence following the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

The IRI is believed to be responsible for hundreds of attacks in Iraq, Syria and Jordan, and was behind the killing of three U.S. service members during a drone attack in January 2024 in Jordan. 

‘The Trump administration broke the taboo during term one when it proved it could name, shame, and punish Iran-backed militias in Iraq without the country devolving into civil war,’ Behnam Ben Taleblu, Iranian expert and senior director of the FDD’s Iran program, told Fox News Digital. ‘Now in term two the administration is upping the ante continuing a campaign of designations against the agents of influence and terror of Iran in Iraq.’

The four terrorist groups also operate within the Popular Mobilization Forces, which is a coalition force of largely Shia groups that was formed to counter ISIS by the Iraqi government, but which is also strongly influenced by Iran. 

‘Tehran relies on these militias to literally have a state within a state in Iraq,’ Ben Taleblu said. ‘Sandwiching these and other Iran-backed terror groups between Treasury Department [Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons] SDN listings and State Department [Foreign Terrorist Organizations] FTO listings, as the Trump administration previously did with their patron, the IRGC, in term one is the right approach.’