The Senate passed a $95 billion national security supplemental package to assist Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific after a tedious procedural process that came to an end early Tuesday morning.

The final vote was 70 to 29.

The supplemental package does not include any border security provisions and several Republicans spent hours — since the beginning of the weekend — collectively filibustering the package on the Senate floor. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, committed to filibustering the bill for four hours on Saturday and continued early Tuesday.

The package includes $60 billion for Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel, $9 billion in humanitarian assistance for Gaza and nearly $5 billion for the Indo-Pacific. Democrats brought the package up for a vote after Republicans had blocked the $118 billion package that also included numerous border and immigration provisions — negotiated by a group of bipartisan senators and Biden officials — last Wednesday. 

The U.S. has already spent more than $100 billion in aid for Ukraine since its war against Russia began in Feb. 2022. 

Several Republicans voted against the package and spent the last few days filibustering the movement of the bill.

‘This bill gives the finger to American taxpayers,’ Paul said on the floor before the final vote. ‘This bill gives the finger to all of America — this bill is Ukraine first, America last.’

By Monday, several GOP senators were hoping for a breakthrough to get their amendments heard, which mainly included hardline border security-related provisions. 

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, introduced an amendment identical to the House’s immigration bill, H.R. 2, which would restore most Trump-era restrictions, hire additional border patrol officers and tighten asylum screenings.

Republican Sens. Roger Marshall, JD Vance, and Josh Hawley were just a few other senators who spoke in opposition to the bill on Monday, continuing the filibuster. Meanwhile, GOP Sens. Mitt Romney and Thom Tillis were just a few who urged their colleagues to ‘delay’ no further and pass the package. 

Republican Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas became emotional in a floor speech in support of the bill.

‘I believe in America first, but unfortunately America first means we have to engage in the world,’ Moran said.

Democrats brought the package up for a vote after Republicans had blocked the $118 billion package that also included a slew of border and immigration provisions on Wednesday. Republicans had previously said they would not approve funding for Ukraine unless the overwhelmed southern border was secured first.

The border-foreign aid package was unveiled last weekend and hit a buzzsaw of conservative opposition from Republicans who said the package would normalize historic levels of illegal immigration and continue catch-and-release. Conservatives joined with some liberal Democrats in shutting down the bill, so Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer prepared a vote without the border package as a backup plan.

Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had backed funding for Ukraine, but drew criticism from party members who urged lawmakers not to pass foreign aid without securing the border first. 

‘I know it’s become quite fashionable in some circles to disregard the global interests we have as a global power, to bemoan the responsibilities of global leadership,’ McConnell said on the floor on Super Bowl Sunday. ‘To lament the commitment that has underpinned the longest drought of great power conflict in human history — this is idle work for idle minds, and it has no place in the United States Senate.’

Schumer said Monday the package is ‘a down payment for the survival of Western democracy and the survival of American values.’

The White House requested the supplemental funding package in October, but it was held up by Republicans who wanted more measures to fix the record-setting border crisis, including greater limits on asylum and limits on releases into the interior. Negotiators worked for months and on Sunday finally released their text.

In addition to the foreign aid package, the failed border package included an ’emergency border authority’ to mandate Title 42-style expulsions of migrants when migration levels exceed 5,000 a day over a seven-day rolling average.

President Joe Biden should resign.

We have known for some time that the president is infirm, but infirmity goes to physical capacity. He moves stiffly. He tires. Public events are rare and always fraught.

The president is now also revealed as impaired. He cannot remember basic facts. He cannot deliver even the simplest line. Reports of his angry temper and his profanity are consistent, if not with dementia, then certainly with an ability to weigh and judge important matters with a calm and coherent mind.

Most Americans have sympathy for the aging, the infirm and the impaired. Many have themselves had to deal with aging parents or friends. Very few churches do not have beloved octogenarians, for whom younger adults are eager to be solicitous and of help. Most Americans have fond memories of grandparents who, when on their game, provide unconditional love and encouragement. None of that has anything to do with a very old man showing that age being president.

