A senior Justice Department official was demoted this week amid an ongoing investigation into his contacts with the opposition research firm responsible for the anti-Trump “dossier,” the department confirmed to Fox News.

Until Wednesday morning, Bruce G. Ohr held two titles at DOJ: associate deputy attorney general, a post that placed him four doors down from his boss, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein; and director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF), a program described by the department as “the centerpiece of the attorney general’s drug strategy.”

Ohr will retain his OCDETF title but has been stripped of his higher post and ousted from his office on the fourth floor of “Main Justice.”

Initially senior department officials could not provide the reason for Ohr’s demotion, but Fox News has learned that evidence collected by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), chaired by Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., indicates that Ohr met during the 2016 campaign with Christopher Steele, the former British spy who authored the “dossier.”

Later, a Justice Department official told Fox News, “It is unusual for anyone to wear two hats as he has done recently. This person is going to go back to a single focus—director of our organized crime and drug enforcement unit. As you know, combatting transnational criminal organizations and drug trafficking is a top priority for the Attorney General.”

Additionally, House investigators have determined that Ohr met shortly after the election with Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS – the opposition research firm that hired Steele to compile the dossier with funds supplied by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. By that point, according to published reports, the dossier had been in the hands of the FBI, which exists under the aegis of DOJ, for some five months, and the surveillance on Page had been commenced more than two months prior.

Glenn Simpson met with a top DOJ official after the election, Fox News has learned.

Former FBI Director James Comey, testifying before the House in March, described the dossier as a compendium of “salacious and unverified” allegations against then-candidate Donald Trump and his associates. The Nunes panel has spent much of this year investigating whether DOJ, under then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, used the dossier to justify a foreign surveillance warrant against Carter Page, an advisor to the Trump campaign.

The contacts between Ohr and Steele, and between Ohr and Simpson, have not been publicly disclosed nor shared with HPSCI staff.

The panel has issued numerous subpoenas for documents and witnesses related to the dossier but claims DOJ and FBI have “stonewalled,” an assertion that House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., seconded in a rare public statement in October.

While the agencies say they have cooperated extensively with Nunes and his team, including the provision of several hundred pages of classified documents relating to the dossier, it was only last weekend that DOJ and FBI agreed to make available to the committee for questioning Peter Strzok, the high-ranking FBI official who was disciplined in July for having sent-anti-Trump texts to a colleague while playing a decisive role in last year’s investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s private server.

Strzok was removed from the staff of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is probing allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and demoted to a position on the FBI’s human resources division. The agencies’ decision to make Strzok available to House investigators came on the same day the New York Times and Washington Post disclosed the existence of the anti-Trump text messages, and Fox News disclosed that Strzok’s conduct in the Clinton case was under review by the FBI’s Office of Inspector General.

The demotion of Ohr thus marked the second time within a matter of months that the Justice Department and the FBI have disciplined for misconduct a senior official connected in some form or fashion to the Trump-Russia case.

According to congressional sources, Simpson and Ohr met sometime around Thanksgiving last year, when President-elect Trump was in the process of selecting his Cabinet, and discussed over coffee the anti-Trump dossier, the Russia investigation, and what Simpson considered the distressing development of Trump’s victory.

How exactly Simpson and Ohr came to know each other is still being investigated but initial evidence collected by the House intelligence committee suggests that the two were placed in touch by Steele, a former FBI informant whose contacts with Ohr are said by senior DOJ officials to date back to 2006.

Nunes, who has instructed HPSCI staff to draft contempt-of-Congress citations against Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray – preparatory to a House vote on whether the citations should be enforced – issued a fresh subpoena on Thursday specifically covering Ohr and his files.

Franken resigns from Senate amid new claims of sexual misconduct, backlash from Dems

Calling it “the worst day of his political life,” Sen. Al Franken said Thursday he will resign from the U.S. Senate following a wave of sexual misconduct allegations against him.

Minnesota Public Radio reported late Wednesday he would resign, though Franken’s office pushed back saying it wasn’t a done deal yet.

It will be up to Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton to appoint a successor.

Multiple sources reported that the likely candidate could be Democratic Lt. Gov. Tina Smith, a close ally of Franken. Any successor, if he steps down, would serve until a special election is held in 2018 to determine who would fill the final two years of Franken’s term.

On Wednesday, Franken faced a tidal wave of resignation calls by members of his own party.

By mid-afternoon, 23 of them wanted him gone.

