House Democrats are launching a working group aimed at crafting artificial intelligence policy, the latest attempt by federal lawmakers to wrap their heads around legislating the rapidly-advancing sector. 

The New Democrat Coalition, a group of nearly 100 House Democrats that touts itself as ‘pragmatic,’ unveiled the new initiative this week. 

Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., one of the initiative’s vice chairs, told Fox News Digital he hopes the working group will ‘help develop real, practicable ideas that will put guardrails in place for AI.

‘I continue to be focused on a variety of areas related to AI, including safety and security, transparency, the future of work, preventing civil rights abuses, health care and suicide prevention, and more, and have discussions ongoing about legislation in these areas with members of both parties,’ Beyer said. ‘Congress has to get up to speed on this issue, and I think the New Dems’ AI working group will be a constructive setting for progress.’

Working group Chair Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Wash., suggested it could lay the groundwork for an AI regulatory framework in the House of Representatives. ‘We are already seeing how breakthroughs in this emerging technology present both great opportunities and challenges with potential disruptions for workers, for democracy, and for national security,’ Kilmer said.

‘As AI’s applications expand and change, it is incumbent on lawmakers to address its unique opportunities and challenges by creating a regulatory framework that both encourages growth while guarding against potential risks.’

Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., another member of the working group and a Marine veteran, said he was concerned with how AI would ‘transform warfare’ and called on Congress to put up responsible guardrails against the technology’s most devastating possibilities.

‘It’s going to be impossible for Congress to really stay ahead of AI, but what we can and should do is to take very seriously AI’s most dangerous use cases and develop solutions and safeguards that apply directly to those cases,’ Moulton told Fox News Digital. ‘I’m also particularly concerned about how AI will transform warfare. We need a Geneva Convention for AI in warfare so that Beijing or Moscow aren’t empowered to set the goalposts. The New Dems are known for prioritizing practical solutions to our biggest challenges, so this working group makes a lot of sense and I expect it to be very productive.’

He also added, ‘I’m glad this working group will be focusing on protecting our democratic institutions from AI interference. Trust in our elections is already eroding and AI could do irreparable harm if left unchecked.’

It follows a similar effort by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who launched a bipartisan AI working group with the aim of crafting regulation earlier this year. 

And while efforts to regulate AI appear to be in their infancy so far, it’s already clear that Democrats in Congress’ lower chamber would have a more uphill battle than in the Senate.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who set up a bipartisan group of AI learning sessions for House lawmakers alongside Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., told Fox News Digital in April that it was early to start discussing regulatory barriers. 

‘What you want to first do, you want to gather all the information,’ he said at the time. ‘That’s why I think the best approach here is to bring in some of the brightest minds to talk about it before you’re crafting any legislation on it.’

Fox News Digital reached out to McCarthy’s office to inquire whether his position has since shifted but did not immediately hear back. 

FIRST ON FOX — Top Republicans on Capitol Hill are vowing a crackdown on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for allegedly destroying documents related to a congressional probe.

‘By deleting documents, the FTC likely violated federal law. It also impeded Congressional oversight of the FTC’s recent, unprecedented actions, including its proposed rule banning non-compete clauses,’ Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican and ranking member on the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, wrote in a letter to FTC Chair Lina Khan, which was dated for Thursday and shown to Fox News Digital ahead of its release.

‘Congress and the public deserve an explanation of why the FTC improperly destroyed records, what records it improperly destroyed, and what steps will be taken to ensure it never happens again,’ Cruz wrote, joined by Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican and the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.

The letter by Republican legislators comes about a year and a half after the FTC’s in-house watchdog, the Office of Inspector General (OIG), found multiple failure’s in the FTC’s record-keeping process. 

The Republicans allege that the FTC ‘improperly deleted’ documents that Jordan had requested in relation to the agency’s new rule that would ban private-sector employers from requiring workers to sign noncompete clauses that restrict them from working for competitors or starting new businesses that offer similar services for a period of time.

