Second gentleman Doug Emhoff’s ex-wife released a statement defending her ex after he confessed to having an affair with a nanny during their marriage.

‘Doug and I decided to end our marriage for a variety of reasons, many years ago,’ Kerstin Emhoff told the Washington Post in a statement Saturday. ‘He is a great father to our kids, continues to be a great friend to me and I am really proud of the warm and supportive blended family Doug, Kamala, and I have built together.’

Emhoff admitted to having an affair with a nanny shortly after the Daily Mail published a report last week that the second gentleman had an affair with his daughter’s nanny and got her pregnant. The nanny’s close friend told the outlet that she did not keep the baby, but did not elaborate further. 

‘During my first marriage, Kerstin and I went through some tough times on account of my actions. I took responsibility, and in the years since, we worked through things as a family and have come out stronger on the other side,’ Emhoff told CNN last week of the affair. 

Emhoff and his first wife were married from 1992 to 2008 and share two adult children. Vice President Kamala Harris married Emhoff in 2014, and helped co-parent his children, who call their stepmom ‘mommala.’ 

The divorce cited ‘irreconcible differences’ as the motivation behind parting ways, the New York Post reported. 

Harris knew about the affair before they married, and the Biden 2020 campaign knew about it when it was vetting her for Biden’s vice presidential pick, CNN reported. 

Despite the affair and divorce, Kerstin Emhoff has posted supportive messages regarding her ex-husband’s second wife. 

‘LFG!!!! It’s time for democrats to put their differences aside and find common ground. We can’t give up and lose to DJT. ALL HANDS ON DECK!! Kamala Harris for President!’ she posted to her Instagram account, accompanied by a Time cover of Harris following President Biden dropping out of the 2024 race. 

‘For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I,’ she told CNN last month in defense of Harris. 

‘She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective and always present,’ she continued. ‘I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.’

Fox News Digital reached out to the vice president’s office for comment on the matter, but did not immediately receive a reply. 

As Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and her soon-to-be-announced running mate hit the campaign trail this week in all seven crucial battleground states, Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance will be close by.

The first-term senator from Ohio, who is former President Trump’s running mate on the GOP national ticket, plans to tail Harris as part of the Trump campaign’s plan to bracket the vice president and her running mate on their initial swing state tour.

Sources in the senator’s political orbit confirmed to Fox News that Vance will be in Philadelphia on Tuesday as the vice president kicks off her campaign swing. 

The senator is expected to use his stops, which are being described as media availabilities rather than rallies, to take aim at Harris over the key issues of inflation, border security and crime, which Republicans view as the vice president’s political Achilles’ heel.

The Vance events, which were first reported by Politico earlier on Monday, are also expected to feature ‘everyday Americans’ who have been negatively impacted by President Biden’s policies.

Vance is expected to stay close to Harris and her running mate as the Democratic ticket holds rallies Wednesday in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and Detroit, Michigan, and on Thursday in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Later in the week, Harris and her running mate will also hold rallies in Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.

The bracketing of Harris by Vance comes as the senator increasingly fits into the role of the GOP ticket’s attack dog, as well as a key ambassador to the top-dollar Republican donor class.

But Trump, who has a history of practicing in-your-face politics, has had no problem taking direct aim at Harris in the two weeks since she replaced Biden at the top of the Democrats’ ticket.

In social media posts this past weekend and at the rally with Vance in Atlanta, Georgia, on Saturday, Trump charged that the vice president had a ‘low IQ’ and was ‘dumb,’ and accused her of lacking ‘mental capacity.’

A key House committee is widening its probe into the major Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue.

Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., who chairs the Committee on House Administration, is investigating ActBlue over accusations it’s skirting campaign donation laws that allow for rampant fraud on the site.

In a letter sent to top officials on the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Monday, Steil urged them to ‘immediately initiate an emergency rulemaking to require political campaigns to verify the card verification value (‘CVV’) of donors who contribute online using a credit or debit card, and to prohibit political campaigns from accepting online contributions from a gift card or other prepaid credit cards.’

Republicans on the committee and other GOP officials have for months accused ActBlue of lax donor verification standards.

‘Following widespread allegations of fraudulent donations being reported to the FEC by ActBlue, one of the largest fundraising platforms in the country, this emergency rulemaking is necessary to reassure the American people that ActBlue is taking the necessary steps to protect its donors,’ Steil wrote.

