Former President Joe Biden’s persistent use of a teleprompter during public events, including during a fundraiser with just a couple dozen supporters, left donors complaining for months and dashed their expectations of hearing from the 46th president, a new book claims. 

‘For most of the campaign, Biden only ever spoke with the assistance of a teleprompter, even for small private audiences,’ a new book, ‘2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America,’ reported. ‘The presence of the machine made for extremely awkward interactions in intimate settings, and irked donors who had paid thousands of dollars for a personal view of the president, not expecting a canned speech they could see on TV.’ 

‘He once read from a teleprompter in front of thirty people in the open kitchen of a Palo Alto mansion,’ the book continued. ‘Donors complained for months about the president’s reliance on the machine. Aides defended the teleprompter as a tool to keep the famously garrulous president on schedule.’ 

‘2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America’ was released Tuesday and authored by Josh Dawsey of the Wall Street Journal, Tyler Pager of the New York Times and Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post. It details the 2024 presidential campaign cycle, including Biden’s cratering health issues. 

The book detailed that just days after Biden’s disastrous June 2024 debate against President Donald Trump that opened the floodgates to typical Democrat supporters turning their backs on Biden ahead of the election, the president attended a campaign event at Virginia Democrat Rep. Dan Beyers’ house without a teleprompter. The book claims Biden only spoke for about six minutes.

‘At Beyer’s house, the campaign was eager to prove Biden could speak off the cuff. There was no teleprompter to be found. The president blamed his poor debate performance on a heavy travel schedule and said he ‘almost fell asleep onstage.’ He spoke for about six minutes,’ the book detailed. 

The word ‘teleprompter’ appears in the new book a dozen times, mostly referencing the president’s reliance on the machine, as well as concern among some staffers that using a teleprompter was crucial to the president avoiding the unexpected as his health deteriorated. 

‘The officials who planned events at the White House tried to avoid any surprises or unpredictable situations. If the president was going to speak, he would go to the podium, deliver remarks from a teleprompter, and leave. There was no room for creativity or spontaneity,’ the book states in a section on how Biden had fallen during a commencement in 2023 and staff devised plans to prevent another public fall in the future. 

‘Everyone could see the president was aging. He sometimes failed to recognize former staff at functions. Still, current aides insisted his decline was strictly physical, and even then they acknowledged it only by trying to Bubble Wrap the president and avoid any more catastrophes. Staff limited direct access to the president, keeping meetings with him small,’ the book continued.

Biden entered his 2024 reelection cycle already racked by claims and concerns that his mental acuity had slipped and he was not mentally fit to continue serving as president, which was underscored by special counsel Robert Hur’s report in February 2024 that rejected criminal charges against Biden for possessing classified materials, citing he was ‘a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’ Fox News has been reporting on Biden’s apparent health decline since at least 2020. 

Biden brushed off the claims throughout 2024, until his debate against Trump in June of that year, when he was seen tripping over his words, speaking in a far more subdued tenor than during his vice presidency, and losing his train of thought at times. The debate opened the floodgates to criticism among Democrats that Biden should step aside and pass the mantle to a younger generation of Democrats. 

After weeks of the White House and campaign staffers vowing Biden would stay in the race and to ‘keep the faith,’ Biden announced in a social media post on a Sunday afternoon in July 2024 that he dropped out of the race. He endorsed then-Vice President Kamala Harris to run for the Oval Office, giving her just over 100 days to launch her own campaign that failed to rally enough support when up against Trump. 

Fox News Digital reached out to Biden’s office regarding the claims in the new book, but did not immediately receive a reply.

The Cato Institute is warning that the federal government is testing the outer limits of executive power with President Donald Trump’s use of emergency tariffs, and it wants the courts to put a stop to it.

In a new amicus brief filed in V.O.S. Selections, Inc. v. Trump, Cato argues that the president overstepped his legal authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) by imposing steep tariffs on imports from countries including China, Mexico and Canada.

The libertarian thinktank argues the move undermines the Constitution’s separation of powers and expands executive authority over trade in ways Congress never intended.

