Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is throwing cold water on Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s assertion about the Obama administration’s role in pushing the Trump-Russia collusion narrative during the 2016 presidential election. 

Gabbard has declassified documents, including a House Intelligence Committee memo, alleging that former President Barack Obama and his national security team ‘manufactured an Intelligence Community Assessment they knew was false.’

‘I think what Gabbard and her staff are doing is dishonest and misstated, and I’ll leave it at that,’ Schiff told Fox News Digital on Capitol Hill. 

But White House Spokesman Davis Ingle was quick to fire back in a statement to Fox News Digital. ‘Pencil neck, watermelon head Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff was one of the chief propagandists behind the Russia collusion hoax,’ he said. ‘He’s now trying to desperately cover his tracks as this entire lie is being exposed to the world.’ 

Schiff was elected to the Senate last year but served in the House while Congress investigated whether Trump colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election. 

And as a ranking member and then chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Schiff was directly involved in the congressional investigation and became a leading Democratic voice accusing Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign of colluding with Russia. 

‘Should Obama and his team be held responsible in some way for pushing the Russia collusion narrative that was proven false to take down Trump?’ Fox News Digital asked Schiff. 

‘Well, if you read the well-reported intelligence community report, you know they documented Russia’s efforts to help denigrate Hillary Clinton, which gave a boost to the Trump campaign,’ Schiff responded. 

Schiff was referring to an Intelligence Community Assessment report from 2017 that asserted that Russia’s goals were to undermine faith in the U.S. democratic process and to ‘denigrate’ former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and that Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘developed a clear preference’ for Trump. 

Gabbard’s office alleged in a press release outlining the unearthed documents that Putin did not favor a candidate in 2016. It also said, ‘There is irrefutable evidence detailing how President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an Intelligence Community Assessment that they knew was false.’

When asked if he should apologize, Schiff told Fox News Digital, ‘It’s been proven accurate.’

And as he walked away, Schiff seemed to nod in agreement and say, ‘Yes,’ when asked if everything he had said about the Russia collusion was accurate. 

The Justice Department, however, has formed a ‘strike force’ to assess the evidence publicized by Gabbard into the Obama administration’s role in the Trump–Russia collusion narrative.

Trump and Schiff have long been political foes, as the president often evoked Schiff’s nickname on the presidential campaign trail in 2024 while Trump weaved through a range of topics, including what he has come to refer to as the ‘Russia, Russia, Russia hoax.’

‘Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff is in BIG TROUBLE!’ Trump said on Truth Social on Sunday. ‘He falsified Loan Documents. He once said my son would go to prison on a SCAM that Schiff, along with other Crooked Dems, illegally ‘manufactured’ in order to stage an actual coup.’ 

‘My son did nothing wrong, knew nothing about the fictional story,’ he added. ‘It was an American Tragedy! Now Shifty should pay the price of prison for a real crime, not one made up by the corrupt accusers!’ 

The U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) sent a letter to the Department of Justice in May alleging that Schiff has ‘falsified bank documents and property records to acquire more favorable loan terms, impacting payments from 2003-2019 for a Potomac, Maryland-based property.’

‘Since I led his first impeachment, Trump has repeatedly called for me to be arrested for treason,’ Schiff said after Trump first accused Schiff of mortgage fraud. ‘So in a way, I guess this is a bit of a letdown. And this baseless attempt at political retribution won’t stop me from holding him accountable. Not by a long shot.’ 

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman, Emma Colton, Danielle Wallace, and Peter Doocy contributed to this report. 

There are two distinct and clear things happening in American politics today that at first blush appear to be in direct conflict, President Donald Trump has had the best six months of any president in recent memory, and he is losing support in the polls. 

How can this be?

In fact, the way to reconcile Trump’s signature successes with his drop in approval is to understand that the president has expended an enormous amount of political capital, sacrificing support today, in the hope of good results tomorrow.

The achievements of the Trump administration are truly breathtaking when taken as a whole, starting with his central campaign promise, to shut down the southern border.

In a funny way, Trump was too successful on the border for his own political good. Had he cut the number of entries in half by now, it would still have been a positive story for the president, but he brought it to zero, so the issue is all but gone and forgotten, and nobody is getting any credit for it.

Then we have the passage of the ‘big, beautiful bill, the largest tax cut in history packed with big political winners like no tax on overtime and tips, and passed by a tiny GOP majority in Congress.

While that was going on, Trump also attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities, badly damaging them and setting our geopolitical foe’s weapons program back years in a bold and perfectly executed mission.

Donald Trump has also unleashed his decades-long desire for higher tariffs to bolster American jobs and manufacturing, and after an all out panic from markets and pundits on ‘Liberation Day,’ back in April, the economy is now humming, largely free of inflation.

