Former President Trump on Tuesday is expected to attend an appeals court hearing in Washington, D.C., that will consider the scope of his presidential immunity as the 2024 GOP front-runner seeks to have Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against him dismissed.

‘I will be attending the the Federal Appeals Court Arguments on Presidential Immunity in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday,’ Trump posted to his Truth Social account.

‘Of course I was entitled, as President of the United States and Commander in Chief, to Immunity,’ Trump said. ‘I wasn’t campaigning, the Election was long over. I was looking for voter fraud, and finding it, which is my obligation to do, and otherwise running running our Country.’

Trump added, ‘If I don’t get Immunity, then Crooked Joe Biden doesn’t get Immunity, and with the Border Invasion and Afghanistan Surrender, alone, not to mention the Millions of dollars that went into his ‘pockets’ with money from foreign countries, Joe would be ripe for Indictment.’

Trump accused Biden of ‘weaponizing the DOJ.’ 

‘By weaponizing the DOJ against his Political Opponent, ME, Joe has opened a giant Pandora’s Box,’ Trump said.

He also noted that as president, he was ‘protecting our country, and doing a great job of doing so, just look around at the complete mess that Crooked Joe Biden has caused.’

He added, ‘The least I am entitled to is Presidential Immunity on Fake Biden Indictments!’

Smith’s case against Trump is on pause as Trump’s attorneys appeal the case and argue that presidential immunity protects him from being prosecuted. The trial had been set to begin on March 4.

In August, Trump pleaded not guilty in federal court to all four federal charges stemming from Smith’s investigation into 2020 election interference and the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump is charged 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.

Smith filed an argument to dispute Trump’s claim of presidential immunity in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently rejected Smith’s appeal to expedite their assessment of the immunity claim before it went fully through a federal appeals court. Trump’s legal team asked the court to deny Smith’s request.

American forces in the Middle East were attacked eight times during the time that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spent in the hospital before resuming his job on Friday, Fox News has learned.

Five additional incidents took place after Austin resumed his job on Friday night, bringing the total to 128 attacks since October 17 and 13 attacks since he was hospitalized.

The Biden administration official was checked into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on January 1 after experiencing ‘severe pain.’ He was taken to an intensive care unit (ICU) and ‘resum[ed] his duties’ on Friday, but still remains in the medical center.

Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said that Austin’s ailment was a result of complications from an elective medical procedure, but did not give extensive details about the stay.

‘Since resuming his duties on Friday evening, the Secretary has received operational updates and has provided necessary guidance to his team,’ Ryder said in a statement to Fox News Digital. ‘He has full access to required communications capabilities and continues to monitor DoD’s day-to-day operations worldwide.’

The Pentagon and the Biden administration have been criticized by Republican politicians for allegedly not communicating properly about the hospitalization. Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi told Fox News Digital that the incident ‘further erodes trust in the Biden Administration, which has repeatedly failed to inform the public in a timely fashion about critical events.’

The recent Middle East incidents were targeted at U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria and began amid the escalation of the Israel-Hamas war.

Iran-backed terrorist groups have repeatedly targeted American forces with a mix of one-way drones and rockets. On January 2, one-way attack drones targeted Mission Support Site Green Village in Syria twice and targeted Erbil Airbase in Iraq once. Several rockets were launched towards Patrol Base Shaddadi in Syria on that day as well.

On January 3, a one-way attack drone was launched at U.S. forces in Al-Tanf Garrison in Syria. 

Mission Support Site Green Village in Syria was targeted with a one-way attack drone on January 4, while two other drones targeted Al-Tanf Garrison in Syria and Patrol Base Shaddadi in Syria on January 5.

No casualties from any of the eight incidents were reported. There was also no reported damage to infrastructure.

Fox News Digital’s Greg Wehner, Emma Colton and Liz Friden contributed to this report.

DES MOINES, IA – With one week until the Iowa caucuses kick off the Republican presidential nominating calendar, Nikki Haley is a candidate on the rise.

But with her rise in the polls comes more scrutiny for Haley, and more incoming fire from her rivals for the GOP nomination and from President Biden.

On Monday, at a Fox News town hall hosted by ‘Special Report’ chief political anchor Bret Baier and ‘The Story’ executive editor and anchor Martha MacCallum, the former South Carolina governor who served as ambassador to the United Nations in former President Donald Trump’s administration fired back.

