Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, R-N.Y., an ally to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, did not mince words when it comes to Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., ahead of a vote over whether to vacate the speakership.

‘I prefer, you know, common sense over chaos. I think that we should be focused on governance rather than grandstanding, and the fact that we have one a–hole that is holding us up and holding America up is a real problem,’ D’Esposito said in an interview with Fox News Digital on Tuesday. 

Asked if he felt Gaetz introduced a motion to vacate as part of a personal vendetta against McCarthy, D’Esposito said, ‘With Matt Gaetz, absolutely. It’s definitely personal.’

‘He’s more focused on raising money, also going after the speaker of the House, than focused on putting good policy in place and moving this country forward,’ D’Esposito said. ‘We have 45 days to put appropriation bills on the floor and pass them and that’s what we should be doing.’ 

Gaetz’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Addressing the issue of McCarthy’s speakership, Fox News Digital asked D’Esposito whether House Republicans had enough votes to table a motion to vacate. 

‘It’s a work in progress, and we’ll see how it goes,’ D’Esposito told Fox News Digital, ‘I think that anybody, anybody who has been around Speaker McCarthy before knows that he’s a fighter and that you never give up on him, and he never gives up.’ 

House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., reportedly told the House Democratic Caucus to vote to remove McCarthy, and said Democrats should vote against any attempt to delay a motion to vacate. Gaetz has claimed McCarthy will be forced to work with Democrats to save his speakership, as the GOP maintains a majority by a razor-thin margin. 

The initial vote on McCarthy, which is to table the Gaetz’s vacate proposal, not to actually vacate, is expected at about 2 p.m. Tuesday.

House Democratic leaders will not save Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., if Republicans move to remove his gavel, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said on Tuesday.

‘Given their unwillingness to break from MAGA extremism in an authentic and comprehensive manner, House Democratic leadership will vote yes on the pending Republican Motion to Vacate the Chair,’ Jeffries said in a letter to colleagues after a lengthy caucus meeting behind closed doors.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., a staunch critic of McCarthy, first issued a motion to vacate the Speaker on Monday night over what he says are broken promises in the government spending patch.

McCarthy likely has to rely on Democrats to save his job with at least five Republicans expected to vote in favor of ousting him. House Democratic caucus members might still vote to keep McCarthy in his post, even if Democratic leaders won’t save him.

‘We confront a serious, solemn and sober moment,’ Jeffries’ letter stated. ‘The vote that the House will cast this week in connection with a Motion to Vacate the Chair is not about any one individual. Our responsibility as Members of Congress relates to the Constitution, the principle of good governance and the people we are privileged to serve. Nothing more, and nothing less.’

‘In that regard, House Democrats remain willing to find common ground on an enlightened path forward. Unfortunately, our extreme Republican colleagues have shown no willingness to do the same,’ it continued. ‘It is now the responsibility of the GOP members to end the House Republican Civil War.’

On the House floor Tuesday, a motion to table Gaetz’s motion commenced with 15 minutes to cast their votes. The motion was shot down, with several Republicans voting not to table it. 

McCarthy can only afford to lose a handful of GOP votes, and if Gaetz’s motion succeeds, all proceedings on the House floor will freeze and the House will then be required to conduct successive roll call votes until a new speaker is elected.

Five GOP lawmakers – Reps. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., Bob Good, R-Va., Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and Eli Crane, R-Ariz. – have said they are voting against keeping McCarthy as speaker. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., has strongly suggested he would do so as well. 

Conservatives aligned with former President Donald Trump are coming out in opposition to the motion by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., to vacate House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., over the stopgap government funding bill that passed late Saturday.

Gaetz threatened over the weekend that he would file the motion this week, which would aim to effectively oust McCarthy from the speakership after he accused McCarthy of making a ‘side deal’ with Democrats to send additional aid to Ukraine. McCarthy, who said he supports arming Ukraine but not sending additional money to Ukraine, rejected the notion that a side deal took place with Democrats or President Biden.

‘For all the crocodile tears about what may happen later this week about a motion to vacate, working with the Democrats is a yellow brick road that has been paved by Speaker McCarthy,’ Gaetz said during a floor speech Monday afternoon. ‘Whether it was the debt limit deal, the [continuing resolution] or now the secret deal on Ukraine.’

‘This is swampy log-rolling,’ Gaetz added. ‘The American people deserve single-subject bills. I get that a lot of folks might disagree with my perspectives on the border or on Ukraine, but can we at least agree that no matter how you feel about Ukraine or the southern border, they each deserve the dignity of their own consideration and should not be rolled together where they might pass, where each individually wouldn’t. This is what we’re trying to get away from.’