There are some jobs in the federal government that can be handled even by the 80-somethings. Many senators have ambled through an unofficial retirement while casting votes in accordance with the suggestions of their party’s leadership. Senators Storm Thurmond and Dianne Feinstein, for example, stayed on in the Senate long past their ability to process information —a very different situation from that of, say, Senator Chuck Grassley who at 90 may not sprint down the marbled halls but knows exactly where he’s going and what he intends to get done.

Presidents are not, however, one of 100 senators or one of 435 representatives. Crises are different from legislation.

When the Cuban Missile Crisis arrived in 1962, or Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, 9/11 befell us, President Bush ordered the invasion of Afghanistan and then the invasion of Iraq, the financial collapse of 2008 shook the world, COVID arrived and Operation Warp Speed on vaccines followed —in each of these moments of crisis and decision, the president and only the president must lead. And the president must have the capacity to decide and lead. President Biden does not have that capacity any more.

One person alone must take in all the facts in each of these crises, remember them, absorb all the counsel he receives, remember it, and then chose wisely and consistently, staying the course on which the president embarks, adjusting policy as new facts emerge. It’s not a job by committee but one man’s or woman’s job.

And it is painfully clear that Biden can no longer do it. The most obvious deficiency? Part of this most critical job is in communicating with the American people. For the first time in my memory, the United States embarked on a significant military campaign—this one against Yemen—and the president did not address the country about why. He didn’t even do the softball Super Bowl interview. He is not trusted by himself or his staff to engage in any serious sit down with a journalist much less the many exchanges with journalists he ought to be having. He’s sequestered. Because he knows, as do the people around him, he is not up to the job. Not for another year or, God forbid, five more years behind the Resolute desk.

We have Special Counsel Hur’s assessment after long investigation, interviews and deliberation. We have our own eyes and ears that watched and heard Thursday night’s meltdown. We have an increasing lava flow of red-hot scoops on Biden’s blistering temper and descents into profanity. We know. We all know. It isn’t the mix-ups of Mitterrand and Macron, Kohl and Merkel. It’s not the serial sets of halting prepared remarks, his inability to read a teleprompter, his wandering about on stages or the hooks he gets from staff when the rambling has gone on too long.

It’s all of it. We all know. And, crucially, so do our enemies.

Do not expect Vice President Harris and the Cabinet to trigger the 25th Amendment. It was not designed with advancing cognitive incapacity in mind, but rather the dramatic and undeniable strokes and heart attacks. There could well come a day when the president blurts out such a strong of inanities and non-sequiturs so troubling that the Veep would make some calls, but don’t count on it. We are in Woodrow Wilson territory already, and she is pretending with the rest of the Beltway this is fine.

Many Republicans and Independents recoil from the prospect of President Harris, and she most definitely wouldn’t be an FDR or Reagan. But she can remember what year she was married, and what the national security daily intelligence briefing reports. She might make decisions that appall but they will be her decisions, not the text of statements from whichever committee is hammering them out right now.

We have been warned about this situation. No less an authority than Alexander Hamilton wrote about it in Federalist #70, one of the most famous of the essays that successfully persuaded a young country to adopt the Constitution which endures still.

‘A feeble Executive implies a feeble execution of the government,’ Hamilton wrote. ‘A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.’

We have such a bad government now, with a crisis on the southern border, a failed splurge of trillions on Bidenomics which unleashed inflation that torments everyone who buys gas and groceries, and of course Americans under attack across the Middle East by Iran’s fanatics, fanatics who do not fear Biden. Israel has now begun to glimpse what an erratic and infirm president means and it’s a warning to us as well. Please, whomever the president listens to, speak candidly to him. It is time for him to go, before another crisis arrives, one which he is simply not capable of handling.

Hugh Hewitt is one of the country’s leading journalists of the center-right. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990, and it is today syndicated to hundreds of stations and outlets across the country every Monday through Friday morning. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and this column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his forty years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio show today.

President Biden met with the chairman of the Chinese energy firm Hunter Biden sought to create a joint venture with at the Four Seasons in Washington D.C. in 2017, a former business partner of the first son told congressional investigators.

