President Biden has long attempted to distance himself from his family’s business dealings as he ran for and eventually became president, but a new report details just how involved those in the president’s inner circle have been in Biden family ventures.

Biden has shared a personal bookkeeper with this son, Hunter Biden, a personal lawyer with this brother, Jim Biden, and the former head of then-Vice President Biden’s Secret Service detail helped Jim Biden investigate a potential Chinese business partner, according to a report from Politico.

While the Bidens have long said they observe strict ‘firewalls’ when it comes to discussing business with each other, the Politico report details just how involved those in the president’s orbit have been in dealings with Hunter and Jim Biden.

In one case, the president’s brother, Jim Biden, hired the head of the former vice president’s Secret Service detail, Dale Pupillo, to investigate a Chinese executive the president’s son, Hunter Biden, was traveling to meet in 2017.

The president’s brother stressed during the February impeachment inquiry that he personally commissioned the investigation into the executive so that he was not going into the situation blind, but insisted he did not know the details of the potential venture being led by his nephew.

‘I wanted to know who I was meeting with and if there were any complications at all,’ he said at the impeachment interview, noting that it was common in the Biden family to keep the details of business dealings away from each other.

The executive, Patrick Ho, was later arrested and convicted on federal corruption charges.

The Politico report notes that Jim Biden had a long habit of tapping those connected to his powerful older brother. In one case, in 1975, during Joe Biden’s first Senate term, Jim Biden secured a loan from the senator’s old law firm, Walsh, Monzack & Owens, to help fund his nightclub business.

One of those partners, Mel Monzack, has gone on to serve as the president’s personal attorney and campaign treasurer. Monzack’s current firm has also served as the registered agent for the president’s personal S Corporation, CelticCapri, which handles income from activities such as writing and speaking fees.

Monzack has also served as Jim Biden’s personal attorney, helping to negotiate a proposed deal that would have given the president’s brother’s company a 35% stake in the Americore hospital chain.

While the deal fell through, Monzack’s involvement raised questions, though Jim Biden has insisted he does not have knowledge of the attorney’s arrangement with President Biden.

‘I don’t have the full depth of what he does or doesn’t do,’ he said in February. ‘But I know that he’s intricately involved and has been, you know, for the last 40 or 50 years.’

Another close associate of President Biden, body man Fran Person, stayed involved with Hunter Biden after leaving government in 2014. Emails showed that Person, who the Bidens have said became like a son to them over the course of Joe Biden’s service in the Senate and as vice president, pitched Hunter Biden on a plan to develop SeaWorld parks in China in a deal between Person’s business and the state-owned Chinese Development Bank in 2015.

WhatsApp messages that were revealed as part of an IRS investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax matters also showed conversations between Person and Hunter Biden, including conversations in which Person told Hunter Biden his Chinese business partner, Bo Zhang, was eager to help the president’s son overcome his growing financial troubles.

The Politico report also detailed the role another Hunter Biden business partner, personal bookkeeper Eric Schwerin, played in the family, with President Biden leaning on the bookkeeper to handle his own finances.

Nevertheless, Schwerin testified during the impeachment inquiry that there was no intermingling between the president and his son’s finances.

The connection between the president’s orbit and his family even extended to President Biden’s personal physician, Army doctor Kevin O’Connor. O’Connor served as then-Vice President Biden’s personal physician and grew close to Biden throughout his time in the Biden administration. The doctor now serves as Biden’s White House physician, the report notes.

In between those two roles, the president’s brother, Jim Biden, sought O’Connor’s help as part of his proposed Americore deal. According to the report, the president’s brother wanted to partner with the Veterans Affairs Department ‘to use vacant space at rural hospitals to treat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.’

The White House did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.

JERUSALEMAmid allegations leveled against the Biden administration that it is placating the Islamic Republic of Iran’s drive to build a nuclear weapon, former Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Tehran seeks a nuclear Holocaust targeting the Jewish state.

Lieberman, a member of Israel’s parliament (Knesset), told Israel’s Army Radio Tuesday Iran is ‘planning a Holocaust for us in the next two years.’

‘We are in the midst of an Iranian extermination program,’ Lieberman said. ‘Israel will be attacked with the aim of destroying it from several fronts with tens of thousands of missiles at the same time.’

A day after Lieberman’s comments, Israeli Brig. Gen (Res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, the former head of the research division in the Israel Defense Force’s Military Intelligence, told the Israeli TPS news agency, ‘The Biden administration wants to avoid any confrontation with Iran. They are afraid that if they move into confrontation, confrontational Iran may actually move towards having a bomb. But maybe [Iran’s leaders] believe that Trump is going to become the next president. They might actually try to break out a bomb now.’

