A leading Republican senator is demanding the U.S. cancel the visa reportedly given to Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian to attend a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meeting this week after Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel over the weekend. 

‘As the host country of the United Nations, the United States has historically granted visas to diplomats from both allies and adversaries: However, the United States holds the authority to deny visas to diplomats for security, terrorism, or foreign policy reasons,’ Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., wrote in a letter submitted to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. 

‘I strongly believe that denying Iranian Foreign Minister Amirabdollahian’s entry to the United States is necessary and consistent with the precedent set by President Obama and President Trump,’ Lankford stressed.

‘Not only does Amirabdollahian have irrefutable ties to Hamas terrorists who are currently holding 133 hostages, including five Americans, but Iran’s irresponsible strikes and continued threats have jeopardized Israel’s security,’ he wrote. ‘I urge the administration to take swift action and deny Amirabdollahian’s entry to the United States.’

Lankford noted that this week marks the anniversary of Hezbollah’s bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon – which killed 63 people, including 52 Lebanese and American Embassy employees – saying, ‘Hosting a senior member of the IRGC on the 41st anniversary of Hezbollah’s terrorist attack would be an insult to the victims and their families.’

A U.N. diplomatic source confirmed to Fox News Digital that the Iranian foreign minister would attend the meeting, even as the State Department and United Nations continued to dodge questions about his visa.

‘Visa records are confidential as a matter of law,’ State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said during a briefing on Tuesday, saying he could not speak to any individual cases. 

‘We do take our obligation as the host nation of the United Nations quite seriously, and that includes allowing diplomats from other countries – even countries with whom we have significant disagreements – to attend U.N. meetings and U.N. functions,’ Miller said.

Miller noted the U.S. does ‘have the ability to restrict and, in fact, severely restrict the movements of certain diplomats while they’re in New York for legitimate U.N. meetings.’

‘Should the foreign minister of Iran attend this meeting at the United Nations, I would not expect to see him at very many locations outside the United Nations,’ Miller added. He clarified that the foreign minister is not in the U.S. yet, and he said he could not speak to what restrictions Amirabdollahian would face during his potential visit. 

‘I would not expect to see him snapping selfies from the top of the Empire State Building, should he travel to New York to attend this meeting,’ Miller quipped, dodging more specific questions. 

Miller called Iran’s attack a ‘clearly escalatory’ action that requires consistent efforts to reduce tensions in the region and ‘maintain as much calm as possible.’ 

Iran on Saturday night launched hundreds of drones and a mixture of cruise and ballistic missiles in retaliation for strike against its diplomatic mission in Damascus, or, as some reports have stated, an IRGC compound next to the mission. Israel never took credit for the strike, but other countries, including the United States, attributed the attack to the Jewish state. 

Arabian Peninsula news outlet Amwaj Media first reported on Amirabdollahian’s plan to travel New York City for the Apr. 18 U.N. Security Council meeting, which will focus on Palestinians. The report also claimed that Tehran may agree to pull back from further action if Washington can broker a ceasefire deal for Gaza. 

The State Department, in a separate response to Fox News Digital, reiterated the U.S. obligations under the U.N. Headquarters agreement but noted it did so ‘irrespective of our continued concerns about Iran’s destabilizing activities and support for terrorism.’ 

Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, told Fox News Digital that ‘it is important that all member states be able to have a place to meet and discuss global problems.’

‘The Secretary-General does not have the authority to regulate which individuals are chosen by member states,’ Dujarric added. ‘That being said, the Secretary-General has been extremely clear in his condemnation of the Iranian missile strikes against Israel.’

The Iranian Mission to the United Nations did not respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment. 

The trial for Alexander Smirnov, the ex-FBI informant who has been charged with making false statements related to Joe Biden and Hunter Biden’s business ties in Ukraine, has been delayed until early December, just weeks after the 2024 presidential election.

Smirnov’s trial had been scheduled to begin in Los Angeles April 23, but special counsel David Weiss and Smirnov’s defense attorneys filed a joint stipulation motion last week requesting additional time to prepare for the trial. 

Smirnov’s attorneys said a failure to grant the time would ‘deny them reasonable time necessary for effective preparation, taking into account the exercise of due diligence.’ 

The motion also pointed to additional time necessary to bring classified material into discovery, noting they would have to go through the Classified Procedures Act.