Jordan in February said the rule would wipe out roughly 30 million existing noncompete agreements, and while the FTC highlights estimated benefits of the rule, it made little effort to quantify the costs, according to Jordan.

Jordan said the rule ‘exceeds [the commission’s] delegated authority and imposes a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach that violates basic American principles of federalism and free markets.’

Jordan sought at the time, among other things, documents related to the litigation risks due to the rulemaking, economic analysis related to the rulemaking, and communications between the FTC and third parties about the rulemaking.

In May, the FTC informed House Judiciary Committee staff that it had ‘deleted material likely responsive to the Committee’s requests,’ including records of the employee on detail from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who led the FTC’s rulemaking.

‘The FTC’s deletion of documents responsive to a Congressional inquiry underscores the OIG’s conclusion in 2022 that ‘the FTC has not prioritized records management nor embedded it as a value in the agency’s culture,’’ the top Republicans wrote.

‘Moreover, it suggests that the agency is not committed to complying with the law, and that it may continue to delete records that are relevant to ongoing investigations. This is not how a federal agency should be run,’ they wrote.

The GOP trio notes in their letter that ‘Federal law imposes important recordkeeping requirements on the FTC.’

The Federal Records Act (FRA) requires the head of every federal agency to ‘make and preserve records’ about the agency’s ‘functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions.’ It further requires agency heads to ‘establish and maintain’ a ‘records scheduling’ process, pursuant to which the agency must identify the records it has, determine how long each type of record is deemed valuable, and when there is no longer a need for them at the agency, request authority to either legally destroy the records or transfer them to the National Archives.

The FRA explains that such recordkeeping is necessary to ‘furnish the information necessary to protect the legal and financial rights of the Government and of persons directly affected by the agency’s activities,’ the lawmakers note.

‘It turns out the FTC has struggled to comply with the law,’ they write.

In a February 2022 memo, the OIG ‘alert[ed] FTC leadership’ to two key issues with the FTC’s records management processes: the agency (1) was not adhering to the National Archives and Records Administration (‘NARA’) records scheduling requirements and (2) had not set up ‘automated practices for properly storing and timely disposing of records in a manner across the agency.’

The lawmakers note that the OIG found it ‘[p]articularly noteworthy’ that ‘the Bureau of Competition and the Bureau of Consumer Protection do not use a comprehensive case management system for their case files’ and that FTC management had ‘no plans’ to store files on the FTC’s cloud platform rather than various shared drive folders.

‘To date, the FTC has not adequately addressed concerns about its record retention policy,’ the Republicans say in the letter.

‘The agency has not explained how documents were deleted related to a rulemaking that the FTC should have known would face litigation, FOIA requests, and Congressional oversight. In addition, the FTC has not explained how federal records from senior advisors (sic) at the FTC could be deleted, regardless of whether there were litigation or other holds placed on the documents.’

The FTC did not immediately return Fox News Digital’s request for comment on the letter.

The Republicans requested an exhaustive list of communications from the agency, including what documents the FTC may have deleted in relation to 12 additional congressional oversight probes into the agency.

Republican White House candidate Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina is dishing out roughly $8 million to run ads starting Thursday in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states to vote in the GOP presidential nominating calendar.

The announcement, shared first with Fox News and a handful of other organizations, comes as Scott’s standing in the race to be the 2024 Republican standard-bearer is on the rise. And the large seven-figure buy underscores a key advantage for the Scott in a crowded field of contenders – his well stocked campaign war chest.

The new ad buy by the Scott campaign includes $6.6 million to run TV spots, with the rest for digital and radio commercials. 

The new buy is the second major ad blitz by Scott. His campaign shelled out nearly $6 million to run spots in the early voting states as he declared his candidacy for the presidency in mid-May.

Scott’s campaign touted that the senator is the only candidate to date to have ads placed post-Labor Day.

