Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has called on the FBI to conduct a counterintelligence threat assessment on the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Schumer said on the Senate floor on Tuesday that the FBI assessment should accomplish three things: determine if foreign intelligence agencies could gain access to the information ‘the president does not want to release in the Epstein files, through methods that include cyber intrusion;’ identify any vulnerabilities that could be exploited by foreign intelligence agencies with access to non-public information in the Epstein files, ‘including being able to gain leverage over Donald Trump, his family, or other senior government officials;’ and result in the FBI publicly showing that the bureau is ‘developing mitigation strategies to counter these threats and safeguard our national security.’ 

At his weekly Democratic leadership press conference afterward, Schumer condemned what he categorized as the Epstein ‘cover-up,’ further taking aim at President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.

‘Trump promised he’d release the Epstein files while he was on the campaign trail, yet he has yet to do it,’ Schumer told reporters. ‘Speaker Johnson quite literally preferred to shut down Congress, sending everyone home on an Epstein recess to avoid the topic. Americans are right to be angry over the lack of transparency, but there are also some very real questions about risks to national security.’

‘Given Trump’s total about-face on releasing files and given what we know from the FBI whistleblowers, it’s natural to ask, what happens if our adversaries use cyberattacks and other means to access files and materials into Epstein that are damaging or worse for President Trump and or those around him?’ Schumer continued. ‘What happens if the Epstein files end up in the hands of Russia or North Korea, or Chinese governments? Unless the Epstein files are fully released to the public, could our adversaries use that, Epstein, to use that information to blackmail someone like the president? 

Last Thursday, Schumer noted, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services were among several government agencies hacked as part of a breach to Microsoft SharePoint system. 

‘This was confirmed that it was Chinese actors. So we don’t need this happening again,’ Schumer said. ‘We have to ensure that it can’t happen. National security is not and should never be a partisan issue. We need to do everything we can to make sure we protecting the U.S. and American families. This report is vital in doing that. Beyond that, there is one more thing Donald Trump could do to quell people’s anger, confusion, frustration, and/or deep fears. That is, release the files.’ 

Last week, Johnson ended the House legislative session a day early, averting a potential vote on a resolution by Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif., that would have compelled the Justice Department and the FBI to release the Epstein files. Johnson asserted on Sunday that House Republicans supported ‘maximum disclosure’ but argued that the resolution was ‘reckless’ and poorly drafted, arguing that it ignored federal rules protecting grand jury materials and ‘would require the DOJ and FBI to release information that they know is false, that is based on lies and rumors and was not even credible enough to be entered into the court proceedings.’ 

Johnson said he supported the Trump administration’s stance that ‘all credible evidence and information’ be released, but emphasized the need for safeguards to protect victims’ identities.

During a bilateral meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Scotland on Monday, Trump was asked why he kicked Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club in West Palm Beach, Florida, years ago. 

‘That’s such old history. Very easy to explain, but I don’t want to waste your time by explaining it. But for years, I wouldn’t talk to Jeffrey Epstein. I wouldn’t talk because he did something that was inappropriate,’ Trump told reporters. ‘He hired help, and I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He stole people that worked for me. I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He did it again, and I threw him out of the place, persona non grata. I threw him out and that was it.’ 

Trump said he turned down an invitation to Epstein’s notorious island in the Caribbean and claimed former President Bill Clinton and former Harvard University President Larry Summers had gone. 

‘I never went to the island and Bill Clinton went there, supposedly 28 times. I never went to the island, but Larry Summers, I hear, went there. He was the head of Harvard and many other people that are very big people. Nobody ever talks about them,’ Trump said. ‘I never had the privilege of going to his island. And I did turn it down. But a lot of people in Palm Beach were invited to his island. In one of my very good moments, I turned it down.’ 

Fox News’ Tyler Olson contributed to this report.

The Senate confirmed President Donald Trump’s nominee Emil Bove as a federal judge Tuesday, handing a controversial leader at the Department of Justice a lifetime role on a powerful appellate court.

Bove was narrowly confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit in a 50-49vote with no support from Democrats. His confirmation followed a contentious weeks-long vetting process that included three whistleblower complaints and impassioned outside figures voicing both support and opposition to his nomination.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said from the Senate floor before the vote that he supported Bove and believed the nominee had been the target of ‘unfair accusations and abuse.’

‘He has a strong legal background and has served his country honorably. I believe he will be a diligent, capable, and fair jurist,’ Grassley said. 

Bove’s ascension to the appellate court marks a peak in his legal career.

He started out as a high-achieving student, college athlete and Georgetown University law school graduate. He went on to clerk for two federal judges and worked for about a decade as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, leading high-profile terrorism and drug trafficking cases through 2019.

Alongside Todd Blanche, now a deputy attorney general, Bove led Trump’s personal defense team during the president’s criminal prosecutions. Blanche told Fox News Digital in an interview last month that Bove was a ‘brilliant lawyer’ who authored the vast majority of their legal briefs for Trump’s cases. In a letter to the Senate, attorney Gene Schaerr called Bove’s brief writing ‘superb.’

