A U.S. citizen jailed in Saudi Arabia for criticizing the royal family online was freed Wednesday by Saudi authorities, ending a four-year ordeal in the country, according to media reports.

Saad Almadi’s release came just a day after President Donald Trump met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Washington, D.C., per the New York Post.

Almadi, 75, a retired engineer and U.S. resident since 1976, was detained in 2021 during a family visit to Riyadh and later sentenced to more than 19 years in prison on terrorism charges tied to a series of posts online.

The charges were reduced to cyber crimes, and although he was released from prison in 2023, Almadi was held in the country under an exit ban which prevented him from going back home to the U.S.

The Almadi family issued a statement Wednesday celebrating the good news and thanking Trump.

‘Our family is overjoyed that, after four long years, our father, Saad Almadi, is finally on his way home to the United States!’ they said.

‘This day would not have been possible without President Donald Trump and the tireless efforts of his administration. We are deeply grateful to Dr. Sebastian Gorka and the team at the National Security Council, as well as everyone at the State Department.’

A third portion of the statement expressed appreciation to others who had supported the case over the years.

‘We extend our thanks to the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh for keeping our father safe, and to the nonprofit organizations and members of Congress who fought for his freedom,’ the statement read.

Almadi’s case also drew attention from human rights groups and U.S. lawmakers after he was accused of terrorism over 14 social media posts.

One suggested that a street in Washington be renamed after Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

U.S. pressure to lift Almadi’s exit ban had also intensified since Trump’s May visit to Saudi Arabia.

The president’s national security advisor, Sebastian Gorka, also met with Almadi’s son at the White House.

The Foley Foundation, which advocates for Americans detained overseas, praised the news Wednesday, saying it was ‘so excited’ the family’s fight had finally succeeded.

Per reports, Almadi was flying to the U.S. from Riyadh on Wednesday, according to his family, after Trump and the crown prince set foot on stage at a forum in Washington.

Fox News Digital has reached out to Sebastian Gorka, the Department of State and The White House for comment.

A bid by Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., to force a censure of her fellow House Republican and remove his committee assignments failed on Wednesday night.

Mace introduced a censure resolution against Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., earlier in the day, accusing him of stolen valor among other alleged improprieties.

Mills rose in his own defense on Wednesday night to call for a vote to refer the measure to the House Ethics Committee and deny her accusations.

His counter-effort succeeded, with the House voting 310-103 to send the matter to the ethics panel — effectively squashing Mace’s effort for an immediate punishment.

Seven House Republicans voted alongside Mace to move the censure vote forward. They are Reps. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., Kat Cammack, R-Fla., Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., and Joe Wilson, R-S.C.

The 310 lawmakers who voted against Mace’s move included both Democrats and Republicans.

Twelve lawmakers, including members of the House Ethics Committee, voted ‘present.’

Mace introduced the censure as a privileged resolution, a mechanism aimed at forcing House GOP leaders to reckon with a piece of legislation in the immediate future.

The resolution accused Mills of a wide variety of improprieties, including misrepresenting his military service and working as a private military contractor while serving as a member of Congress. 

She also cited several media reports alleging Mills assaulted past romantic partners while being accused of threatening another woman he was also reportedly involved with. Mills previously denied those allegations.

In addition to censuring him, Mace’s resolution would have also removed Mills from his roles on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and House Armed Services Committee if successful.

Hours before the vote, however, the House Ethics Committee announced it would open an investigation into Mills via a new subcommittee — a move Mace criticized as an effort to neuter her push.

‘This is a naked attempt to kill my resolution to censure Rep. Cory Mills. Common sense tells us we don’t need an investigative subcommittee to decide if Cory Mills, who a Court found to be an immediate and present danger of committing dating violence against a woman, should serve on committees related to national security. Or the testimony of soldiers and the stolen valor,’ Mace said.

Notably, however, the House Ethics Committee is the traditional first step when lawmakers are accused of impropriety.

It comes after House Democrats threatened to pursue a retaliatory censure against Mills Tuesday evening in response to Republicans trying to censure Del. Stacey Plaskett, D-V.I., the Virgin Islands’ nonvoting representative in the House, over her ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

The Plaskett censure failed after three House Republicans voted ‘no’ and three more voted ‘present,’ however, along with every Democrat rejecting the measure. Democrats did not appear to pursue the censure against Mills after that.