In addition to the new ad blitz, the Scott-aligned super PAC announced last month that it would spend $40 million to reserve TV and digital ad time to run ads starting Sept. 7 in Iowa, New Hampshire and the senator’s home state of South Carolina, which votes third in the GOP presidential nominating calendar. TIM PAC said its spots will run through January, when the first votes in the GOP primaries and caucuses are cast.

Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate and a rising star in the GOP, has been spotlighting an uplifting conservative message as he seeks his party’s presidential nomination.

Scott is in third place in the initial edition of the Fox News Power Rankings in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, which were unveiled Wednesday. He trails only former President Donald Trump – the commanding front-runner as he makes his third straight White House run – and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The senator stood at 11% in July in the most recent Fox News polling in Iowa, putting him in third place behind Trump and DeSantis.

And in his home state, he stood at 10% last month in Fox News polling, putting him in fourth behind Trump, DeSantis and his fellow home state candidate, former U.N. ambassador and former Gov. Nikki Haley.

Scott, who’s also known for his fundraising prowess, entered July with a very healthy $21 million in his campaign coffers, according to his fundraising filing with the Federal Election Commission. That was second only to Trump.

The senator, in an interview last month in New Hampshire with Fox News Digital, emphasized that he and his campaign are going to ‘keep doing what we’re doing. It’s working. So, we have to continue to show up, continue to have the resources to put on TV.’

Scott’s war chest – which is paying for the new ad blitz – is fueled by grassroots support for his White House bid as well as a massive transfer of funds from his 2022 Senate reelection campaign.

‘Tim Scott is the only candidate who has shown steady, upward momentum since entering the race. As he prepares to take the debate stage, it is clear he not only is the best messenger and most consistent conservative in the race but also has the resources to win,’ the Scott campaign said as it pointed to next week’s Fox News-hosted first GOP presidential primary debate.

EXCLUSIVE: Democratic strategists are dismissing the criticism leveled at President Biden after he told reporters ‘no comment’ when asked on Sunday about the increased death toll from the wildfire that swept through the Hawaiian town of Lahaina last week.

Fox News Digital spoke with multiple strategists who said Biden’s response was out of character for someone known for empathy in tragic situations, and argued that he either didn’t fully hear the question or didn’t feel like he had all the knowledge necessary for a proper response at that moment.

‘What I suspect is he’s not been sufficiently briefed on it and would have been a little afraid to say something that turned out not to be correct,’ James Carville said, who added that Fox Digital’s request for comment was the first he had heard of Biden’s response. ‘You know, it’s better sometimes to say nothing than to say something wrong.’

Carville said that presidents and other politicians generally like to comment on natural disasters because it isn’t their fault, and they can help, but repeated that Biden was possibly not ‘factually comfortable enough’ to talk about it at the time.

‘I’m sure some creative right wing talk show person has figured out a way to make it Hunter’s fault. I’m sure Hunter Biden was behind it,’ he later quipped.

Fox News contributor Leslie Marshall said that she, and anybody else who knows Biden, knows that ‘he is a nice person’ who suffered his own loss when he lost a wife and daughter in a car accident and a son to cancer, and wouldn’t react coldly like his critics were portraying.

‘He’s lived — everybody wants to point out and say he’s lived a long time — through numerous disasters. Not just his own, but as a representative of his state and vice president and now as president,’ Marshall said. ‘I know that Joe Biden is not a cold person. I would also say that words don’t matter. And I know people think they do, but they don’t.’

Marshall recalled how people often want to say, ‘I’m sorry,’ when someone they know experiences a loss because they don’t know what else to say, but that it’s just ‘giving lip service to disaster.’

‘Maybe he didn’t hear what the reporter asked,’ she added while also echoing what Carville said in that Biden might not have wanted ‘to speak out improperly’ because of the situation’s fluidity.

