A Jewish-American national security group is sounding an alarm about how America and Israel’s enemies may exploit low missile stockpiles after the 12-day war with Iran.  

Defending Israel and the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar from Iranian counterstrikes cost the U.S. and Israel between $1.48 billion to $1.58 billion, according to an analysis by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), and burned through a large portion of missile interceptor stockpiles. 

Both the U.S. and Israel now face an ‘urgent need’ to replace those stocks and sharply increase production rates. 

The U.S. had roughly 632 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors before June 13, the day Israel began its offensive in Iran. About 540 interceptors remain in its arsenal based on JINSA’s calculations of interceptor deliveries and use, according to the report. 

In addition, the two Patriot missile interceptor systems responsible for defending Al Udeid, the U.S.’s largest base in the Middle East that’s home to 10,000 soldiers, reportedly used roughly 30 Patriot interceptors against the 14 Iranian ballistic missiles targeting the site June 23, The interceptors cost about $3.7 million each, totaling $111 million.

Iran launched 574 medium-range ballistic missiles toward Israel and the U.S. airbase in Qatar after Tel Aviv and Washington conducted strikes on Iranian military and nuclear sites between June 13 and June 24, when the conflict ended in Iran’s counterstrike in Qatar.

Lt. Gen. Thomas Bergeson, former chief of U.S. Central Command, said the U.S. and its allies needed to do more to invest in nonkinetic interception mechanisms,or systems that can neutralize a threat without explosive force, would be much cheaper in defending against future attacks. 

‘There’s any number of operational test and developmental testing going on with a cheaper bullet than a multibillion-dollar interceptor to shoot down a relatively inexpensive missile or UAS,’ he said. ‘Any electro-magnetic interference capability, a microwave laser EMP, whatever that can screw up, the guidance system or the proportion of that particular system is something that could be cheaper.

‘You can have literally hundreds if not thousands of rounds in one interceptor at very low cost.’

While the cost for the U.S. and Israel was high, the cost for Iran was greater — between $1.1 billion and $6.6 billion. Air defenses saved Israel about $13.5 billion in property damage.

Iran used up between a third and a half of its ballistic missile arsenal during the 12-day conflict, suggesting Iranian assertions it could have continued striking Israel for years if it wanted were overblown. 

Replacing its missile stockpiles will be even more costly given that Israel struck many of its launchers and production sites. 

But the U.S. used up 14% of its global stockpile of prized THAAD missile interceptors. America’s THAAD system accounted for nearly half of all interceptions due to ‘insufficient’ capacity of Israel’s Arrow interception system. 

It would take three to eight years to replenish the THAAD interceptors used in the 12-day war at current production rates. 

Patriot interceptor production is more robust than THAAD, according to the report, but the U.S. is providing a number of Patriot interceptors to Ukraine. So, it’s unclear how many remain in the stockpile. 

If the U.S. and Israel fail to urgently replenish their interceptor inventories — especially THAAD and Patriot systems — they risk entering the next crisis with dangerously thin defenses, according to the report. Adversaries may take note of the extended gap between munitions use and stockpile replenishment, which leaves U.S. bases across the world open to vulnerabilities. 

‘Iran’s large-scale missile campaign may have revealed vulnerabilities in Israeli and U.S. air defense systems, providing lessons that Iran or other U.S. adversaries could exploit in the future,’ the report said.

The Pentagon could not immediately be reached for comment on its plan to replenish missile interceptor stocks.

Ex-President Joe Biden’s former chief of staff ignored reporters on his way out of an interview with congressional investigators on Thursday after a marathon grilling behind closed doors.

Ronald Klain served as White House chief of staff for the first half of Biden’s term. He also reportedly played a key role in helping the former leader prepare for what proved to be a disastrous first and only 2024 election debate against current President Donald Trump.

Klain sat with staff and some lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee for hours for a voluntary transcribed interview.

Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., earlier told reporters that the interview was going well just after the session broke for lunch.

‘I think we’re having a very good transcribed interview. Mr. Klain is being fairly responsive to our questions,’ Comer said.

Comer is investigating whether Biden’s top White House aides concealed signs of mental decline in the then-president, and if that meant executive actions were signed via autopen without his knowledge.

Lawmakers who briefly attended the interview, however, called him ‘credible.’

