Top Biden administration officials questioned and criticized the way the former president’s team handled pardons and made use of an autopen in the waning days of his White House term, a report said, citing internal emails.

A person familiar with the clemency process told Axios that after President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter on Dec. 1, 2024, ‘There was a mad dash to find groups of people that he could then pardon — and then they largely didn’t run it by the Justice Department to vet them.’ 

The news agency reported Saturday that several senior Justice Department officials raised concerns with the White House Counsel’s office regarding the process to pardon individuals.

Three days before Biden left office, the president announced that he was ‘commuting the sentences of nearly 2,500 people convicted of non-violent drug offenses who are serving disproportionately long sentences compared to the sentences they would receive today under current law, policy, and practice.’ 

‘With this action, I have now issued more individual pardons and commutations than any president in U.S. history,’ Biden said in a statement on Jan. 17. 

However, Axios reported that the following day, senior Justice Department ethics attorney Bradley Weinsheimer argued in a memo that describing those who were pardoned as nonviolent was ‘untrue, or at least misleading.’ 

‘Unfortunately and despite repeated requests and warnings, we were not afforded a reasonable opportunity to vet and provide input on those you were considering,’ Weinsheimer wrote, according to Axios. 

The news agency said Weinsheimer mentioned a man who pleaded guilty to murder-related charges. 

Weinsheimer described how the Justice Department labeled the man as ‘problematic,’ yet Biden commuted his sentence, Axios reported. 

‘I have no idea if the president was aware of these backgrounds when making clemency decisions,’ Weinsheimer reportedly added. 

Ed Siskel, the former head of the White House Counsel’s office, and representatives for Biden did not immediately respond Saturday to requests for comment from Fox News Digital.

Senior Biden White House officials also pushed back internally on requests to use the autopen, according to Axios, which cited emails it obtained. 

It said Biden White House staff secretary Stef Feldman repeatedly asked for more information and confirmation of Biden’s intentions with the autopen. 

‘When did we get [Biden’s] approval of this?’ Feldman reportedly wrote in a Jan. 7 email regarding the use of autopen to sign an executive order. 

‘I’m going to need email from… original chain confirming [Biden] signs off on the specific documents when they are ready,’ she was cited by Axios as writing in a Jan. 16 email about using autopen to commute cases linked to crack-cocaine sentences. 

The developments come as President Donald Trump has ordered an investigation into Biden’s administration, alleging that top officials used autopen signatures to cover up the former president’s cognitive decline. 

‘I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false,’ Biden said in a statement in June.  

‘This is nothing more than a distraction by Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans who are working to push disastrous legislation that would cut essential programs like Medicaid and raise costs on American families, all to pay for tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and big corporations,’ he added at the time. 

Fox News Digital’s Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report. 

President Donald Trump wrapped up the week Friday signing an executive order to change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War. 

The executive order gives the green light to use the name ‘Department of War’ as a secondary title for the Department of Defense, along with terms like ‘secretary of war’ for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, according to a White House fact sheet.

The order also calls for Hegseth to propose both legislative and executive actions to permanently cement the title as the U.S. Department of War.

Additionally, a White House official told Fox News Digital that implementing the order would mean making alterations to public-facing websites and office signage at the Pentagon. For example, one change on the horizon is renaming the public affairs briefing room the ‘Pentagon War Annex,’ the official said, noting other longer-term projects also will emerge. 

The U.S. previously used the Department of War title for its military agency until 1949, but modified it to the Department of Defense to align with multiple reforms included in the National Security Act of 1947.

Trump signaled in late August the change might happen. 

‘Everybody likes that we had an unbelievable history of victory when it was Department of War,’ Trump told reporters Aug. 25. ‘Then we changed it to Department of Defense.’

Here’s what also happened this week:

War on cartels

Trump also announced that the U.S. military strike against an alleged drug-laden Venezuelan boat in the southern Caribbean killed 11 suspected Tren de Aragua narco-terrorists Tuesday. 

Trump shared a video on social media Tuesday depicting the strike against the Venezuelan vessel, just days after he authorized sending three U.S. Navy guided missile destroyers to enhance the administration’s counternarcotics efforts in the region.

‘You had massive amounts of drugs,’ Trump told reporters Wednesday about the recent strike. ‘We have tapes of them speaking. It was massive amounts of drugs coming into our country to kill a lot of people. And everybody fully understands that fact. You see it, you see the bags of drugs all over the boat and they were hit.’