Marshall went on to predict the situation wouldn’t ultimately be bad for his chances of winning re-election, and that people wouldn’t base their vote on this instance, especially in a deep-blue state like Hawaii.

As of Wednesday morning, the death toll from the devastating Maui fire reached 106.

Biden said Tuesday that he and First Lady Jill Biden plan to visit Hawaii as soon as possible, but he does not want his arrival to get in the way of recovery efforts.

Fox News’ Lawrence Richard contributed to this report.

A proposal to legalize recreational adult use of marijuana in Ohio was cleared Wednesday to appear on statewide ballots this fall after the Republican-led state Legislature failed to act on it.

The measure would allow adults 21 and over to buy and possess up to 2.5 ounces of cannabis and to grow plants at home. A 10% tax would be imposed on purchases, to be spent on administrative costs, addiction treatment programs, municipalities with dispensaries and social equity and jobs programs.

Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose determined that the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol had submitted 127,772 valid signatures, more than the 124,046 needed to put the question before voters on Nov. 7.

In July, organizers had originally submitted fewer signatures than required, but were given 10 days to try again. During that grace period, they collected an additional 4,405 valid signatures.

If the issue passes, Ohio would become the 24th state to legalize cannabis for adult use.

‘This isn’t groundbreaking,’ Tom Haren, a coalition spokesperson, said in a statement when the signatures were submitted. ‘We’re just trying to get Ohio in line with neighbors like Michigan and Illinois.’

The proposal had a long journey to the ballot.

LaRose first submitted petitions to the Ohio General Assembly on behalf of the coalition on Jan. 28, 2022, triggering a four-month countdown for lawmakers to act. Republican legislative leaders indicated they did not intend to vote the proposal into law. Legislators also asserted that the coalition’s petition signatures weren’t turned in in time to make the 2022 ballot.

The coalition sued and, in a settlement, ultimately agreed to wait until 2023.

Marijuana has been legal for medical use in the state since 2016.

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EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said he’s still awaiting a response from the White House about a meeting he requested between President Biden and Afghanistan Gold Star families, who will be in Washington, D.C., this month.

Issa sent a letter one week ago to Biden, asking to coordinate a meeting with the families of the fallen U.S. service members from the Kabul airport terrorist attack on Aug. 26, 2021, which occurred during the president’s chaotic military withdrawal.

The families were in Washington last week when Issa, a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, held a congressional forum, and the families reported feeling misled and betrayed by their own government.

‘After spending many meaningful days with them, I write to facilitate an opportunity for you to speak with them in person so you can finally take the time to listen and hear what they have to say,’ Issa wrote in an Aug. 10 letter to Biden, which was provided to Fox News Digital on Wednesday. ‘To date, that simply has yet to happen.’

‘By any objective measure, these families have been ignored by your administration as it has sought to ‘turn the page’ on the events surrounding the withdrawal and evacuation,’ Issa continued. ‘From questions surrounding personal effects of the fallen to details of the attack and the apparent lack of accountability, I have heard from the family members how they have felt ignored, lied to, and betrayed since their loved ones made the ultimate sacrifice.’

‘I believe you would greatly benefit from hearing the families’ experiences and their testimonials to their loved ones. With this in mind, I would be happy to coordinate a meeting between you and them,’ Issa concluded his letter. ‘Please do not hesitate to have your staff contact me.’

Issa said he’s yet to hear a response from Biden.

‘For two years, Joe Biden ignored and insulted these Gold Star parents as he turned the page on his disastrous decisions that cost our 13 service members their lives,’ Issa said in a statement to Fox News Digital. ‘He has yet to in any way make this right with the families. Does he have the courage to face them? Not yet.’

Fox News Digital asked the White House whether the president had a response to the request or whether the president had any plans to meet with the families, but it declined to comment.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul announced Tuesday that the full committee will hold a roundtable discussion on ‘Examining the Abbey Gate Terrorist Attack,’ which will include some of the Gold Star family members on Aug. 29.