U.S. District Judge Otis Wright, who is presiding over the trial, granted the request. 

Smirnov’s trial is now scheduled to begin Dec. 3 at 9:30 a.m. 

Weiss charged Smirnov, 43, in February after he alleged Joe Biden and Hunter Biden were paid millions in exchange for their help in firing a Ukrainian prosecutor who was at the time investigating the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings. Hunter Biden sat on the board of that company when Shokin was removed from his post. 

Prosecutors have accused Smirnov of peddling lies ‘that could impact U.S. elections,’ highlighting his alleged lies about a supposed multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving the Bidens and Burisma Holdings. 

Prosecutors say Smirnov falsely told his handler that Burisma executives paid Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter $5 million each around 2015. 

Smirnov pleaded not guilty to making a false statement. He is being held without bail after a judge denied his request for release.

Wright ordered that Smirnov remain in detention ahead of his trial in April, concurring with prosecutors who argued he presented a high flight risk. It is unclear whether Smirnov will remain in detention until December. 

Smirnov, a now-ex-FBI informant, had been described by the FBI as a ‘highly credible’ confidential human source and worked for the bureau for years, dating back to the Obama administration. Smirnov, through his work for the FBI, had been paid ‘six figures,’ the FBI told lawmakers. 

The FBI also told lawmakers that information Smirnov brought to the bureau was ‘used in criminal investigations and prosecutions.’ 

Top DOJ officials also testified that Smirnov ‘was vetted against sources of Russian disinformation’ and they found that information regarding the Bidens was ‘not sourced from Russian disinformation.’ 

But according to the indictment, Smirnov gave ‘false derogatory information’ to the FBI despite ‘repeated admonishments that he must provide truthful information and that he must not fabricate evidence.’ 

The indictment says Smirnov told an FBI agent in March 2017 that he had a phone call with Burisma’s owner concerning the firm potentially acquiring a U.S. company and making an initial public offering (IPO) on a U.S-based stock exchange. 

In reporting this conversation to the FBI agent, Smirnov said Hunter Biden was a board member of Burisma, though this was publicly known. 

Smirnov is accused of having told the FBI for the first time In June 2020 about two meetings he had four to five years earlier, where executives associated with Burisma supposedly admitted they hired Hunter Biden to ‘protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.’ 

During this meeting, the indictment alleges, Smirnov said the executives paid $5 million to each of the Bidens while Joe Biden was still in office. The indictment alleges Smirnov falsely claimed the Bidens were paid so that Hunter Biden, with his dad’s help, could take care of a criminal investigation being conducted by then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin into Burisma. 

The indictment alleges this information given by Smirnov in June 2020 was a fabrication. Prosecutors say Smirnov did have contact with Burisma executives in 2017, but when Joe Biden was out of public office and had no ability to influence U.S. policy and after the Ukrainian Prosecutor General had been fired in February 2016. 

The indictment alleges Smirnov transformed his ‘routine and unextraordinary’ business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later bribery allegations against Joe Biden after expressing bias against him and his presidential candidacy. 

Smirnov is accused of repeating some of his false claims during an interview with FBI agents in September 2023, while changing other bits of information and promoting a new false narrative after claiming to have met with Russian officials. 

If convicted, Smirnov faces a maximum of 25 years in prison.   

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley were approached by a whistleblower last summer who alleged the FBI was in possession of a document — an FD-1023 form, dated June 30, 2020 — which explicitly detailed information provided by a confidential source alleging Biden, while serving as vice president, was involved in a multimillion-dollar scheme with a foreign national in exchange for influence over policy decisions.

The source told Fox News Digital the confidential source was used by the FBI for ‘at least several years,’ dating back to the Obama administration, before the FD-1023 form, and was ‘found to be highly credible’ by the FBI. 

House Republicans demanded the FBI turn over the document, but FBI Director Christopher Wray refused a request from Comer and Grassley last summer for the public release of the form because the bureau ‘claimed it would jeopardize the safety of a confidential human source who they claimed was invaluable to the FBI.’ 

Wray was at risk of being held in contempt of Congress and eventually brought the FD-1023 form to Capitol Hill for House lawmakers to review in a secure location. 

Fox News Digital first reported on the contents of the document. 

An FD-1023 form is used by FBI agents to record unverified reporting from confidential human sources. The form is used to document information as told to an FBI agent, but recording that information does not validate or weigh it against other information known by the FBI. 