‘I think he is telling what he knows accurately,’ Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., told Fox News Digital.

On the other side of the aisle, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., told reporters, ‘He answered every single question. He was fully cooperative.’

Comer was guarded, however, in response to questions about how much new information was gleaned.

‘There have been tidbits,’ he said. ‘We’ve asked specific questions. Obviously, evidence emerges on a daily basis that would suggest Joe Biden wasn’t mentally fit to be President of the United States.’

Klain is the sixth former Biden administration aide to appear for Comer’s probe and the third to appear voluntarily.

Former White House physician Kevin O’Connor, as well as senior advisors Annie Tomasini and Anthony Bernal, all appeared under subpoena.

Each also pleaded the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering questions.

Longtime Biden aide Ashley Williams and former staff secretary Neera Tanden both appeared voluntarily.

Like the previous five before him, the longtime Democratic operative did not answer questions from reporters either before or after his interview.

Lies and lying people comprise the sorry epitaph of Barack Obama’s presidency.  

The Big Lie was that then-candidate Donald Trump colluded with Russia to rig the 2016 presidential election. It derived from a phony dossier commissioned and financed by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Obama’s national security team happily peddled to destroy his successor.  

It begat an even bigger whopper that ‘Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump’ and ‘aspired to help’ his election chances. This notorious deceit was inserted in the official Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that was ordered by Obama himself and conjured up by his CIA Director John Brennan.  

None of it was true. 

The bogus dossier was exploited to justify the ICA. Conversely, the ICA was used to legitimize the dossier. The circular faux verification was a clever ruse. And it worked splendidly. When both documents were leaked to the gullible Trump-hating media, journalists adopted them without question as sacred gospel from the Holy Book of Obama. The Russia hoax took off like a rocket.  

It crash-landed on Wednesday, July 23, when Tulsi Gabbard, the director of National Intelligence, accused Obama, Brennan and others of engineering the false intelligence. ‘They knew it would promote this contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, selling it to the American people as though it were true. It wasn’t,’ she added.  

Newly declassified documents show that a December 8, 2016, draft of Obama’s Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) debunked the notion of Russian electoral meddling to help Trump. But wait … that was problematic because it did not conform to the preferred narrative of Trump-Russia collusion. So, FBI Director James Comey and his cohorts reportedly scuttled it. That way, Trump, as president-elect, could not be briefed on its contents.   

The next day Obama convened a highly confidential meeting at the White House. The president ordered his intelligence cronies to expedite a new ICA that would reverse the PDB’s conclusion and energize the collusion fiction. With his marching orders in hand, Brennan immediately went to work on it. 

His challenge was devising a way to contort the known evidence and contradict the consensus of nearly everyone else in the intelligence community. No problem. CIA experts on Russia who strenuously objected were sidelined and silenced. Brennan ignored their warning that there was no direct evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to elect Trump.  

Other intel agencies that typically contribute to the assessment were deliberately excluded to stifle dissent. Evidence shows that Brennan then selected a handful of sycophants — with only one principal drafter — to craft the entire ICA that bore little resemblance to the truth and established facts.  

On January 6, 2017, the rushed-to-completion ICA was produced. It offered a remarkable transformation from the earlier PDB: ‘Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-Elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.’ (Page 7 of ICA)  

The head-spinning about-face of intel conclusions was an immaculate conception of corrupt handicraft that belongs in the Intelligence Hall of Shame.  

Although Brennan denied it, numerous delusions drawn from the fake dossier were placed in the formal intelligence assessment to give it the sustenance that it otherwise lacked. Armed with both fallacious documents, Comey then met with Trump later that day in a devious but misbegotten scheme to entrap him. It failed miserably because the newly elected president had no idea what the FBI director was talking about.        

Obama’s dirty fingerprints were all over the cooked-up intelligence claiming that Moscow helped Trump in some grand collusion conspiracy. On Wednesday, Gabbard held a news conference to lift the veil of secrecy and malevolence. She leveled the following broadside:  

‘President Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey and others, including their mouthpieces in the media, knowingly lied as they repeated the contrived narrative that was created in this January 2017 intelligence community assessment with high confidence, as though it were fact.’   