Mace had accused Mills of participating in a ‘backroom deal’ at the time to avoid a censure, adding, ‘I have the General who ‘recommended’ him for the Bronze Star on record saying he never wrote it, never read it and never personally signed it.’

Mills’ office told Fox News Digital there was never a deal, however, and had expected his censure to move forward on Tuesday night. He also voted in favor of censuring Plaskett.

Mace introduced her resolution after sending a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Wednesday accusing Mills of ‘credible accusations he misrepresented his military service’ and ‘credible accusations of having committed crimes against women.’

Mills has previously denied wrongdoing in reports of both sets of allegations.

He also criticized the move in a statement to Fox News Digital.

‘Congresswoman Nancy Mace’s latest stunt is a politically motivated attempt to grab headlines and settle personal scores. The American people deserve better than fabricated accusations and theatrics at a time when Republicans should be focused on governing,’ Mills said.

‘The claims on my valor that she’s pushing are baseless, recycled, and already publicly disproven. I fully deny them, just as I always have. This is not oversight, it’s attention-seeking dressed up as accountability.’

The House of Representatives unanimously voted against a provision that allows Republican senators whose phone records were seized by former Special Counsel Jack Smith to sue the federal government.

The provision was included in the recently passed bill to end the 43-day government shutdown, which President Donald Trump signed into law last week.

Despite supporters saying the provision is necessary to give senators recourse when the executive branch oversteps its constitutional bounds and reaches into congressional communications, the last-minute inclusion of the measure outraged both Republicans and Democrats, underscoring the ever-present tensions between the House and Senate.

The repeal passed 426 to 0, with 210 Democrats and 216 Republicans in the tally.

Dubbed ‘Requiring Senate Notification for Senate Data,’ the provision would allow senators directly targeted in former special counsel Jack Smith’s Arctic Frost investigation to sue the U.S. government for up to $500,000.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., who was involved in crafting part of the successful funding deal, told Fox News Digital he had even been afraid it could derail the final vote to end the shutdown.

‘It had been added in the Senate without our knowledge,’ Cole said. ‘It was a real trust factor … I mean, all of a sudden, this pops up in the bill, and we’re confronted with either: leave this in here, or we pull it out, we have to go to conference, and the government doesn’t get reopened.’

It was placed into the bill by Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and given the green light by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., sources confirmed to Fox News Digital last week.

Thune put the provision into the bill at the request of members of the Senate GOP, a source familiar with the negotiations told Fox News Digital, which included Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. 

It was a big point of contention when the House Rules Committee met to prepare the legislation for a final vote last Tuesday night. Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, Austin Scott, R-Ga., and Morgan Griffith, R-Va., all shared House Democrats’ frustration with the measure, but they made clear it would not stand in the way of ending what had become the longest shutdown in history.

Even Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., appeared blindsided by the move.

‘I had no prior notice of it at all,’ Johnson told reporters last week. ‘I was frustrated, as my colleagues are over here, and I thought it was untimely and inappropriate. So we’ll be requesting, strongly urging, our Senate colleagues to repeal that.’

Those Republicans agreed with the motivations behind their Senate counterparts wanting to sue but bristled over the notion that it would come at the expense of U.S. taxpayers.

Rep. John Rose, R-Tenn., told Fox News Digital the senators ‘have been wronged, no doubt in my mind’ but added its scope was too narrow.

‘This provision does not allow other Americans to pursue a remedy. It does not even allow the President of the United States, who was equally wrongfully surveilled and pursued by the Justice Department — they didn’t even include President Trump in this,’ Rose said.

And while several senators who would be eligible for the taxpayer-funded lawsuits have distanced themselves from the issue amid uproar, others have stuck to their guns.

‘My phone records were seized. I’m not going to put up with this crap. I’m going to sue,’ Graham said on ‘Hannity’ Tuesday night. He said he would be seeking ‘tens of millions of dollars.’

Cruz also told Fox News Digital that he did not support repealing the provision.

And Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., defended the provision in comments to Politico. 

‘I’d like for us to be able to defend our branch when DOJ gets out of control,’ he said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., similarly suggested to reporters on Wednesday that he was in favor of the measure.

‘I would just say, I mean, you have an independent, co-equal branch of government whose members were, through illegal means, having their phone records acquired — spied on, if you will, through a weaponized Biden Justice Department,’ Thune said. ‘That, to me, demands some accountability.’

He added, ‘I think that in the end, this is something that all members of Congress, both House and Senate, are probably going to want as a protection, and we were thinking about the institution of the Senate and individual senators going into the future.’