According to his committee, whistleblowers who approached the panel in recent weeks have accused ActBlue of deliberately not using CVV numbers for donations to reduce the bar for verification. 

Whistleblowers have also reported the receipt of a significant number of donations from retirees living on a fixed income, and hundreds of donations of $2.50 from the same individual, according to the committee.

The site has been used to raise millions of dollars for Vice President Kamala Harris as she seeks to take on former President Trump in November.

As of Monday morning, however, a CVV number was required on the page accepting credit card donations for the vice president.

A CVV number was also required for credit card donations to several Democratic House candidates’ ActBlue pages checked by Fox News Digital, though donations were also accepted via Paypal, Venmo and Google Pay, which did not require the user to input such information.

As of spring last year, however, the FEC did not impose specific rules requiring CVV numbers for online political donations.

Steil’s letter also argued that the site’s acceptance of prepaid credit cards and gift cards fueled a ‘very real possibility that straw donors are making campaign donations with funds provided by another person or an unlawful donor including a foreign national. These issues present a serious loophole to the transparency and integrity of the campaign donation process, and an emergency rulemaking is required to rectify these issues.’

The committee said whistleblowers have also claimed prepaid gift cards and credit cards are being used to launder campaign contributions that would otherwise violate campaign finance laws.

It comes after similar investigations were launched by the GOP attorneys general of Virginia, Wyoming and Missouri last week.

ActBlue told Newsweek in response to those probes, ‘This investigation is nothing more than a partisan political attack and scare tactic to undermine the power of Democratic and progressive small-dollar donors. We welcome the opportunity to respond to these frivolous claims.’

The FEC declined to comment when reached by Fox News Digital.

ActBlue and the Harris campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., is getting a boost from her allies in the House’s left-wing ‘Squad’ on Monday, as her anti-Israel comments have her fighting for her political life in this week’s primary elections.

‘We have just ONE DAY ahead of us before primary Election Day. Come join Cori & some very special guests on Election Day eve to rally together and get out the vote!’ Bush’s campaign wrote on Instagram announcing the event.

It’s a virtual rally to be held on Zoom at 5 p.m. Eastern Time alongside Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., and Summer Lee, D-Pa.

Another notable guest is Hill Harper, an actor who is running in the Michigan Senate Democratic primary against Bush’s more moderate colleague, Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich.

Bowman’s appearance comes after he lost his own primary re-election bid to a more moderate, pro-Israel Democrat, Westchester County Executive George Latimer.

Bush has been viewed as the second-most embattled Squad member after Bowman, with pro-Israel groups actively campaigning against both progressive leftists. 

The two-term progressive Democrat is one of Congress’ harshest critics of Israel and its operation in Gaza. She has accused Israel’s government of waging a genocide on Palestinians and consistently voted against emergency funding for the Middle Eastern ally.

It has earned her opposition from within her own party, with the group Democratic Majority for Israel backing her opponent, Wesley Bell. He has also got the support of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a bipartisan pro-Israel lobbying group.

Tlaib, one of the Bush allies rallying for her Monday night, is Israel’s most outspoken critic in the House, having been censured over her verbal attacks against the Middle Eastern country. She also held up a sign accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being a ‘war criminal’ during his speech to Congress last month.

Bell, Bush’s opponent, is prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County. He’s leaned to the center with his campaign, contrasting with the Democratic incumbent’s progressive policies. 

She and her allies have sought to paint him as a right-wing operator, however, citing his past volunteer work for anti-abortion conservative Mark J. Byrne.

Bush is also going into Tuesday with the backing of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and his top two deputies.

Bell was endorsed by the editorial board of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, one of the district’s largest newspapers, late last month.

Former President Donald Trump has been blocked from five of the top social media platforms over the years, and all except one have returned his accounts as he runs for re-election in 2024. 

During his presidency, Trump saw his Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube accounts all suspended in 2021 following the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.

‘Since President Trump first ran for office, liberals in big tech have allowed terrorists and dictators to spout hate speech on their platforms while banning President Trump in a shameless attempt to help Democrats win elections,’ RNC Spokesperson Anna Kelly told Fox News Digital in a statement. ‘It won’t work – President Trump’s message is resonating with voters across the country, which is why he had the most successful TikTok launch in history, and he will continue to speak directly to the American people about his agenda to Make America Great Again.’