Rob Walker, a former business associate of Hunter Biden, testified at the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees earlier this month as part of the House impeachment inquiry against President Biden.

Walker, during his closed-door transcribed interview, told congressional investigators that Joe Biden attended a meeting where he, Hunter Biden, their other business partners and CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming were having lunch.

‘I don’t remember the exact time, but I remember being in Washington, D.C., and the former vice president stopped by. We were having lunch,’ Walker testified, according to a transcript of his interview reviewed by Fox News Digital.

Walker said he did not know the ‘exact’ date, but said ‘it was 20-probably-17 at some point.’

‘I can say it was for certain he was out of office,’ Walker said, referring to Joe Biden being out of the Obama administration at the time of the lunch.

Walker said the lunch took place ‘at the Four Seasons in a restaurant in a private room.’

‘I’m certain—I’m certain Ye was there,’ Walker said, noting there were also other CEFC business partners.

Ye Jianming, at the time, was the chairman of Chinese energy company CEFC.

Walker said the purpose of the meeting was to discuss ‘ways we could work together.’

‘I don’t think we had structured a deal on how to work together at this point,’ Walker said, noting the meeting lasted ‘probably an hour and a half,’ but said Biden ‘was not’ there for the entirety of the meeting.

‘The former vice president was not there the entire time. He was there maybe 10 minutes,’ Walker said. ‘He spoke nice, you know, normal pleasantries. I think he probably did most of the talking and then left.’ 

Walker testified that Biden addressed the entire group—which consisted of approximately 10 CEFC-linked individuals— during his visit.

Walker testified that the visit, and Biden’s appearance, ‘likely’ took place before his Robinson Walker LLC received $3 million from State Energy HK Limited—a CEFC-linked entity.

But Walker maintained that Joe Biden was not involved in any of his business ventures with Hunter Biden, despite his appearance at the lunch.

Walker did, however, say that early correspondence to CEFC was sent on behalf of the group—which included himself, James Gilliar, Jim Biden, and Hunter Biden—by Hunter Biden.

‘He had an interesting last name that would probably get people in the door,’ Walker said.

When pressed again as to why correspondence came from Hunter Biden, Walker testified: ‘It had just seemed—if a U.S. entity was going to have a foreign national represent them, It would probably make more sense to come from Hunter versus me.’

‘Because he’s the son of the vice president at the time, correct?’ Walker was asked.

‘He is the son of a vice president at the time, yes,’ Walker replied.

‘So it made more sense to get this business deal to put him as the front-facing person, right?’

Walker replied: ‘Yes.’ 

The House Oversight Committee told Fox News Digital that it can ‘now confirm Joe Biden met with nearly every foreign national who funneled money to his son, including Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina, Romanian oligarch Kenes Rakishev, Burisma’s corporate secretary Vadym Pozharsky, Jonathan Li of BHR, and CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming.’

Biden attended dinners at Washington D.C. restaurant Cafe Milano in Georgtown with Baturina, Rakishev and Pozharsky in 2014 and 2015. Biden also met with Li of BHR in China in 2013. Biden met with Ye at the meeting in 2017, according to testimony from Hunter Biden’s ex-business partners Rob Walker and Devon Archer. 

The revelations come ahead of highly-anticipated testimony from another ex-business associate of the first son–Tony Bobulinski. 

Bobulinski is set to testify behind closed doors Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. at the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees. 

Bobulinski, who worked with Hunter Biden to create the joint-venture SinoHawk Holdings with Chinese energy company CEFC, said he met with Joe Biden in 2017. 

Bobulinski, in December, demanded Biden ‘stop lying’ about that meeting and called on him to ‘correct the record.’

‘Why is Joe Biden blatantly lying to the American people and the world by claiming that he did not meet with me face to face?’ Bobulinski told Fox News Digital in a statement. ‘He should call his son Hunter and brother Jim as they can remind him of the facts. The American people deserve the truth!’

He added: ‘I call on Mr. Biden to stop lying and correct the record.’

Despite Biden’s recent denials of involvement with his son’s business dealings, text messages dating back to May 2017 reveal that Biden met with Bobulinski months after he left the vice president’s office. Fox News Digital first reported on the text messages and that meeting in October 2020.