Bove will leave behind his job as principal associate deputy attorney general at the DOJ. Attorney General Pam Bondi congratulated him in a statement.

‘This is a GREAT day for our country,’ Bondi wrote on X. ‘I cannot thank Emil enough for his tireless work and support at @TheJusticeDept. He will be missed — and he will be an outstanding judge.’

Two Republicans, Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, voted against Bove.

Democrats and some who crossed paths with Bove during his time in New York and at DOJ headquarters fiercely opposed his nomination and said he was unqualified.

One whistleblower, Erez Reuveni, had become a successful prosecutor at the DOJ over the last 15 years when he was fired under Bove’s watch. Reuveni said he was party to a meeting in March in which Bove floated defying any court orders that would hinder one of Trump’s most legally questionable deportation plans, a claim Bove denies. Reuveni also said the culture at the DOJ, particularly during the most intense moments of immigration lawsuits, involved misleading federal judges and was like nothing he had experienced during his tenure, which included Trump’s first term.

Two other anonymous whistleblowers emerged at the eleventh hour during the confirmation process and vouched for Reuveni’s claims.

A spokeswoman for Grassley told Fox News Digital the third whistleblower only brought claims to Senate Democrats and did not attempt to engage with Grassley. Grassley’s staff eventually met with the whistleblower’s lawyers after the chairman’s office reached out, the spokeswoman said.

Grassley said his staff interviewed more than a dozen people to vet the initial whistleblower claims and could not find evidence that Bove urged staff to defy the courts.

‘Even if you accept most of the claims as true, there’s no scandal,’ Grassley said. ‘Government lawyers aggressively litigating and interpreting court orders isn’t misconduct—it’s what lawyers do.’

While in New York, Bove also alienated some colleagues. In 2018, a band of defense lawyers said in emails reported by The Associated Press that Bove could not ‘be bothered to treat lesser mortals with respect or empathy.’ Another lawyer who had interactions with Bove in New York told Fox News Digital he was a ‘bully’ who browbeat people. 

A group that opposes Bove’s nomination, Justice Connection, published a letter signed by more than 900 former DOJ employees calling for the Senate to reject Bove’s nomination.

Among their concerns was that Bove led the controversial dismissal of Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ federal corruption charges. Several DOJ officials resigned in protest over Bove’s orders to toss out the charges. In the letter, the former employees said Bove has been ‘trampling over institutional norms’ and that he lacked impartiality.

Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats, in an unusual move, staged a walkout at a hearing on Bove before a recent vote to advance his nomination. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called him a ‘henchman,’ a description Democrats have widely adopted for him.

‘He’s the extreme of the extreme,’ Schumer told reporters. ‘He’s not a jurist. He’s a Trumpian henchman. That seems to be the qualification for appointees these days.’

Bove defended himself against critics during his confirmation hearing.

‘I am not anybody’s henchman. I’m not an enforcer,’ Bove said. ‘I’m a lawyer from a small town who never expected to be in an arena like this.’

Fox News’ Alex Miller contributed to this report.

Longtime Democratic operative Steve Ricchetti is appearing before House investigators on Wednesday, the seventh former White House aide to be summoned for Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer’s probe.

Ricchetti most recently served as counselor to President Joe Biden during the vast majority of the Biden White House’s four-year term.

He’s now expected to sit down with House Oversight Committee staff for a closed-door transcribed interview that could last several hours.

Comer, R-Ky., is investigating whether Biden’s top White House aides concealed signs of mental decline in the president, and if that meant executive actions were signed via autopen without his knowledge.

Ricchetti first began working for Biden in 2012, when he was appointed as counselor to the vice president during the Obama administration. He was soon promoted to Biden’s chief of staff in late 2013.

Ricchetti, who made a living as both a lobbyist and a Democratic insider, chaired Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign as well.

The committee’s interest in him, however, lies in his alleged key role in managing the White House while aides reportedly worked to obscure signs of the president’s mental decline.

‘As Counselor to former President Biden, you served as one of his closest advisors. According to a report, you were part of a group of insiders who implemented a strategy to minimize ‘the president’s age-related struggles,’’ Comer wrote to Ricchetti in June, referencing a Wall Street Journal report.

‘The scope and details of that strategy cannot go without investigation. If White House staff carried out a strategy lasting months or even years to hide the chief executive’s condition—or to perform his duties—Congress may need to consider a legislative response.’

Axios reporter Alex Thompson, who co-wrote ‘Original Sin’ with CNN host Jake Tapper about Biden’s cognitive decline and his aides’ alleged attempts to cover it up, told PBS program Washington Week earlier this year that Ricchetti was part of a small group of insiders that some dubbed Biden’s ‘Politburo.’

