Intelligence agency officials like former CIA Director John Brennan must be held accountable for their role in advancing allegations about President Donald Trump’s connections with Russia during the 2016 election, according to the White House.

‘President Trump was right — again,’ White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to Fox News Digital. ‘Those who engaged in this political scandal must be held accountable for the fraud they committed against President Trump and the lies they told to the American people.’

Leavitt’s comments come after a new lessons-learned review that CIA Director John Ratcliffe declassified Wednesday determined that the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency’s Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) examining Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election deviated from intelligence standards that led to some ‘procedural anomalies.’

The review determined that the ‘decision by agency heads to include the Steele Dossier in the ICA ran counter to fundamental tradecraft principles and ultimately undermined the credibility of a key judgment.’ 

The ‘Steele dossier,’ composed by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele as part of opposition research on Trump during the 2016 campaign, featured salacious material and unfounded allegations about Trump’s connections to Russia. Trump has denied the allegations included in the document. 

Specifically, the CIA’s new review found that the CIA’s deputy director for analysis said in a December 2016 email to Brennan that including the dossier in any capacity jeopardized ‘the credibility of the entire paper.’

‘Despite these objections, Brennan showed a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness,’ the new review stated. ‘When confronted with specific flaws in the Dossier by the two mission center leaders – one with extensive operational experience and the other with a strong analytic background – he appeared more swayed by the Dossier’s general conformity with existing theories than by legitimate tradecraft concerns. Brennan ultimately formalized his position in writing, stating that ‘my bottomline is that I believe that the information warrants inclusion in the report.’’

Brennan served as director of the CIA from March 2013 to January 2017 under the Obama administration. 

Brennan could not be reached for comment by Fox News Digital. 

Likewise, the review said Brennan had sent a note to intelligence community analysts one day before their only session coordinating on the ICA that he had met with then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and then-FBI Director James Comey.

In that message, Brennan told the CIA workforce that ‘there is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in our recent Presidential election.’

Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report. 

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently placed nearly 140 employees on administrative leave amid an investigation into employees who signed on to a letter allegedly using their official titles and EPA positions.

Written as agency employees, the letter contained information that misled the public about agency business, according to officials.

The EPA confirmed it placed 139 employees on administrative leave pending an investigation.

‘The Environmental Protection Agency has a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging and undercutting the administration’s agenda as voted for by the great people of this country last November,’ an EPA spokesperson told Fox News Digital on Thursday.

The letter came after President Donald Trump’s administration in April fired or reassigned nearly 500 EPA employees.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin confirmed 280 staffers in the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, Office of Inclusive Excellence, and EPA regional offices, were fired. 

Zeldin added that 175 others were reassigned. 

The EPA’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and Environmental Justice arms were also eliminated, as Zeldin cut back more than 30 Biden-era regulations.

Though more than a hundred employees were allegedly put on leave, there are thousands of employees at the agency.

The EPA did not provide Fox News Digital with any additional information about the situation.

President Donald Trump’s agenda appeared on life support as defectors in the House GOP, for a time, appeared ready to torpedo it. But in the end, only two Republicans voted against the bill, and it’s now heading to the president’s desk.

Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., were the sole defectors against Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill.’ House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., could only afford to lose three Republicans, given that no Democrat was willing to cross the aisle to support the $3.3 trillion megabill.

While he did vote to support the procedural hurdle to get the bill on the floor, Massie’s decision to vote against the bill was seemingly predetermined. He has continually argued that the colossal tax, border, defense and energy package would add trillions to the nation’s debt and do little to actually curb Washington’s spending addiction.

And he was not among the many conservatives who Trump and Republican leadership tried to pressure throughout the day on Wednesday, nor as the floor stayed open into early Thursday afternoon.

‘[Trump] reaches out every day on Twitter, reaching out with a million dollars of ads in my district with a picture of me and the Ayatollah,’ Massie said. ‘So, that’s the only sort of reaching out I’ve seen so far.’

While Trump did not directly single him out, the president did call on holdout Republicans to stop holding the bill hostage late Wednesday night, and declared on Truth Social that ‘MAGA IS NOT HAPPY, AND IT’S COSTING YOU VOTES!!!’  