The meeting on May 2, 2017, would have taken place just 11 days before the now-infamous May 13, 2017, email, which included a discussion of ‘remuneration packages’ for six people in a business deal with a Chinese energy firm. The email appeared to identify Biden as ‘Chair / Vice Chair depending on agreement with CEFC,’ in a reference to now-bankrupt CEFC China Energy Co.

The email includes a note that ‘Hunter has some office expectations he will elaborate.’ A proposed equity split references ’20’ for ‘H’ and ’10 held by H for the big guy?’ with no further details.

Bobulinski has repeatedly said ‘the big guy’ was Joe Biden. IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, who claimed that politics had influenced the years-long federal investigation into Hunter Biden, also said ‘the big guy’ was known to be Joe Biden.

The president’s brother, Jim Biden, is expected to testify on Feb. 21. Hunter Biden is expected to appear for his deposition on Feb. 28. 

The Senate is on track to pass the $95 billion national security supplemental package to assist Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific after the upper chamber passed several major procedural votes on Monday night. 

The supplemental package does not include any border provisions and several Republicans spent days — since Saturday — collectively filibustering the package on the Senate floor, which continued into Tuesday morning. The bill passed its final hurdle Monday night and the final vote could come anytime Tuesday, but no later than Wednesday, depending on how long Republicans can delay the vote.

The bill still has no time agreement, meaning a formal agreement between Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., regarding the time allocated for debating the legislation or its amendments. Both leaders have been urging their party members to pass the package. 

Sen. Mike Lee, who spent four hours lambasting the bill on the floor on Saturday and continued his speeches overnight Monday, urged senators to reconsider voting for its passage. 

‘We cannot send billions of dollars to Ukraine while America’s own borders are bleeding,’ Lee said on Saturday. ‘This betrayal is all the more loathsome as it occurs at a time when the eyes of a nation are turned to sport, family and fun.’

By Monday, GOP senators were hoping for a breakthrough to get their amendments heard. Several amendments filed included hardline border security-related provisions. 

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Me., vice chair of the appropriations committee, said on Monday morning that ‘leadership on both sides of the aisle as well as the bill managers on both sides of the aisle have been working diligently night and day to try to get agreement to take consider debate and have votes on a series of amendments offered by senators on both sides of the aisle.’ 

‘Obviously, in order for that to occur, we would need the cooperation of all members and we would need to have time agreements because the number of amendments is considerable,’ she said.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a hawkish figure against continued aid to Ukraine, also spent significant time on the floor Monday prior to the vote. 

‘Senate Republican leadership, including the senators who voted to get on this bill, assured us it would be an open amendment process,’ Paul told Fox News Digital on Monday. ‘Mike Lee spent four hours trying to bring down amendments and the Democrats allowed zero of them. So yeah, I do believe that the Democrats have not been honest or forthright about allowing amendments.’

On Sunday, Schumer said on the floor that there would be a ‘fair and reasonable amendment votes’ on the floor ‘if there’s any possibility of speeding this process up.’ 

However, Republicans who are against passing the aid bill don’t want the process to be sped up and argue they should be allowed to offer amendments even if they don’t support the overall bill. 

‘And members on their side have actually said since we’re not for the overall bill, we shouldn’t even have the right to have amendments,’ Paul said Monday night. ‘So no, it’s a terrible process and we’re going to continue to fight them on this and talking filibusters are ongoing as we speak, and the talking filibuster will be going on as long as we have speakers into the night.’

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., another dissenting vote for the foreign aid-only package, also told Fox News Digital on Monday night that ‘they don’t want amendments because they’d be bad votes for some of the senators and the Democratic side of their elections coming up.’ He explained the party is split on the issue of more aid to Ukraine. 

The former football coach also offered an amendment to the package he said, which would ‘pretty much close the border down’ and ‘doing the things at the border that we already have laws for.’

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, also introduced an amendment identical to the House’s immigration bill, H.R.2, which would restore most Trump-era restrictions, hire additional border patrol officers and tighten asylum screenings.