Video

Tucker: Good riddance to Al Franken, but there’s a downside

“Enough is enough,” New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said.

Gillibrand’s sentiment was echoed by Sens. Kamila Harris of California, Marie Hirono of Hawaii, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Maria Cantwell of Washington, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota.

“Sexual harassment and misconduct should not be allowed by anyone and should not occur anywhere. I believe the best thing for Senator Franken to do is step down,” Harris, D-Calif., said.

Hassan, D-N.H., tweeted, “It is clear that Al Franken has engaged in a pattern of egregious and unacceptable behavior toward women. He should resign.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, weighed in.

“It now appears Senator Franken has lost the support of his colleagues, and most importantly, his constituents,” McConnell said.

“I do not believe he can effectively serve the people of Minnesota in the U.S. Senate any longer,” he added.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune, the largest newspaper in Franken’s home state, called for his immediate resignation late Wednesday. They questioned his ability to “function effectively” after “losing the confidence of so many colleagues.

“If this is to be an actual turning point in our culture, there must be real and lasting consequences to behaviors that never should have been accepted,” the editorial board wrote. “That these incidents came so late in Franken’s life should make him all the more accountable. Instead, he has mostly offered hollow apologies that failed to acknowledge what happened.”

Franken’s political career has been in peril since California radio broadcaster Leeann Tweeden posted a blog detailing how he kissed and groped her without her consent in 2006. She also tweeted a picture showing a grinning Franken standing over her as she sleeps, his hands over her breasts.

Franken has since apologized, but other allegations from seven additional women have surfaced since Tweeden’s claims.

The latest was a woman who claimed she was groped at a Media Matters party during the first Obama inauguration.

Before that, another woman accused Franken of forcibly trying to kiss her – this time after a taping of his radio show in 2006.

The woman, who spoke to Politico, claims Franken pursued her after her boss had left and she was collecting her things. The woman was in her 20s at the time.

The accuser, who was not identified, said Franken tried to kiss her but that she ducked.

Franken, a former “Saturday Night Live” performer who was a host on the now-defunct “Air America” radio network at the time, allegedly followed up by telling her it was his “right as an entertainer.”

“He was between me and the door and he was coming at me to kiss me,” she told Politico. “It was very quick and I think my brain had to work really hard to be like ‘Wait, what is happening?’ But I knew whatever was happening was not right and I ducked.”

Franken has strongly denied those allegations.

The calls for Franken to step down came one day after Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., retired following numerous allegations of sexual misconduct against him.

In Alabama, several women have accused Senate Republican candidate Roy Moore of sexual misconduct when they were in their teens, including one who said she was 14 when Moore molested her.

Moore denies the allegations.

President Trump – who had multiple allegations of sexual harassment against himself when running for president – has endorsed Moore.

The Republican National Committee is also supporting him.

By Barnini Chakraborty | Fox News

President Trump on Wednesday will order the State Department to begin moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, senior administration officials said, a move that fulfills a campaign promise made to religious conservatives but one that could inflame tensions across the Middle East.

In his announcement, Trump will say that the U.S. government recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. One official described it as an “honest” acknowledgement of a “seven-decade old fact.”

“While President Trump recognizes that the status of Jerusalem is a highly sensitive issue, he does not think it will be resolved by ignoring the simple truth that Jerusalem is home to Israel’s legislature, its Supreme Court, the prime minister and is such the capital of Israel,” one official said.

The U.S. would be the first country to move its embassy to Jerusalem, which is claimed by both Israelis and Palestinians. Other countries who have diplomatic relations with Israel keep their embassies in Tel Aviv.

But the embassy move would not be immediate and could take at least three or four years.

The U.S. officials said there are currently about 1,000 personnel in the embassy in Tel Aviv. They added that there is no facility in Jerusalem ready to serve as the embassy site, and it will take time to address security, design and cost concerns.

“It will take some time to find a site, address security concerns, design a new facility, fund a new facility — working with Congress, obviously — and build it,” one official said. “So this is not an instantaneous process.”

Video

Ahead of the announcement, Trump spoke Tuesday with Palestinian President Mahmood Abbas, Jordanian King Abdullah and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu has said he supports the U.S. moving its embassy. But Abbas has warned of the “gravity of consequences” should the move become official for “the peace process and security and stability in the region and world.”

An international affairs adviser for Abbas said that the move “totally destroys any chance that he can play a role as an honest broker” in Middle East peace negotiations.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that moving the capital was a “red line” for Muslims, and such an action could result in Turkey severing diplomatic ties with Israel.