Among her targets, Biden, who hours earlier knocked her for failing to mention slavery when answering a question about the causes of the Civil War. 

‘Let me be clear for those who don’t seem to know: Slavery was the cause of the Civil War,’ the president said hours earlier, as he gave a speech in Haley’s hometown. Biden spoke at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, a historic Black church where nine parishioners were killed in a horrific 2015 shooting.

‘Mother Emanuel Church is a sacred place,’ Haley said when asked to respond. ‘For Biden to show up there and give a political speech is offensive in itself.  

And Haley stressed that ‘I don’t need someone who palled around with segregationists in the ’70s and has said racist comments all the way through his career lecturing me or anyone in South Carolina about what it means to have racism, slavery, or anything related to the Civil War.’

Biden came under criticism as he ran for the White House during the 2020 presidential cycle for speaking positively about two segregationist senators he had years earlier worked with in the Senate, as he noted that there was at least ‘some civility’ in the chamber.

Haley also argued that ‘Biden should be fired’ after the Pentagon failed to disclose that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had been hospitalized for elective surgery, leaving the president in the dark for a couple of days. ‘This is unbelievable that we have a situation like this.’

‘I have a problem with the fact that Biden is not talking to his secretary of Defense every single day anyway,’ Haley stressed.

Haley has soared in recent months, thanks in part to her well-regarded performances in the first three Republican presidential primary debates. Over the past month she hs caught up with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the latest Iowa polls and in national surveys, for a distant second place behind Trump, who remains the commanding front-runner for the nomination as he makes his third straight White House run.

And Haley has surged to second place and narrowed the gap with Trump in New Hampshire, which holds the first primary and votes second – just eight days after Iowa.

Trump and his political allies have increasingly taken aim at Haley in recent weeks. The Trump campaign and an aligned super PAC are running new ads that blast Haley over the combustible issue of border security and illegal immigration.

‘Haley even opposed Trump’s wall and Haley repeatedly pushed amnesty for illegals,’ the narrator in a new spot that started running Monday claimed. ‘Nikki Haley – too weak, too liberal, to fix the border.’

And the Trump campaign blasted out emails during the Fox News town hall targeting Haley over immigration, taxes and the support she’s received from some top dollar Wall Street donors.

Firing back, Haley argued ‘just because President Trump says something doesn’t make it true.’

‘He’s lying about it,’ she stressed. ‘And I’ll tell you the reason he’s lying about it is because he’s taking snippets of things I said. I said you shouldn’t just do the border wall. You have to do more than that. That’s what I said.’

But Haley and her campaign take the increased attacks as a sign that Trump’s increasingly concerned about her upward mobility in the polls.

‘I appreciate all the attention President Trump is giving me. It is quite sweet and thoughtful of him,’ she said.

Trump and his allies aren’t the only ones taking aim at Haley. DeSantis and two super PACs aligned with his campaign are also training their fire on Haley.

A recent ad claims that Haley was inspired by former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who’s a popular target for Republicans.

‘DeSantis is desperate. He’s lying because he’s losing,’ Haley charged. ‘I never said Hillary Clinton was an inspiration.’

DeSantis joins Fox News Tuesday for a similar town hall, with Trump taking questions from Baier and MacCallum on Wednesday.

Several GOP senators, in alignment with House Republicans, expressed outrage over the agreed-upon annual government spending cap of $1.59 trillion brokered between House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer over the weekend. 

Lawmakers argued Monday that this figure neglects ample Republican suggestions for budget cuts. Meanwhile, the first spending deadline is fast approaching on Jan. 19. That means there are just eight legislative days until Congress must pass the first batch of appropriations to fund several federal agencies to avert a government shutdown. The second deadline is Feb. 2. 

‘As the House Freedom Caucus has noted, the actual spending levels in this plan are nearly $100 billion above what we are being promised, but mostly preserve all the pre-existing funding for Biden’s priorities,’ Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah told Fox News Digital on Monday. 

‘At a time when we’re $34 trillion in debt and inflation is hollowing out America’s middle class, Republicans can and must do better than this,’ he said. 