‘This is an important case about whether the president can impose tariffs essentially whenever he wants,’ Cato Institute legal fellow Brent Skorup said in an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital. ‘There has to be a limit — and this administration hasn’t offered one.’

‘Tariff rates went up to 145% on some products from China,’ he said. ‘And the president’s lawyers couldn’t offer a limiting principle. That tells you the administration believes there’s no real cap, and that’s a problem.’

Cato’s brief urges the appeals court to uphold a lower court ruling that found the tariffs exceeded the president’s statutory authority. The U.S. Court of International Trade ruled earlier this year that the president’s use of IEEPA in this case was not legally authorized. The court said the law does not permit the use of tariffs as a general tool to fight drug trafficking or trade imbalances.

Skorup said in court the administration was unable to define a clear limit on its authority under IEEPA. 

‘They couldn’t articulate a cap,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing in the law that mentions duties or tariffs. That’s a job for Congress.’

The administration has defended its actions, arguing that IEEPA provides the necessary tools for the president to act swiftly in times of national emergency. Trump officials maintain that both the fentanyl crisis and America’s trade vulnerabilities qualify.

‘There are real emergencies, no one disputes that,’ Skorup said. ‘But declaring an emergency to justify global tariffs or solve domestic trade issues goes far beyond what most Americans would recognize as a legitimate use of emergency powers.’

Skorup acknowledged that the real issue may be how much discretion Congress gave the president in the first place. 

‘It’s a bipartisan problem. Presidents from both parties have taken vague laws and stretched them. Congress bears some of the blame for writing them that way,’ he said, adding that’s why courts should ‘step in and draw the line.’

For small businesses like V.O.S. Selections, the costs go beyond legal fees. Skorup said businesses who rely on imports, like V.O.S., have struggled to plan ahead as tariffs have been paused and reinstated repeatedly.

Skorup said there are several small businesses that rely on global imports and it becomes a ‘matter of survival’ when tariff rates change unexpectedly.

‘V.O.S. Selections imports wine and spirits and when the tariff rates go up unexpectedly, they can’t get products to their distributors as planned,’ he said. ‘And that’s true for others too, like pipe importers and specialized manufacturers. These companies don’t have the flexibility to absorb those costs or adjust overnight.’

If the appeals court sides with the administration, it could mark a major expansion of presidential power over trade policy. Skorup warned that such a ruling would allow future presidents to take similar actions with little oversight.

‘It would bless Congress’ ability to hand over immense economic power to the president,’ he said. ‘That would blur the separation of powers that the Constitution is supposed to protect.’

A decision from the appeals court is expected later this year.

The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

In a blockbuster report, the CIA has belatedly exposed the rank corruption among top intelligence officials who connived to frame President Donald Trump and drive him from office during his first term.  

Their pernicious lie was that Trump colluded with Russia to rig the 2016 presidential election in his favor. The principal piece of so-called evidence was a document known infamously as the dossier.  

It was secretly financed by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and Democrats, conceived by a foreign agent with a checkered past in espionage, and then brokered to solicitous collaborators at the FBI, CIA, the Department of Justice and the Trump-hating media.  

The dossier was garbage, of course. The FBI largely debunked it before Trump was even sworn in and fired its author, Christopher Steele, for lying as a confidential human source. But the bureau concealed those inconvenient facts under then-Director James Comey and deftly exploited the document as a cudgel to bludgeon the newly elected president.  

Comey was aided and abetted by others in the intelligence community, including CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. This malignant force of unelected officials plotted to smear Trump with what is surely the dirtiest trick in political history.  

Recently, current CIA Director John Ratcliffe declassified and released an internal agency review of the machinations that helped fuel the Russia hoax. In a statement posted on social media, Ratcliffe stated, ‘All the world can now see the truth: Brennan, Clapper and Comey manipulated intelligence and silenced career professionals — all to get Trump.’ 