The controversy surrounding the move of the embassy dates back decades. A law passed in 1995 under the Clinton administration considers Jerusalem the capital, and even mandates the move of the embassy there.

But the law allows for a loophole used by former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama – an option to issue waivers every six months to delay the move from Tel Aviv.

Trump also took advantage of the loophole, which Republicans have long called to be closed. Trump’s first waiver was signed in June, which drew praise from the Palestinians and some disappointment from Israel.

The administration officials said Tuesday that Trump will still sign a waiver to keep from jeopardizing State Department funding while the relocation process begins.

In January, Republican Sens. Dean Heller, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz introduced legislation that would move the embassy to Jerusalem and recognize the city as Israel’s capital, after the Obama administration abstained from a U.N. Security Council vote to condemn Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank.

Fox News’ Brooke Singman and Kelly Chernenkoff contributed to this report, along with The Associated Press.

“We’re really proud of you. What you do is like nobody else.” Those were the words of U.S. President Donald J. Trump in his first visit to Salt Lake City since becoming president nearly a year ago. President Trump met with leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at Welfare Square Monday, December 4, 2017.

He was greeted by President Henry B. Eyring of the Church’s First Presidency; President Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles; Bishop Gérald Caussé of the Presiding Bishopric; and Sister Jean B. Bingham, Relief Society general president.

Church leaders took the president on a late-morning tour of the bishops’ storehouse and Deseret Bakery, where he learned about the Church’s welfare facilities and self-reliance programs, which are dedicated to serving the needy of many faiths around the world.

“We’re here in a place where we have food and materials that we give to the poor,” explained President Eyring. “This is simply an example of what we do across the world, the idea being that we think we have an obligation to God to look out for the people who, without our aid, have tragedy in their lives, be it poverty or hunger.”

While stopping at the bakery, the president invited volunteers to come out and take pictures and shake his hand.

In referring to the Church, President Trump said, “This is very exciting for me. The job you’ve done is beyond anything you could think of — taking care of people the way you take care of people and the respect that you have all over the world.”

Resources at Welfare Square come from member donations. Most of the people who process the goods are volunteers. The Church also owns farms, ranches, orchards and lands that supply the raw materials. Volunteers also assist in harvesting the crops.

In recent months, 50 semi-trailers of food from Welfare Square and other Church facilities were sent to Houston to assist in hurricane relief efforts, including 2 million pounds of commodities and non-food items. Church members throughout Texas and surrounding states also volunteered more than a million hours of labor in ongoing cleanup and recovery efforts.

Others included in the Salt Lake City visit were U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch from Utah and staff from the White House.

President Eyring and President Nelson expressed their appreciation to the president for the efforts by his administration to protect religious freedom. President Eyring gave the president a Christus statue before he departed for the Utah State Capitol.

In a long-standing tradition, many United States presidents have visited with Church leaders in Utah, beginning in 1875 when Ulysses S. Grant met with Church President Brigham Young and other Latter-day Saint leaders. U.S. presidents who have visited Church leaders in Utah in the past 70 years include presidents Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Handing the White House a huge judicial victory, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of President Trump’s travel ban affecting residents of six majority-Muslim countries.

The justices said the policy can take full effect despite multiple legal challenges against it that haven’t yet made their way through the legal system.

The ban applies to people from Syria, Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.

Lower courts had said people from those countries with a “bona fide” relationship with someone in the United States could not be prevented from entry.

Grandparents and cousins were among the relatives courts said could not be excluded.

The nine-member high court said in two one-page orders late Monday afternoon that lower court rulings that partly blocked the ban should be put on hold while appeals courts in Richmond, Va., and San Francisco take up the case.

Liberal-leaning Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have left the lower court orders in place.

The justices offered no explanation for their order, but the administration had said that blocking the full ban was causing “irreparable harm” because the policy is based on legitimate national security and foreign policy concerns.

Both courts are scheduled to hear arguments in those cases this week.

Both courts are also dealing with the issue on an accelerated basis, and the Supreme Court noted it expects those courts to reach decisions “with appropriate dispatch.”

Quick resolution by appellate courts would allow the Supreme Court to hear and decide the issue this term, by the end of June.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley called the ban “lawful and essential to protecting our homeland.”

Gidley added in a written statement, “We look forward to presenting a fuller defense of the proclamation as the pending cases work their way through the courts.”