Comer said the FBI’s FD-1023 form is not being used in the impeachment inquiry against the president. 

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., called on Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to resign Tuesday following a heated exchange over her past financial transactions.

Hawley’s tense back-and-forth with Granholm came during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing held to review the Department of Energy’s (DOE) 2025 budget request. The Missouri Republican excoriated the energy secretary for violating the STOCK Act and for continuing to own shares of individual companies last year despite testifying that she did not own any individual stock.

‘It is outrageous that you misled us. It is outrageous that you are continuing to mislead us,’ Hawley remarked. ‘This has got to change. And, frankly, you should go.’

Early in her tenure leading the Department of Energy, it was revealed that Granholm violated the STOCK Act nine times by failing to disclose $240,000 worth of stock sales within the legally-mandated time frame.

And separately, in a June 2023 letter to Energy and Natural Resource Committee leadership, Granholm said she owned shares of six unnamed individual companies worth up to $120,000 and that her husband owned $2,457.89 worth of shares in Ford Motor Co. at the time of her under-oath testimony before the panel months prior.

During the April 20, 2023, hearing, Granholm told Hawley that she was ‘not owning individual stocks.’ After discovering her and her husband’s ownership of stock, Granholm sold her husband’s Ford shares on May 15, 2023, and sold her remaining individual stock holdings days later, according to her letter.

‘You neglected to report it to this committee for months afterwards,’ Hawley asked Granholm during the hearing Tuesday. ‘Why did you mislead this committee?’

‘Oh, my goodness,’ Granholm responded. ‘I believed that I had sold all individual stocks, and I was incorrect. So, I came back as soon as I found out that, in fact, I had not sold all individual stocks.’

Hawley then interrupted her, saying she had waited a month before informing the committee of the transactions.

‘I did not hide it because I brought it forth to the committee when I realized that we had made a mistake,’ Granholm added.

In addition, the GOP lawmaker blasted Granholm for allowing agency employees to own individual stocks. Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that hundreds of senior DOE officials owned stocks related to the agency’s work, a potential conflict-of-interest violation.

He said that senior DOE officials owning stocks reveals the ‘institutionalized corruption in the Department of Energy.’

Granholm responded by saying officials strictly own stocks in companies in areas they do not have any influence over. She also said the agency has a strong ethics office that reviews relevant transactions.

The foreign aid plan Speaker Johnson, R-La., unveiled on Monday night is already facing a growing red wave of opposition from his own colleagues as of Tuesday morning, making it likely he will have to seek House Democratic support to get the proposal passed.

Under Johnson’s tentative plan, aid for Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel would all be considered as separate bills. A fourth bill would combine miscellaneous national security priorities, including the House’s recently passed bill that could pave the way to a TikTok ban and the REPO Act, a bipartisan measure to liquefy seized Russian assets and send that money to Ukraine.

A lack of any border security measures, however, has prompted even reliable leadership allies to be wary of letting the bills move forward.

‘I’m thinking of voting against the rule,’ Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., told Fox News Digital. ‘Unless we vote to send something to the Senate the same day that addresses the border, requires the president to take action on his executive orders. Or we can put something with the underlying legislation that would actually do a couple of things – we can stop money from going to NGOs that are transporting individuals, we can stop Homeland Security from releasing criminals into the interior.’

While the four bills are designed to get separate House floor votes, they will first have to pass a procedural hurdle known as a rule vote, a House-wide measure that if passed will allow for debate and eventual votes on the four individual pieces. 

Rule votes traditionally fall along party lines, and with Johnson’s razor-thin majority, he can only afford to lose two Republicans on any party-line vote – and it’s becoming increasingly likely that he might, meaning Democrats will need to break precedent to help get the bills over the line.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., whose disagreements with Johnson have led her to threaten his leadership role, said on Tuesday morning that she would vote against the rule unless the Democrat-controlled Senate took up the House GOP’s comprehensive border security bill known as H.R.2 – which Democrats have panned as a nonstarter.

‘NO, I am NOT voting for the rule on Johnson’s bundle of funding bills for billions more to Ukraine and other foreign wars. When Joe Biden signs HR2 into law and Schumer holds the Mayorkas impeachment trial in the Senate, I will agree to vote for the rule only,’ Greene said on X. ‘Speaker Johnson is not holding Democrats accountable nor leading our Republican majority, he’s actually giving in to Democrats every demand. And he’s using dirty swamp tactics to push through the America Last agenda.’

Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, a member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, would not say how he would vote on the rule but told reporters, ‘The rule that was proposed last night at conference will fail.’

Other critics of foreign aid similarly declined to say how they would vote but signaled they were opposed to Johnson’s proposal itself.

‘I think it leaves much to be desired. It doesn’t have border control in it, it doesn’t have any pay-fors in it,’ Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., told Fox News Digital. ‘I think those are two problems.’

Other Republicans, however, argued it’s a better plan than the Senate-passed $95 trillion supplemental aid package that its leaders are now pressuring Johnson to take up.

‘No one wants to swallow the senate supplemental as a whole, and if we wait any longer without taking any action, that’s exactly what’s going to happen,’ Rep. Nick Langworthy, R-N.Y., told Fox News Digital.

Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, R-N.Y., urged his colleagues to remember that they had already passed H.R.2 and have furiously been pushing for Democrats to take it up. He also told Fox News Digital that there were ‘conversations’ about including border provisions before the text is released.

‘I think we’re in a critical time that, obviously, our allies need our support more than ever, and I hope that there’s a way that we could include more border security into these packages,’ D’Esposito said. ‘But I think we need to remind ourselves that we’ve as House Republicans done our job. We sent a comprehensive border bill over to the Senate. They have failed to act.’

Russian President Vladimir Putin joined international calls for cool heads in the Middle East as tensions remain high following Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel over the weekend. 

‘Vladimir Putin expressed hope that all sides would show reasonable restraint and prevent a new round of confrontation fraught with catastrophic consequences for the entire region,’ the Kremlin said in a readout of a call with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, according to a translation by The Moscow Times.  

‘Ebrahim Raisi noted that Iran’s actions were forced and limited in nature: At the same time, he stressed Tehran’s disinterest in further escalation of tensions,’ the Kremlin added. ‘Both sides stated that the root cause of the current events in the Middle East is the unresolved Palestinian-Israeli conflict.’ 

‘In this regard, the principled approaches of Russia and Iran in favor of an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, easing the difficult humanitarian situation, and creating conditions for a political and diplomatic settlement of the crisis were confirmed,’ the Kremlin concluded, adding that the call discussed ‘in detail’ the airstrike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus.

On Saturday night, Iran launched hundreds of drones and a mixture of cruise and ballistic missiles in retaliation for strikes against its diplomatic mission, or, as other reports claim, an adjoining Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) compound in Damascus. 

The strike killed seven IRGC members, including Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, the senior commander of the forces since the assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani in 2020.

Israel never took credit for the strike, but other countries, including the United States, attributed the attack to the Jewish state. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly wanted to retaliate directly, but he changed his plans after President Biden told him to ‘take the win’ and stressed the U.S. would not support any direct response to Iran’s strike. Instead, Israel struck Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon. 

However, Israel continued to stress a desire and intent to retaliate against Iran, with Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant telling U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Sunday that Israel had no choice but to respond. 

The Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) Chief of Staff Gen. Herzi Halevi added on Monday that ‘Israel is considering next steps’ and that ‘the launch of so many missiles and drones to Israeli territory will be answered with retaliation,’ Axios reported. 

The insistence on retaliation, despite pressure from Israel’s closest and arguably most vital ally to do otherwise, continues to worry the international community. 

‘The Middle East is on the brink,’ United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres told a Security Council meeting called on Sunday in response to the strikes. ‘The people of the region are confronting a real danger of a devastating full-scale conflict. Now is the time to defuse and de-escalate.’ 

Biden has continued to increase his pursuit of a ceasefire deal, telling Iraq’s prime minister that the U.S. is ‘committed to a ceasefire that will bring the hostages home and prevent the conflict from spreading beyond what it already has.’

‘The United States is committed to Israel’s security,’ the president said, according to a readout of the phone call. White House national security communications spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that the president is ‘certainly not looking for a war with Iran, and I am confident that Prime Minister Netanyahu is aware of the president’s concerns.’ 

Reuters contributed to this report.

A nonprofit founded and funded by liberal billionaire George Soros funneled a massive eight-figure sum into a prominent liberal super PAC that bankrolls several left-wing groups, according to records reviewed by Fox News Digital.