Citing previously hidden records, the review concluded that Brennan, in particular, pushed for the phony dossier to be included in the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) to catalyze a false narrative against Trump. Senior CIA experts on Russia objected but were sidelined and silenced.  

The CIA’s deputy director for analysis warned Brennan in writing that including the discredited dossier in any capacity jeopardized ‘the credibility of the entire paper.’ Brennan didn’t care. The fiction penned by the ex-British spy conformed to the director’s preconceived fable that Trump colluded with Russia.  

The ICA, which was ordered by President Barack Obama, was rushed to completion just days before Trump’s inauguration. Brennan directed its composition and handpicked the analysts who compiled the ersatz information. To stifle dissent, 13 other key intelligence agencies were deliberately excluded. To put it bluntly, Trump was set up.  

According to the new CIA review, Comey and Clapper were all in on the scheme. In an interview with the New York Post, Ratcliffe said, ‘This was Obama, Comey, Clapper and Brennan deciding ‘We’re going to screw Trump.’’ 

They knew the dossier was junk, which motivated them to prop it up as a reliable indictment of Trump. By incorporating it in the ICA they could leak and propagate both documents as mutual corroboration. It was a clever ruse. An illusion.  

Those of us who have long covered the bogus collusion story knew it long ago. In my 2019 book, ‘Witch Hunt,’ I recounted how Brennan ‘insisted that the dossier be included in the classified intelligence report,’ but then told Congress under oath that the dossier was ‘not in any way used as the basis for the intelligence community’s assessment.’ Clapper’s testimony was nearly identical.  

Here is what I wrote in chapter 2: 

‘Brennan and Clapper were spinning a deception. A prominent colleague contradicted them and produced documents as proof that they were not telling the truth. In a classified letter to Congress, National Security Agency director Michael Rogers disclosed that the uncorroborated document (the dossier) ‘did factor into the ICA’ report. Having been caught in a falsehood, Clapper then repudiated his earlier statement. Brennan continued to deny all of it, the contrary evidence notwithstanding.’  

Neither Brennan nor Clapper was ever prosecuted for perjury.  

None of that bothered news organizations. MSNBC promptly hired Brennan, while Clapper went to work for CNN. I described what they did from their media perches:  

‘The two super spooks launched an all-out attack on Trump, exploiting their new television platforms to advance the toxic fiction that the president was a secret Russian asset who had ‘colluded’ with Putin. It didn’t matter to CNN that a House Intelligence Committee report determined that it had been Clapper who had leaked news of the phony dossier to the network before Trump had ever taken office.’  

The collusion narrative was a conspiracy itself. The collaborators knew it was a lie, but they manipulated the dossier and the ICA to peddle their fairy tale. With Hillary and her confederates, they engineered the hoax. Brennan even accused Trump of treason.  

Comey also knew the dossier was spurious, as I wrote in chapter 4:  

‘He knew exactly where the dossier came from and who paid for it. He used it as the primary basis for the warrants, used it as part of the nonpublic version of the intelligence community assessment, and used it to debrief President-elect Trump so that it could be leaked to the media in January 2017.’ 

They knew the dossier was junk, which motivated them to prop it up as a reliable indictment of Trump. By incorporating it in the ICA they could leak and propagate both documents as mutual corroboration. It was a clever ruse. An illusion.  

Comey’s decision to purloin and leak additional FBI documents triggered — just as he planned — the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his dilating investigation of Trump that hobbled his presidency for two years.  

On the day that Mueller issued his report concluding that there was no evidence of a Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy, the sheepish Brennan conceded, ‘I don’t know if I received bad information, but I think I suspected there was more than there actually was.’  

That’s quite the Jekyll-Hyde metamorphosis for a guy who enthusiastically endorsed the dossier and who kept claiming that ‘it was in line’ with his own CIA sources, in which he ‘had great confidence.’ That, too, was a fabrication, according to the newly released CIA review.  

What did Comey have to say?  In public, the master prevaricator dissembled and pleaded ignorance.  But before Congress, he was forced to admit that some of his actions would have been different had he known then what he knows now.  Not likely.  He was wedded to the artifice of collusion because he despised Trump. 