“We are pleased that the Supreme Court has agreed to allow us to fulfill this most vital mission performed by any sovereign nation.  DHS will continue to fully implement the President’s robust and Constitutional counterterrorism agenda in accordance with the law,” the Department of Homeland Security’s acting press secretary, Tyler Q. Houlton, said.

Trump’s travel ban has been challenged in separate lawsuits by Hawaii and the American Civil Liberties Union. Both have argued the ban discriminates against Muslims and should not go into effect under immigration laws.

“President Trump’s anti-Muslim prejudice is no secret — he has repeatedly confirmed it, including just last week on Twitter,” Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement. “It’s unfortunate that the full ban can move forward for now, but this order does not address the merits of our claims. We continue to stand for freedom, equality, and for those who are unfairly being separated from their loved ones. We will be arguing Friday in the Fourth Circuit that the ban should ultimately be struck down.”

Trump issued his first travel ban within days of being sworn in as president. That version tightened the country’s refugee and visa policies and suspended almost all refugee admissions for four months.

Trump issued a revised version in March after the first was blocked by federal courts. The second one expired in September after a lengthy court fight and was replaced with the current version.

Fox News’ Jake Gibson, Bill Mears and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

In a victory for the Trump White House, a temporary restraining order to halt the president’s pick for acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Mick Mulvaney, was denied by a judge late Tuesday though the decision is likely to be appealed.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ruled in favor of Trump in his effort to appoint White House budget director Mulvaney to lead the bureau, the nation’s top financial watchdog agency.

“Denying the president’s authority to appoint Mr. Mulvaney raises significant constitutional questions,” Kelly, a Trump nominee for the bench, said.

The ruling comes after a nasty partisan spat that pitted the Trump administration against an Obama-era holdover.

Leandra English was elevated to acting deputy director Friday when Richard Cordray resigned. The fight for control bled into the weekend and on Sunday, English filed an emergency restraining order to keep Mulvaney out.

Video

Mulvaney announces hiring, regulation freezes at CFPB

The government filed a response to English’s restraining-order request late Monday, calling her claims to the office a “bureaucratic sleight-of-hand” meant to circumvent presidential authority.

English cited the Dodd-Frank Act, which created the CFPB. She said that as deputy director, she became the acting director under the law and argued that the federal law the White House contends supports Trump’s appointment of Mulvaney doesn’t apply when another statute designates a successor.

“We are pleased with the court’s decision to deny the request for a temporary restraining order, finding that the plaintiff had not shown a substantial likelihood of success on the merits,” Lauren Ehrsam, a spokesperson with the Department of Justice, said in a statement.

Former CFPB litigation counsel Deepak Gupta, who represented English, said the career civil servant would weigh her next step but added he didn’t think Kelly’s ruling was “the final stop for this case.”

Earlier Tuesday, Mulvaney instructed staff to “disregard” instructions from English and then tweeted a picture of himself working at a desk under the handle @CFPBDirector.

“Consistent with my email from yesterday, please disregard any email sent by, or instructions you receive from, Ms. English when she is purporting to act as the Acting Director,” Mulvaney wrote in an email Tuesday. “I apologize for having to send this instruction again. And I feel terrible about you folks being put in this position, as I understand it can be both confusing and disruptive.”

The scene was a follow-up to an awkward power struggle that played out Monday when Mulvaney and English both showed up for work. Mulvaney brought donuts. English sent out post-Thanksgiving holiday wishes.

Both declared in emails that they were in charge.

Mulvaney, a former congressman, has called the agency a “joke” and an example of bureaucracy run amok. He is expected to dismantle much of what the bureau has done.

A new director for the CFPB must be confirmed by the Senate.

Fox News’ Jake Gibson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

President Trump on Sunday weighed in again on the fast-approaching Election Day in the Alabama Senate race, calling Democratic nominee Doug Jones “weak” on crime and other conservative issues, but stopping short of backing embattled GOP candidate Roy Moore.

“The last thing we need in Alabama and the U.S. Senate is a Schumer/Pelosi puppet who is WEAK on Crime, WEAK on the Border, Bad for our Military and our great Vets, Bad for our 2nd Amendment, AND WANTS TO RAISES [sic] TAXES TO THE SKY,” Trump tweeted. “Jones would be a disaster!”

Trump is in a tough political position. He and fellow Republicans desperately need to keep the Alabama Senate seat left open after GOP Sen. Jeff Session became U.S. attorney general, considering they now have just a narrow 52-46 member majority in the chamber.