‘Obviously, they won’t be doing it again. And I think a lot of other people won’t be doing it again. When they watch that tape, they’re going to say, ‘Let’s not do this.’ We have to protect our country, and we’re going to. Venezuela has been a very bad actor.’

After the deployment of the destroyers, Maduro said Venezuela was ready to respond to any attacks and said the ship’s presence in the region was ‘an extravagant, unjustifiable, immoral and absolutely criminal and bloody threat.’

‘In the face of this maximum military pressure, we have declared maximum preparedness for the defense of Venezuela,’ Maduro said during a Monday press conference. 

Meanwhile, the Pentagon confirmed Thursday that two Venezuelan aircraft buzzed a U.S. Navy vessel in international waters. 

‘This highly provocative move was designed to interfere with our counter narco-terror operations,’ the Defense Department wrote in a statement posted to X. ‘The cartel running Venezuela is strongly advised not to pursue any further effort to obstruct, deter or interfere with counter-narcotics and counter-terror operations carried out by the U.S. military.’

Space Command HQ move 

Trump also unveiled plans Tuesday to move Space Command’s headquarters from Colorado to Alabama — putting an end to the controversy about where the command would be based. 

Space Command has been operating out of Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado, but Trump long has backed moving the command’s headquarters to Huntsville, Alabama. But in 2023, former President Joe Biden announced that the command would remain based in Colorado. 

‘The U.S. Space Command headquarters will move to the beautiful locale of a place called Huntsville, Alabama, forever to be known from this point forward as Rocket City,’ Trump told reporters Tuesday.

Just over a year ago, Matthew Thomas Crooks nearly blew off President Trump’s head at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Only by the grace of God did Crooks’ bullets miss their target by millimeters because President Trump had turned his head ever so slightly to look at an immigration chart. Crooks did manage to murder a rallygoer and seriously wound two others before the Secret Service killed him. Just under a year ago, Ryan Wesley Routh took his shot at President Trump, establishing a sniper’s nest at the Doral golf course where he knew the president would play later that day. Routh was a hole ahead of Trump when Secret Service agents spotted him. A gun battle followed, and Routh escaped, yet he was captured 50 miles away. He now sits in jail awaiting trial before Aileen Cannon, a superb federal judge.

While Cannon epitomizes the gold standard of the federal judiciary, Obama-appointed D.C. Chief District Judge Jeb Boasberg represents the garbage standard. Throughout the January 6 saga, Boasberg had no problem keeping defendants—even nonviolent ones—locked up before their trials, in part based on social media posts. He let off disgraced former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith with probation after Clinesmith had altered an email to secure a surveillance warrant against former Trump campaign official Carter Page. Boasberg claimed that Clinesmith would receive punishment from the disciplinary authorities (the D.C. Bar) in the form of possible disbarment; yet, Clinesmith kept his license. Then, Boasberg made clear early in the second Trump administration that he was itching for a fight, expressing his baseless concern to Chief Justice John Roberts that President Trump and his subordinates would violate court orders.

This March, Boasberg instigated the fight he had longed for when he illegally ordered planes full of Tren de Aragua terrorists and vicious MS-13 gang members to turn around after they had departed for Honduras and El Salvador. This was an ongoing military operation. The planes would have been in danger trying to fly back over the Gulf of America with minimal fuel. Additionally, there were not the appropriate security resources in place in the United States to deal with the return of hundreds of foreign terrorists and violent gang members, unlike the situation in El Salvador and Honduras where the proper resources were in place. The planes did not turn around, and Boasberg ‘found’ probable cause to hold administration officials in contempt. A D.C. Circuit panel reversed; yet, Boasberg, undaunted by the smackdown he had received, mused at a hearing about disciplinary proceedings against Trump Justice Department lawyers before the jurisdictions in which they hold law licenses.

This past week, Boasberg has outdone himself. Nathalie Rose Jones is a nutcase from Indiana who is staying in New York City. She thinks that President Trump is a Nazi and a terrorist, and she blames him for the deaths caused by the coronavirus. Earlier this month, Jones posted on Facebook that ‘I am willing to sacrificially kill this POTUS by disemboweling him and cutting out his trachea with [former] U.S. Representative] Liz Cheney and all the affirmation present.’ Jones then told the Secret Service that she would kill President Trump at ‘the compound’ (presumably the White House) if she had to and that she had a bladed object to accomplish her ghastly goal. The next day, law enforcement arrested Jones at a protest that had begun at Dupont Circle and wound up near the White House.