Mincing no words, Gabbard accused Brennan of lying about his use of the dossier even though he knew it was a discredited and politically manufactured document. ‘He directed senior CIA officials to use it anyway,’ she said.  

Other intel agencies that typically contribute to the assessment were deliberately excluded to stifle dissent. 

As ‘irrefutable proof,’ she unlocked the 2020 report of the House Intelligence Committee that had never before been seen publicly, thanks to the machinations of then-Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who buried it as classified in a limited-access vault at CIA headquarters. The report outlined in detail the events that I summarized above. 

It was easy to do so because many of them are contained in the book I wrote six years ago, ‘Witch Hunt:’ ‘John Brennan was instrumental in proliferating the dossier. But even before the Clinton campaign and Democrats funded Christopher Steele’s project to smear Trump with the collusion hoax, the seeds of the collusion narrative were germinated by none other than Brennan.’ (Pages 66-67)  

I recounted how Brennan boasted to the House Intel Committee in May of 2017 that he had been the first to alert the FBI about collusion. ‘As he exerted uncommon pressure on the FBI to pursue a counterintelligence probe on Trump, he resolved to help spread the false allegations to Congress and the media. He politicized phony intelligence and instigated the fraudulent case against Clinton’s opponent.’ (Page 68) 

The Russians never had ‘Kompromat’ (compromising material) on Trump, as the dossier falsely accused. But they apparently did have it on Hillary. And that proved quite a stunner on Wednesday.  

The heretofore hidden House Intelligence report reveals how Russian intelligence ‘possessed DNC communications that in 2016 Clinton was suffering from ‘intensified psycho-emotional problems, including uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression, and cheerfulness.’ Clinton was placed on a daily regimen of ‘heavy tranquilizers’ and while afraid of losing, she remained ‘obsessed with a thirst for power.’’  

Obama and Democrat Party bosses apparently knew all about Clinton’s mental instability and found it ‘extraordinarily alarming.’ So much so, they worried it might have a ‘serious negative impact’ on the November election.    

Unlike the dossier, those shocking discoveries were not just idle gossip. The committee reviewed reams of source material and obtained corroboration during some 20 interviews with FBI agents and intelligence officers.  

How did the Russians get their hands on the damaging material? The report explains that Putin ordered hacking operations on the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. It seems that since Putin believed Hillary would win the election, he held the ‘Kompromat’ in his back pocket to use as potential blackmail for later use. 

His challenge was devising a way to contort the known evidence and contradict the consensus of nearly everyone else in the intelligence community. No problem. CIA experts on Russia who strenuously objected were sidelined and silenced.

In sending a criminal referral for possible prosecution to the Justice Department, Gabbard stated, ‘The evidence that we have found and that we have released directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment.’ 

In response, the DOJ announced that it had formed a ‘strike force’ to fully assess all the evidence and to investigate the next legal steps. Attorney General Pam Bondi vowed to ‘leave no stone unturned to deliver justice.’  

Obama denies any wrongdoing. But he should thank Trump for winning the recent landmark Supreme Court decision that provides all presidents with immunity. Ironically, the former president can now hide behind its broad protections. However, no such shield extends to others involved.  

It is folly to predict at this stage what prosecutions, if any, the future may hold. But the stain of corruption is already embedded in the epitaph of Obama’s presidency.   

As part of his effort to ‘Make America Safe Again,’ President Donald Trump signed an executive order to allow cities and states to remove homeless people off the streets and into treatment centers. 

Trump signed the order, ‘Ending Vagrancy and Restoring,’ Thursday afternoon. 

The order states that the ‘number of individuals living on the streets in the United States on a single night during the last year of the Biden administration — 274,224 — was the highest ever recorded.’ 

It directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to ‘reverse judicial precedents and end consent decrees’ stopping or limiting cities and states from removing homeless individuals from the streets and moving them to treatment centers. 

Though it is unclear how much money will be allocated to the effort, Trump’s order redirects federal funds to ensure that removed homeless individuals are sent to rehabilitation, treatment and other facilities.

Additionally, the order requires Bondi to partner with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to prioritize federal grants to cities and states that ‘enforce prohibitions on open illicit drug use, urban camping and loitering, and urban squatting, and track the location of sex offenders,’ according to USA Today. 

The order also stipulates that discretionary grants for substance-use disorder prevention, treatment and recovery programs ‘do not fund drug injection sites or illicit drug use.’ 

