FBI Director Christopher Wray is set to warn lawmakers on Capitol Hill Wednesday that Chinese hackers are preparing to ‘wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities.’ 

Wray and other government officials are set to testify in front of the House Select Committee at 11 a.m. for a hearing titled ‘The Chinese Community Party Cyber Threat to the American Homeland and National Security.’ 

‘There has been far too little public focus on the fact that People’s Republic of China hackers are targeting our critical infrastructure — our water treatment plants, our electrical grid, our oil and natural gas pipelines, our transportation systems. And the risk that poses to every American requires our attention – now,’ Wray is expected to tell lawmakers in an excerpt from his remarks. 

‘China’s hackers are positioning on American infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities, if or when China decides the time has come to strike,’ he will add. 

Wray is also expected to say that ‘today, and literally every day’ Chinese hackers are ‘actively attacking our economic security, engaging in wholesale theft of our innovation, and our personal and corporate data.’ 

‘And they don’t just hit our security and economy. They target our freedoms, reaching inside our borders, across America, to silence, coerce, and threaten our citizens and residents,’ Wray will add in his testimony. 

Wray previously testified in April last year that FBI agents are outnumbered by ‘at least 50 to 1’ when attempting to address the threat China poses to critical infrastructure through its cyber hacking practices, and said Beijing has stolen more personal and corporate data from the U.S. than any other nation. 

‘They’ve got a bigger hacking program than every other major nation combined and have stolen more of our personal and corporate data than all other nations – big or small combined,’ he said during a House Appropriations Committee hearing at the time. 

‘To give you a sense of what we’re up against, if each one of the FBI’s cyber agents and intel analysts focused exclusively on the China threat – on nothing but China – Chinese hackers would still outnumber FBI cyber personnel by at least 50 to 1,’ Wray testified. 

Fox News’ David Spunt and Brooke Singman contributed to this report. 

A spokesman for the United Nations insisted Tuesday that UNRWA, facing allegations that at least a dozen of its employees participated in the Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel, ‘does not work with Hamas.’ 

The remarks came from Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, during a press briefing when a reporter asked whether Guterres is planning to ask for a broader investigation of UNRWA’s employees’ affiliation with Hamas. The reporter noted how it’s estimated, according to one intelligence report, that up to 10% of the 13,000 UNRWA employees working in Gaza are affiliated with Hamas. ‘Is he asking for a more intensive examination of the vetting procedures?’ the reporter asked. 

Dujarric responded by noting how Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, ‘himself has said UNRWA would commission an independent review of its work to look at risk, to look at how it does its operations.’

‘So that’s something they themselves want to do, while I think in any context I don’t know how you examine people’s thoughts. Right?’ Dujarric said. ‘What is clear is that any action that contravenes the U.N., U.N. principles, that violates our rules is dealt with. And I think Mr. Lazzarini did it. Furthermore, I think it’s also important to clarify something. Every year, UNRWA shares its list of staff with the host countries where it works. Right? So UNRWA works in Jordan, works in Lebanon, works in Syria.’

‘For the work that it does in Gaza and the West Bank,’ he said, UNRWA ‘shares the list of staff with both the Palestinian Authority and with the Israeli government as the occupying power for those areas. And as far as I’m told by UNRWA, concerns have not been raised when the list of staff has been shared.’ 

‘But have they shared this list with the de facto power in charge in Gaza, which would be Hamas? And then they asked Hamas for a list of their own members?’ the reporter pressed back, arguing that the terror organization would be unlikely to release that information. 

‘I think you can imagine the answer to the scenario which you’re laying out. Our counterpart for the occupied Palestinian territory is the Palestinian Authority,’ Dujarric said. 

The reporter interjected, saying, ‘But UNRWA works with Hamas.’ 

‘UNRWA does not. I don’t agree with the terminology. UNRWA does not work with Hamas. We have operational contacts with de facto authorities like we do in every other place in the world where they are de facto authorities,’ Dujarric responded, before moving onto other reporters’ questions. 

The exchange comes amid Israel’s allegations that 12 UNRWA employees were involved in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, which led the United States and several other countries to cut off funding for the agency and reignited debate over Gaza’s biggest humanitarian aid provider. 

In Gaza, UNRWA employs thousands of staffers to provide aid across the Middle East, and has been the main supplier of food, water and shelter to civilians during the Israel-Hamas war. 

Israel, whose allegations were detailed in a document provided to the Biden administration Monday, has long railed against the agency, accusing it of tolerating or even collaborating with Hamas and of perpetuating the situation of Palestinian refugees.

The Israeli government has accused Hamas and other militant groups of siphoning off aid and using U.N. facilities for military purposes.