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has vowed a reckoning. She told Fox News, ‘We are digging deep to find everything that has been related to this, and I guarantee you there are some U.S. attorneys who are eager to see what we are finding — in some cases are already working their own cases to bring about that necessary accountability.’  

Unless those who unscrupulously weaponized their immense power for political purposes are held to account, it will happen again. And again. The only remedy for lawlessness is justice.  

The reckoning awaits. 

The State Department is investigating an impostor who reportedly pretended to be Secretary of State Marco Rubio with the help of AI. 

The mystery individual posing as one of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet members reached out to foreign ministers, a U.S. governor and a member of Congress with AI-assisted voice and text messages that mimicked Rubio’s voice and writing style, the Washington Post reported, citing a senior U.S. official and State Department cable. 

‘The State Department, of course, is aware of this incident and is currently monitoring and addressing the matter. The department takes seriously its responsibility to safeguard its information and continuously take steps to improve the department’s cybersecurity posture to prevent future incidents. For security reasons, we do not have any further details to provide at this time,’ State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said Tuesday. 

When asked by Fox News about Rubio’s reaction to being impersonated, she said, ‘We’re not at a point here where I will discuss or portray what actions are being taken or his reaction.’ 

‘The secretary… is very transparent, quite transparent, and he’s direct with everyone. I think that any description of his reaction, of course, belongs to him. And I would suspect that at some point we’ll have that for you,’ Bruce added. 

She also said that ‘We live in a technological age that we are well enmeshed in.’ 

It’s unclear who is using AI to impersonate Rubio, but it’s suspected they are doing so in an attempt to manipulate government officials ‘with the goal of gaining access to information or accounts,’ the State Department cable said, according to the Washington Post. 

The cable reportedly said the impersonation act started in mid-June when someone created a Signal account with the display name Marco.Rubio@state.gov — which isn’t Rubio’s actual email address. 

The July 3 cable reportedly added that the fake Rubio ‘contacted at least five non-Department individuals, including three foreign ministers, a U.S. governor, and a U.S. member of Congress.’ 

‘The actor left voicemails on Signal for at least two targeted individuals and in one instance, sent a text message inviting the individual to communicate on Signal,’ the Washington Post also cited the cable as saying. 

The impersonation attempt ultimately was unsuccessful and ‘not very sophisticated,’ a senior U.S. official told The Associated Press.

Fox News’ Nick Kalman contributed to this report.  

The Trump administration landed a legal victory on Monday after a federal judge allowed the Department of Justice (DOJ) to rescind nearly $800 million dollars in grants for programs supporting violence reduction and crime victims.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington denied a preliminary injunction that five organizations sought against the DOJ’s cancellation of more than 360 grant awards and granted a motion to dismiss the case. 

Metha described the DOJ’s actions as ‘shameful’ in his ruling, though he ultimately declared that the court lacked jurisdiction and the organizations had failed to state a constitutional violation or protection.

‘Defendants’ rescinding of these awards is shameful. It is likely to harm communities and individuals vulnerable to crime and violence,’ Mehta wrote. ‘But displeasure and sympathy are not enough in a court of law.’

The DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs canceled more than $800 million in grants in April as part of what it called a priority shift to include more direct support to certain law enforcement operations, combat violent crime and support American victims of trafficking and sexual assault.

Democracy Forward Foundation and the Perry Law firm filed the lawsuit, arguing the grant terminations did not allow due process, lacked sufficient clarity and violated the constitutional separation of powers clause that gives Congress appropriation powers.

The loss of the federal money triggered layoffs, program closures and loss of community partnerships, according to many of the organizations that had the grants rescinded.

The Justice Department argued in a court filing that there was ‘no legal basis for the Court to order DOJ to restore lawfully terminated grants and keep paying for programs that the Executive Branch views as inconsistent with the interests of the United States.’

Noting that it intended to redirect the grant funds, it called the suit a ‘run-of-the mill contract dispute’ and said it belonged in a different court.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.