Kuperwasser continued, ‘They have enough material to produce the fissile material that is necessary for three bombs within a month.’

This week saw a flurry of regulatory, diplomatic and congressional activity directed at Iran for its continued work on its illicit atomic weapons program. 

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) censured Iran Wednesday for its lack of cooperation with agency inspectors. Britain, France and Germany initiated the resolution. The Wall Street Journal reported the Biden administration sought to dissuade the Europeans from rebuking Iran at the IAEA. 

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller denied the Wall Street Journal report, noting the ‘report is not true. We have not lobbied any country to vote against or abstain from any resolution in that regard. We are actively increasing pressure on Iran through a combination of sanctions, deterrence and international isolation to counter their destabilizing behavior and prevent them from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

‘But I think you should not expect us to be acting in any sort of disharmony with our E3 partners. We’ve prized our unity with them, and I expect that to continue.’ 

After mounting pressure on the U.S. to join the Europeans in a reprimand of Iran, the U.S. agreed at the 11th hour Wednesday.

Fox News Digital had asked the U.S. State Department for its response to Lieberman’s prediction about Iran’s use of nuclear weapons, the numerous diplomatic sources who said the EU did not want to rebuke Iran at the IAEA and whether the Biden administration plans to impose new sanctions on Tehran.

The British, French and German governments on Friday sent a letter to the United Nations Security Council outlining Iran’s alleged violations of the 2015 nuclear deal. However, the European countries did not announce a ‘snap back’ of U.N. sanctions on Iran for its alleged violations of the accord. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the formal name for the Iran nuclear deal, expires Oct. 18, 2025. 

The Trump administration withdrew from the deal in 2018 because, the former president argued, it was a ‘horrible’ deal that only placed temporary restrictions on Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapons arsenal.

According to Iran International, Ali Shamkhani, a senior aide to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, is now overseeing the nuclear talks for the Islamic Republic. Shamkhani issued a defiant post Thursday, stating, ‘From the JCPOA until the recent IAEA BoGs meeting, in compliance with their roles as good & bad police, the #US & the #EuropeanTroika have been trying to manage Iran’s reactions to their misbehavior by creating false hope in Iran. They have never been successful & never will be.’ 

Fox News Digital reported this week that Republican Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., submitted a resolution that would ‘refer the issue to the U.N. Security Council and reaffirm that all measures will be taken to prevent the regime in Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.’

In late May, Fox News Digital reported that an IAEA document obtained by The Associated Press said that as of May 11, Iran had 313.2 pounds of uranium enriched up to 60%, an increase of 45.4 pounds since the last report by the U.N. watchdog in February. Uranium enriched at 60% purity is just a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.

Fox News’ Jamie Joseph and Pilar Arias contributed to this report.

A clip of liberal comedian Chelsea Handler saying that 50 Cent ‘cannot vote’ for former President Donald Trump during 2020 because he is Black sparked a snarky response from Sen. Tim Scott this week.

Sen. Scott, R-S.C, hit back at Handler in a social media post on Friday, saying, ‘tell another Black man how to think.’

‘Yes, by all means, please tell another Black man how to think, White lady,’ Scott wrote.

The comedian made the comments about the rapper, 50 Cent, who she briefly dated in 2011, during a remote interview with Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show in 2020.

‘And I had to remind him that he was a Black person, so he can’t vote for Donald Trump,’ she told Fallon. 

The comedian argued that the rapper had a responsibility to not influence people to vote for Trump in 2020.

‘He shouldn’t be influencing an entire swathe of people who may listen to him, because he’s worried about his own personal pocketbook,’ she said. 

Scott previously pushed against the narrative that Black people should vote for Democrats, recently calling out ‘The View’ after they mocked him for his leadership in bringing Black voters over to the Republican Party.

‘Women of ‘The View’: My goodness gracious. Let me just be plain and simple. Without the Black vote, there is no Democratic Party,’ Scott told ‘Hannity.’ ‘And since I was elected in 2010 to Congress, before that, no Black Republicans [in Congress]. But since then, there’s been seven.’ 

Scott said, ‘President Trump’s policies have led to a surge’ of Black Republican political candidates taking office at the ‘city level, to the county level, to the state level, and in Congress.’ 

‘We’re seeing Black city council members, we’re seeing Black assembly members all across this nation,’ he said. ‘There is a wave of Black elected officials who happen to be Republicans. But the Black vote is following.’ 