Homelessness increased in the U.S. by 18% from 2023 to 2024, according to Housing and Urban Development’s annual homelessness assessment report released in January. 

Trump has previously vowed to clean up American cities, especially the nation’s capital of Washington.

Speaking in March, Trump said, ‘We’re going to have a crime-free capital. When people come here, they’re not going to be mugged or shot or raped. They’re going to have a crime-free capital again. It’s going to be cleaner and better and safer than it ever was. And it’s not going to take us too long.’ 

Writing in the New York Times on Monday, longtime Democratic political strategist James Carville outlined a compelling message for Democrats to unite around ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Carville urged Democrats to delay the ‘civil war’ that will eventually erupt between the party’s moderate and progressive wings, and to coalesce around a single ‘oppositional message’ focused entirely on repealing President Donald Trump’s agenda.

With all due respect to Mr. Carville, his myopic focus on a strategy of resisting Trump above all else is simply too narrow to be truly effective.

Put another way, a Democratic agenda built entirely around repealing the Republican agenda may be enough for 2026, but it falls far short of what Democrats must do if they hope to take back the White House in 2028.

Indeed, nowhere in the Times piece is any description of actual policies that Democrats should advance as an alternative to what Republicans are offering, either next year or in three years.

There are no calls for an entirely new economic agenda, one that replaces Democrats’ tendency for profligate spending with a more fiscally conservative plan focused on managing the debt while also protecting the social safety net.

In many ways, Democrats today should look to former President Bill Clinton, who was able to reduce the debt, leave a budget surplus and still protect vital social programs.

Moreover, the word ‘immigration’ is not even mentioned. 

This comes despite 2024 election polling showing that immigration was a top issue for voters, and exit polls showing voters trusted Trump over former Vice President Kamala Harris by a 16-point margin (52% to 36%), per Fox News.

To that end, if Democrats hope to take back more than just one chamber of Congress, the party needs an agenda that prioritizes securing the border, combined with a pathway to citizenship for legal migrants and Dreamers.

And, while I do agree with Mr. Carville that the midterms will be decided based on kitchen table issues rather than foreign policy, that does not mean Democrats can afford to ignore this issue.

As a party, Democrats must advance an agenda that positively asserts democratic values at home and abroad. 

This entails rejecting the belief of the far left – and increasingly the far right – that any use of American power is inherently bad.

To be sure, formulating an entirely new Democratic agenda takes time. And it will require the emergence of moderate candidates at a time when Zohran Mamdani’s win in New York City has energized the progressive wing of the party. 

Nevertheless, as the 2024 election made clear, Democrats cannot afford to run from the center toward the far left. What the party needs is a candidate who can win, not one chosen because they passed progressives’ ideological purity test.

Interestingly, Carville cites former President Clinton as a figure who emerged as Democrats’ ‘savior’ in 1992. 

But Clinton was able to do so because, at a time when the party was moving further to the left, Clinton dragged the party toward the middle on the economy and crime.

Finally, the crux of Carville’s message – ‘we demand a repeal’ of Trump’s agenda – overlooks the core factor behind who Americans cast a vote for.

Voters choose candidates who have plans and policies that will improve their lives. 

Slogans, no matter how catchy, may work for the midterms, but if Democrats then fail to deliver actual change between 2026 and 2028, its unlikely voters will trust them.

Quite simply, voters want a strong economy, safe streets, a government that is not excessively bloated and secure borders, not candidates whose only agenda is resisting the president. 

Now, this is not to say that the agenda outlined by Carville will not be successful next year – it very well may.

Rather, it is to point out that even if it helps Democrats reclaim the House of Representatives, it will not be enough to take back the White House in 2028.

For that, the party needs to advance its own agenda, one that addresses the above issues and actually provides a real, viable alternative to the Trump-GOP agenda. 

House Republicans are already discussing contours for a potential second ‘big, beautiful bill’ advancing President Donald Trump’s agenda.

The Republican Study Committee (RSC), the 189-member-strong group that acts as a de facto ‘think tank’ for the House GOP, is launching a working group to look at what a second budget reconciliation bill would look like, Fox News Digital has learned.

It’s the largest organized effort so far by congressional Republicans to follow through on GOP leaders’ hopes for a second massive agenda bill.