He also played a key role in Biden’s legislative agenda, most notably as one of the Democratic negotiators working with then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to avoid a full-blown fiscal crisis over the U.S. national debt in early 2023.

It comes after another close former aide, former White House Chief of Staff Ronald Klain, appeared before investigators for his own transcribed interview last week.

Like Klain, Ricchetti is appearing on voluntary terms—the fourth former Biden aide to do so.

Three of the previous six Biden administration officials who appeared before the House Oversight Committee did so under subpoena. Former White House physician Kevin O’Connor, as well as former advisers Annie Tomasini and Anthony Bernal, all pleaded the Fifth Amendment during their compulsory sit-downs.

But the three voluntary transcribed interviews that have occurred so far have lasted more than five hours, as staff for both Democrats and Republicans take turns in rounds of questioning.

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he may skip the G20 summit in South Africa in November over the nation’s ‘very bad policies,’ and instead send someone else to represent the United States.

Trump made the remarks aboard Air Force One in response to a reporter’s question as he returned from a trip to Scotland, where the president achieved a massive trade deal with the European Union.

‘I think maybe I’ll send somebody else because I’ve had a lot of problems with South Africa,’ Trump said. ‘They have some very bad policies.’

‘Very, very bad policies, like policies where people are being killed,’ Trump added.

In May, Trump confronted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House with news clippings and a video allegedly showing grave treatment of White farmers.

Trump has claimed that White Afrikaner South African farmers are being slaughtered and forced off their land. The Afrikaners are descendants of mostly Dutch settlers who first arrived in South Africa in 1652. 

South Africa and its president have denied claims of genocide and harassment. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio already boycotted a G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in South Africa earlier this year over the government’s controversial land seizure policy.

Both the Trump and former Biden administrations have also criticized South Africa after the nation accused Israel of genocide in Gaza and brought a case to the International Court of Justice.

Fox News Digital’s Greg Norman contributed to this report.

The Senate confirmed its first nominee of the week ahead of what is expected to be a jam-packed schedule to ram through as many of President Donald Trump’s picks as possible.

David A. Wright, Trump’s pick to lead the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a five-year term, was confirmed in the upper chamber on a 50to 39 vote on Monday. It’s not Wright’s first time as chair of the commission, having first served in the role beginning in 2020.

Trump had previously tapped Wright during his first term, and again selected him to lead the NRC earlier this year. His new term is set to end in 2030.

The NRC is an independent regulatory agency tasked with regulating commercial nuclear power plants, reactor licensing and renewal and other elements related to protecting public health and safety when it comes to nuclear energy. Wright’s confirmation comes on the heels of Trump’s announcement that the U.S. and European Union were entering a trade deal that would see the bloc purchase $750 billion of U.S. energy over the next three years. 

While the commission is independent from other arms of the government, Senate Democrats have balked at recent attempts to make the regulatory body, in their view, more partisan.

Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order that demanded the agency consider making its safety standards less stringent, shortening the timelines for environmental reviews and a quadrupling of the nation’s nuclear power capacity by 2050: all part of the president’s quest to ensure America’s energy dominance. 

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.V., argued that over the last seven years that Wright has been a part of the commission, first as a commissioner beginning in 2018 and then as chair, he would fulfill the president’s wishes. 

‘Achieving this will require experienced and highly qualified Commissioners who are empowered to lead the Agency through a period of high expectations,’ she said in a statement. ‘Well, David Wright meets that mark.’

Then Trump fired a Democratic member of the commission last month, and a staffer from the president’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was reportedly detailed from the Department of Energy to the regulatory agency.  

That prompted Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, to warn of a ‘hostile takeover’ of the commission by the Energy Department.

The move hurt what began as bipartisan support for Wright’s nomination — Whitehouse initially backed him but changed his position.

‘I hoped to see Chairman Wright rise to the occasion, but circumstances right now at the NRC continue to deteriorate,’ he said in a statement. ‘I cannot presently support his renomination.’

Still, Wright’s confirmation is a win for both Senate Republicans and the White House after Trump called on the Senate GOP to ram his nominees through blockades set up by Senate Democrats.

There are now over 140 pending ‘civilian’ nominations for positions across the gauntlet of federal agencies, ambassadorships and judgeships. The Senate has moved at a blistering clip over the last six months to confirm nominees—they’ve clocked nearly 100 so far — the president has called on Senate Republicans to consider canceling the forthcoming August break to get more done. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., warned that if his colleagues across the aisle continued to slow walk the process in the upper chamber for the slew of remaining ‘uncontroversial’ nominees, or be prepared to stick around Washington. 

‘Or they can rein in their reflexive anti-Trump sentiment and allow some of his rank-and-file nominees to proceed by unanimous consent or voice vote — just as Republicans did when the roles were reversed,’ he said. ‘And I’d remind my colleagues about the dangerous and ugly precedent that they’re setting here. But the choice is theirs. But whether it’s the slow way or the fast way, we’re getting President Trump’s nominees confirmed.’