‘The View’ co-host Sunny Hostin had said Friday that Scott was not making a strong case for Black conservatives. Scott got under Hostin’s skin last year when he rejected her beliefs on the show about systemic racism.

‘Just to speak for African-American voters,’ Hostin said. ‘If anyone thinks that Tim Scott is going to bring over a bunch of Black men, they need to just get with it, because Tim Scott is the only African-American senator in the Republican Party for a reason.’ 

Scott is one of several candidates that former President Trump is reportedly considering as his running mate in the 2024 election. 

Scott ran for the Republican nomination but dropped out before the Iowa caucuses and went on to endorse Trump.

Fox News’ Jeffrey Clark contributed to this report.

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s use of artificial intelligence (AI) to crack down on its populace is having a particular impact on the freedoms of Iranian women. 

Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital the Iranian regime ‘is moving into the AI realm to benefit even more from technology that links together the disparate elements of facial recognition, CCTV, cell phone analysis, traffic geolocation and internet monitoring,’ which ‘bolster its cyber crackdown on street protesters or women who don’t wear their hijab correctly.’

Enhanced AI tools will be a key facet of the forthcoming Hijab and Chastity Bill, approved by the Iranian Parliament in September 2023 and awaiting ratification from the regime’s Guardian Council. 

Taleblu said AI has become ‘the cherry on the sundae of Iran’s digital repression, whether that starts with very crude tools like CCTV in a shop or whatever repository of purportedly criminal behavior that the regime puts at the feet of these AI sorting tools. Because humans don’t have to make the linkages, it frees up more manpower for mischief from the Iranian repressive apparatus.’

Article 30 of the Hijab and Chastity Bill states police will ‘create and strengthen intelligent systems for identifying perpetrators of illegal behavior using tools such as fixed and mobile cameras,’ Iran International reported. Article 60 forces private businesses to turn in video footage to enforcement personnel to check for compliance. 

Businesses that fail to comply could lose ‘two to six months worth of profits.’ Women who fail to cover their hair properly face consequences ranging from fines to ‘social exclusion, exile, closure of social media pages, passport confiscation for up to two years’ and possibly imprisonment for up to 10 years. 

Taleblu explained the Hijab and Chastity Bill allows authorities to use AI to leverage ‘lawfare and economic warfare against women’ by going after non-compliant women’s homes, cars, bank accounts and livelihoods. 

U.N. experts say the bill allows Iran to govern ‘through systemic discrimination with the intention of suppressing women and girls into total submission,’ which amounts to gender persecution, or gender apartheid. 

Long before the bill’s passage, the regime began preparing for increased AI use, installing new cameras throughout Iran as early as April 2023. A report from Amnesty International detailed increasing pressures on Iranian women between April 15, 2023, and June 14, 2023. During this period, an Iranian police spokesperson claimed police had sent ‘almost 1 million SMS warning messages to women captured unveiled in their cars’ and 133,174 messages about vehicle immobilizations. About 2,000 cars had been confiscated, and more than 4,000 ‘repeat offenders’ had been referred to Iran’s judiciary.

Between April 2023 and March 2024, Amnesty International found the morality police had ‘ordered the arbitrary confiscation of hundreds of thousands of vehicles’ because those inside were improperly covered. Testimony indicates confiscation orders were ‘based on pictures captured by surveillance cameras or reports from plainclothes agents patrolling the streets and using a police app … to report license plates.’ Amnesty also reported that some women were sentenced to prison or flogging, faced fines or were sent to ‘morality’ classes.

The regime likely used AI during 2022 protests after the death of Mahsa Amini, who was beaten after being arrested by morality police for wearing her hijab too loosely.

As head of the United Nations’ fact-finding mission into Iran’s 2022 protests, Sara Hossain determined the Iranian regime did use AI to monitor social media platforms during protests, Iran Wire reported. 

In October 2023, the U.S. sped up its timeline for blocking exports of AI chips to China, Iran and Russia to curtail their access to advanced AI capabilities.

Taleblu suggested additional methods for controlling access to tech that could ‘bolster Iran’s digital or cyber repressive apparatus.’ He recommends the U.S. work with European firms to increase export controls and keep close track of new Chinese tech subsidiaries operating in Iran. By consistently exposing and sanctioning new firms, the U.S. ‘increases their transaction costs.’

‘There is talk of tech and cyberspace and AI freeing people and building bridges,’ Taleblu said, ‘but the Islamic Republic is really intending to use them to build boundaries and then continue to wall off Iran and impose their will on the population.’