On Saturday, the House and Senate passed a stopgap government funding bill that Biden signed later that evening. The bill passed the House in a 335-91 vote and helped avoid a government shutdown – which would have resulted in thousands of federal employees being furloughed – and extended funding through mid-November.

Gaetz ultimately filed a motion to vacate on Monday evening, hours after he said in his floor speech to ‘stay tuned.’ The House is poised to vote on the motion Tuesday afternoon after a separate effort to kill the motion failed.

His actions garnered pushback from Republicans, including those who have traditionally been aligned with Trump.

‘Yes, that is correct,’ conservative commentator Mark Levin said Monday. ‘The guy who says McCarthy is the Democrats’ speaker is plotting and scheming with the radical Democrats to take out a Republican speaker who is more conservative than he is (McCarthy backed the Freedom Caucus CR and the cuts and border security, which Gaetz and 4 others killed).’

‘There are now numerous reports that Gaetz is doing this not because he insists that McCarthy interfered with an ethics investigation of him, which a speaker cannot do and has never done,’ Levin continued. ‘I might add that after two years it’s about time the Ethics Committee release its report and either lift the cloud over Gaetz or clear him. Gaetz should demand this as well.’

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said that while she shares substantive concerns with Gaetz about McCarthy’s leadership, she won’t support a motion to vacate.

‘What I see is a system of failure and a federal government that serves the world first and America last and my desire for wanting to fix it is why I ran for Congress in the first place,’ the Georgia Republican said. ‘So, I agree with Matt Gaetz that things must change, but I don’t agree that a motion to vacate will effectively create the changes needed to solve the intentional systemic failure that create the annual never-ending CR’s and Christmas omnibus mega-spending packages.’

‘A [motion to vacate] of our speaker gives the upper hand to the Democrats during dangerous times while we have been handed over under the presidency of an ailing old man ridden with dementia [who] has spent over 50 years in Washington seats of power corruptly enriching himself and his family by delivering policy deals to foreign investors,’ she added.

Additionally, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich suggested that GOP leadership could expel Gaetz from the House Republican Conference and eliminate his committee assignments.

‘Is Gaetz secretly an agent for the Democratic Party? No one else is doing as much to undermine, weaken and cripple the House GOP,’ Gingrich said in a social media post.

Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, a former Trump aide who was endorsed by the former president, blasted Gaetz in a post on X on Tuesday, saying, ‘It says a lot that Matt Gaetz and his small crew of supposed conservatives are speaking from the Democrat side of the House chamber.’

‘Instead of working on appropriations bills, we watch as Gaetz joins with Democrats to halt our conservative agenda,’ he added.

And Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., who was endorsed by Trump during the 2022 election, blasted the effort to file a motion to vacate as counterproductive and self-destructive during a floor speech that preceded Gaetz’s on Monday.

‘We are faced with the threat that a Republican will move to vacate the Republican speaker of the House. It will only require four other Republican members to join the Democrats to achieve this result,’ McClintock said. ‘The immediate effect will be to paralyze the House indefinitely because no other business can be taken up until a replacement is elected.’

‘Just when we are on the verge of completing the appropriations process, that in turn will finally initiate discussions with the Senate that are vital to change the dangerous path that our country is on – I cannot conceive of a more counterproductive and self-destructive course than that,’ the California Republican added. ‘The supreme irony is that this is being initiated by self-described conservatives.’

Also on Monday, former senior White House adviser Stephen Miller said McCarthy is ‘not going to be going anywhere’ and called for unity among Republicans to solve border security issues.

‘I think at this point in time, it’s very clear that Kevin is not going to be going anywhere,’ Miller said in an interview with FOX Business. ‘He has the support of 218 members and I understand and I need to – everybody rise above. I understand all the emotions that are playing out right now.’

‘But for the love of God, we are losing this country, and we are losing it fast,’ he continued. ‘Republicans need to unify around the twin mission of stopping the open border invasion and stopping a government that has been weaponized against conservatives and Christians and anyone who does not subscribe to the tenets of the radical left.’

Gaetz’s office did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

President Joe Biden’s son Hunter pleaded not guilty Tuesday to federal gun charges in Delaware. But his high-priced lawyers plan to argue that the earlier ‘sweetheart’ plea deal is legally enforceable so that their client should never be tried and, thereby, skate on any prison time.

It won’t work. It was a crooked deal that imploded in July when a suspicious judge exposed a hidden immunity clause buried in the ancillary documents. At that point, Hunter’s attorneys announced in court that they were ‘tearing up’ the agreement.  Now they want to paste it back together. Good luck with that.  