UNRWA denies those allegations and says it took swift action against the employees accused of taking part in the attack. The United States and other top donors that together provided more than half of UNRWA’s budget in 2022, nevertheless suspended their funding to the agency. Guterres says 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, or 87% of the population, rely on UNRWA services that would be scaled back as soon as February if the money is not restored.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

An Iran-backed militia group in Iraq says it is suspending attacks on U.S. troops after a drone attack killed three soldiers early Sunday, but the Department of Defense is casting doubt on those claims. 

The Iraq-based Kataeb Hezbollah said Tuesday it was suspending ‘military and security operations against the occupying forces to avoid any embarrassment for the Iraqi government.’ 

The group is one of multiple Iranian proxies in the region that are believed responsible for carrying out attacks on U.S. targets in Iraq, Syria, and, most recently, Jordan over the past several months. The groups say the attacks are in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel in its ongoing offensive against Hamas militants in Gaza and the mounting death toll of Palestinian civilians. 

Since Oct. 17, there have been at least 165 attacks on U.S. targets in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan. Of these, 66 were in Iraq, 98 were in Syria, and one was in Jordan. Meanwhile, Houthi militants stationed in Yemen have been firing upon commercial vessels in the Red Sea – prompting retaliatory strikes from the U.S. and its allies. 

Per Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin, Kataeb Hezbollah said it would support Palestinians in Gaza in other ways and told its fighters not to respond even if the U.S. were to strike. 

Asked for his reaction to the group’s message, Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said, ‘actions speak louder than words.’ 

‘I don’t think that we could be any more clear that we have called on the Iranian proxy groups to stop their attacks. They have not. And so we will respond in a time and manner of our choosing,’ he said. ‘When I say, ‘actions speak louder than words, there have been three attacks – to my knowledge – since the 28th of January. And I’ll just leave it there.’ 

President Biden has faced mounting pressure to respond after three U.S. soldiers were killed and more than 40 were injured in an overnight drone strike at a base in Jordan near the Syrian border. 

Biden blamed the attack on Iran-backed militias and vowed that the U.S. ‘shall respond.’ At the same time, administration officials have repeatedly said the U.S. has no desire to escalate tensions with Iran. 

The attack marked a significant escalation of violence in the onslaught of attacks since Oct. 17 as it was the first time U.S. troops had been killed by enemy fire. 

Since October, the Biden administration has sent about $121 million in taxpayer funds to UNRWA, the U.N. agency under scrutiny for its alleged ties to Hamas, the State Department said Tuesday.

A remaining $300,000 in appropriated funds for this fiscal year was supposed to be delivered to the humanitarian relief organization in the next few weeks. But the U.S. froze those funds over allegations that some UNRWA members participated in the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, according to State Department spokesman Matthew Miller. 

‘That funding has been suspended,’ Miller told reporters at the State Department daily press briefing. He added that it’s ‘impossible’ to say how much more the U.S. could provide to UNRWA this fiscal year if the funds are unfrozen because the government is operating under a continuing resolution. 

‘We don’t know how much overall funding will be available for this fiscal year, and that would impact how much that we would be able to provide UNRWA,’ Miller said. ‘Historically, we have typically provided somewhere between $300 and $400 million a year in funding.’ 

The Biden administration has sent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to UNRWA, reversing former President Donald Trump’s decision to cut funding to the group. Biden officials say the funds provide humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people, while critics say the group is ‘effectively a branch of Hamas.’

UNRWA’s ties to Hamas have come into focus in recent weeks after Israel provided the Biden administration with a new dossier containing information about how some 13 agency staffers allegedly assisted or supported the Hamas terror attacks on Oct. 7.

The Biden administration announced last week it has temporarily paused ‘additional’ funding to UNRWA in response to the dossier. Germany, Italy, Australia, Finland, Netherlands and Switzerland have also joined the boycott following the accusations, which have already resulted in the termination of multiple staffers.

Miller said the next expected payment to UNRWA would happen over the summer and that the amount would depend on how much money Congress approves for the agency in Biden’s $106 billion supplemental package request.

Despite the terrorism allegations, the White House has defended UNRWA, insisting that the entire agency should not be judged by the purported actions of 13 people.

‘We very much support the work that UNRWA does, we think it’s critical,’ Miller said. ‘There is no other humanitarian player in Gaza who can provide food, medicine at the scale that UNRWA does. 

‘We want to see that work continued, which is why it is so important that the United Nations take this matter seriously, that they investigate it, that there is accountability for anyone who is found to engage in wrongdoing, and that they take whatever other measures are appropriate to ensure that this sort of thing cannot happen again,’ he said.

Fox News Digital’s Peter Aitken and Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.