Moore, a Christian conservative, has been accused in recent weeks of sexual misconduct with teenage women roughly four decades ago. He has denied the allegations and refused to quit the race, with Election Day on December 12.

Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., unsuccessfully backed Moore’s rival in the Alabama GOP primary, Luther Strange, a more moderate Republican appointed to Sessions’ seat until the election.

Trump has said Moore should step aside if the allegations are true. However, the president, before leaving on Thanksgiving break, appeared to soften his position, telling reporters, “I can tell you one thing for sure: We don’t need a liberal person in there, a Democrat Jones.”

He also said Moore “denies” the allegations.

“He says it didn’t happen,” Trump said. “He said 40 years ago this did not happen.”

By Joseph Weber

Democrats lashed out at Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., Thursday after Los Angeles TV and radio host Leeann Tweeden accused him of kissing and groping her during a USO tour in 2006, with at least two female lawmakers pledging to return campaign funds raised for them by Franken’s political action committee.

Leaders of both parties in the Senate called for an ethics investigation of Franken, a request echoed by the senator himself, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

“The allegations brought forth are extremely disturbing,” Perez said in a statement. “Sexual misconduct, harassment, and assault are never acceptable, no matter one’s party or politics. The Senate should immediately begin an ethics investigation into Senator Franken’s conduct.”

Video

Rep. Luke Messer: Moore and Franken should step down

Pelosi said any “credible allegation” should be subject to an ethics probe, telling Fox News “We are at a watershed moment and now is the time for Congress to overhaul how it deals with the issue of sexual harassment.”

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., went a step further, tweeting that she had donated $30,000 in campaign contributions from Franken’s Midwest Values PAC to food banks in her home state.

McCaskill said she was “shocked and concerned” by Tweeden’s allegations against Franken, who was elected to the Senate in 2008.

“Comedy is no excuse for inappropriate conduct,” McCaskill’s statement added.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., announced that she planned to donate $20,000 raised by Franken’s PAC to a group working on behalf of female veterans in the state.

“This type of behavior isn’t acceptable whether it’s from a Democrat or a Republican or an independent,” Baldwin, who is up for re-election next year, told MSNBC in an interview.

Video

Tweeden not calling for Franken to step down

Another prominent Democratic woman, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, reportedly planned to donate $12,500 in campaign funds to Protect our Defenders, a nonprofit group dedicated to combating sexual assault in the military.

“The allegations against Sen. Franken are deeply concerning,” Gillibrand posted on Twitter. “This kind of behavior is unacceptable and should not be tolerated anywhere in our society. There is nothing funny about it and there is no excuse for it.”

Franken’s fellow Minnesota Democrat, Amy Klobuchar, said, “This should not have happened to Leeann Tweeden. I strongly condemn this behavior, and the Senate Ethics Committee must open an investigation.”

A spokeswoman for Klobuchar, who has received at least $15,000 from Midwest Values PAC, did not immediately respond to queries from Fox News about the senator’s plans for the money.

Video

Howard Kurtz: Franken photo is ‘devastating’

In a series of statements, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), singled out eleven Democratic senators and called on them to return their donations from Midwest Values PAC.

“If [senator’s last name] won’t immediately denounce Franken and return his donations, it will be clear [he or she] puts partisan politics over basic decency,” each statement read.

The senators named by the NRSC were McCaskill; Baldwin; Joe Manchin of West Virginia; Jon Tester of Montana; Tim Kaine of Virginia; Joe Donnelly of Indiana, to whom the NRSC referred as “Mexico Joe”; Debbie Stabenow of Michigan; Bob Casey of Pennsylvania; Bill Nelson of Florida; Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

Of the eleven, only McCaskill and Baldwin had announced plans to return the money Thursday evening.

Fox News’ Brooke Singman and Barnini Chakraborty contributed to this report. The Associated Press also contributed to this report.

The House on Thursday passed a sweeping tax bill largely along party lines that makes good on a Republican campaign promise to reform the country’s tax code.

The House bill passed 227-205.

But the future of the Senate version, which includes a repeal of ObamaCare’s individual mandate, is still very much up in the air.

While the “Tax Cut and Jobs Act” was pitched as a plan to help middle income Americans, the final version scaled back many popular deductions while cutting the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent. It also collapsed tax brackets to four from seven.

Republicans aggressively marketed their plan as something that would benefit everyone but critics said much of the financial gains would go to the wealthiest Americans and big corporations.