It’s true that then-U.S. Attorney David Weiss, who appears to have been acting covertly as a member of Hunter’s defense team, agreed to the deal. But under the law, that’s not enough.  It must be approved by the probation officer, who declined to do so.  Judge Maryellen Noreika also refused to accept the plea.  That makes it dead as a doornail. 

Veteran defense attorney Abbe Lowell, meanwhile, is prepping Plan B. He’ll claim that the gun law is an unconstitutional violation of the Second Amendment by citing a recent decision from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that tossed out the criminal conviction of a marijuana user who possessed a gun.  Ironically, Joe Biden’s solicitor general is appealing the very ruling that the president’s son wants to rely on.

Regardless, the Fifth Circuit’s pronouncement covers Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi.  It is not binding on Delaware, although the U.S. Supreme Court may have the final say on its validity.  But that still leaves two separate counts of making false statements, which carries a maximum penalty of 15 years behind bars upon conviction.  

If the past is prologue, Weiss —who was elevated by Attorney General Merrick Garland to special counsel— won’t let that happen.  He’ll likely conjure up another lenient deal or otherwise drag his feet by letting the case collect dust balls through the upcoming election cycle.

How do we know this? Because Weiss spent five years dithering in the face of compelling evidence that Hunter committed far more serious felonies of influence peddling, bribery, conspiracy, money laundering, foreign lobbying crimes, obstruction of justice, tax fraud and tax evasion.  Those schemes netted tens of millions of dollars from overseas adversaries by appearing to sell access to Joe Biden and promises of future influence.  

Yet, no charges have ever been brought. Indeed, Weiss deliberately allowed the statutes of limitations to run on many of the suspected crimes.  Hunter’s lawyers were tipped off about a surprise interview.  A search of Hunter’s storage locker was halted despite probable cause being established. Privileged information was secretly divulged.  Investigators were blocked from asking about Joe Biden’s involvement, instructed to ignore Hunter’s incriminating laptop, and told to ignore the immense paper trail of overseas wire transfers.  A written agreement to bring six felony charges against Hunter was scuttled.      

Who does that?  A corrupt or incompetent U.S. Attorney who’s been running an obvious protection racket to shield his boss, the president, who is implicated as complicit in his son’s scams and schemes.  

Weiss almost got away with it until two IRS whistleblowers stepped forward to reveal the chicanery.  They informed Congress of the constant political interference and preferential treatment that slow-walked the investigation, suppressed evidence, and diverted the case. 

Now exposed, perhaps Weiss has experienced an epiphany.  Maybe he will suddenly embrace the rule of law and aggressively pursue the escalating evidence of pervasive crimes committed.

But something tells me that lottery tickets are a better bet. 

Lawmakers have voted to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., from his leadership role, the first time in the history of the House of Representatives that the chamber voted to boot a member from the top job.

Eight Republicans voted with every present Democrat to vacate the speaker’s chair. The final vote was 216 to 210 in favor of McCarthy’s ouster.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., introduced a measure against McCarthy known as a motion to vacate on Monday night, accusing him of breaking promises he made to win the speaker’s gavel in January.

Tensions flared during an hour of debate before the actual motion to vacate, after 11 Republicans voted with every Democrat to advance the measure. McCarthy’s allies had taken up all of the microphones on the GOP side of the chamber, forcing Gaetz to make his case from the side where Democrats traditionally sit.

‘Chaos is Speaker McCarthy. Chaos is somebody who we cannot trust with their word,’ Gaetz said as McCarthy looked down at his lap.

At one point, an outraged McCarthy ally, Rep. Garret Graves, R-La., accused Gaetz and his cohorts of sending fundraising efforts on their motion to vacate. He fumed while pointing to his phone, ‘Using official actions to make money, it’s disgusting.’

Chants of ‘shame’ erupted on the House GOP side of the chamber.

Gaetz responded, ‘When it comes to how those raise money, I take no lecture on asking patriotic Americans to weigh in and contribute to this fight from those who would grovel and bend knee for the lobbyists and special interests who own our leadership.’

A Republican lawmaker shouted at Gaetz, ‘You’re no martyr.’

Democrats signaled early on Tuesday that they would not be inclined to help McCarthy. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said before the vote that Democrats ‘are ready to find bipartisan common ground. Our extreme colleagues have shown no willingness to do the same. They must find a way to end the House Republican civil war.’

In January, it took 15 rounds of voting until McCarthy was elected.