Trump had previously threatened Massie with a primary challenger, as he did with Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., before his retirement announcement, for defecting against the bill. 

But senior White House officials told reporters on a call just after the bill passed that the president had not threatened a primary against lawmakers to earn their vote, and that lawmakers ‘well understand the President’s political power, and ultimately, they want his political power to be used for their benefit.’

Fitzpatrick had raised concerns about changes the Senate GOP had made to Medicaid reforms in the bill but had not publicly staked a position until the procedural vote.

He was the only ‘no’ vote on the rule, and that resistance carried into the final vote that ultimately saw House Republicans largely unify and pass the legislative behemoth.

Fitzpatrick said in a statement just minutes before the bill passed that he had voted to ‘strengthen Medicaid protections, to permanently extend middle class tax cuts, for enhanced small business tax relief, and for historic investments in our border security and our military,’ but that the Senate’s tweaks soured him to the bill.

‘However, it was the Senate’s amendments to Medicaid, in addition to several other Senate provisions, that altered the analysis for our PA-1 community,’ he said. ‘The original House language was written in a way that protected our community; the Senate amendments fell short of our standard.’

‘I believe in, and will always fight for, policies that are thoughtful, compassionate, and good for our community,’ he continued. ‘It is this standard that will always guide my legislative decisions.’ 

The Supreme Court ended its term last week, but the justices aren’t done yet, partly due to a legal blitz President Donald Trump has strategically deployed in his second term, one that’s proven surprisingly effective in advancing his sweeping agenda.

Lawyers for the Trump administration filed their 20th emergency application to the Supreme Court Thursday in just a 23-week period. 

The dizzying pace of applications comes as the administration looks to advance some of Trump’s sweeping policy actions. And, in many cases, the court’s 6-3 majority has given the administration the green light to proceed. 

The high court has ruled in Trump’s favor in the majority of emergency applications, allowing the administration to proceed with its ban on transgender service members in the military, its termination of millions of dollars in Education Department grants and its firing of probationary employees across the federal government, among many other actions.

Like most emergency orders, the rulings are often unsigned, giving little indication what the justices might be thinking.

Emergency applications — and the Supreme Court’s responses — aren’t meant to offer lasting relief. But Trump has found success using a ‘move fast and break things’ strategy to push key requests through the court’s so-called ‘shadow’ docket.

For context, Trump has filed more emergency applications in five months than his predecessors did in years. Former President Joe Biden submitted just 19 over his entire term, while presidents Obama and George W. Bush filed only eight combined during their time in office.

In the interim, the strategy has allowed him to enforce many of the sweeping executive orders he signed upon taking office. These orders were met with hundreds of lawsuits across the country and blocked by many lower courts, prompting the administration to appeal them, again and again, through the federal judiciary. 

For now, those near-term wins have energized Trump allies, allowing them to press forward with a blitz of executive actions and claim ‘victory,’ however temporary. The approach allows Trump to advance major policy priorities without relying on a slow-moving Congress.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., touted the close coordination between Congress and President Donald Trump to successfully pass the ‘one big, beautiful bill,’ saying the collaboration is part of the ‘beauty of unified government.’

Congress officially passed Trump’s multitrillion-dollar bill Thursday afternoon after back-to-back sleepless sessions for both the House and Senate.

The massive agenda package now goes to Trump’s desk to be signed into law just in time for Republicans’ self-imposed Fourth of July deadline.

The ‘big, beautiful bill’s’ passage marks the first major piece of legislation passed under the Trump administration and the first to pass while Republicans have control of the executive branch and both chambers of Congress.

Speaking with reporters after the mega-spending bill’s passage Thursday, Johnson said, ‘The beauty of unified government is this is exactly how it can work.

‘How it’s supposed to work is that you have an interaction between the executive and the legislative branches, because that’s what’s best for the people, and that coordination is going to yield great results for the folks.’

The speaker said people inside the Trump administration, including Cabinet secretaries, the vice president and the president, were all willing to take questions from members of Congress.

‘President Trump was so generous with his time answering questions himself. Vice President JD Vance was directly engaged. We had Cabinet secretaries at a number of different federal agencies answering questions from members. Some of them even brought their agency attorneys in to get really deep in the weeds on the details,’ said Johnson.