President Donald Trump said on Wednesday evening that he signed legislation greenlighting the Justice Department to release files related to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. 

‘I HAVE JUST SIGNED THE BILL TO RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES!’ Trump wrote in a lengthy message on the Truth Social platform. ‘As everyone knows, I asked Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, to pass this Bill in the House and Senate, respectively. Because of this request, the votes were almost unanimous in favor of passage. 

‘At my direction, the Department of Justice has already turned over close to fifty thousand pages of documents to Congress. Do not forget — The Biden Administration did not turn over a SINGLE file or page related to Democrat Epstein, nor did they ever even speak about him.’

Trump’s ties to Epstein had faced increased attention after Trump’s Justice Department and FBI announced in July it would not unseal investigation materials related to Epstein, and that the agencies’ investigation into the case had closed.

But Sunday Trump announced that he backed releasing the documents, asserting that he had ‘nothing to hide.’ 

‘As I said on Friday night aboard Air Force One to the Fake News Media, House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party, including our recent Victory on the Democrat ‘Shutdown,” Trump wrote.

The House voted Tuesday to release the files by a 421–1 margin, following pressure for months from the measure’s ringleaders, Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and other Democrats. 

Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., was the only House member to vote against the release, and said he didn’t back the measure because ‘this bill reveals and injures thousands of innocent people — witnesses, people who provided alibis, family members, etc.’ 

Although Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., ultimately voted in favor of the measure, he also voiced similar concerns during a Tuesday press conference.

‘Who’s going to want to come forward if they think Congress can take a political exercise and reveal their identities? Who’s going to come talk to prosecutors? It’s very dangerous. It would deter future whistleblowers and informants,’ he said. ‘The release of that could also publicly reveal the identity, by the way, of undercover law enforcement officers who are working in future operations.’

After the House’s approval of the measure, the bill headed to the Senate and passed hours later Tuesday by unanimous consent. 

The Epstein Files Transparency Act specifically directs the Justice Department to release all unclassified records and investigative materials related to Epstein and Ghislane Maxwell, as well as files related to individuals who were referenced in Epstein previous legal cases, details surrounding trafficking allegations, internal DOJ communications as they relate to Epstein and any details surrounding the investigation into his death. 

Files that include victims’ names, child sex abuse materials, classified materials or other materials that could threaten an active investigation may be withheld or redacted by the DOJ. 

Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters Wednesday that she would comply with the law after it was signed, which directs the Justice Department to release the files online in a searchable format within 30 days. 

The Epstein files received fanfare among supporters of the president in the early days of the administration as they rallied around the Trump DOJ to release details on Epstein’s alleged ‘client list’ and death. 

The DOJ and FBI said in a joint memo obtained by Fox News in July that the two agencies had no further information to share with the public about Epstein’s case and suicide in 2019, sparking outrage among some MAGA supporters as they demanded the DOJ release more documents. 

Trump has since railed against the Epstein case as a ‘Democrat hoax,’ before calling for their release Sunday. 

The push to release the files gained increased momentum after Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released three emails Wednesday that Epstein’s estate provided to them that mentioned Trump. In turn, Republicans released their own stash of 20,000 pages of Epstein documents that same day.

Included in the tranche of documents are emails between Epstein and his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, and correspondence with author Michael Wolff, former President Barack Obama’s White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler, among others, where Epstein mentions Trump.

‘i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. (VICTIM) spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75 % there,’ Epstein said in an email to Maxwell in April 2011, which was provided with other correspondence to the committee by Epstein’s estate in response to a subpoena request.

‘I have been thinking about that…’ Maxwell said in response.

Epstein told Wolff in a separate email in 2019 that ‘of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop’ — a reference to Trump. Trump has said that he barred Epstein from his Florida Mar-a-Lago golf club because Epstein kept ‘taking people who worked for me.’

While the documents themselves are authentic, Epstein’s statements in the emails remain unverified and uncorroborated. The documents do not claim that Trump committed any wrongdoing, and only portray Epstein mentioning the president. 

Likewise, Trump has not faced formal accusations of misconduct tied to Epstein, and no law enforcement records connect Trump to Epstein’s crimes.

Epstein died by suicide in 2019 as he was awaiting trial on federal charges. Maxwell was convicted on charges including sex trafficking of a minor and is currently serving a 20-year sentence.

Fox News’ Elizabeth Elkind and David Spunt contributed to this report. 