During the committee’s hearing with the families last week, several called out Biden and his top Cabinet officials by name, calling on them to resign.

Kelly Barnett, the mother of Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover who spoke out last week and who will be a panelist during the roundtable this month, accused Biden officials of lying to her about her son’s death – and said she was told that he died immediately only for eyewitnesses to tell her he ‘lived for a little while.’

‘We were told lies, given incomplete reports, incorrect reports, total disrespect,’ Barnett said. ‘I was told to my face he died on impact. That’s not true. The only reason that I know this is because witnesses told me the truth. I was lied to and basically told to shut up.’

Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui’s father, Steve Nikoui, accused Biden during the hearing of using his Marine son ‘as a pawn so we can meet his Sept. 11th deadline and get the optics he wanted.’

‘My life and that of my family’s has been on pause since the early morning of Aug. 26, 2021,’ the emotional father said. ‘The difference between the minutes of my life before that and the minutes that passed after that day are contrasted drastically.’

Christy Shamblin, the mother-in-law of Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee, held back tears during the hearing when she described her reaction to Biden officials lauding the evacuation as a success.

‘When our leaders, including the secretary of defense and our commander in chief, called this evacuation a success, as if there should be celebration, it is like a knife in the heart for our families and for the people [who] came back,’ Shamblin said. ‘I live [every] single day knowing that these deaths were preventable. My daughter could be with us today.’

‘I can’t even begin to piece together the words that would convey to you the devastation that her murder has brought to our family,’ she said.

Nikoui, Shamblin and seven other family members are also listed as panelists for the Aug. 29 discussion.

When reached for comment last week about the families’ criticism, a White House official told Fox News Digital that the president and first lady ‘will always honor the sacrifices of the 13 servicemembers who were killed in that attack.’

‘We mourn with them, we remember their loved ones, and we will continue to support these Gold Star families,’ the official said. ‘We are enormously proud of the men and women of our military, our diplomats and the intel community who conducted that withdrawal – they performed bravely and helped evacuate more than 120,000 people in one of the largest airlifts in history.’

‘But more broadly, the President made the tough decision to end the 20-year war in Afghanistan because he was not going to send another generation of troops to fight and die in a conflict that had no end in sight,’ the official added.

Biden previously received criticism for his treatment of the Gold Star families immediately after the 2021 attack in Kabul.

Following the attack, Biden met in Dover, Delaware, with the family members of the 13 killed, but several of them later spoke out, accusing the president of repeatedly bringing up his late son, Beau, and saying he routinely checked his watch during the dignified transfer of the soldiers’ remains.

Cheyenne McCollum, one of the sisters of Marine Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum, said she met with Biden alongside McCollum’s pregnant widow and that the president would not look family members in the eye and spent the three-minute conversation talking about Beau, who served in Iraq with the Army and died in 2015 from brain cancer.

‘I was able to stand about 15 seconds of his fake, scripted apology and I had to walk away,’ Cheyenne told ‘Fox & Friends’ at the time.

Mark Schmitz, the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, said Biden bristled and bluntly responded to his request that he learn the individual stories of the 13 fallen.

‘Initially, I wasn’t going to meet with him,’ Schmitz said at the time. ‘But then I felt I owed it to my son to at least have some words with him about how I felt, and it didn’t go well.’

The controversy had also resurfaced Biden’s reported past treatment of Gold Star families that predated the Afghanistan withdrawal.

For instance, Mike Iubelt, the father of the fallen Army Pfc. Tyler Iubelt, told the Washington Examiner in October 2019 that he had a ‘horrible experience’ meeting the now-president in 2016 after his son’s death in Afghanistan a few days earlier. Iubelt said he left their conversation ‘feeling worse’ than before.