A magistrate judge correctly ordered Jones detained without bail. It is hard to imagine a clearer case of someone who poses a danger, but Jones found an ally: Boasberg. He decided to send Jones back to New York with an ankle bracelet, and he ordered her to see a shrink. Boasberg found the case hard because Jones had not brought a gun. Never mind that Jones had referred to a bladed object that she had somewhere ready to kill President Trump. Never mind that guns are easy to procure, even for convicted felons who are prohibited from possessing them by federal law. Never mind that Jones could have returned to the White House at any time after the day that she showed up without a gun. Francisco Martin Duran, a former Army sergeant, gave no warnings before he showed up at the White House early in President Clinton’s first term and fired off dozens of shots outside the gate. These maniacs often strike without warning, as Crooks and Routh also did. Jones has telegraphed what she wants to do to President Trump, and still it is not enough for Boasberg.

Boasberg has established a pattern of utterly horrific judgment. After his illegal order in March, Congressman Brandon Gill of Texas filed an article of impeachment. It is time to move forward with that article—and add to it based on the Jones farce, as well as the revelation of Boasberg’s grossly improper comments to Chief Justice Roberts. President Trump is only alive thanks to divine intervention; a millimeter and a millisecond could have changed the course of history.

Reckless robed partisans like Boasberg, however, do not appear to care about the danger the president faces.

Trump-deranged judge refuse to accept that he won the election, and they have put up roadblock after roadblock in an appalling effort to overturn the will of American voters. The disgrace of the Jones case is just the latest example. The time has come for the House to exercise its core Article I power and use a legal tool to curtail these judges: impeachment.

President Donald Trump on Friday endorsed Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson as she runs to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Joni Ernst in Iowa.

Hinson — a former TV news anchor who is in her third term representing Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District, which covers the northeastern portion of the state — showcased her support for Trump as she launched her Senate campaign on Tuesday.

‘I’m running to be President Trump’s top ally in the United States Senate,’ she said. And in a Fox News Digital interview this week, Hinson highlighted that she’s ‘proud to stand’ with Trump.

Trump, in a social media post, said, ‘I know Ashley well, and she is a WINNER!’ 

‘I know Ashley well, and she is a WINNER! A Loving Wife and Proud Mother of two sons, Ashley is a wonderful person, has ALWAYS delivered for Iowa, and will continue doing so in the United States Senate,’ the president said. 

‘Ashley Hinson will be an outstanding Senator, and has my Complete and Total Endorsement – SHE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN!’

Trump’s support followed earlier endorsements from Senate Majority Leader Sen. John Thune and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), which is the Senate GOP’s campaign arm.

‘We need conservative fighters in the Senate — and that’s exactly what we’ll get with Ashley Hinson,’ Thune wrote early Friday as he endorsed Hinson.

And NRSC chair Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina said, ‘Having traveled Iowa with Ashley, I know she is the fighter the Hawkeye State needs to deliver President Trump’s agenda in 2026 and beyond.’

Hinson doesn’t have the GOP primary field to herself. Former state Sen. Jim Carlin and veteran Joshua Smith had already entered the primary ahead of Ernst’s announcement.

But the support from Trump, Thune, and the NRSC will further boost Hinson, who was already considered the frontrunner for the nomination, and will likely dissuade any others from entering the primary. The president’s clout over the GOP is immense, and his endorsement in a Republican primary is extremely influential.

Hinson’s campaign launch came a few hours after Ernst, in a social media video, officially announced that she wouldn’t seek re-election in next year’s midterms.

‘After a tremendous amount of prayer and reflection, I will not be seeking re-election in 2026,’ the 55-year-old Ernst, who was first elected to the Senate in 2014, said in a video posted to social media.

Ernst, a retired Army Reserve and Iowa National Guard officer who served in the Iraq War, had been wrestling for months over whether to run for re-election in 2026. And in her video, she said, ‘This was no easy decision.’

Ernst first grabbed national attention 11 years ago with her ‘make ’em squeal’ ads as she won the high-profile Senate election in Iowa in the race to succeed retiring longtime Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin.

And Ernst highlighted in her video that ’11 years ago, Iowans elected me as the first female combat veteran to the U.S. Senate, and they did so with a mission in mind – to make Washington squeal. And I’m proud to say we have delivered. We’ve cut waste, fraud, and abuse across the federal government.’

Hinson, in a social media post, thanked Ernst for her ‘incredible service to our state and nation’ as well as for her friendship. ‘Iowa is better off thanks to your selfless service,’ she said.

In an Iowa radio interview on Tuesday, she said that among her priorities as she runs for the Senate are ‘secure borders, keeping men out of girls’ sports, cutting taxes for our working families, standing up for Iowa agriculture and helping our young Iowans who are trying to buy a house and start a family.’