‘We had a tough four years before this last election cycle,’ the speaker added. ‘We knew that if we got unified government, we’d have to quite literally fix every area of public policy. Everything was an absolute disaster under the Biden-Harris radical woke Progressive Democrat regime.’

The bill, which advances Trump’s policies on taxes, the border, defense, energy and the national debt, narrowly passed the House of Representatives in a mostly party-line vote. All but two Republicans, Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., voted for the bill, which passed 218-214.

It’s a commanding victory for Johnson and for the president, both of whom spent hours overnight trying to persuade GOP critics of the bill.

Speaking after the bill’s passage, Johnson explained his role in getting GOP holdouts to switch their vote to ‘yes,’ saying, ‘My leadership style is I try to be a servant leader.’

He said that because many members wanted to take time to ‘go really deep in the weeds’ on changes the Senate made to the bill, he felt it was his job as speaker to give each member the time to have their concerns addressed.

‘I knew as the leader that we would have to take the time to do that,’ he explained. ‘And, so, some of that went late into the night, and I was not going to make anybody — I was not going to demand anybody’s vote or their position on the bill until they felt that they had exhausted that opportunity. So, we did it. And that’s how we got everybody to ‘yes.’’

Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.

Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman secretly met with President Donald Trump and other key officials in the White House on Thursday to discuss de-escalation efforts with Iran, multiple sources confirmed with Fox News.

Khalid, also known as KBS, is the younger brother of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Multiple sources told Fox News Channel’s chief political anchor Bret Baier about the meeting.

According to sources, the talks included discussions about de-escalation with Iran and getting to the negotiating table.

The talks were also reportedly about ending the war in Gaza and negotiating the release of the remaining hostages – whether dead or alive – and about working toward peace in the Middle East.

Although the talks were not exclusively about the possibility of normalization with Israel, sources said the conversation dealt with steps that needed to occur to get there.

Sources also said, ‘there was progress and optimism on all fronts.’

The Saudis are in the process of finalizing a defense and trade deal with the U.S., and the message shared between the two allies, sources added, is that they see eye-to-eye on all issues.

The meeting comes days after Trump said other nations have suggested they would like to join the Abraham Accords amid recent Middle East shakeups that saw Israel and the U.S. inhibit Iran’s nuclear ambitions during what has been dubbed the ’12-Day War.’

The Abraham Accords, which sought to normalize relations between Israel, Sunni Gulf States and North African countries, was signed at the White House during the first Trump administration in September 2020.

US special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff said on June 25 that expanding the accords is one of the president’s ‘key objectives’ and predicted that the administration will have some ‘big announcements’ on countries coming into the accords soon.

Last week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt named Syria as one of the nations the president was keen to join, noting their historic meeting in Saudi Arabia earlier in the year.

One of the largest Hebrew-language outlets, Israel Hayom, reported Tuesday that Israeli National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi believes those countries are Syria and Lebanon as the top Middle East states who could join the Abraham Accords.

In May, Trump asked Syrian President al-Sharaa to fully normalize relations with Israel in exchange for sanctions relief. 

‘The barriers of entry for expanding the Abraham Accords are incredibly low. It will not surprise me if President Trump expands the Accords within his second term,’ Robert Greenway, former senior director for the National Security Counciland key architect of the Abraham Accords, told Maria Bartiromo, on ‘Mornings With Maria’ on FOX Business.

After the completion of the Abraham Accords, which normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan in 2020, there was a growing expectation among U.S. officials and Middle East experts that Saudi Arabia would follow suit.

In February, Fox News Digital reported that Trump administration officials said the White House was seeking an expansion of the Abraham Accords.

The Biden administration faced criticism for failing to expand the Abraham Accords and for picking fights with states who made peace with Israel as part of the landmark agreement.

Fox News Digital’s Benjamin Weinthal, Morgan Phillips and Taylor Penley contributed to this report.

The Supreme Court ended its term last week, but the justices aren’t done yet, partly due to a legal blitz President Donald Trump has strategically deployed in his second term, one that’s proven surprisingly effective in advancing his sweeping agenda.