Mike Pompeo, former secretary of state in the Trump administration, blasted the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as ‘truly evil’ for its infiltration of American institutions during a House select committee hearing on Tuesday – and he went on to torch Chinese President Xi Jinping for never being held accountable for the COVID-19 pandemic unleashed on the world.

In a bipartisan show of support, Pompeo and Leon Panetta, former secretary of defense in the Obama administration, testified Tuesday before the House select committee hearing titled ‘Authoritarian Alignment: The CCP’s Support for America’s Adversaries.’

‘We should never forget this information space on social media and how the Chinese Communist Party has communist-directed entities on every one of our children’s cellphones passing information that is deeply filtered, designed for our young people here to undermine their idea and their understanding of America and our foundational ideas,’ Pompeo said. ‘This is the very Xi Jinping that unleashed a virus upon the world that killed millions of people, including over a million people in the United States. It gets seldom referenced.’

‘It’s hard to imagine the staggering impact that COVID had on the world, and yet no one’s held Xi Jinping accountable, not for the leak from his lab, which happened,’ Pompeo continued. ‘Not for the fact that once he was aware he had a leak from his lab, of a relatively lethal, relatively contagious virus, he foisted it upon the world. He made a decision to hide the data, hide the information, to off the researchers and to put thousands of people on airplanes and transit them across the world with the death and destruction and the economic harm that followed from that. This is the very same Xi Jinping that’s working here in the United States against us.’

Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., noted how Pompeo warned America’s governors not to get too entwined with the CCP.

‘As Washington becomes more aware of the China threat, the CCP has targeted many of our states’ governors. This morning, the Washington Post published a story about the CCP’s ‘united front’ efforts [in] amping up their engagement with our nation’s mayors, including the mayor of Carmel, Indiana, in my state,’ Banks said to Pompeo. ‘The former mayor, he just left office, who went on lavish trips to China and engaged at a high level with Chinese officials in their country. Why should our nation’s mayors stray away from these types of entanglements with the sister cities projects and other CCP united front efforts?’

In Wisconsin, the home state of Chair Mike Gallagher, Pompeo said, ‘They have made a hard place for your state’s legislative body.’

‘They are determined to propagate their efforts. They want to make friends so that when they are confronted, they can turn to their friends and say, ‘We’re not such bad guys after all,” Pompeo said. ‘The Chinese Communist Party is truly evil, they will work at every level of government, they will work against our private sector as well. They’ll show up at PTA meetings, if that’s what it takes. This is an effort on every level of the Chinese Communist Party.’

‘When the Chinese Communist Party shows up at your school and offers a free swing set, it is not because they care about the health of your children,’ Pompeo added. ‘That’s maybe the simplest way to articulate sister cities programs and the Confucius Institutes. On all of these ‘united front’ efforts inside our country … they may show up and give you some temporary lift, but in the end, it is about them, not about us.’

Breaking with the bipartisan nature of the hearing, Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., said Jan. 6, 2021, was Xi’s ‘best day in office’ and demanded that Pompeo state under oath ‘that Joe Biden was duly elected in a free and fair election.’

In response, Pompeo said, ‘Well, so much for bipartisanship of this committee. Well done, sir, you have destroyed that.’

‘Of course, President Biden is the duly elected president of the United States,’ Pompeo said.

‘I wish Secretary Clinton would be so clear about her election as well,’ he added.

Pompeo went on to say, ‘We did have a peaceful transition of power from the Trump administration to the Biden administration. I was present for that.’

‘We’ll have partisan disagreements on many things,’ Pompeo said. ‘It is a factual matter that the world was in less conflict three years ago than it is today. Secretary [Antony] Blinken said just yesterday that not since 1973 has the Middle East been so dangerous. I agree with him on that. It was safer three years ago because we established a deterrence model that was successful in preventing the invasion of Europe, the debacle in Afghanistan, and the good work that we did – you’ll recall that the Trump administration was actually the first administration to provide defense weapons systems to Ukraine when the Obama administration had concluded it could not or would not do so. These were things that kept the American people safe. It wasn’t partisan, it wasn’t political. It was good policy.’

Pompeo and Panetta, who both also served as CIA directors, describe themselves as good friends. They both also addressed the conflict in Ukraine.

‘The only way to try to avoid war with China, the only way to deal with China, is from strength,’ Panetta said. ‘Both China and Russia became more aggressive when they sensed weakness on the part of the U.S. And for that reason, we must take strong action to arm and train Taiwan to defend itself, to strengthen our force posture, to invest in the next generation of military technology, to bolster our alliances, and to maintain strong export controls on critical technologies.’

‘We lost deterrence in Ukraine,’ Pompeo said later in the hearing. ‘We shouldn’t applaud ourselves for rallying NATO. That’s great, I’m glad the Europeans stood up. But we should remember, we did not conduct American foreign policy with the diplomatic excellence and the military power to actually convince Putin not to invade Ukraine. We have to win these things. It is insufficient to catch incoming missiles. You have to hold your adversary at risk.’