Last but not least, Trump, through his rescission package defunded NPR and PBS, something that has been the great white whale of many a conservative for many a year. They said it couldn’t be done, but Trump did it.

The scope, scale and speed of Trump’s triumphs are the good news, but they are always why his polling can get a bit jumpy, which is what we have seen over the past few weeks. 

According to the Real Clear Politics average of polls, Trump has shed about 3.5 points since July 7th — not a drop off a cliff, but not nothing, either. It’s mostly down to how busy he has been.

Above were listed 5 major accomplishments. There are, to be sure, many voters who love all five, but there are also voters who like 3 or 4 but not the others, and in approval polling the stuff people don’t like is louder than stuff they do.

Two weeks ago on a trip to Texas, I reported on these warning signs, especially around the deportations of illegal aliens without any other criminal record that make many Americans, including some Trump supporters, queasy. 

There is also an isolationist wing of the MAGA movement that hates the Iran strike, and even though its dire warnings of World War III fizzled like a cap gun in a hard rain, that still dinged the numbers.

Likewise, there are still plenty of individuals and industries that strongly dislike the tariffs, even if the economic sky hasn’t fallen. 

The point here, as Abe Lincoln once put it, is that you can’t please all the people all the time, and when you do as much as Trump has, this quickly, you are sure to displease lots and lots of folks.

The real bet that the Trump administration is making is not on the short-term popularity of any of its top achievements, but rather that a year from now, they will have made the lives of Americans better.

Donald Trump, even with just one term this time around, is committed to leaving our nation a very different place in 2029 than he found it in 2025. To do this requires an all-out assault on institutions from the deep state, to academia, to the media. 

Trump can’t poke as many political bears as he is without catching a few flesh wounds from the claws, but there is no sign of any imminent collapse that could thwart his overall efforts.

For six months, I have argued that Trump had all the runway he needed to put his plans in action. That was true, and he got a lot of planes up in the air, but the runway may be shortening now.

Now, all that is left is to judge the results of the Trumpian whirlwind of the past six months, and find out if this has been political capital well spent.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg will hear from immigration lawyers and the Trump administration in court on Thursday as he weighs new facts and allegations at the heart of one of the biggest immigration cases of President Donald Trump’s second term — setting the stage for another heated court fight.

Boasberg did not immediately signal which motions he would consider during the hearing. 

However, it comes after Boasberg found himself at the center of Trump’s ire and attacks on so-called ‘activist’ judges this year, following his March 15 temporary restraining order that sought to block Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act — a 1798 wartime immigration law — to quickly deport hundreds of Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador earlier this year.

Boasberg also ordered all planes bound for El Salvador to be ‘immediately’ returned to U.S. soil, which did not happen. 

His emergency order touched off a complex legal saga that ultimately spawned dozens of federal court challenges across the country — though the one brought before his court on March 15 was the very first — and later prompted the Supreme Court to rule, on two separate occasions, that the hurried removals had violated migrants’ due process protections under the U.S. Constitution.

Boasberg, as a result, has emerged as the man at the center of the legal fallout.

While the order itself has been in a bit of a holding pattern — the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia stayed the order two months ago, when they agreed to review the ruling — Thursday’s hearing could revive the bitterly divisive court fight once more.

Boasberg is expected to consider plaintiffs’ motions to reopen limited discovery, citing new evidence — including a recent U.N. report stating that, according to Salvadoran officials, the U.S. holds sole legal responsibility and custody over migrants transferred to CECOT. Other submissions include a whistleblower report from former Justice Department attorney Erez Reuveni, who worked on the case shortly before his removal.

Trump administration officials have repeatedly excoriated Boasberg as an ‘activist judge’ — a term they have employed for judges who have either paused or blocked Trump’s sweeping policy priorities enacted via executive order. Trump himself floated the idea that Boasberg could be impeached earlier this year— prompting Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to issue a rare public warning.

Tensions between Boasberg and the Trump administration soared to a fever pitch earlier this year after Boasberg in April said he had found probable cause to hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt for failing to return the planes to U.S. soil, in accordance with his emergency order, and said the court had determined that the Trump administration demonstrated a ‘willful disregard’ for his order.

The Trump administration appealed the findings to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

In June, Boasberg ordered the Trump administration to provide all noncitizens deported from the U.S. to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador to be afforded the opportunity to seek habeas relief in court, and challenge their alleged gang status.

‘Such was the situation into which Frengel Reyes Mota, Andry Jose Hernandez Romero, and scores of other Venezuelan noncitizens say they were plunged on March 15, 2025,’ Boasberg said.

Thursday’s hearing comes amid a flurry of new reports and allegations filed by plaintiffs in the case in an effort to reopen discovery.  

Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, are asking Attorney General Pam Bondi to appoint a special counsel to investigate newly declassified information about the Obama administration’s intelligence assessments about Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Graham and Cornyn’s call for a special counsel, which Fox News Digital learned they are announcing Thursday morning, comes the day after the Department of Justice (DOJ) created a ‘strike force’ to investigate the evidence, which was declassified by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard this month.

Graham and Cornyn, both senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, did not address the strike force but indicated in a statement that special counsels, who are outside officials brought in to oversee politically sensitive cases, operate independently of the attorney general.

Fox News reached out to the DOJ for comment on the special counsel request.

‘As we have supported in the past, appointing an independent special counsel would do the country a tremendous service in this case,’ Graham and Cornyn said.

Gabbard’s declassified intelligence shed new light on the Obama administration’s determination that Russia sought to help President Donald Trump in the 2016 election. Gabbard alleged Wednesday during a press briefing that Obama and his intelligence officials promoted a ‘contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, selling it to the American people as though it were true. It wasn’t.’

Graham, who previously served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, led the Senate’s inquiry into the FBI’s investigation into alleged Trump-Russia collusion and released a tranche of documents in 2020 suggesting the bureau had a flimsy basis for opening its investigation into Trump.

‘With every piece of information that gets released, it becomes more evident that the entire Russia collusion hoax was created by the Obama administration to subvert the will of the American people,’ Graham and Cornyn said.

Their remarks follow Trump accusing former President Barack Obama of ‘treason’ this week and after the DOJ opened criminal investigations into former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey. 

Critics say Gabbard’s claims have been contradicted by past congressional reviews, some of which were led by Republicans. Obama, meanwhile, issued a statement in response to the wave of headlines suggesting he attempted to hurt Trump’s election chances.

‘Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response,’ Obama spokesperson Patrick Rodenbush said. ‘But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.’

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Passing President Donald Trump’s agenda was a team effort between the Senate and House, but one Senate Republican was key in smoothing over differences between the two chambers.

‘There’s an inherent mistrust between senators and representatives,’ Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., told Fox News Digital in an interview. ‘There’s a deep, deep mistrust, and it’s like we’re playing shirts and skins with our own team.’

‘And trying to break down that barrier and let people know, ‘Hey, we’re all on the same team,’ is a little tougher than what people think,’ he continued.

House Republicans were dead set on crafting one, colossal package, while Senate Republicans preferred splitting the bill into two — even three — pieces. Then there were disagreements over the depth of spending cuts, changes to Medicaid and carveouts to boost the cap on the State and Local Tax Deduction (SALT).

And while the House GOP worked to craft their version of the massive, $3.3 trillion tax cuts and spending package that eventually made its way to the Senate, Mullin was a crucial figure in bridging the roughly 100-yard gap between both sides of the Capitol.

But it’s a job he never really wanted.

Mullin, who has been in Washington for over a decade, got his start in the House before being elected to the Senate in 2021. He wanted to maintain ‘lifelong friendships’ with his House colleagues, but becoming the de facto liaison between the chambers was more a decision of practicality than one he truly desired.

‘The first couple of deputy whip meetings we had when [Senate Majority Leader John Thune] was whip was discussing what the House is going to do, and no one knew,’ Mullin said. ‘And I was like, ‘Man, it’s just down the hall, we can go walk and talk to them.’ So the first time I did that, I went to the [House GOP] conference and just talked.’

‘And then it just turned into me going to Thune and saying, ‘Hey, why don’t I just become a liaison between the two?’ So I didn’t, I never envisioned of doing that, other than just keeping a relationship, but it was a natural fit,’ he continued.

That role began when former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who Mullin had a longstanding relationship with, led the House GOP, and has continued since House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., took the helm in 2023.

And it paid dividends during the six-month slog to draft and pass Trump’s budget reconciliation bill, which required full buy-in from congressional Republicans to do so given that no Democrats were involved in the process.

Markwayne said that before the bill even made it to the Senate in early June, he played a role in ensuring that House Republicans didn’t ‘dump a ton of stuff in there’ that would be nixed by Senate rules.

He effectively ping-ponged back and forth between the chambers, jetting from morning workouts to speak with lawmakers, meeting with House Republicans during their weekly conference confabs or holding smaller discussions with lawmakers, particularly blue state Republicans concerned about changes to SALT, to get everyone on roughly the same page.

Much of it broke down to explaining how the Senate’s Byrd rule, which governs reconciliation and allows either party to skirt the Senate filibuster to pass legislation, worked.

‘I mean, even though I spent 12 or 10 years in the House, I never understood the Byrd rule, but why would I? I didn’t have to deal with it,’ he said. ‘So really getting to understand that, and breaking down that barrier helped.’

The flow of information wasn’t just one way, however. His discussions with House Republicans helped him better inform his colleagues in the upper chamber of their priorities, and what could and couldn’t be touched as Senate Republicans began putting their fingerprints on the bill.