The $1.59 trillion figure was part of an agreement mandated by the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) last year, a compromise reached during debt limit talks between President Biden and then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. 

Democratic leaders said the final top line would also include an additional $69 billion in nondefense discretionary spending that was part of a McCarthy and Biden side deal at the time. That would bring the total to roughly $1.66 trillion, a figure the House Freedom Caucus called ‘a total figure.’

The budget comprises of $886 billion allocated for defense and $704 billion designated for nondefense expenses.

Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kans., a member of the upper chamber’s budget committee, said there will be at least a dozen Republican senators who ‘are going to have to look twice at this number.’ Nonetheless, he thinks the budget in its current form will still reach the 60 votes needed to pass.

‘Speaker Johnson is gonna have to try really hard to get his conference on board with this, but I don’t think he’s going to ever get more than 90% of them on board with it,’ Marshall told Fox News Digital on Monday. 

‘He needs every vote he can get, and they’re going to want to argue about this $70 billion, which is important — that’s a lot of money,’ he said. 

According to Johnson, the achieved Republican concessions involve $10 billion in extra cuts to IRS mandatory funding (totaling $20 billion) and a $6.1 billion reduction from the Biden administration’s ongoing COVID-related funds.

Johnson said the new agreement would see some additional cuts to discretionary spending to offset the deal.

However, a potential confrontation is approaching. Johnson has emphasized his desire to include conservative policy additions in the ultimate spending agreement.

Opening up the next legislative session Monday afternoon, Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the floor that ‘both parties reached this agreement without resorting to the painful and draconian cuts that the hard right, particularly those in the Freedom Caucus clamored for.’

‘And make no mistake, Democrats have made clear to Speaker Johnson that we will not support the inclusion of any poison pills in any of the 12 appropriation bills before the Congress,’ he said.

Fox News’ Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report. 

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, called on the Pentagon to provide transparency surrounding Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s ‘secret’ hospitalization. 

‘I am glad to hear Secretary Austin is in improved condition and I wish him a speedy recovery. However, the fact remains that the Department of Defense deliberately withheld the Secretary of Defense’s medical condition for days. That is unacceptable. We are learning more every hour about the Department’s shocking defiance of the law,’ Wicker wrote in a statement. 

‘When one of the country’s two National Command Authorities is unable to perform their duties, military families, Members of Congress, and the American public deserve to know the full extent of the circumstances,’ he said. 

Wicker added that ‘Members must be briefed on a full accounting of the facts immediately.’

‘I am concerned about his health and shocked that the Pentagon and White House have not been more forthcoming about his condition or why he remains hospitalized. It appears that even the President, his national security advisor, and the Deputy Secretary of Defense were unaware of Secretary Austin’s hospitalization for at least three days,’ Collins said in a statement Monday. ‘Given the extremely serious military decisions that the United States is dealing with, including attacks on our troops by Iranian-backed proxies, the war in the Middle East, and the ongoing aggression by Russia in Ukraine, it is inexplicable that the Secretary’s condition remains shrouded in secrecy.’ 

She added, ‘I wish him a speedy recovery, but also believe that he must be forthcoming about the nature of his illness and his ability to do his job.’

Austin was hospitalized last Monday following complications from surgery, the Pentagon said. 

‘On the evening of January 1, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for complications following a recent elective medical procedure,’ Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said. 

The news about Austin was shared with the media on Friday.

‘Worryingly, we now have more questions than answers,’ Wicker said. 

Wicker inquired about the involvement of the Secretary of Defense’s staff, the timing of the President’s notification, and the reasons behind withholding information from the National Security Council. Wicker also asked the Pentagon about the extent of the Secretary’s incapacitation due to surgery.

‘The very fact that we have none of this information is an indictment of an administration which consistently holds Congressional authority on national defense matters in contempt,’ he said.

Ryder said that the hospitalization was kept from the press due to ‘medical and personal privacy issues.’

Other congressional Republicans also requested additional information about Austin’s hospitalization. 

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said in a statement Saturday that Austin ‘must address promptly the troubling report that the Department of Defense didn’t immediately notify President Biden or the National Security Council that he was hospitalized and unable to perform his duties.’ 

 ‘The Secretary of Defense is the key link in the chain of command between the president and the uniformed military, including the nuclear chain of command, when the weightiest of decisions must be made in minutes,’ he said. 