New York Rep. Pete King, one of the most ardent opponents of the proposal, called the House bill “an unforced error,” and suggested it could come back to bite Republicans in next year’s midterm elections.

Ahead of the vote, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi slammed it as “a tax hike on 36 million middle class familiar that is dead on arrival in the Senate.”

The Senate version, which is working its way through the Finance Committee this week, is facing a lot of obstacles, including pushback from GOP senators.

Earlier Thursday, President Trump visited Capitol Hill to meet with House Republicans ahead of the vote.

“He told us that we have this once-in-a lifetime opportunity to do something really bold, and he reminded us that is why we seek these offices,” Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., said of Trump’s closed-door pep rally. “And here we are on the cusp of getting something really important done.”

Some House Republicans spoke warily of what might happen to the tax bill in the Senate.

“Political survival depends on us doing this,” said Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D. “Frankly, one of the things that scares me a little bit is that they’re going to screw up the bill to the point we can’t pass it.”

The House measure would collapse today’s seven personal income-tax rates into four: 12, 25, 35 and 39.6 percent. The Senate would have seven rates: 10, 12, 23, 24, 32, 35 and 38.5 percent.

Both bills would nearly double the standard deduction to around $12,000 for individuals and about $24,000 for married couples and dramatically boost the current $1,000 per-child tax credit.

Each plan would erase the current $4,050 personal exemption and annul or reduce other tax breaks. The House would limit interest deductions to $500,000 in the value of future home mortgages, down from today’s $1 million, while the Senate would end deductions for moving expenses and tax preparation.

Each measure would repeal the alternative minimum tax paid by higher-earning people. The House measure would reduce and ultimately repeal the tax paid on the largest inheritances, while the Senate would limit that levy to fewer estates.

Fox News’ Barnini Chakraborty and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Three major news networks—ABC, CBS, and NBC— failed to cover on their nightly news programs Thursday the explosive allegations from Donna Brazile that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) rigged the 2016 Democratic primary in Hillary Clinton’s favor.

PHILADELPHIA, PA – JULY 26: on the second day of the Democratic National Convention at the Wells Fargo Center, July 26, 2016 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton received the number of votes needed to secure the party’s nomination. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Brazile claimed in an excerpt from her soon-to-be-released book that Clinton’s campaign had control over the DNC’s pocketbook and strategy in exchange for paying down the Party’s 2012 presidential campaign debt, explaining that the Party skewed the primary in Clinton’s favor through backroom financial deals so she could easily beat Bernie Sanders.

Despite these bombshell allegations, ABC, CBS, and NBC did not cover these revelations on their evening newscasts, even though the excerpt, taken from Brazile’s new book Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House, had been published more than 12 hours prior.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) spoke about the DNC rigging scandal on CNN at 4:40 p.m. Eastern, but ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS’s Evening News, and NBC Nightly News did not feature any segment about the subject on their 6:30 p.m. Eastern programs.

Instead, CBS broadcast a segment on the Niger ambush, while ABC and NBC led off with segments on President Trump’s proposed tax cut.

Trump called out the three networks for not giving any airtime to the DNC rigging revelations:

Media watchdog organizations, such as the Media Research Center, took notice of the networks’ failure to cover Brazile’s allegations.

Media Research Center Vice President Dan Gainor told Fox News:

The Donna Brazile story is astonishing. The media loves to tell stories of Republican discord. Here’s the woman who was the interim head of the DNC saying Bernie Sanders got screwed by the party and Team Clinton. No matter how much the media wants to hide that, it’s a huge issue and will impact future elections.

Brazile took over as interim chairperson of the DNC in July 2016 after party insiders ousted Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) as chair on the evening before the DNC convention in Philadelphia.

After Fox News and CNN aired segments about Brazile’s DNC rigging claims and the president tweeted about the subject, CBS and NBC published stories on their websites Friday afternoon about the matter. ABC published a story about it Friday night.

Still reeling from Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in last year’s presidential election and wondering how to move forward, the schism within the Democratic Party appears to have widened even more in the wake of the bombshell claims made Thursday by a former interim party boss.

The allegations by Donna Brazile not only asserted that the Democratic National Committee helped rig last year’s presidential primary in favor of Clinton over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, but also raised a number of troubling questions as the party attempts to regroup ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

Are Brazile’s revelations the first shots in a virtual civil war between the Democratic establishment faithful to the Clintons and a growing progressive wing represented by lawmakers like Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren? Is this the final nail in the coffin for Clinton’s influence within the Democratic Party? Will this scandal linger into 2020 when the party challengesTrump for the White House?