Hinson also pledged to campaign across all 99 of Iowa’s counties, starting with a kick-off event on Friday.

And as she entered the race, Hinson was endorsed by Republican Sens. Jim Banks of Indiana, Katie Britt of Alabama, and Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma.

House Majority Leader Rep. Steve Scalise, Majority Whip Rep. Tom Emmer, House Republican Leadership Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik and Iowa House Majority Leader Bobby Kaufmann also backed Hinson.

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) communications director Maeve Coyle, following Hinson’s announcement, argued that ‘Republicans failed to convince Joni Ernst to run for reelection, and now they may be stuck with Ashley Hinson, who has repeatedly voted to raise costs and make life harder for Iowans by voting to slash Medicaid, cheering on the chaotic tariffs that threaten Iowa’s economy, voting against measures to lower the cost of insulin, and threatening Social Security.’

Responding, Hinson told Fox News Digital, ‘I think they’re misinformed at best.’

And she charged that ‘when I hear the lies and the fearmongering coming out of the left, it’s to only cover up for the fact that they have no message and no real leader other than Bernie and AOC and now Mamdani in New York,’ as she referred to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani.

‘If that’s the direction they want to take our country, I think Iowans are going to reject that wholeheartedly,’ she predicted.

Iowa was once a top battleground state that former President Barack Obama carried in his 2008 and 2012 White House victories. But the state has shifted to the right in recent election cycles, with President Donald Trump carrying the state by nine points in 2016, eight points in 2020, and by 13 points last November.

Republicans currently hold both of the state’s U.S. Senate seats – Ernst and longtime Sen. Chuck Grassley – and all four of Iowa’s congressional districts, as well as all statewide offices except for state auditor, which is held by Democrat Rob Sand, who’s running for governor next year.

But Democrats in Iowa are energized after flipping two GOP-held state Senate seats in special elections so far this year.

Five Democrats are already running for Senate in Iowa. The field includes state Rep. Josh Turek, a Paralympian wheelchair basketball player, state Sen. Zach Wahls, Knoxville Chamber of Commerce executive director Nathan Sage and Des Moines School Board Chair Jackie Norris.

‘An open seat in Iowa is just the latest example of Democrats expanding the senatorial map,’ Lauren French, spokesperson for the Democrat-aligned Senate Majority PAC, said in a statement.

But Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), said in a statement, ‘The NRSC is confident Iowans will elect a Republican to continue fighting for them and championing President Trump’s agenda in 2026.’

Republicans are aiming to not only defend, but expand, the current 53-47 Senate majority in next year’s elections.

Senate Republicans enjoyed a favorable map in the 2024 cycle as they flipped four seats from blue to red to win back the majority.

But the party in power – the Republicans – traditionally faces political headwinds in the midterm elections. Nevertheless, a current read of the 2026 map indicates the GOP may be able to go on offense in some key states.

In battleground Georgia, which Trump narrowly carried in last year’s White House race, Republicans view first-term Sen. Jon Ossoff as the most vulnerable Democrat incumbent up for re-election next year.

They’re also targeting battleground Michigan, where Democratic Sen. Gary Peters is retiring at the end of next year, and swing state New Hampshire, where longtime Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen decided against seeking a fourth six-year term in the Senate.

Also on the NRSC’s target list is blue-leaning Minnesota, where Democratic Sen. Tina Smith isn’t running for re-election.

But the GOP is defending an open seat in battleground North Carolina, where Republican Sen. Thom Tills decided against seeking re-election. And Republicans will likely be forced to spend resources to defend Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio – who was appointed to succeed former senator and now-Vice President JD Vance – as he faces off next year against former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown.

Meanwhile, Democrats are also targeting moderate Sen. Susan Collins – who has yet to announce her expected 2026 re-election — in blue-leaning Maine. 

President Donald Trump has his sights on a new version of Air Force One as delays and cost overruns continue to plague Boeing’s long-awaited presidential aircraft replacements.

The most recent data from 2020 says at least 20 planes make up the executive fleet. A newly constructed plane has not been added in nearly 27 years. Some of the ones currently in service are expected to stay flying for another 13 years.

‘They’re not building the plane fast enough. I mean, they’re actually in default,’ Trump said about Boeing in a February interview with Sean Hannity.

Air Force One is used to designate any Air Force aircraft carrying the commander in chief. There are currently two highly customized Boeing aircraft that were deployed in 1990 when George H.W. Bush was president. The planes have since carried Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Trump, Joe Biden and now Trump once again.