‘We must capitalize on the momentum we’ve generated in the first 6 months of a Republican trifecta in Washington,’ RSC Chairman August Pfluger, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital. ‘To fulfill the promises we made to the American people, conservatives must begin laying the groundwork for the second reconciliation bill to ensure we continue to drive down the cost of living and restore America’s promise for future generations.’

House Republicans left Washington on Wednesday to kick off a five-week recess period, where they’re readying to sell the benefits of their first massive agenda bill to their constituents. 

Meanwhile, Pfluger also directed lawmakers part of the new working group to begin reaching out to colleagues, conservative senators, and GOP organizations about potential policy proposals for a new bill, Fox News Digital was told.

The goal of the new group is to create a framework for what a second ‘big, beautiful bill’ could look like, and to recommend that framework to GOP leaders.

The first bill was a massive piece of legislation advancing Trump’s agenda on taxes, the border, immigration, defense, and energy.

It made much of Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) permanent, while imposing new work requirements on Medicaid and food stamps, among other measures.

After passing the House and Senate, Trump signed it into law during a celebratory event on the Fourth of July.

But the political fight to get just one reconciliation bill took Herculean political efforts across both the House and Senate, with debates and even heated arguments ongoing for months before the bill passed.

Notably, however, Republicans did get the legislation to Trump’s desk by July 4 – meeting a goal that many in the media and even within GOP circles thought impossible.

The budget reconciliation process allows the party controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress to pass massive partisan policy overhauls, while completely sidelining the other side – in this case, Democrats.

Reconciliation bills can pass the Senate with a simple majority rather than 60 votes, lining up with the House’s own passage threshold. But the legislation must adhere to a specific set of rules and only involve measures related to fiscal policy.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told ‘Sunday Morning Futures’ earlier this month that he was eyeing multiple reconciliation bills.

‘With President Trump coming back to the White House, and us having the responsibility for fixing every metric of public policy that Biden and Harris and the Democrats destroyed over the previous four years –  so the big beautiful bill was the first big step in that,’ he told host Maria Bartiromo.

‘But we have multiple steps ahead of us. We have long planned for at least two, possibly three, reconciliation bills, one in the fall and one next spring.’

JERUSALEM— The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is under growing pressure to extradite the self-confessed female Hamas terrorist Ahlam Aref Ahmad al-Tamimi, who engineered the terrorist bombing at a Jerusalem pizzeria in 2001 that murdered three Americans among 16 people, half of whom were children.

Frimet and Arnold Roth, the parents of Malki Roth, a 15-year-old U.S. citizen murdered in the 2001 Sbarro pizzeria bombing, held a virtual meeting on July 17, 2025 with Jeanine F. Pirro, United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. 

The U.S. State Department has a $5 million reward for information leading to al-Tamimi’scapture, even as reports claim Jordan’s King Abdullah II has played hardball, refusing to extradite the accused mass murderer. 

‘You have the capacity to push for her extradition, to ensure that the 1995 treaty is honored, to show Jordan and its population along with the watching world that harboring terrorists has consequences,’ Arnold Roth told Pirro during the meeting, according to a family press release following the meeting. 

The 24th anniversary of the Aug. 9, 2001 bombing is next month.

Roth added, ‘We’re here today to implore you to act. Jordan needs to know the U.S. cannot tolerate the protection of a murderer of American citizens. U.S. justice needs to be respected by the world and, without hammering this point too hard, by America’s lawmakers and senior officials.’ 

The Roths said that the meeting focused on the need for ‘concrete steps’ to advance the long-delayed extradition of al-Tamimi.  

Al-Tamimi’sterrorist bombing also killed Judith Shoshana Greenberg and Chana Nachenberg in the 2001 attack. ‘All the victims deserve justice,’ Arnold Roth said, stressing that Tamimi’s extradition should become a ‘true priority’ for the U.S. Department of Justice. 

When asked if the extradition of al-Tamimi was raised by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in his Wednesday meeting with Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, a State Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital, ‘The United States has continually emphasized to the Government of Jordan the importance of holding Ahlam al-Tamimi, the convicted terrorist released by Israel in a 2011 prisoner swap, accountable in a U.S. court for her admitted role in a 2001 bombing in Jerusalem that killed 15 people, including Americans Malka Chana Roth, Judith Shoshana Greenbaum, and Chana Nachenberg. The United States continues to impress upon the Government of Jordan that Tamimi is a brutal murderer who should be brought to justice.’