“This is standard in politics when you don’t have the presidency because there is nobody in charge of the party,” Joe Trippi, a Democratic strategist and Fox News contributor, told Fox News. “You’re going to have an all-out battle and a new voice will eventually emerge.”

Finding out who that voice is and when it will emerge appears, for the time being, to be a long way away as the fallout from Brazile’s claims reverberate throughout the Democratic Party.

“It was obviously a shocking revelation,” Sanders’ campaign manager Jeff Weaver told CNN on Friday. “”It was pretty clear that they were on the Clinton side … I don’t think any of us imagined that there was actually a formal arrangement giving the Clinton campaign control of the DNC.”

In her new book – excerpts of which were published on Politico – Brazile writes that the DNC signed a joint fundraising agreement document with the Hillary Victory Fund and Hillary for America. It had been signed in August 2015, four months after Clinton announced her candidacy and a year before she officially secured the nomination over Sanders.

“The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised,” Brazile wrote. “Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff.”

Defenders of Clinton have noted that the Sanders’ campaign also signed its own joint fundraising agreement with the DNC during the campaign season.

Brazile took over as the interim DNC chairman in 2016 when Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced out as chairman over emails that indicated the party organization unfairly favored Clinton over Sanders during the primary.

DNC spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa, who works under current DNC chairman Tom Perez, told Fox News that the party “must remain neutral in the presidential primary process, and there shouldn’t even be a perception that the DNC is interfering in that process.” But it appears the damage has been done.

Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii said Brazile’s revelations confirmed “what many suspected for a long time” and added that the “deep financial debt, closed door decision-making, complete lack of transparency, and unethical practices are now front and center.”

Gabbard’s statement was preceded by a video earlier in this week in which she slammed Perez for a recent overhaul of the party’s executive committee, which she said was intended “to cast out those who haven’t fallen in line with the establishment and who are actually demanding real reform.”

Massachusetts’ Warren, who campaigned for Clinton during the presidential campaign and is rumored to be eyeing a run herself in 2020, said “yes” when asked if the campaign was rigged and called it “a real problem.”

“But what we’ve got to do as Democrats now, is we’ve got to hold this party accountable,” she said, according to the BBC.

Trump weighed in on social media on the mounting scandal and said the American public “deserves” an inquiry, while lashing out at Clinton in a series of tweets.

FoxNews.com/Alex Pappas contributed reporting to this story. 

President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he walks to board Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House, Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Trump on Sunday said the lack of investigation into the Clinton campaign spending a reported $12 million on a dossier crafted during the 2016 presidential race to smear him has sparked unprecedented “anger and unity” among fellow Republicans.

“Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier (now $12,000,000?),” Trump said first in a series of tweets.

The president tweeted after South Carolina GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Oversight committee, told “Fox News Sunday” that his concerns about Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign purportedly paying a law firm at least $10 million for the dossier, which was to be used as Trump opposition research.

“I’m interested in that … laundering money through a law firm,” Gowdy said.

In the series of tweets Sunday, the president again attempted to make the larger case that Washington and the rest of the country is consumed by the Justice Department’s special counsel probe into whether Trump associates colluded with Russia during the White House race, amid similar issues related to Democrats and others.

“The Uranium to Russia deal, the 33,000 plus deleted Emails, the Comey fix and so much more. Instead they look at phony Trump/Russia,” Trump tweeted following news reports earlier this weekend that special counsel Robert Mueller now has federal grand jury charges in the Russia investigation that could be made public as early as Monday.

Congressional investigators are in fact looking into new details about an Obama-era Uranium deal with connections to Russia and perhaps Clinton when she was secretary of State. The FBI investigated her use of private email servers and deleted emails when she ran the State Department.

However, then-FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump recently fired, concluded the server-email investigation without recommending criminal charges.

“The Dems are using this terrible (and bad for our country) Witch Hunt for evil politics, but the R’s … are now fighting back like never before. There is so much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton, and now the facts are pouring out. DO SOMETHING!,” Trump also said.

FoxNews.com

The highly-anticipated release of long-secret documents detailing the investigation into the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy have provided fresh fodder to fuel conspiracy theories surrounding the controversial death of the former commander in chief.

President Trump on Thursday released the trove of records, however, the collection was incomplete, with some records being held back. Trump cited “potentially irreversible harm” to national security if he were to allow all records to come out now. He placed the remaining files under a six-month review, but released 2,891 others, racing to honor a deadline mandating their release.