Soros’ Fund for Policy Reform poured $60 million into the Democracy PAC in the first quarter of this year, which then funneled millions of dollars into top Democratic committees benefiting House and Senate races, along with other liberal groups, FEC records posted on Monday show.

Of the $21 million that Democracy PAC sent to a dozen left-wing groups, $8 million was evenly divided between a pair of top outside groups benefitting House and Senate Democrats, $2.5 million to Planned Parenthood, $2.5 million to BlackPAC and $1.8 million to American Bridge, a Democratic opposition research firm.

Democracy PAC also sent $500,000 to Americans for Contraception Victory and $1 million to the ColorOfChange PAC.

Color of Change has been among the most active groups advocating to defund the police. In 2021, they were at the forefront of the unsuccessful push to ‘dismantle’ and replace the Minneapolis Police Department, an effort that was fueled by $500,000 from George Soros’ Open Society Policy Center.

‘We know that policing doesn’t keep us safe, communities do,’ reads a Color of Change petition calling on supporters to demand their local officials start the defunding process. ‘Policing doesn’t lead to thriving communities, investment does.’

The $60 million figure was the second largest in the 2024 election cycle so far, eclipsed only by the $82.5 million a state-level super PAC gave to Never Back Down, the super PAC backing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ ill-fated presidential campaign, Bloomberg reported.

Fox News Digital reached out to Soros’ Open Society Foundations for comment, but did not receive a response.

Soros recently handed control of his political empire last year to his son, Alex, and his various organizations have continued to exert significant financial influence, including millions of dollars aimed at flipping Texas to Democrats.

Fox News Digital reported last fall that a Soros-funded group pushed more than $15 million to a nonprofit tied to President Biden’s main outside super PAC for the 2024 elections to evaluate crucial policy matters.

The Soros network appears to be closely involved in doing what it can to help ensure President Biden is re-elected, as evidenced by Alex Soros huddling with high-ranking Democrats shortly after taking over the Open Society Foundations.

Alex’s social media profiles have dozens of pictures of him and leading House and Senate Democrats since 2018. The two who appear the most are Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California. Alex had at least nine meetings with Schumer, whom he referred to as his ‘good friend.’  

Alex had at least eight visits with Pelosi, calling her the ‘greatest Speaker of the House in American History!’ 

Fox News Digital’s Joe Schoffstall and Cameron Cawthorne contributed to this report.

The White House formally declined an invitation by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., for President Biden to testify in connection to his son Hunter’s business dealings.

‘As our Office has demonstrated, and you acknowledged in a recent fundraising email, your impeachment investigation is over,’ Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, wrote in a letter to Comer on Monday. ‘It is past time for the House to focus on the issues that matter to the American people rather than continuing to waste time and taxpayer resources on this partisan charade.’ 

Sauber said the House Oversight Committee’s impeachment inquiry ‘has succeeded only in turning up abundant evidence that, in fact, the President has done nothing wrong.’ 

‘Yet rather than acknowledge this reality, your March 28, 2024, letter contains the same litany of false allegations that have been repeatedly debunked and refuted by the very witnesses you have called before your Committee and the many documents you have obtained,’ the special counsel told Comer. ‘Your insistence on peddling these false and unsupported allegations despite ample evidence to the contrary makes one thing about your investigation abundantly clear:  The facts do not matter to you.’ 

The National Review published a full copy of the letter also obtained by The Associated Press and other outlets.

Reacting to President Biden’s refusal to testify, Comer issued a blistering statement on his X account, declaring, ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree in the Biden family.’ 

‘Like his son, Hunter Biden, President Biden is refusing to testify in public about the Bidens’ corrupt influence peddling,’ Comer wrote. ‘This comes as no surprise since President Biden continues to lie about his relationships with his son’s business partners, even denying they exists when his son said under oath during a deposition that they did. It is unfortunate President Biden is unwilling to answer questions before the American people and refuses to answer the very simple, straightforward questions we included in the invitation. Why is it so difficult for the White House to answer those questions? The American people deserve transparency from President Biden, not more lies.’

Despite providing testimony behind closed doors, Hunter Biden declined to testify in a public committee alongside former business associates, Tony Bobulinski and Jason Galanis, regarding alleged ‘pay-for- influence’ schemes to provide access to certain offices in exchange for payments to the Biden family.    