Trump’s Snapchat account was suspended in 2021 after the outlet claimed he was responsible for ‘multiple policy violations.’ It has not been restored since. 

Asked why the profile could not be restored several years later, a spokesperson for Snapchat told Trump’s team their terms of service prevented them from reinstating his account.

Trump War Room, an account working on behalf of the former president’s 2024 re-election campaign, blasted Snapchat in a post on X.

‘Snapchat REFUSES to reinstate President Trump’s account — but then shamelessly asks the Trump campaign to advertise with Snapchat Big Tech is all in for Kamala!’ Trump War Room wrote, alongside a screenshot of their communication with Snapchat.

Snapchat’s terms of service reportedly don’t allow for a terminated user to create a new account or be reinstated to their old one. 

In the same message, the spokesperson for Snapchat encouraged the Trump campaign to buy advertisements on the platform to reach a ‘key audience that can be persuaded to turn out for Trump.’

Meta suspended Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in 2021, but it reinstated them two years later.

‘Two years ago, we took action in what were extreme and highly unusual circumstances. We indefinitely suspended then-US President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts following his praise for people engaged in violence at the Capitol on January 6, 2021,’ Meta said in a statement. 

‘We then referred that decision to the Oversight Board — an expert body established to be an independent check and balance on our decision-making. The Board upheld the decision but criticized the open-ended nature of the suspension and the lack of clear criteria for when and whether suspended accounts will be restored, directing us to review the matter to determine a more proportionate response.’ 

Trump was also suspended from Twitter in 2021, but was given his account back after Elon Musk bought the company.

Youtube said its decision to reinstate Trump to the platform ‘carefully evaluated the continued risk of real-world violence, while balancing the chance for voters to hear equally from major national candidates in the run up to an election.’

Musk recently suggested that Google’s autocomplete search feature was omitting results for the assassination attempt against Trump.

‘Wow, Google has a search ban on President Donald Trump,’ Musk wrote. ‘Election interference?’ A Google spokesperson told FOX Business that there was no ‘manual action taken on these predictions.’

After being blocked from several of the top social media companies in the U.S., Trump launched his own platform, Truth Social, which he frequently uses to make public statements regarding his 2024 presidential campaign.

Fox News’ Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.

President Biden will meet with his national security team in the Situation Room Monday ahead of an anticipated Iranian attack against Israel. 

The meeting came a day after Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III spoke with his counterpart in Israel Sunday to reiterate U.S. support for the Jewish state as tensions escalate with Iran and its proxies, threatening a wider regional war after 10 months of fighting Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.  

Austin and Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant discussed U.S. force posture moves that the Defense Department is taking to bolster protection for U.S. forces in the region, support the defense of Israel, and deter and de-escalate broader tensions in the region, according to readout from the Pentagon. 

That meeting came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a Cabinet meeting Sunday that Israel is already in a ‘multi-front war’ with Iran and its proxies.

Tensions in the region are already at all-time highs after last week’s killing of a senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon and Hamas’ top political leader in Iran. Iran and its allies have blamed Israel and threatened retaliation. Hamas said it has begun discussions on choosing a new leader.

Netanyahu said Israel was ready for any scenario. Jordan’s foreign minister was making a rare trip to Iran as part of diplomatic efforts — ‘We want the escalation to end,’ Ayman Safadi said.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly told his counterparts on Sunday that Iran and Hezbollah could attack Israel as early as Monday, per Axios. 

Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, head of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) is expected to arrive in Israel Monday to coordinate preparations for the anticipated attack, according to the Times of Israel. 

In Israel, some prepared bomb shelters and recalled Iran’s unprecedented direct military assault in April following a suspected Israeli strike that killed two Iranian generals. Israel said almost all the drones and ballistic and cruise missiles were intercepted.

‘For years, Iran has been arming and financing terrorist organizations across the Middle East, including smuggling explosives into Israeli territory for terror attacks against civilians,’ IDF Spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a statement. ‘The IDF and ISA have already thwarted numerous attacks in which Claymore type explosives were smuggled into the country’s territory. We are determined to continue acting against Iranian terrorism wherever it may be.’