Republican Sens. Roger Marshall, JD Vance, and Josh Hawley were just a few other senators who spoke in opposition to the bill on Monday, continuing the filibuster. Meanwhile, GOP Sens. Mitt Romney and Thom Tillis were just a few who urged their colleagues to ‘delay’ no further and pass the package. 

The package includes $60 billion for Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel, $9 billion in humanitarian assistance for Gaza and nearly $5 billion for the Indo-Pacific, including Taiwan. Democrats brought the package up for a vote after Republicans had blocked the $118 billion package that also included numerous border and immigration provisions last Wednesday. 

Republicans had previously said they would not approve funding for Ukraine unless the overwhelmed southern border was secured first. The GOP-led House said in a statement Monday they would not pass the Senate’s foreign aid bill without border security provisions, and instead, would work on their own bill. 

‘House Republicans were crystal clear from the very beginning of discussions that any so-called national security supplemental legislation must recognize that national security begins at our own border,’ Johnson said in a statement Monday evening, in part. ‘The mandate of national security supplemental legislation was to secure America’s own border before sending additional foreign aid around the world. It is what the American people demand and deserve. Now, in the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters. America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo.’

Several conservatives agree with Sen. JD Vance’s memo circulated early Monday that there’s a ‘hidden’ clause in the national security supplemental bill that he believes could be grounds to impeach former President Donald Trump from office if elected to office later this year. 

Vance sent a memo to GOP lawmakers highlighting that the bill, which would send billions of federal dollars to Ukraine, assures the delivery of funding through September 2025. Trump, however, has vowed to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of gaining office, which would also end funding.

Vance’s memo claimed that the supplemental bill ‘represents an attempt by the foreign policy blob/deep state to stop President Trump from pursuing his desired policy, and if he does so anyways, to provide grounds to impeach him and undermine his administration,’ and he urged Republicans to block its passage. 

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky, said he supported Vance’s memo on Monday, arguing that Democrats are ‘setting up’ for a possible Trump presidential win.

‘They’re locking in foreign aid that will even tie the hands of the next president,’ Paul told Fox News Digital in an interview. ‘So, I think it’s a terrible idea. But also, if the next President were to try to have a different policy, you can see the Democrats again starting an impeachment.’

‘I think they’re going to try to impeach him before he gains office now, and that’s exactly what this is,’ he said.

Mark Paoletta, former Office of Management and Budget (OMB) General Counsel during the Trump Administration, told Fox News Digital in a statement that the clause in the bill text is an ‘effort to inappropriately tie President Trump’s hands in his next term by locking in Ukraine funding for multiple years.’ 

‘In a presidential election year, Congress should not be making long-term funding commitments, particularly in foreign policy, that will attempt to tie the hands of the next commander in chief,’ Paoletta said. ‘President Trump had every right to pause the Ukraine funding for about 60 days, given his concerns about corruption in Ukraine and how best to spend those funds.’

He added, ‘As OMB General Counsel, I issued the legal justification to pause the funding, and would do it again today.’

Russ Vought, a former Trump cabinet member, also agreed with Vance’s memo and said in a post on X that Vance is ‘absolutely right to interpret these Ukraine provisions’ in this manner. 

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said the provision in the bill ‘is gonna force him to send money and spend money for Ukraine.’

‘This is in the bill,’ Tuberville told Fox News Digital. ‘So, it’s just another situation where the Democrats are doing something and working towards making sure that money’s spent in a certain area where American taxpayers and this country don’t have.’

The Trump administration, through the OMB, withheld a total of about $400 million of security assistance from Ukraine in 2019. This came just before Trump asked Ukrainian President Voldomyr Zelenskyy to investigate the family of his 2020 rival, Joe Biden, and while the White House allegedly was withholding an Oval Office visit from Zelenskyy in exchange for that investigation.

These actions are what fueled the impeachment effort against Trump, in which he was ultimately acquitted. 

Trump has indicated that if he is elected president this year, he would resolve the war in Ukraine ‘within 24 hours.’ 