The State Department referred Fox News Digital to the Department of Justice for more information about the U.S. criminal case against al-Tamimi.

The Justice Department and Pirro’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital press queries.

Al-Tamimi is on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list. She is the second female to appear on the terrorism list.

Frimet Roth told U.S. Attorney Pirro that ‘We cannot carry this fight alone any longer. Judge Pirro, please, be the voice for Malki and the other American victims. Be the advocate for justice that has been denied for too long. We beg you to act—not for our sake alone, but for the integrity of American law and the sanctity of every life lost to terror.’ 

The Roths also delivered a petition to U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee in May 2025, with some 30,000 signatures urging the Trump administration to press Jordan for al-Tamimi’s extradition. 

Arnold Roth told Fox News Digital that ‘No senior figure from State has ever, in all the years of our fight for justice, agreed to speak with us. Their treatment of us and of the Tamimi case is deplorable. Victoria Nuland, then one of the top-ranking figures in the State Department. Nuland wrote to us in the names of President Biden and then-Sec of State Antony Blinken, and told us that the Tamimi case was quote ‘a foremost priority’ for the U.S. And that they would keep us informed. She then [they] ignored every follow-up letter that I sent her, and of course so said Biden and Blinken.’

Jordan’s government is a major recipient of U.S. Foreign Military Financing (FMF).

According to a January 2025 U.S. State Department fact sheet, ‘Since 2015, the Department of State has provided Jordan with $2.155 billion in FMF, which makes Jordan the third-largest global recipient of FMF funds over that time period.  In addition, the Department of Defense (DoD) has provided $327 million to the Jordanian Armed Forces (JAF) under its 333 authority since 2018, making Jordan one of the largest recipients of this funding.’

Al-Tamimi reportedly boasted about her terrorist operation in the Arab media and called for more terrorism against Israel. ‘Of course. I do not regret what happened. Absolutely not. This is the path. I dedicated myself to jihad for the sake of Allah, and Allah granted me success. You know how many casualties there were [in the 2001 attack on the Sbarro pizzeria]. This was made possible by Allah. Do you want me to denounce what I did? That’s out of the question. I would do it again today, and in the same manner,’ she said in 2011, according to a MEMRI translation.

In 2017, the U.S. Justice Department publicly announced that it had charged her with the Jerusalem suicide bombing. 

Fox News Digital sent multiple press queries to Jordan’s government and its embassies in Washington, D.C., and Tel Aviv.

President Donald Trump said Friday that former President Barack Obama ‘owes me big’ following the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling. 

Trump on Tuesday claimed that Obama was the ‘ringleader’ of Russiagate, calling for him to be criminally investigated amid new claims that members of his administration allegedly ‘manufactured’ intelligence that prompted the Trump–Russia collusion narrative. Obama has denied the allegations, with a spokesperson for him describing them as ‘bizarre.’

‘It probably helps him a lot. Probably helps a lot. The immunity ruling, but it doesn’t help the people around him at all. But it probably helps him a lot,’ Trump said Friday. ‘He’s done criminal acts, there’s no question about it. But he has immunity, and it probably helps him a lot… he owes me big, Obama owes me big.’ 

The intelligence community did not have any direct information that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to help elect Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election, but, at the ‘unusual’ direction of then-President Barack Obama, published ‘potentially biased’ or ‘implausible’ intelligence suggesting otherwise, the House Intelligence Committee found, according to a Fox News report earlier this week.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had declassified a report prepared by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence back in 2020.

The report, which was based on an investigation launched by former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., was dated Sept. 18, 2020. At the time of the publication of the report, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., was the chairman of the committee.

The committee focused on the creation of the Intelligence Community Assessment of 2017, in which then-CIA Director John Brennan pushed for the inclusion of the now-discredited anti-Trump dossier, despite knowing it was based largely on ‘internet rumor,’ as Fox News Digital previously reported.

According to the report, the ICA was a ‘high-profile product ordered by the President, directed by senior IC agency heads, and created by just five CIA analysts, using one principal drafter.’