Notably, Bobulinski at the committee hearing accused Hunter Biden and his uncle, James Biden, of lying under oath regarding the nature of their dealings with the Chinese conglomerate CEFC. 

In a March 28 letter, Comer invited President Biden to ‘explain, under oath,’ what involvement he had in the Biden family businesses, claiming the committee ‘has accounted for over $24 million that has flowed from foreign sources to you, your family and their business associates.’ 

The letter included questions about Biden’s interactions with specific foreign business officials. 

Comer told President Biden that ‘you have asserted your pressuring Ukraine in 2015 to fire a government official investigating a company in which your son has a financial interest was wholly in line with U.S. policy.’ 

The committee received bank records showing Hunter Biden was paid $1 million per year for his position on the board of the Ukrainian company Burisma until Joe Biden left office, when Hunter’s salary ‘was inexplicably cut in half,’ Comer wrote. The letter specifically asks if President Biden has interacted with executives at Burisma Holdings, which was at the center of the indictment of a former FBI informant in February who the Justice Department accused of providing false information to the FBI.  

The indictment says the former informant, Alexander Smirnov, claimed that during meetings with Burisma executives, they admitted to hiring Hunter to ‘protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems,’ and later that they had specifically paid $5 million for such protection. But the DOJ goes on the claim that those events that Smirnov first reported to the FBI Agent in June 2020 were ‘fabrications.’ 

Sauber, who was brought on in 2022 to oversee the president’s response to congressional investigations into the Biden family, is leaving the White House early next month to return to the private sector. 

To replace him, the White House is elevating his deputy, Rachel Cotton. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is facing renewed motion to vacate threats a day after he introduced a plan to pass foreign aid.

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., threatened to force a vote to oust the speaker during remarks in House Republicans’ closed-door conference meeting on Tuesday morning, if the speaker did not willingly step aside first. He’s the second conservative to do so after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., filed a motion to vacate against Johnson last month.

‘I asked him to resign…he said he would not,’ Massie told reporters after the meeting. ‘And I said, well, you’re the one who’s going to put us into this because the motion is going to get called, OK? The motion will get called.’

Massie took it a step further and said Johnson would lose more GOP support than the eight House Republicans who voted to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., last year.

Asked about the chaos wrought in October during the race to replace McCarthy, Massie said, ‘We ended up with some guy nobody in America ever heard of.’

A defiant Johnson said at his weekly press conference afterward, ‘I am not resigning.’

‘It is, in my view an absurd notion that someone would bring a vacate motion. We’re simply here trying to do our job. It is not helpful,’ Johnson said. ‘It is not helping the House Republicans advance our agenda, which is in the best interest of the American people.’

Massie is among the conservatives pushing back against Johnson’s plan for aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, which was announced Monday night and is already facing pushback from members on the right over its lack of border security provisions. He predicted that the proposal would not even pass its initial procedural hurdle on the House floor, a chamber-wide rule vote.

‘I’m the canary in the coal mine. This rule’s dead on arrival,’ Massie said.

A GOP lawmaker who was present at the meeting said Massie told Johnson that he should ‘just get all this legislation out of the way and then announce he’s not going to stay speaker.’

Asked if Massie was serious about trying to oust Johnson, the GOP lawmaker said, ‘I’ve never found him as someone who is not serious.’

A second GOP lawmaker said Johnson responded to Massie with some form of ‘Bring it on’ challenge – and noted that McCarthy made similar comments when presented with a leadership fight.

‘My experience has been so far, don’t do that,’ the second GOP lawmaker said.

While no House Republicans leaving the Tuesday morning meeting said they would back Massie’s effort, they were divided on whether his accusations had any merit.

‘I think if the speaker ignores the obvious desire of the conference to include border control [in the foreign aid plan], and I think a lot of people who want part of this to be paid for, I think he ignores that at his own risk,’ House Freedom Caucus member Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., told Fox News Digital.

Meanwhile, Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, R-N.Y., told Fox News Digital of Massie’s threat, ‘I think it’s ridiculous. Speaker Johnson is doing the best job that he can with a divided conference. I think it’s about time we come together.’

Massie said he would sign onto Greene’s existing resolution to vacate Johnson. But unless they file it as a privileged motion, as was the case with McCarthy, there is nothing compelling House Republican leadership to hold a vote.