McCarthy angered hardliners over the weekend when he passed a short-term spending bill known as a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government open for 45 days in order to avert a government shutdown and give lawmakers more time to cobble together 12 individual spending bills.

Ninety House Republicans voted against the CR on Saturday, arguing that it was a ‘clean’ extension of the previous Democrat-held Congress’ policies. But the speaker’s previous attempts to put a CR on the table that would cut spending for its short duration were upended by several of those same conservatives who were opposed to any such measure on principle.

The frustration at the small number of rebels was palpable among House Republicans on Tuesday morning.

‘This is a distraction from what we should be focusing on, which is the appropriations process,’ said Main Street Caucus Vice Chair Stephanie Bice, R-Okla. ‘This is all about Matt Gaetz. It’s not about Kevin McCarthy. Matt Gaetz is using the American people as pawns in his narcissistic game of charades.’

The National Security Agency (NSA) will launch a new artificial intelligence security center to both protect U.S. AI systems and defend against external threats.

The new security center launches as the U.S. government has increased its use of algorithms and AI systems in defense and intelligence and is seeking to safeguard systems from theft or sabotage. The NSA center will also be responsible for protecting the homeland from external AI-related threats, according to a report from Yahoo News on Monday,

Army Gen. Paul Nakasone, NSA director, told the Associated Press that the new center could be incorporated into the NSA’s existing Cybersecurity Collaboration Center, which works with the private sector and internal partners to strengthen U.S. defenses from near-peer rivals such as China and Russia.

Christopher Alexander, the chief analytics officer of Pioneer Development Group, told Fox News Digital such a center is ‘desperately needed for intelligence analysis and is crucial for national security.’

‘The most obscure details can complete an intelligence estimate and that requires intelligence analysts who can comb through every piece of information, recognize a [pattern] and turn that data into information – and ultimately a finished analysis,’ Alexander said. ‘AI and machine learning can take on the role of literally 1000s of lower-level analysts. It works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and the sheer amount of data collected allows for whole new methods of analysis.’

Alexander pointed to allied intelligence collection efforts during World War II, ‘Part of the reason the intel community realized the Germans would attack at the Battle of Bulge was because of the size of buttons coming from German factories. AI will find and alert human analysts to small details that may otherwise be missed.’

Alexander said that ‘In the future predictive analytics will also be improved by collecting and sifting through massive data sets as well. That could completely revolutionize the spycraft trade.’

The report comes after a top CIA official warned that China’s use of AI programs could be a threat to national security.

‘They are growing every which way,’ Lakshmi Raman, the CIA’s director for artificial intelligence, said at the Politico AI & Tech Summit, according to a report on Fox Business.

Those concerns seemingly mirror those of the Department of Homeland Security, which released a threat assessment that said ‘the proliferation of accessible artificial intelligence tools likely will bolster our adversaries’ tactics.’

‘Nation-states seeking to undermine trust in our government institutions, social cohesion, and democratic processes are using AI to create more believable mis-, dis-, and malinformation campaigns, while cyber actors use AI to develop new tools and accesses that allow them to compromise more victims and enable larger-scale, faster, efficient, and more evasive cyber attacks,’ the assessment said.

But Jon Schweppe, the policy director of American Principles Project, is wary of the use of AI by the NSA, pointing to the controversial spying scandal that was made public by whistleblower Edward Snowden just over a decade ago.

‘Nobody is clamoring for more data mining and invasion of privacy from three letter agencies. The NSA has already demonstrated a history of abusing their power with the data collection operation previously uncovered by a whistleblower,’ Schweppe told Fox News Digital. ‘We don’t even know the full scale of the dangers we’re facing with this emerging technology — should we really be entrusting a corrupt bureaucratic agency with even more power? Congress should be looking to limit the scope of these domestic spying operations, not giving them a de facto green light.’

‘We maintain an advantage in AI in the United States today. That AI advantage should not be taken for granted,’ Nakasone told reporters.

But an NSA spokesperson told Fox News Digital in a statement that the new security center is simply ‘consolidating its various AI security related activities into a new entity, the NSA AI Security Center (AISC). Since AI security is principally a cybersecurity responsibility, the AISC will be located within and part of NSA’s Cybersecurity Collaboration Center.’

The new center comes amid increased fears that China or Russia could look to use AI to interfere in the U.S. presidential election next year, though that threat is something Nakasone said the NSA hasn’t seen yet.

Instead, AI will still mostly be used for threat detection analysis, something Nakasone stressed the U.S. has already been doing.