The supplemental package, on track for final passage this week in the upper chamber, would send billions of federal dollars to Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific. The bill text includes $1.6 billion to finance Ukraine’s military as well as just under $14 billion for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, set to expire on Sept. 30, 2025. 

‘These are the exact same accounts President Trump was impeached for pausing in December 2019,’ Vance wrote in a memo distributed to GOP offices early Monday. ‘Every single House Republican voted against this impeachment solution.’

The Senate is gearing up for the last round of procedural votes Monday night to push the supplemental package forward for a final vote this week, despite several Republicans in opposition who are avoiding a time agreement to continue filibustering. It’s unclear if the bill would pass in the GOP-led House. 

A former version of this bill that included border-related provisions failed to pass in the Senate last week. 

The offices of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. R-Ky., did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment on Vance’s memo.

Fox News’ Tyler Olson and Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report. 

President Biden said his administration is working on facilitating a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas that would bring a halt to the fighting in the Gaza Strip ‘for at least six weeks,’ during his remarks Monday at the White House alongside King Abdullah II of Jordan. 

Biden met with the Jordanian monarch to discuss the ongoing war between Israel and the terror group as well as how to bring about a peace agreement between the Jewish state and Palestinian leaders. The two leaders met before addressing reporters at the White House Cross Hall with prepared remarks.

‘The key elements of the deal are on the table. There are gaps that remain,’ said Biden. ‘But I’ve encouraged Israeli leaders to keep working to achieve the deal.’

Biden and the king also discussed Israel’s military offensive in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza. He said the operation should not occur without a credible plan for ensuring the safety and support of more than one million Palestinians sheltering there who are ‘exposed and vulnerable.’  

‘We cannot afford an Israeli attack on Rafah,’ the king said. ‘It is certain to produce another humanitarian catastrophe.’

On Monday, Israel said two Israeli hostages – Fernando Marman, 60, and Louis Har, 70being held in Rafah were rescued.

‘The hostages … were held captive in harsh conditions. They were intentionally held in the middle of a civilian neighborhood inside a civilian building to try to prevent us from rescuing them. But we did,’ IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a video message. ‘Fernando Marmon and Luis Har are now home in Israel. They have undergone medical examination and have been reunited with their families.’

Biden noted that a Palestinian state could create conditions for Israel to have long-term peace with its Arab neighbors and long-lasting security. 

‘That effort was underway before the Oct. 7 attacks,’ Biden said. ‘It’s even more urgent today.’

Israel has proposed a two-state solution to Palestinian leaders in the past, which have all have been rejected. 

Abdullah said issues between Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem must also be addressed, including the expansion of Israeli settlements and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, where he said Muslim worshipers have not been allowed to enter.

‘Seven decades of occupation, death and destruction have proven beyond any doubt that there can be no peace without a political device,’ he said. 

House Republicans leading the impeachment inquiry against President Biden are demanding the Justice Department turn over the transcript and any recordings of Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur in his investigation into Biden’s mishandling of classified documents.

Hur, who released his report to the public last week after months of investigating, did not recommend criminal charges against Biden for mishandling and retaining classified documents and stated that he wouldn’t bring charges against Biden even if he were not in the Oval Office.

Those records included classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan and other countries, among other records related to national security and foreign policy, which Hur said implicated ‘sensitive intelligence sources and methods.’

Hur did not recommend any charges against the president but did describe him as a ‘well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory’ — a description that has raised significant concerns for his 2024 reelection campaign.

On Monday, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan and House Ways & Means Committee Chair Jason Smith penned a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland to request that he turn over the transcript and any recordings of Biden’s October 2023 interview with Hur and the special counsel team. The three committee leaders are leading the impeachment inquiry against Biden.

Comer had asked Hur if any of the classified records that Biden held were related to the countries with which his family allegedly conducted business.

Comer told Fox News Digital last week that he wants ‘unfettered access to these documents to determine if President Biden’s retention of sensitive materials were used to help the Bidens’ influence peddling.’

The letter sent to Garland and obtained by Fox News Digital on Monday detailed the concerns that ‘Biden may have retained sensitive documents related to specific countries involving his family’s foreign business dealings.’