‘My effort as secretary of state was to remind the world if we don’t hold the CCP at risk – if we simply play defense economically, diplomatically; we allow a spy balloon to travel over our country for five days and then hold a press conference announcing what brilliance it was to fire, shoot it down over South Carolina – Xi Jinping gets that he’s on offense, we’re on defense,’ he added. ‘And that is not a good place for the United States to be.’

The Justice Department is investigating ‘Squad’ member Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., over the alleged misuse of government funds intended to pay for her security, two sources tell Fox News.

The probe is related to allegations of federal security money being spent improperly, the sources said.

A subpoena announcement was read on the House floor Monday, and sources said it was related to the investigation into Bush.

The Justice Department declined to comment. 

Responding to Fox News Digital, Bush’s office provided a statement confirming the ‘Department of Justice is reviewing my campaign’s spending on security services.’ 

The congresswoman blamed ‘right-wing organizations’ for the DOJ probe, as well as other investigations into the matter by the Federal Election Commission and the House Committee on Ethics. ‘I have not used any federal tax dollars for personal security services. Any reporting that I have used federal funds for personal security is simply false,’ she said in part. 

One of those watchdog groups, the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), reacted to news of the Justice Department probe and defended having filed an official complaint with the FEC in 2023 regarding the details of repeated payments Bush made to a man who is now her current husband.

‘In her own FEC filings the payments were initially characterized as being for ‘security.’ Among the many troubling facts involved that we strongly felt justified an investigation were her close personal relationship, her large payments to others for the same services at the same time, and that her husband reportedly didn’t have a license to provide those services,’ FACT executive director Kendra Arnold said in a statement obtained by Fox News Digital. 

‘Unfortunately, after our complaint was filed, Rep. Bush changed the language on her disclosure describing the continuing payments to her husband to something amorphous and vague, ‘wage payments,’ which at a minimum is contrary to the purpose of the law to clearly describe the purposes of campaign disbursements,’ she said. ‘Our hope, as it always is with our complaints, is that a thorough and fair investigation reveals the truth of the matter and whether any legal violations have occurred.’

Arnold added, ‘The rules and laws governing the use and disclosure of federal campaign expenditures are written to ensure that those in Congress elected to represent us do so without personally profiting from their office. The facts alone speak to the need for an investigation, citizens deserve the truth, and we are glad that several governmental bodies have found an investigation is merited and look forward to the outcomes.’

In a message read aloud by a House clerk on Monday to notify Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., House Sergeant at Arms William McFarland relayed that his office received a grand jury subpoena for documents issued by the Justice Department and added that the sergeant of arms office would comply with that subpoena. The message did not elaborate further.

Speculation swirled on social media about what the DOJ probe could be about, including whether it was related to Jan. 6, but sources later pointed to Bush instead. 

Bush notably has spent more than $500,000 on her own private security while publicly advocating for the defund the police movement. 

PunchBowl News first reported the Justice Department is conducting a criminal probe into Bush, connected with the House sergeant at arms subpoena.

Bush’s husband and former security guard, Cortney Merritts, who she married in February 2023, has pocketed more than $100,000 in payments since Bush added him to her campaign’s payroll in January 2022 for what they marked as ‘security’ payments before switching their description to ‘wage expenses’ in April, Fox News Digital previously reported.

In March 2023, Bush was hit with two FEC complaints over security payments she made to her new husband.

One complaint comes from the Committee to Defeat the President, an anti-Biden super PAC, which alleges Bush has ‘flouted’ federal campaign finance laws by paying Merritts $60,000 for security in 2022. Merritts does not have a license to perform security functions in the congresswoman’s district.

Bush’s campaign also paid $225,281 to the St. Louis-based PEACE Security firm for personal protection throughout 2022. Bush and Merritts have been together since before she entered Congress in 2021, a press release from her office said.

FACT also filed a complaint to ask the FEC to investigate whether Bush ‘used campaign funds for personal use,’ citing the $60,000 payment in 2022 for security services provided to Merritts.

‘It appears Rep. Bush’s campaign may have made payments for services that were unnecessary or above fair market value because of her personal relationship with the payee,’ Arnold wrote in the complaint at the time. ‘If so, these payments would qualify as either impermissible payments to a family member or an impermissible gift.’

‘Therefore, we request the FEC investigate whether Rep. Bush converted campaign funds for personal use by paying a salary that was not for bona fide services at fair market value,’ the complaint said. ‘Ultimately, if one or more campaign laws are found to have been broken, we request the FEC hold the respondents accountable.’

Fox News’ Joe Schoffstall contributed to this report.