‘I miss Air Force One,’ Bush said at an event for Veterans in 2014. ‘In eight years, they never lost my baggage.’

The two forthcoming Boeing planes have been plagued by delays due to the complex technology needed onboard Air Force One.

‘They’ve got to debug it, make sure there’s no signals intelligence risks. And I think just to make it secure against any potential military attacks. It was ironic for a long time. It was one of the Prince’s planes, which I think they were trying to sell. And now they’re giving it to the U.S., and it’s costing quite a bit to update,’ staff writer for the Free Press Jay Solomon said.

The Qatari jet is estimated to have a faster timeline than the two Boeing planes, but it still needs some of the same technology to make it Air Force One.

‘If you look at it just through economics, maybe it makes sense, but I still think the fact that we’re allowing a foreign country to gift something of that magnitude to a sitting president on top of all these other concerns,’ Soloman said. ‘I think it’s a risk, and it’s not a good look.’

Air Force One is required to have four engines, unlike most of today’s passenger planes which have two. Onboard is the highest level of classified communications and external protections against foreign surveillance. The planes are equipped with air-to-air refueling capabilities so they can fly for as long as is needed. Air Force One is built for the worst possible scenarios, like nuclear war, so that the president can still command military forces from the sky.

‘They’re extremely complex, and I’m not going to go into it, but they’re not like a normal plane. You know, it’s not like building a 747 normal,’ Trump said during his Middle East Trip on ‘Special Report’ in May.

Air Force officials say it is possible to add some of the security features to the Qatari jet, but it’s unlikely to have the full suite of technology by Trump’s February timeline.

‘Initially it was supposed to be like, maybe he’ll get it done by the end of his presidency,’ Solomon said.

Four modified Boeing 757s or C-32As are the newest planes in the executive fleet. Those were added in 1998 and 1999. The Air Force is studying potential replacement options, but the current planes will continue to fly until 2038. The aircraft are primarily used by the vice president, Cabinet members, members of Congress and other officials.

‘Even today and regardless of the airplane, we have to operate it differently based on the threat environment that even the current or any of the future aircraft will go into. Again, can’t talk in detail about that, but that is always a consideration,’ Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said during a June Senate Hearing. 

Air Force One isn’t the only aging plane; much of the executive fleet is more than two decades old. The aircraft have undergone modernization modifications, but officials have questioned the timeline for major updates as several incidents have taken place over the years.

In 2014, Obama was forced to switch planes during a campaign event in Philadelphia after a minor mechanical problem was reported on Air Force One.

In 2021, Vice President Kamala Harris’ plane requested an emergency return to Joint Base Andrews as she began her first foreign trip overseas to Guatemala and Mexico.

Most recently, Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s plane was forced to turn around while en route to Munich in February, after a mechanical issue.

The newest aircraft among the executive fleet are the Marine One Helicopters. Biden first rode in the newly designed Marine One in 2024 during the Democratic National Convention. Updating those took nearly two decades and in some cases replaced helicopters flying since the 1970s.

The Boeing 777X is expected to be the next new major commercial aircraft. It’s scheduled to enter service in 2026 after a nearly six-year delay with Lufthansa taking the first flight. The modernized plane is designed to have a folding wingtip, a touchscreen flight deck and wider cabin space.

Reverend Franklin Graham, one of the nation’s most prominent Christian voices, is standing behind Vice President JD Vance after his profane rebuke of senators in a heated social media post over Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

In an exclusive statement to Fox News Digital, Graham acknowledged that while he admired Vance’s stand, the Vice President’s ‘salty’ choice of words could have been better.

Graham said in the statement: ‘We have had many vice presidents who have used salty language, but the point Vice President Vance was making is correct. Could he have used a better choice of words? In my opinion, yes; but I appreciate the vice president standing up for Secretary Kennedy who is trying to buck a very corrupt system and is trying to improve the health of the American people. God bless Secretary Kennedy and Vice President Vance.’

The exchange follows Vance’s viral X post declaring senators were ‘full of s—.’ Kennedy himself endorsed the message, one day after more than 1,000 current and former HHS employees called for Kennedy’s resignation.

The clash unfolded during a contentious Senate Finance Committee hearing on Thursday where Sen. Ron Wyden pressed Kennedy over health policies and accusations of promoting conspiracy theories. Kennedy pushed back, defending his record and policies aimed at challenging pharmaceutical companies.