‘Production of the ICA was subject to unusual directives from the President and senior political appointees, and particularly DCIA,’ the report states. ‘The draft was not properly coordinated within CIA or the IC, ensuring it would be published without significant challenges to its conclusions.’

The committee found that the five CIA analysts and drafter ‘rushed’ the ICA’s production ‘in order to publish two weeks before President-elect Trump was sworn-in.’

In a statement Tuesday, Obama denied Trump’s ‘bizarre allegations’ that he was the Russiagate ‘ringleader.’

‘Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response,’ Obama spokesman Patrick Rodenbush said in a statement. ‘But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one.’ 

‘These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction,’ Obama’s spokesman continued. ‘Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes.’ 

Gabbard later told ‘Jesse Watters Primetime’ on Wednesday that there were ‘deep state obstacles’ to releasing her information about the Trump-Russia collusion investigation and that some people within the intelligence community (IC) didn’t want it to ‘see the light of day.’

‘There are a lot of deep state actors still here within Washington. President Trump wants us to find the truth. I want to find that truth. The American people deserve the truth, and they deserve accountability,’ she said.

Fox News’ Brooke Singman and Ashley Carnahan contributed to this report. 

Senate Democrats have begun to ramp up their push for the full release of documents related to the late, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, while Senate Republicans have tried to focus their attention elsewhere.

‘The story Republicans hoped would quietly fade is growing louder by the hour,’ Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor.

Schumer has led the charge among Senate Democrats in demanding more transparency on the Epstein issue, and has used the drama in recent weeks as a political cudgel to go after congressional Republicans and the White House.

His remarks come after a recent Wall Street Journal report alleged that President Donald Trump’s name appeared in the documents surrounding Epstein, and that he was told by the Justice Department about it before publicly saying he was not among the untold number of names within the documents.

Trump also ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to ‘produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony’ on the matter, and top Justice Department official Todd Blanche met with Epstein accomplice Ghislane Maxwell in Florida on Thursday to discuss the late pedophile and alleged sex trafficker.

‘It has the stench of a cover-up,’ Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Fox News Digital. ‘The only right outcome here is to release and disclose all the files. There should be no secret meetings or secret deals.’

However, the Epstein saga has not had near the effect in the Senate as in the House, where House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., sent lawmakers home early this week for a monthlong break after some Republicans and Democrats joined forces in their calls to bring the so-called Epstein files out in the open.

Senate Republicans, meanwhile, have downplayed the issue, arguing that Congress has far less power to obtain the information than the Justice Department does.

Sen. Ron Johnson, who chairs the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, told Fox News Digital that he does not like ‘duplicating efforts,’ but noted that he is still curious to know more information about the Epstein documents.  

‘I’m like every American who knows anything about this – I’m curious,’ the Wisconsin Republican said. ‘It doesn’t make any sense to me, starting back with his original trial and very light sentence. But I think there are far more important things to worry about.’

Senate Democrats are trying to force the issue, however. Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., again tried to introduce a non-binding resolution that called on Bondi to release all files related to Epstein, and the move was again blocked by Sen. Markwaye Mullin, R-Okla. 

Gallego said that the White House continues to make the issue ‘political theater,’ something that began on the campaign trail.

‘They fed this monster, and now they have to figure out the solution to what the American public is asking for, which is, you know, resolution and answers to their questions,’ he said.

Mullin, however, introduced his own resolution that comported with the president’s order for state and federal courts to release all Epstein documents surrounding the criminal investigation and prosecution against him. But when Gallego offered to combine the two, he objected, and accused him of turning the issue into a ‘political football.’

‘One, in this particular case — in a lot of cases — we’re not willing to stretch the truth to tell something that’s not accurate,’ Mullin said. ‘We want to be accurate with what we’re telling the American people. And the truth is, what can Congress do?’

So far, Mullin’s resolution is the only action offered by Senate Republicans in the ongoing Epstein saga. When asked if he would be interested in bringing the resolution to the floor for a vote, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said ‘obviously there is some interest in taking action on it, and we’ll see how intense that feeling is.’

Still, some Republicans want to focus their efforts elsewhere.

‘I hope we don’t waste our time on that,’ said Sen. John Cornyn, R-TX, and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. ‘We’ve got enough to do.’