‘He told my daughter-in-law … that she was too pretty for this to happen to her,’ Iubelt recalled. ‘It’s probably a good thing that he was surrounded by Secret Service, probably for both of us, because I’d probably be locked up in jail right now.’

Fox News’ Kyle Morris and Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission declined to vote Wednesday on whether the state’s top elections official should appear before a state Senate hearing on her reappointment as a fight continues over who will lead elections in the critical battleground state ahead of the 2024 presidential race.

Without clear instructions from commissioners, it is up to Meagan Wolfe, the commission’s administrator, to decide whether she will testify before Republicans who control the state Senate and wish to force a vote on firing her.

‘It is a really difficult spot,’ Wolfe said. ‘I feel like I am being put in an absolutely impossible, untenable position either way.’

Wolfe has been a target of conspiracy theorists who falsely claim she was part of a plan to rig the 2020 vote in Wisconsin, and some Republican leaders have vowed to oust her.

The bipartisan elections commission on June 27 deadlocked 3-3 along party lines on a vote to reappoint Wolfe, with Democrats abstaining in order to cause the nomination to fail. Without a nomination from at least four commissioners, a recent state Supreme Court ruling appears to allow Wolfe to continue indefinitely as head of the elections commission, even past the end of her term.

Senate Republicans tried to proceed with the reappointment process anyway, deciding in a surprise vote the following day to move ahead with a committee hearing and ultimately hold a vote on whether to fire her.

Commissioners said Wednesday they would not vote on a motion to either authorize or prohibit Wolfe from appearing at a hearing of the Senate elections committee, as it is not standard for the commission to decide those matters.

‘Meagan Wolfe is the chief elections officer for the state of Wisconsin. I have no interest in babysitting who she speaks to,’ said Democratic Commissioner Ann Jacobs.

The commission’s decision came despite partisan disagreements about the legitimacy of the Senate’s actions.

‘They do not have a nomination before them. I don’t care what they said in that resolution,’ Jacobs said. ‘I don’t have any interest in indulging the Legislature’s circus, which is based on a false reading of the law.’

But Don Millis, the Republican chair of the commission, argued that if Wolfe fails to appear, it could worsen the already tense situation.

‘They’re probably going to hold a hearing anyway,’ he said. ‘We’ve already seen what’s happened when we didn’t approve her nomination with four votes. I think that turned out very badly.’

The Senate has not yet set a date for the committee hearing on Wolfe’s reappointment, and Wolfe did not say at Wednesday’s meeting whether she will appear once a date has been set.

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A former fundraiser for Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., is facing wire fraud and identity theft for allegedly impersonating a high-ranking congressional aide, Fox News has learned. 

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn say Miele impersonated the former Chief of Staff of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy while soliciting contributions for Santos’ campaign. 

Miele was charged with four counts of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in an alleged scheme to defraud donors and obtain money for Santos under false pretenses. He was arraigned Wednesday morning and released on $150,000 bail. 

Prosecutors said Miele used a fake name and email address to trick at least a dozen prospective donors. Santos was not charged in the case. The indictment did not name the person who was impersonated by name. 

Miele pleaded not guilty to the charges in Brooklyn federal court and was released on a $150,000 bond. 

Miele’s attorney, Kevin Marino, said his client ‘is not guilty of these charges.’ 

‘He looks forward to complete vindication at trial as soon as possible,’ Marino said. 

Santos’ office referred all questions to his campaign.  

Federal prosecutors said Miele admitted to ‘faking my identity to a big donor’ in a letter sent to Santos last Sept. 26, a few months before Santos was elected. Miele said he was ‘high risk, high reward in everything I do,’ according to the indictment. 

Miele earned a commission of 15% for each contribution he raised, prosecutors said.

The indictment comes three months after Santos was arrested on charges of wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and making false statements to Congress. He has pleaded not guilty and insisted he has no plans to resign from Congress. 

The case against Santos involves separate allegations that he embezzled money from his campaign for personal use, lied to Congress about his finances and cheated his way into undeserved unemployment checks.