Vance quickly jumped to Kennedy’s defense on X. ‘When I see all these senators trying to lecture and ‘gotcha’ Bobby Kennedy today all I can think is: You all support off-label, untested, and irreversible hormonal ‘therapies’ for children, mutilating our kids and enriching big pharma. You’re full of s— and everyone knows it,’ Vance wrote.

Kennedy reposted the comment, thanking him: ‘Thank you @JDVance. You put your finger squarely on the preeminent problem.’

That defense extended beyond Vance. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also backed Kennedy, framing Democrat criticism as proof that the secretary is ‘over the target’ in challenging entrenched interests.

This is not the first time Graham has weighed in on political leaders’ language. He previously urged President Donald Trump to cut down on his profanity. ‘Your storytelling is great, but it could be so much better if you didn’t use foul language,’ Graham wrote in a letter to Trump, citing Matthew 12:36: ‘I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak.’

Graham ultimately closed his statement to Fox News Digital with a blessing: ‘God bless Secretary Kennedy and Vice President Vance.’ 

Representatives for Vice President Vance did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Fox News’ Alexandra Koch contributed to this report.

One of former President Joe Biden’s top spokespeople dismissed the fallout from the former president’s disastrous June 2024 debate performance during a closed-door interview with the House Oversight Committee that lasted over five hours.

Andrew Bates, who served as White House senior deputy press secretary and worked in Biden’s communications shop for nearly his entire term, said reactions to Biden’s debate against then-candidate Donald Trump were ‘overblown,’ according to a source familiar with his interview.

Bates ‘ultimately agreed with President Biden’s decision to drop out’ after viewing polling data the week Biden made his choice to drop his re-election bid, the source said.

A source close to Bates, however, said after he had time to process the then-president’s decision and a turn in public polling during the final week of Biden’s candidacy, he agreed Biden had made the right decision to withdraw.

He dismissed concerns about Biden’s age as a ‘polling problem,’ however, and wrote off Americans’ concerns about his age and abilities as the product of mainstream media and right-wing critics, according to the first source – similar to previous Biden allies in their closed-door interviews.

The former spokesman also described relatively infrequent interactions with Biden and allegedly said Biden only met with his press team a few times in a year.

‘He would see President Biden in person a little over once a month, but this could be anything from travel, going with him to the Hill or just seeing him in the hallway,’ the first source said.

But a former Biden White House staffer argued that the press secretary and the communications director were the default representatives of the press and communications team for daily meetings with the president.

Bates also allegedly told investigators he supported the sweeping, and controversial, pardon granted to Hunter Biden toward the end of the president’s term. 

The second source, however, said Bates told investigators that Biden conducted himself ‘honorably’ when asked whether any of his actions were done to benefit his son’s business dealings.

That pardon and the hundreds of other clemency orders signed by Biden are of particular interest to the House Oversight Committee.

Oversight Committee Republicans are investigating whether Biden’s top White House allies covered up signs of mental decline in the former president, and by extension, are looking into whether executive actions signed by autopen were executed with Biden’s full awareness and approval.

Biden himself told the New York Times recently that he made every clemency decision on his own.

His allies have also blasted the GOP-led probe as a partisan exercise.

During his opening statement, obtained by Fox News Digital, Bates defended Biden’s fitness for office while criticizing Trump’s own actions as president.

‘I was proud to support Joe Biden as President because we believe in the same values. In the White House, it was universally understood that Joe Biden was in charge. That is completely consistent with my personal experience with the President,’ Bates told House investigators, according to another source.

A House Oversight Committee spokesperson blasted Bates as ‘delusional’ and accused his opening statement of leaking to media before he read it in the room.

Fox News Digital reached out to Bates via his public relations firm Wolfpack Strategies, as well as his counsel, for further comment.

President Donald Trump on Friday signed his 200th executive order which authorized the Department of Defense to revert its name back to the ‘Department of War.’

Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump said the new name ‘sends a message of victory, a message of strength’ to the world.

‘It has to do with winning,’ the president went on. ‘We should have won every war. We could have won every war. But we really chose to be very politically correct or woke.’

‘We won the First World War, we won the Second World War, we won everything before that and in between. And then we decided to go woke and we changed the name to the Department of Defense. So, we’re going Department of War,’ he added.

Trump said the name is ‘a much more appropriate name, especially in light of where the world is right now.’

‘We have the strongest military in the world. We have the greatest equipment in the world. We have the greatest men. New factories of equipment, by far. There’s nobody to even compete,’ he said.

Turning to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Trump said while smiling, ‘I’d like to ask our, secretary of war, to say a few words.’