‘AI helps us, but our decisions are made by humans. And that’s an important distinction,’ Nakasone said. ‘We do see assistance from artificial intelligence. But at the end of the day, decisions will be made by humans and humans in the loop.’

But the new security center comes after an NSA study found that securing AI models would be a major national security challenge going forward, noting that generative AI technologies continue to emerge that can be harnessed for both good and evil.

Nakasone said the center will become the’NSA’s focal point for leveraging foreign intelligence insights, contributing to the development of best practices guidelines, principles, evaluation, methodology and risk frameworks,’ adding that both protecting the nation from AI threats and protecting the country’s own AI will fall within ‘our national security systems and our defense industrial base.’

Ziven Havens, policy director at the Bull Moose Project, told Fox News Digital that the new center ‘has the potential to bolster America’s national security,’ pointing to the threats posed by adversaries such as China.

‘With China continuously improving and building out their AI capabilities, we have no choice but to lead the way in the development and implementation of this emerging technology,’ Havens said. ‘America must be first, or else we will be left behind in the AI race.’

Meanwhile, an NSA spokesperson told Fox News Digital in a statement that the agency ‘is uniquely well positioned to bring its technical expertise, threat insights, and authorities as National Manager for National Security Systems and its work with the Defense Industrial Base to support whole-of-government efforts in conjunction with the private sector to ensure an enduring U.S. advantage in AI.’

‘NSA’s principles and values, along with our culture of compliance and protection of privacy and civil liberties, will serve as the foundation for the AISC’s activities,’ the spokesperson added.

–>

WILMINGTON, DELAWARE—Hunter Biden is expected to plead not guilty to federal gun charges in U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware Tuesday morning after being charged out of Special Counsel David Weiss’ years-long investigation. 

The president’s son is set to appear in person in court for his arraignment Tuesday morning at 10:00 a.m. ET. 

Biden was charged by Weiss this month with making a false statement in the purchase of a firearm; making a false statement related to information required to be kept by a federal firearms licensed dealer; and one count of possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance. 

His attorneys, who initially requested for the court appearance to take place via video conference, earlier this month, signaled that he would plead not guilty to the charges. U.S. Magistrate Judge from the District of Delaware Christopher Burke rejected Hunter’s request, saying he should not receive special treatment. 

‘In the end, the Court agrees with both the Defendant and the Government, that Defendant should not receive special treatment in this matter — absent some unusual circumstance, he should be treated just as would any other defendant in our Court,’ Burke stated in a filing earlier this month. 

Hunter’s court appearance comes after an original plea agreement collapsed in July. Hunter Biden was expected to plead guilty in July to two misdemeanor tax counts of willful failure to pay federal income tax as part of the plea deal to avoid jail time on a felony gun charge.

Hunter Biden was forced to plead not guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and one felony gun charge when the deal collapsed in court. 

The federal gun charges are the first charges Weiss has brought against Hunter since being granted special counsel status by Attorney General Merrick Garland in August. 

According to the indictment, ‘on or about October 12, 2018, in the District of Delaware, the defendant, Robert Hunter Biden, in connection with the acquisition of a firearm, that is, a Colt Cobra 38SPL Revolver with serial number RA 551363…knowingly made a false and fictitious written statement, intended and likely to deceive that dealer with respect to a fact material to the lawfulness of the sale of the firearm…in that the defendant, Robert Hunter Biden, provided a written statement on Form 4473 certifying he was not an unlawful user of, and addicted to, any stimulant, narcotic drug, and any other controlled substance, when in fact, as he knew, that statement was false and fictitious.’ 

The indictment also states: ‘on or about October 12, 2018, through on or about October 23, 2018, in the District of Delaware, the defendant Robert Hunter Biden, knowing that he was an unlawful user of and addicted to any stimulant, narcotic drug, and any other controlled substance…did knowingly possess a firearm, that is, a Colt Cobra 38SPL revolver with serial number RA 551363, said firearm having been shipped and transported in interstate commerce.’ 

Fox News first reported in 2021 that police had responded to an incident in 2018, when a gun owned by Hunter was thrown into a trash can outside a market in Delaware.

A source with knowledge of the Oct. 23, 2018, police report told Fox News that it indicated that Hallie Biden, who is the widow of President Biden’s late son, Beau, and who was in a relationship with Hunter at the time, threw a gun owned by Hunter in a dumpster behind a market near a school.

A firearm transaction report reviewed by Fox News indicated that Hunter purchased a gun earlier that month.

On the firearm transaction report, Hunter answered in the negative when asked if he was ‘an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance.’

Hunter was discharged from the Navy in 2014 after testing positive for cocaine.