Lawyers for the Trump administration filed their 20th emergency application to the Supreme Court Thursday in just a 23-week period. 

The dizzying pace of applications comes as the administration looks to advance some of Trump’s sweeping policy actions. And, in many cases, the court’s 6-3 majority has given the administration the green light to proceed. 

The high court has ruled in Trump’s favor in the majority of emergency applications, allowing the administration to proceed with its ban on transgender service members in the military, its termination of millions of dollars in Education Department grants and its firing of probationary employees across the federal government, among many other actions.

Like most emergency orders, the rulings are often unsigned, giving little indication what the justices might be thinking.

Emergency applications — and the Supreme Court’s responses — aren’t meant to offer lasting relief. But Trump has found success using a ‘move fast and break things’ strategy to push key requests through the court’s so-called ‘shadow’ docket.

For context, Trump has filed more emergency applications in five months than his predecessors did in years. Former President Joe Biden submitted just 19 over his entire term, while presidents Obama and George W. Bush filed only eight combined during their time in office.

In the interim, the strategy has allowed him to enforce many of the sweeping executive orders he signed upon taking office. These orders were met with hundreds of lawsuits across the country and blocked by many lower courts, prompting the administration to appeal them, again and again, through the federal judiciary. 

For now, those near-term wins have energized Trump allies, allowing them to press forward with a blitz of executive actions and claim ‘victory,’ however temporary. The approach allows Trump to advance major policy priorities without relying on a slow-moving Congress.

North Korean officials accused the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) of running ‘an absurd smear campaign’ after announcing that it had unraveled several schemes by the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea (DPRK) to fund the regime through remote information technology work for U.S. companies.

Earlier this week, the DOJ said North Korean actors were helped by individuals in the U.S., China, the United Emirates and Taiwan to obtain employment with over 100 U.S. companies, including Fortune 500 companies.

The scheme allegedly involved the workers getting laptops from the companies that hired them and allowing remote North Korean IT workers to remotely access the computers. In another scheme, North Korean IT workers used false identities to gain employment with a blockchain research and development company in Atlanta, Georgia, and steal over $900,000 in virtual currency.

As part of its announcement about the North Korean scheme, the DOJ unsealed a five-count indictment against Zhenxing Wang, a U.S. national living in New Jersey, who has since been arrested.

Wang and his co-conspirators, the DOJ said, obtained remote IT work with U.S. companies and generated over $5 million in revenue.

Also charged in the indictment are Chinese nationals Jing Bin Huang, Baoyu Zhou, Tong Yuze, Yongzhe Xu, Ziyou Yuan and Zhenbang Zhou. Taiwanese nationals Mengting Liu and Enchia Liu were also charged in the indictment.

Also indicted was U.S. national Kejia ‘Tony’ Wang, also of New Jersey, who was charged separately.

North Korean news agency KCNA reported that a spokesperson for the DPRK Foreign Ministry lambasted the U.S. judicial system for its actions against DPRK citizens on the suspicion of a cybercrime.

‘The recent incident is an absurd smear campaign and grave violation of sovereignty aimed at tarnishing the image of our state as it is a continuation of the hostile move of the successive U.S. administrations that have talked much about the non-existent ‘cyber threat’ from the DPRK,’ the spokesperson reportedly said. ‘The Foreign Ministry of the DPRK expresses serious concern over the U.S. judicial authorities’ provocation which is threatening and encroaching on the security, rights and interests of our citizens by fabricating the groundless ‘cyber’ drama, and strongly denounces and rejects it.’

The spokesperson accused the U.S. of creating ‘international cyberspace instability,’ and not the DPRK.

‘The U.S. has long been posing a constant threat to the cybersecurity of the DPRK and other sovereign states by making cyber space a scene of battle and abusing the cyber issue as a political weapon to tarnish the image of other countries and impair the exercise of their legitimate rights,’ the spokesperson said. 

‘The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has the right to take a proper and proportionate countermeasure to thoroughly protect the security and rights of its citizens from the judicial enforcement for a sinister political purpose, and to call to strict legal account the outsiders who took malicious action,’ the spokesperson concluded.