‘Further, we seek to understand whether the White House or President Biden’s personal attorneys placed any limitations or scoping restrictions during the interview that would have precluded a line of inquiry regarding evidence (emails, text messages, or witness statements) directly linking the President to troublesome foreign payments,’ they wrote. 

‘Additionally, the Committee on the Judiciary requires these documents for its ongoing oversight of the Department’s commitment to impartial justice and its handling of the investigation and prosecution of President Biden’s presumptive opponent, Donald J. Trump, in the November 2024 presidential election,’ they continued. 

‘Despite clear evidence the President willfully retained and transmitted classified materials willfully, Mr. Hur recommended ‘that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter,” they wrote. ‘Although Mr. Hur reasoned that President Biden’s presentation ‘as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory’ who ‘did not remember when he was vice president’ or ‘when his son Beau died’ posed challenges to proving the President’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, the report concluded that the Department’s principles of prosecution weighed against prosecution because the Department has not prosecuted ‘a former president or vice president for mishandling classified documents from his own administration.’’

They added, ‘The one ‘exception’ to the Department’s principles of prosecution, as Mr. Hur noted, ‘is former President Trump.’ This speaks volumes about the Department’s commitment to evenhanded justice.’

Comer, Jordan and Smith demanded the materials by Feb. 19.

Former President Trump is asking the Supreme Court to extend the delay in the trial stemming from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s 2020 election interference case, arguing that he has presidential immunity to protect him from prosecution.

Trump attorneys on Monday afternoon filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court just days after a D.C. appeals court ruled the former president and 2024 GOP front-runner is not immune from prosecution in Smith’s case.

The request is for temporary relief, to stay or block the appeals court mandate from taking effect, which would give the Trump legal team more time to file an appeal to the Supreme Court on the merits of whether a former president deserves immunity from criminal prosecution for actions while in office.

The trial stemming from Smith’s case against Trump is on hold pending resolution of the immunity question.

The Justice Department may ask for expedited consideration of this initial emergency appeal.

‘If the prosecution of a President is upheld, such prosecutions will recur and become increasingly common, ushering in destructive cycles of recrimination,’ the request states. ‘Criminal prosecution, with its greater stigma and more severe penalties, imposes a far greater ‘personal vulnerability’ on the President than any civil penalty.’

The request adds, ‘The threat of future criminal prosecution by a politically opposed Administration will overshadow every future President’s official acts — especially the most politically controversial decisions.’

The request states that the president’s ‘political opponents will seek to influence and control his or her decisions via effective extortion or blackmail with the threat, explicit or implicit, of indictment by a future, hostile Administration, for acts that do not warrant any such prosecution.’

‘This threat will hang like a millstone around every future President’s neck, distorting Presidential decision-making, undermining the President’s independence, and clouding the President’s ability ‘to deal fearlessly and impartially with’ the duties of his office.” 

Trump’s lawyers added, ‘Without immunity from criminal prosecution, the Presidency as we know it will cease to exist.’ 

A Trump spokesperson described the filing as a ‘powerhouse filing.’

‘As President Trump’s powerhouse Supreme Court filing explains, if immunity is not granted to a President, every future President who leaves office will face the prospect of being wrongfully indicted by the opposing party,’ the spokesperson told Fox News Digital. ‘Without complete immunity, the President of the United States will not be able to function properly. Even while the President is still in office, his political opponents will use the threat of future prosecution as a weapon, effectively blackmailing and extorting him to influence his most sensitive and important decisions.’

The spokesperson added, ‘The Supreme Court should grant the requested stay and put an end to Deranged Jack Smith’s repeated attempts to corruptly short-circuit the ordinary and correct functioning of our justice system.’

The filing comes after Washington, D.C., federal Judge Tanya Chutkan earlier this month officially delayed the trial, which was set to begin on March 4– a day before the critical Super Tuesday primary contests, when Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Vermont vote to select a GOP nominee.

Chutkan said in December that she does not have jurisdiction over the matter while it is pending before the Supreme Court, and she put a pause on the case against the Republican 2024 front-runner until the high court determines its involvement.