The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 people hostage. Israel’s brutal retaliation has led to the deaths of nearly 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Heavy airstrikes and ground operations have caused widespread destruction and displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people.

The militant group Hezbollah and Israel have continued to trade fire along the Lebanon border since the war began, with the severity growing in recent months. Hezbollah said it’s aimed at relieving pressure on fellow Iran-backed ally Hamas.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

White House National Security Council communications adviser John Kirby on Sunday dodged answering questions regarding the abrupt plea deal reversal provided to a trio of 9/11 terrorists last week. 

‘Is the president willing to let these terrorists escape the harshest penalty in the system of justice and let that be part of his legacy?’ Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich asked Kirby during an interview on ‘Fox News Sunday.’

‘Again, this was a decision made by a convening authority in the military chain of command, an independent convening authority,’ Kirby responded. 

‘He didn’t weigh in at all?’ Heinrich pressed. 

‘The secretary of defense has the authority to change the delegation of that – of that authority to the convening authority,’ Kirby continued. ‘I know that sounds kind of complicated, but he has the authority to do that. He did this on his own.’

‘But did the president weigh in?’ Heinrich asked again. 

‘This was a decision made by the secretary of defense,’ Kirby said, sparking Heinrich to say that she ‘didn’t hear an answer.’

The Department of Defense announced last week the Convening Authority for Military Commissions entered into pretrial agreements with Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi. The agreement included taking the death penalty off of the table for the three 9/11 plotters. 

As outrage mounted over the agreement, the White House said Biden did not play a role in the deal. 

‘The White House learned yesterday that the Convening Authority for Military Commissions entered into pretrial agreements, negotiated by military prosecutors, with KSM and other 9/11 defendants,’ a White House National Security Council spokesperson told Fox News Digital. ‘The President and the White House played no role in this process. The President has directed his team to consult as appropriate with officials and lawyers at the Department of Defense on this matter.’ 

Biden has also rejected a proposal last year that would have spared the three suspects from the death penalty.

After the news broke, the Defense Department abruptly backtracked on the agreement on Friday. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has now taken the lead on the case. 

‘Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pretrial agreements that you signed on July 31, 2024,’ the letter from the secretary reads. 

No explanation was offered as to why the matter was not settled before the deals were concluded and publicly announced. 

Heinrich pressed Kirby whether Biden asked Austin to rescind the deals to the trio of terrorists, to which the White House spokesman responded that Austin made an ‘independent decision.’ 

‘This was a decision made by the secretary of defense. It was an independent decision by him, certainly within his authorities, as in the chain of command at the Defense Department,’ Kirby responded. 

On Sunday, Kirby also addressed ongoing efforts to broker a cease-fire in Israel as war continues raging since Oct. 7, when Hamas launched an attack that killed more than 1,200 and led to the kidnapping of hundreds more.

‘Number one, we still believe a cease-fire deal is the best way to bring this war to an end. It’s also, we believe, very possible. We still believe the gaps are narrow enough to close,’ Kirby said. 

‘The other thing that we’ve been doing since the 7th of October is making sure that not only Israel has what it needs to defend itself, but that this war doesn’t escalate to become something broader, a regional war, a regional conflict. And that’s what you’re seeing us do.’

Concern has grown, however, that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not want a cease-fire. On CNN’s ‘State of the Union,’ deputy national security adviser Jonathan Finer said he could not weigh in on Biden’s private discussions with Netanyahu about a cease-fire deal, while noting that the two world leaders have a candid and long-established relationship. 

‘I won’t speak to the private conversations that take place between the president and the prime minister. What I will say is these are two people who have a four-decade-plus relationship. One of the extraordinary assets in the US-Israel relationship is this personal relationship between these two leaders in which they can speak to each other directly and candidly. That’s been the case since President Biden came to office, it’s certainly been the case since Oct. 7,’ Finer said when asked about Netanyahu potentially avoiding a cease-fire deal. 

‘The United States has been extremely clear, both publicly and privately, about how urgent we think it is that the cease-fire and hostage deal be established. Nothing that’s taken place over the last week or two has changed that sense of urgency, and if anything, part of why we believe this needs to happen as quickly as possible is because in the Middle East, at a time in which there are hostilities taking place, outside factors can infect and disrupt these talks. And so we don’t want to allow that to happen.’ 

Fox News Digital’s Stepheny Price contributed to this article.