During his run for office, Santos fabricated swaths of his life story, falsely portraying himself as a wealthy Wall Street dealmaker when he had actually been struggling to pay his rent and had worked for a company accused of running a Ponzi scheme.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has proposed a commencement trial date of March 4, 2024, in the Georgia election case of former President Donald Trump and 18 other defendants, according to court filings obtained by Fox News. 

Willis is also proposing that arraignments for the defendants happen the week of Sept. 5. The dates are only a proposal for now and do not become official until signed by a judge. 

The proposed trial date is one day before elections on Super Tuesday, when the largest number of delegates are up for grabs of any single day in the primary cycle. For presidential candidates, it’s a day that can make or break a campaign. Roughly 14 primaries are set to be held across the country, from California and Texas to Massachusetts and Maine. 

Trump and 18 others were indicted Monday by a Fulton County grand jury. They are accused of committing various crimes as part of a scheme to keep Trump in power after his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump is already scheduled to stand trial in March in the separate New York case involving dozens of state charges of falsifying business records in connection with an alleged hush money payment to a porn actor. He’s also scheduled to stand trial in May in the federal case brought by special counsel Jack Smith alleging he illegally hoarded classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate and thwarted government efforts to return them.

And Smith’s team is seeking a Jan. 2 trial date in the federal case over Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, demanded that beer giant Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB) cooperate with the committee’s probe ‘regarding marketing alcohol to children.’

Cruz sent a letter late Tuesday night to AB InBev CEO Michel Doukeris with regard to what he called the company’s ‘failure to comply’ with the committee’s investigation into the Bud Light-Dylan Mulvaney controversy and called on him to direct AB ‘to cooperate with the investigation.’

‘On May 17, I wrote to Anheuser-Busch [North America] CEO Brendan Whitworth requesting documents and information regarding alarming allegations that Anheuser-Busch was marketing beer to [minors] through its partnership with social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney,’ Cruz wrote.

‘In response to my letter and at my request, the Code Compliance Review Board (‘CCRB’ or ‘the Board’) of the Beer Institute, an industry-funded lobbyist group representing U.S. brewers, also initiated a review of Anheuser-Busch’s compliance with the beer industry’s self-imposed Advertising and Marketing Code,’ Cruz continued.

The Texas Republican wrote that a ‘dissenting opinion in the CCRB review by retired Judge Paul Summers, the only attorney on the Board, corroborated’ his concerns and said Summers explained ‘Mulvaney appeals to persons below the legal drinking age with a ’special attractiveness.”

Cruz also said Summers wrote in his dissenting opinion that AB ‘knew all this, or the company’s ‘leadership should have known,’ and found that Anheuser-Busch ‘violated the Code as to advertising and marketing to people below the legal drinking age.’’

‘Meanwhile, nearly three months have passed since I requested documents from Mr. Whitworth in my capacity as Ranking Member of the Commerce Committee, and Anheuser-Busch has yet to provide the Committee with a single document,’ Cruz wrote.

‘Anheuser-Busch’s failure to cooperate and blatant disregard for U.S. congressional oversight is unacceptable. Given your broader responsibility for the Anheuser-Busch InBev portfolio of more than 500 brands, I trust you share my sincere concern with the possibility that Anheuser-Busch is marketing alcohol to children and will direct Anheuser-Busch to cooperate immediately with the Commerce Committee’s investigation.’

Cruz wrote that the ‘level of cooperation the Committee receives will bear significantly’ on the senator’s ‘assessment of whether this is part of a broader problem’ across AB’s brands ‘and whether changes to federal law are necessary to prohibit Anheuser-Busch InBev from marketing beer to children.’

The senator said his ‘May 17th requests were designed to obtain pertinent information about how Bud Light selects marketing partners and applies beer industry guidelines in the context of social media.’