Smith charged the former president with conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights. Those charges stemmed from Smith’s investigation into whether Trump was involved in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, and any alleged interference in the 2020 election result.

Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges in August 2023.

There was not a lot of dialogue with the Israeli Defense Forces contacts before this embed happened. After four months of this war, they have the drill down to a system and the IDF had something they wanted to show the outside world.  

We loaded up onto Humvees. A soldier stood in the front seat, one hand on the roll bar, the other on an automatic weapon mounted to the hood. At my left elbow was an Israeli version of a shoulder-mounted rocket as well as a spare rifle. 

For the first 10 minutes of the trip, we were still in Israel. We traveled on the pavement. The closer we got to the Gaza Strip, the road got rougher where the sides had been broken up by heavy armored vehicles. Camps began to appear where soldiers waited outside the fence for their orders to return to combat.

Once we passed the fence into Gaza, the landscape showed only destruction. I didn’t see a building or structure that wasn’t damaged. Most were flattened.

The drivers went breakneck over the twisted and potholed sand roads until we arrived at the camp for the 401st armored division in the Gaza Strip. Soldiers waited on plastic chairs between their vehicles. A few had wandered to the beach to take pictures. Some did maintenance on the big Merkava tanks.

We did not stay long. We transferred into an Israeli Namer, armored personnel carrier, for the trip to the Shati refugee camp, just north of the population center of Gaza City. Reports of Hamas fighters regrouping in Gaza City created a reasonable risk of an ambush, despite Israel’s firm control of the area.

When we climbed out of the armored vehicle at Shati, I could see 360 degrees of destruction. Piles of dirt and broken concrete. All roads and sidewalks were broken. Everywhere we traveled was a matter of hiking up and over piles of sand, either leftover from an explosion or churned up by tanks. Some of the large apartment buildings were still standing, but black smoke stains streaked upward out of most windows. Occasionally, we would hear the large crack of new airstrikes in the area or machine-gun fire.

The first place reporters were taken to was a kindergarten, made obvious with paintings of SpongeBob and other cartoons on the walls. Lt. Col Idor of the 401st armored brigade showed the reporters maps of where the tunnels stretched beneath us. Then we loaded back in the armor and drove to the UNRWA headquarters, where soldiers had dug a well straight down to one of the rooms that served as a hub for electricity in the tunnel. The lieutenant colonel pulled the Velcro press identifier off my body armor and dropped it down the hole. ‘You’ll get this later,’ he said.

We were shown two rooms in the UNRWA headquarters where wiring for computers, communications equipment and electricity went straight underground. Then, ultimately, taken back to the area of the kindergarten to the safest tunnel entrance.

We had to get on hands and knees and crawl for a bit at the start of the tunnel. Once inside, we could stand and walk. Sometimes, when the ceiling wasn’t high enough, we crouched. Sometimes, when it was bad enough, we crawled again. At a few points, we hiked through water that was probably filthy.

The tunnels are dramatically different than the ones I crawled in under the border with Egypt more than a decade ago. The modern ones are reinforced with concrete. There is concrete underfoot. At some locations Hamas spent the effort to tile the tunnels and the rooms built off to the side. They had working plumbing and modern toilets. The tile work was good. In one location, it looked like Hamas had built a coffee shop, where they could take a break, because the decorative tile was all about coffee. 

We hiked probably less than a half mile, arriving underneath the UNRWA headquarters, where I recovered my press identifier. Lt. Col Idor showed us a room 25 feet deep filled with computer servers, another room with communications equipment and still another that was an electrical junction for the tunnels. All of it connected to the headquarters building above with extensive wiring.

The soldiers made the point, there was no way Hamas could have installed all of that, made the construction noise, and moved truckload after truckload of dirt out of the tunnels without UNRWA employees being aware.

‘Our problem is the Hamas,’ said Lt. Col Idor. ‘Hamas working in the UNRWA and under the UNRWA.’

UNRWA released a statement saying they are a humanitarian organization without the capability or expertise to conduct ‘military inspections’ of what might be under its premises.