Hegseth thanked Trump for signing the order, saying, the name change restores the ‘warrior ethos’ to America’s military.

‘After winning a War for Independence in 1789, George Washington established the War Department and Henry Knox was his first secretary of war. And this country won every major war after that … 150 years after that, we changed the name after World War Two from the Department of War to the Department of Defense in 1947 and as you pointed out, Mr. President, we haven’t won a major war since,’ said Hegseth.

 ‘This name change is not just about renaming, it’s about restoring,’ said the secretary. ‘Words matter. It’s restoring, as you’ve gotten us to, Mr. President, restoring the warrior ethos, restoring victory and clarity as an end state, restoring intentionality to the use of force.’  

Hegseth pledged the War Department ‘is going to fight decisively, not endless conflicts. It’s going to fight to win, not to lose. We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct,’ he said, adding, ‘We’re going to raise up warriors, not just defenders. So, this War Department, Mr. President, just like America is back.’

The executive order calls for using the Department of War as a secondary title for the Department of Defense, along with phrases like ‘secretary of war’ for Hegseth, according to a White House fact sheet previously shared with Fox News Digital. 

It’s unclear if Congress, which has the authority to establish federal executive departments, will need to step in to issue final approval on the move. However, Trump expressed confidence the name will stick, saying, ‘We’re going with it, and we’re going with it very strongly … but we’ll put it before Congress.’

Fox News Digital’s Diana Stancy and Emma Colton contributed to this report.

NEW YORK – Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett hasn’t seen The Handmaid’s Tale. But she was well-prepared to be interrupted by any number of red-draped protesters, should they storm in to interrupt her confirmation hearing, the same way they did for her colleague, Brett Kavanaugh, several years prior. 

As she recounted in an interview at the Lincoln Center Thursday night, the preparation had been for naught: Her confirmation took place behind closed doors, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and the social precautions in place at the time. It also made the lengthy confirmation process and her first days as a justice on the nation’s highest court ‘awkward,’ she said, to laughter. ‘Very awkward.’ 

That revelation was just one of many Barrett made during a wide-ranging interview Thursday, just days before the publication of her forthcoming memoir, ‘Listening to the Law.’ 

Like her book, Barrett’s appearance proved to be as telling for what she didn’t say as for what she did. 

Barrett, 53, spoke easily about her family, her faith, and the kindness of her newfound colleagues on the Supreme Court, whom she says lent her not only the use of their office supplies and bench memos during her first days on the job, but also temporarily dispatched their own staff to help her answer phones and restock supplies. ‘There is an indispensable human element to judging,’ Barrett observes in her memoir, something she says is all the more true when serving on a nine-person bench.

‘Thinking in categories of left and right — it’s just the wrong way to think about the law,’ she said Thursday night to the jam-packed audience at Alice Tully Hall. 

Even so, Barrett artfully dodged some of the more polarizing issues the court has faced in the past eight months. 

She was demonstrably less candid on questions involving the so-called emergency, or ‘shadow’ docket — the vehicle by which President Donald Trump has sought to temporarily stay lower court decisions that would have paused or halted some of his most sweeping executive orders from taking force.

The Supreme Court has presided over a record blitz of emergency appeals and orders filed by the administration and other aggrieved parties during Trump’s first eight months back in office. Justices on the 6-3 conservative bench have 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.

The court has sided with Trump in the majority of these requests, prompting a fresh level of scrutiny — and rare public criticism from some of her colleagues on the bench.

The Supreme Court ‘is at its best when it can review cases that have been fully adjudicated’ by the lower courts, she offered, before the conversation moved on. 

Barrett also sought to defend the court as a body that operates beyond the politics of a given moment, and (ideally) outside the reach of public opinion. She noted that public perceptions of what a judge ought to do is, at times, at odds with what the Constitution and existing Supreme Court precedent proscribe. 

‘I think everyone expects the court to deliver the results it likes,’ Barrett said Thursday night. There’s a ‘disconnect between what people want in the moment,’ and what the court should deliver, she said.

People ‘want what they want,’ and will inevitably be disappointed by the results, she said.

Like other justices who have authored memoirs while on the bench, Barrett offered a lofty, and at times idealistic, view of the court. 

Pressed by journalist Bari Weiss about her majority opinion in Trump v CASA earlier this year, Barrett insisted that her ‘spicy’ remarks towards Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson were nothing more than an attempt to ‘set the calibration right.’

‘I thought Justice Jackson had made an argument in strong terms that I thought warranted a response,’ Barrett said.