The top lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee released a statement on Sunday evening calling for ‘additional details’ on Austin’s condition and why notification was delayed.

‘While we wish Sec. Austin a speedy recovery, we are concerned with how the disclosure of the Secretary’s condition was handled,’ Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and ranking member Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., said.

Other reports indicate top White House and Pentagon officials were also unaware of Austin’s hospitalization. 

Fox News’ Liz Elkind contributed to this report. 

EXCLUSIVE: A former aide to ousted Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., is now being employed by Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., Fox News Digital has learned.

Santos’ former communications director, Gabrielle Lipsky, started in a similar role for Mace this month, two sources told Fox News Digital. Her name and email were confirmed in a call to Mace’s Mount Pleasant district office on Monday afternoon.

Lipsky resigned from Santos’ office in mid-November, shortly after a damning report by the House Ethics Committee found that the former congressman misused campaign funds and accused him of violating criminal law, Semafor reported at the time. 

The House voted to expel Santos on Dec. 1 shortly after the report was released. 

Lipsky did not respond to multiple emails from Fox News Digital regarding the new role. A voicemail was left at Mace’s Washington, D.C., office Friday similarly seeking confirmation, but was not returned.

The staffer defended working for Santos last February in an interview with Business Insider, as revelations were breaking that the ex-congressman lied about his work history, education and family heritage, among other details. ‘At the end of the day, the congressman has a job to do, and he needs people to help him do that,’ she said at the time.

Santos is facing 23 federal charges related to misuse of donor funds, identity theft and other accusations. The most recent charges were levied against him in October.

The report of Lipsky’s hiring comes after Mace’s office lost several senior staffers in recent months, including her chief of staff, deputy chief and communications director.T

Mace was accused of making lewd comments in the office by three sources who spoke anonymously with the Daily Mail in December. 

A Daily Beast report from November claimed Mace had a ‘handbook’ for staffers that allegedly said, among other things, that her office must send out at least one press release per day and put her on TV at least nine times per week.

Mace told Fox News Digital during a Nov. 3 interview that she had not read the report, and shrugged off its accusations.

‘If someone wants to attack me for working hard and being demanding and wanting to ensure that our staff is organized and working hard for the almost 800,000 constituents that they represent, game on. Bring it. I don’t care. We’re going to continue to work hard for the Lowcountry, for South Carolina, and for the nation,’ she said at the time.

The South Carolina Republican was one of eight House GOP lawmakers who voted to oust Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as speaker last year. 

The Israeli military knows the location of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar but has not launched strikes against him because he is using Israeli hostages as human shields, according to multiple reports in Israeli media.

Israel has been publicly searching for Sinwar in southern Gaza for weeks, with reports suggesting he is somewhere in Hamas’ labyrinth of tunnels beneath the city of Khan Younis. The IDF has refused to comment on reports that it knows the terrorist leader’s location, however.

‘The reports coming out of Israel over the last two days echo what I have heard for a few weeks,’ Jonathan Schanzer, vice president at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The Times of Israel. ‘Namely, the Israelis have a good idea where Yahya Sinwar is hiding.’

Israel believes there are at least 133 Israeli and foreign hostages being held in Gaza, though it is unclear how many of them remain alive.

Israeli forces took over Sinwar’s private compound in Gaza weeks ago, but said the leader had long since fled the residence.

Reports from some hostages who have been released say Sinwar met with them a few days after they were taken from Israel into Gaza.

‘Sinwar was with us three-four days after we got there,’ Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, told the Davar news outlet. ‘I asked him how he wasn’t ashamed, to do such a thing to people who for years support peace? He didn’t answer. He was quiet.’

The reports about Sinwar also indicate that Israel knows the location of at least some of the remaining Israeli hostages.

Both sides are currently engaged in negotiations over a potential second round of hostage exchanges. Hamas expressed interest in exchanging 40 Israeli hostages for 120 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons last week, but Israel rejected the deal.

Hamas negotiators also grew cold last week after one of its leaders, Saleh al-Arouri, was killed in an explosion in Beirut, Lebanon. Israel has not claimed responsibility for the strike.

While Israel remains open to a hostage deal on the right terms, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has indicated that the war against Hamas in Gaza will last for ‘many more months.’