On Nov. 22, 1963, Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas by, authorities contend, a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald.

John F. Kennedy waves from his car during the motorcade in Dallas before he was shot and killed.  (AP)

But a segment of the public never bought into the official explanation of Kennedy’s assassination, citing video clips, interviews and science experiments in an attempt to prove Oswald, who was himself assassinated two days after Kennedy, did not act alone.

[pullquote]JFK FILES: FROM 2ND SHOOTER TO MEXICO TRIP, TOP QUESTIONS ASSASSINATION DOCUMENTS COULD ANSWER[/pullquote]

The files released Thursday show the aftermath of Kennedy’s death included then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover venting his frustration about Oswald’s killing at the hands of Jack Ruby, bellowing that the shooting would cause the public to suspect a conspiracy, NBC News reported.

“There is nothing further on the Oswald case except that he is dead,” Hoover said. “The thing I am concerned about, and so is [deputy attorney general] Mr. Katzenbach, is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin.”

Hoover reported the FBI received a call from the Dallas office stating the caller was part of a cabal “organized to kill Oswald.”

Hoover said he relayed that warning to Dallas police and was assured Oswald would be protected. However, Oswald was shot dead the next day by Jack Ruby.

“Oswald having been killed today after our warnings to the Dallas Police Department was inexcusable,” Hoover said. “It will allow, I am afraid, a lot of civil rights people to raise a lot of hell because he was handcuffed and had no weapon. There are bound to be some elements of our society who will holler their heads off that his civil rights were violated — which they were.”

Authorities say Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman responsible for John F. Kennedy’s death.  (AP)

Hoover suggested that “instead of a Presidential Commission, we can do it with a Justice Department report based on an FBI report.”

Hoover’s suggestion went nowhere. President Lyndon B. Johnson established the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination the following week.

[pullquote]JFK FILES: ‘BIG NEWS’ COMING, BRITISH REPORTER WAS TOLD BEFORE SHOTS FIRED [/pullquote]

In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded Oswald and Ruby acted alone in their assasinations. No other blame was put on other organizations, actors or foreign governments.

Johnson was mentioned in the files as well. The Soviet Union believed Kennedy’s vice president was behind the assassination, the New York Post reported. The Societs also feared they would be blamed for the slaying and attacked in retaliation.

In a Dec. 1, 1966 FBI memo, sources said the KGB, the world’s largest “spy and state-security machine” claimed they had “possession of data purporting to indicate President Johnson was responsible for the assassination of the late President John F. Kennedy.”

The memo, titled: “REACTION OF SOVIET AND COMMUNIST PARTY OFFICIALS TO JFK ASSASSINATION” was sent to Hoover.

The files on President John F. Kennedy’s killing were released on Oct 26, 2017.  (AP)

“KGB headquarters indicated that in view of this information, it was necessary for the Soviet Government to know the existing personal relationship between President Johnson and the Kennedy family, particularly that between President Johnson and Robert and ‘Ted’ Kennedy,” the document stated.

The Soviet Union also feared the U.S. would use the assassination to bolster “anti-Soviet sentiment and even lead to an attack.”

Oswald lived in the Soviet Union for three years and married a woman from there. He reportedly had ties to the KGB while in America.

Johnson also believed in conspiracy theories himself, the New York Post reported. Richard Helms, the CIA director under Johnson, said the former president said he believed Kennedy was killed in retaliation for the assassination of South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem.

Diem was arrested and killed by a CIA-backed coup in Vietnam in 1963.

The files also showed that a British reporter with the Cambridge News received an anonymous phone call prior to the assassination, alerting the reporter to “some big news.”

“The caller said only that the Cambridge News reporter should call the American Embassy in London for some big news and then hung up,” reads the document from former CIA Deputy Director James Angleton.

The reporter, who was not identified in the Nov. 26, 1963, report, “never received a call of this kind before and MI5 said that he is known to them as a sound and loyal person with no security record.” (MI5 is Britain’s Security Service, similar to the CIA in the United States.)

After Kennedy’s death, the reporter told Cambridge police about the call and they informed M15.

A British reporter said he received a phone call promising ‘big news’ prior to the assassination.  (AP)

Despite the new details unleashed by the files, some felt the bath did not have the “smoking gun” many have urged for following the mysterious death. The full record will still be kept from the public for at least six months – and longer if agencies make a persuasive enough case for continued secrecy.

FoxNews.com/The Associated Press contributed to this report.