The DOJ said the indictment alleges that from 2021 and through most of 2024, the defendants and other co-conspirators compromised the identities of over 80 people in the U.S. to obtain remote jobs at more than 100 companies. As a result, the victim companies incurred legal fees, computer network remediation costs and other damages and losses to the tune of at least $3 million.

Kejia and Zhenxing, along with at least four other U.S. facilitators, allegedly helped overseas IT workers with various parts of the scheme.

Kejia and Zhenxing allegedly established shell companies with websites and financial accounts to make it appear as though the overseas IT workers were affiliated with legitimate businesses in the U.S. Once established, the two allegedly received money from U.S. companies, and the funds were transferred to co-conspirators overseas.

In exchange for their services, Kejia, Zhenxing and the other four conspirators in the U.S. received at least $696,000 from the IT workers.

The DOJ said one of the companies the schemers allegedly accessed data from was a defense contractor that develops artificial intelligence-powered equipment and technology. By accessing the company’s data, the schemers were privy to International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), the DOJ said.

The DOJ also announced that the FBI and Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) seized 17 web domains used as part of the scheme, along with 29 financial accounts holding tens of thousands of dollars, used to launder revenue for the North Korean regime.

The DOJ unveiled another part of the scheme, which resulted in a five-count wire fraud and money laundering indictment against four North Korean nationals: Kim Kwang Jin, Kang Tae Bok, Jong Pong Ju and Change Nam II.

The suspects are accused of scheming to steal virtual currency from two companies, with a value of over $900,000 at the time of the thefts, and to launder the proceeds.

All four nationals, the DOJ said, are at large and wanted by the FBI.

Speaking to a crowd of supporters in Iowa on Thursday night, President Donald Trump announced that the military flight team that launched the strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities will be honored at the White House on Independence Day.

Trump said that he took issue with early media reports suggesting that the strikes on Iran only partially damaged the targets because he considered it an insult to the ‘great’ American military members who executed the mission.

Remember when CNN said it wasn’t obliterated? It was maybe damaged or damaged badly, but obliterated is too strong a word. No, it was obliterated. That’s now been proven,’ said Trump.

They were trying to demean me by saying that, but they were really demeaning those great pilots and people and mechanics that got those planes over there and were able to shoot from high up in the air, going very, very fast, with potentially a lot of things being shot at them, and hit every single one,’ he said. ‘They’re trying to demean me, but to me, they were demeaning them. And they got out of the plane, and they said, ‘What? We hit every single target.’ They know better than anybody.’

These people did one of the greatest military hits and maneuvers in the history of our country, and I want them to be appreciated for it,’ the president went on. ‘So, they’re coming. They’re coming to the White House tomorrow night.’

They’re going to be in Washington tomorrow at the White House, and we’re going to be celebrating.’

Trump said the White House will host not only the pilots, but the entire flight crew, including ‘the people that flew the other planes’ and ‘the mechanics that had these planes going for 37 hours without a stop.’

China, Russia, they were all watching. Everybody was watching,’ he said. ‘We have the greatest equipment anywhere in the world. We have the greatest people anywhere in the world, and we have the strongest military anywhere in the world.’

During his address on Thursday, Trump also claimed that Iran called ahead of their retaliatory strike on the U.S. military base in Qatar to clear the attack with the White House.

They called me to tell me they have to take a shot at us. This was Iran. Very respectful. That means they respect us because we dropped 14 bombs. They said we’d like to take 14 shots at you. I said, ‘Go ahead, I understand,’’ he said.

‘They said where they would do it. I said, ‘Good.’ We emptied out the fort. It was a beautiful military base in Qatar who treated us really fantastically well,’ he said.

Trump claimed that Iran went so far as to ask what time of day would be acceptable for their retaliatory strike.

‘They said, ‘Sir, is 1:00 okay?’ I said it was fine, [they said], ‘We could make it later.’ And we had nobody but four gunners,’ he said. So, all of a sudden, they said, ‘We’re ready.’ And they were a little nervous about doing it. I want to tell, you can you imagine, they were nice enough – this is Iran – to call me and tell me that they would like to shoot me at 14 times, so they want to shoot us. And I said, go ahead. And they shot 14 high grade, very fast missiles every single one of them was shot down routinely by these four unbelievable gunmen. And they did their job. And that was the end of that.’