Thursday night’s interview was the first of many public appearances Barrett is slated to give in coordination with her book release next week. It offered at times a refreshingly personal glimpse into her nearly five years on the Supreme Court — a job she says she wasn’t quite sure she wanted, when the offer finally came. 

Barrett recounted what her husband told her at the time, when she was weighing whether to go through with the confirmation process. Should she choose to move forward, he told her, ‘We have to burn the boats.’

The phrase, adopted from Alexander the Great, refers to the notion that one must eliminate all options for backup plans or retreat.  

It was one she held onto during the confirmation process, when media outlets pilloried her as an out-of-touch and hyper-religious mother of seven, when quips from lawmakers, such as then-Sen. Dianne Feinstein — ‘the dogma lives loudly within you’ — might have rattled her further. 

‘To do the job well, you have to have thick skin,’ she told the audience Thursday night.

She also dismissed fears of a constitutional crisis.

‘I don’t think that we are currently in a constitutional crisis,’ Barrett said. ‘I think that our country remains committed to the rule of law. I think we have functioning courts.’

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. appeared before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday in a hearing that made the Jerry Springer show look like an Oxford Union debate, but amid the pompous posturing from Democrats, an important truth came out.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., thought he scored major points by asking RFK Jr the gotcha question — ‘how many Americans died of COVID?’ When the secretary said that he did not know, a giddy Warner thought he could spike the football.

But here’s the thing: RFK Jr. is right. Nobody actually knows how many people have died of COVID, because we don’t really even know what dying of COVID means. 

Democrats and dim-witted fact-checkers will cry out that we have that data, that both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization say 1.2 million lives were lost to the Chinese virus.

However, we know that at the height of the pandemic some motorcycle accidents were listed as COVID deaths if the victim tested positive for it, and we know that thousands and thousands of Americans with myriad medical conditions died with, not of, COVID.

We also know that during the pandemic, both the CDC and the WHO were two of the worst and least reliable actors in the entire miserable fiasco. Everybody paying attention admits now that CDC guidance on masking and social distancing might as well have been magical incantations.

There was no data to back up these restrictions, and even when the CDC did collect data, they didn’t just do a bad job, they intentionally stacked the deck to make COVID look as deadly and terrifying as possible.

Meanwhile, the CDC and the medical establishment nationwide spent most of 2020, as COVID restrictions raged, not just refusing to listen to contrary voices like Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and Dr. Scott Atlas, but trying to destroy their lives and careers.

This led to another very telling moment in the hearing, this time involving Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who made one of the most hilariously comic appeals to authority in recent memory. 

The socialist senator told Kennedy, ‘We’ve got the entire medical community on one side, The AMA [American Medical Association] representing hundreds of thousands of doctors, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Health Association.’ Then he asked Kennedy, what organizations does his side have?

I’m going to be less polite than the secretary was and say, none of them, thank goodness, because these are the same lunatics who lied their way through COVID and affirm 87 genders.

Kennedy’s more politic answer was that he is backed up by and working with the very scientists, like Bhattacharya, who were right about COVID in the first place, while Bernie’s alphabet soup of medical incompetence was masking babies.

Democrats and the medical establishment are now like middle-school bullies who don’t have a high school growth spurt and are suddenly as harmless as a flower. President Donald Trump knows this, and it is exactly why he tapped the Kennedy scion to fix public health.

In a less cynical time, the coin of the Kennedy realm was public service. John F. Kennedy campaigning in West Virginia in 1960, looking up at the voters on their porch, knowing they were the boss, not him, asking for their trust, not demanding it.

So too, RFK Jr. is hellbent on serving the people, not the establishment. That’s why so many MAHA moms who know they have been lied to about what they feed their kids held their noses and voted for the orange man.

The obvious elephant in the hearing on Thursday was pointed out by Sanders himself: Every single senator on the dais takes big bucks from big pharmaceutical companies, the same companies that fund all the ‘independent research’ thrown at Kennedy.

The age of ‘just shut up and trust the science,’ is well and truly over. As George W. Bush once put it, ‘fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice…well, you’re not gonna fool me again.’ That’s where the American people are when it comes to the medical establishment.

Kennedy stood his ground in the contentious and cacophonous hearing. He gave as good as he got, and he is absolutely right that nobody knows how many died of COVID, or how many were saved by the vaccine.

The very people in the CDC tasked with tracking such data fumbled so badly that neither RFK Jr. nor the American people can rely on their bungled assessments.

This chaos of data, as the secretary called it, is exactly why he is cleaning house at HHS, and that is exactly what President Trump and the voters want and expect from him.