‘There are currently no federal laws against advertising alcohol to minors, in part because of the beer industry’s professed commitment to self-regulation. As Ranking Member on the Commerce Committee, it is my duty to ensure that the Beer Institute’s private regulatory regime is working; if it is not, then our Committee may be forced to consider legislating to protect consumers, including impressionable children,’ he said.

‘Congress cannot effectively weigh the costs and benefits of legislation unless it understands how brewers are adapting to the digital sphere. Anheuser-Busch’s response to my request is thus key to the Committee’s consideration of such potential legislation,’ Cruz wrote.

The Texas Republican said his ‘May 17th letter was initially met with a roughly page-long unsigned response from Anheuser-Busch failing to provide any documents’ and that ‘counsel to Anheuser-Busch refused to provide any documents, citing the then-ongoing CCRB review’ in ‘subsequent communications with the Committee.’

‘This is nonsensical. A review conducted by an industry trade association is not a substitute for congressional oversight. The CCRB’s review was limited in scope — the CCRB does not ‘investigate marketing partnerships’ and did not demand supporting evidence from Anheuser-Busch,’ said Cruz.

‘As CCRB Member Judge Summers observed, Anheuser-Busch ‘failed to provide the reasonable documentation’ requested in my letter and complaint, even though I had issued ‘reasonable requests’ and responses from Anheuser-Busch would have been ‘elucidating,’’ he added.

Cruz wrote that AB ‘persists in refusing to provide the requested documents, revealing plainly that the ongoing CCRB review was never the real reason for Anheuser-Busch’s refusal to cooperate’ and that the company ‘is now suggesting that CCRB review was sufficient, and that it need not cooperate with congressional document requests.’

‘This position is untenable; Anheuser-Busch does not decide whether and when a congressional investigation is concluded,’ Cruz wrote.

‘These dilatory tactics by your subsidiary must end. Otherwise, Anheuser-Busch InBev will leave Congress no choice but to infer this obstructionism is intended to shield inculpatory information from the Committee’s investigation,’ he also wrote.

A spokesperson for AB told Fox News Digital, ‘We are pleased that the Code Compliance Review Board (CCRB), an independent body, ruled that Anheuser-Busch was in compliance with the Beer Institute’s Advertising and Marketing Code.’

‘Anheuser-Busch takes its role in promoting responsible drinking very seriously, and our marketing is directed to adults of legal drinking age,’ the spokesperson said. ‘Since 1985, AB and its wholesaler partners have invested more than $1 billion in responsible drinking initiatives and community-based programs to prevent illegal underage drinking, impaired driving, and other harmful drinking behaviors.’

‘Anheuser-Busch, its 18,000 employees, and our 387 independent wholesaler partners take pride in our tradition of promoting responsible alcohol consumption,’ the spokesperson added.

The Beer Institute published a report on the Mulvaney controversy that included Cruz’s initial letter with Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., as well as AB’s response to the senators.

‘We complied with all provisions of the Beer Institute Advertising and Marketing Code,’ AB wrote. ‘This is true even under the general principles and guidelines that govern traditional advertising placements.’

‘At the time of the engagement, available data indicated that Mulvaney’s Instagram audience complied with the Beer Institute’s standards,’ the company continued. ‘In fact, Instagram as a platform predominantly consists of adults, with data indicating that almost 80% of users are over the age of 21.

‘Anheuser-Busch does not market its products to people below the legal drinking age. The Ad Code dates back almost 90 years and contains detailed procedures for the placement of advertising. We have long adhered to these rigorous requirements, and in each case, our marketing is directed to our consumers — adults of legal drinking age.’

The company wrote it is ‘proud’ of its ‘record of industry leadership and ongoing efforts to promote responsible drinking behaviors.

‘Together with our wholesaler partners, we employ more than 8,200 people across Texas and Tennessee, and the beer industry in total contributes more than $33 billion to your states’ economies,’ it added.