The Senate is once again finding a moment of bipartisan unity in its fury over a recently-passed law that would allow lawmakers to sue the federal government and reap hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money as a reward.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle continue to grapple with the inclusion of a provision in a package designed to reopen the government that would allow only senators directly targeted by the Biden-led Department of Justice (DOJ) and former special counsel Jack Smith’s Arctic Frost investigation to sue the U.S. government for up to $500,000.

Both Senate Republicans’ and Democrats’ ire at the provision is multi-pronged: some are angry that it was tucked away into the Legislative branch spending bill without a heads-up, others see it as nothing more than a quick pay day for the relatively small group of senators targeted in Smith’s probe.

‘I think it was outrageous that that was put in and air dropped in there,’ Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., told Fox News Digital. ‘It’s outrageous. It’s basically just a cash grab for senators to take money away from taxpayers. It’s absolutely outrageous, and needs to be taken out.’

The provision was included in the spending package by Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., on request from lawmakers in the GOP. And it was given the green light by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

The provision is narrowly tailored to just include senators, and would require that they be notified if their information is requested by the DOJ, be it through the subpoena of phone records like in the Arctic Frost investigation or through other means. The idea is to prevent the abuse of the DOJ to go after sitting senators now and in the future.

Thune pushed back on the notion that lawmakers weren’t aware the provision was in the bill, given that the entire package was released roughly 24 hours before it was voted on, but acknowledged their frustration over how it was added was warranted.

‘I think I take that as a legitimate criticism in terms of the process, but I think on the substance, I believe that you need to have some sort of accountability and consequence for that kind of weaponization against a co-equal branch of the government,’ Thune said.

Schumer, when asked about the anger brewing on both sides of the aisle, heaped the blame on Thune, but noted that it was an opportunity to get protection for Democrats, too.

‘Look, the bottom line is Thune wanted the provision, and we wanted to make sure that at least Democratic senators were protected from [Attorney General Pam] Bondi and others who might go after them,’ Schumer said. ‘So we made it go prospective, not just retroactive, but I’d be for repealing all the provision, all of it. And I hope that happens.’

The House is expected to vote on legislation that would repeal the language, and many in the upper chamber want to get the chance to erase the provision should it pass through the House. Whether Thune will put it on the floor remains in the air though.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., was one of the eight senators whose records were requested during Smith’s probe. He told Fox News Digital that he was neither asked about the provision, nor told about it, and like many other lawmakers, found out about it when he read the bill.

‘I just think that, you know, giving them money –- I mean making a taxpayer pay for it, I don’t understand why that’s accountability,’ he said. ‘I mean, the people who need to be held accountable are the people who made the decisions to do this, and, frankly, also the telecom companies. So I just, I don’t agree with that approach.’

He also took issue with the fact that the provision was narrowly tailored to only apply to the Senate, and argued that it could be reworked to only provide for declaratory judgement in court rather than a monetary one.

‘I could see the value of having a court say this was illegal and ruling against the government,’ Hawley said. ‘I think it’s the monetary provisions that most people, including me, really balk at. Like, why are the taxpayers on the hook for this, and why does it apply only to the Senate?’

The provision set a retroactive date of 2022 to allow for the group of senators targeted in Smith’s Arctic Frost probe to be able to sue. That element has also raised eyebrows on both sides of the aisle.

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., told Fox News Digital that he supported repealing the provision, but wanted to fix it.

‘The best way to be able to handle it, I think, is to be able to fix it, take away the retroactivity in it,’ he said. ‘The initial target of this whole thing was to make sure this never happened again.’

Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., told Fox News Digital that the provision was a ‘total mess,’ and raised concerns on a bipartisan basis.

Not every Senator was on board with ditching the provision, however.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., made clear that he intends to sue the DOJ and Verizon, his phone carrier, and argued that he didn’t believe that the provision was self-dealing but rather to deter future, similar actions. He also wants to take the provision, or the core idea of it, a step further.

Graham said that he wanted to open up the process to others, including dozens of groups, former lawmakers and others affected by the investigation.

‘Is it wrong for any American to sue the government if they violated your rights, including me? Is it wrong if a Post Office truck hits you, what do you do with the money? You do whatever you want to do with the money,’ Graham said.

‘If you’ve been wronged, this idea that our government can’t be sued is a dangerous idea,’ he continued. ‘The government needs to be held accountable when it violates people’s rights.’

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tx., was far more succinct. When asked if he would support a repeal of the provision, he told Fox News Digital, ‘No.’