SALT was the main issue that he focused on, and one that most Senate Republicans didn’t care much for. Still, it was a make-or-break agreement to raise the caps, albeit temporarily, to $40,000 for single and joint filers for the next five years, that helped seal the deal for anxious blue state House Republicans.

‘Just keeping them informed through the process was very important,’ he said. ‘But at the same time, talking to the House, and when we’re negotiating over here, I’d be like, ‘No guys, that’s a killer,’’ he said. ‘We can’t do that if you, if you touch this, it’s dead over there for sure. Guaranteed, it’s dead.’

Over time, his approach to the role has changed, an evolution he said was largely influenced by Thune.

A self-described ‘bull in a China cabinet,’ Mullin said that for a time his negotiating style was arguing with lawmakers to convince them ‘why you’re wrong.’ But that style softened after watching Thune, he said, and saw him talking less and listening more.

‘I took his lead off of it to let people talk,’ he said. ‘Sometimes you’re going to find out that they’re actually upset about something that had nothing to do with the bill, but they’re taking that, and they’re holding the bill hostage to be able to let this one point be heard.’

‘I don’t think it was a good indication that we were butting heads. Everybody was very passionate about this. I mean, they’ve been working for a long time. We looked at it as maybe a once in a generation opportunity for us to be able to get this done,’ he continued. ‘We wanted to get it right, but everybody wanted to have their fingerprint on it and at the end of the day, we knew we [had] to bring it to the floor.’

House Republicans are calling for more scrutiny on the roughly 1,500 commutation orders signed by President Joe Biden toward the end of his term after revelations that an autopen was used for a significant number of them.

‘Americans deserve accountability of their leaders. If an autopen was used to pardon hundreds of people, thousands of people, including the president’s son, who made that decision? Was it Joe Biden? Or was it some staffer that used an autopen?’ Ways & Means Committee Chair Jason Smith, R-Mo., said in a brief interview with Fox News Digital.

The New York Times reported earlier this month that autopen signatures were used on clemency orders in the last few months of Biden’s White House tenure.

Biden told the outlet he made ‘every decision,’ and the report details a meticulous process from Biden making his decision to that decision being recorded by aides and passed through a chain of email communication – suggesting the then-president had final signoff.

But the report notes, ‘The Times has not seen the full extent of the emails, so it is impossible to capture the totality of information they contain or what else they might show about Mr. Biden’s involvement in the pardon and clemency decisions.’

Rep. Mark Messmer, R-Ind., suggested pardon decisions carried out in the late hours of the day should be looked at in particular.

‘I think we need to highly scrutinize the use of autopen signatures that were initiated at 10.45 p.m., well beyond the president’s normal day of cognitive activity, need to be brought into question,’ Messmer said.

The report noted one instance where the final word on a particular set of clemency orders was sent just after 10:30 p.m.

The Times had reported in July 2024, before he dropped out of the presidential race, that Biden said he would stop scheduling events after 8 p.m. due to the need for sleep.

Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, argued lawmakers need more information on who was in control of those signatures for public trust.

‘What people want is accountability. They want to know that what was done in the name of our president who was elected, that he actually bears responsibility for that,’ Gill said.

Another lawmaker suggested courts should even look at nullification.

‘Maybe some of the pardons and things like that can be rolled back,’ Rep. John McGuire, R-Va., said. ‘We’ll leave it to the courts to figure that out.’

Rep. Andrew Cylde, R-Ga., went a step further: ‘That has to be corrected. It has to be investigated. And those people, really, in my opinion, should be prosecuted for stepping outside the bounds of the Constitution.’

The House Oversight Committee, led by Chair James Comer, R-Ky., is already investigating the Biden administration’s use of autopen and whether former top White House aides concealed evidence of the then-president’s mental decline.

Ex-White House Chief of Staff Ronald Klain is the latest person expected to appear before House investigators, with a voluntary transcribed interview scheduled for Thursday morning.

Democratic allies of Biden have blasted the probe as a political spectacle rather than an honest fact-finding mission.

But all the Republican lawmakers who spoke with Fox News Digital argued to at least some extent that Americans want accountability, though some suggested it would be beneficial to focus efforts on the future.

‘I have to balance my thoughts on this. I think that, you know, it’s good to know what happened, to keep it from happening…but on the other hand, I really want to be focused on the future,’ said Rep. Troy Downing, R-Mont. ‘But I will tell you, the speculation – although I obviously don’t know 100% what’s true or not – I think the speculation is very probable, just seeing who Biden was at the end of his tenure and knowing that that didn’t happen overnight.’

Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, vice chair of the House GOP Conference, told Fox News Digital, ‘As far as the previous administration, what’s done is done, but it’s also good to highlight to the American people, okay, you were in some cases lied to.’

Notably, autopen is a standard and legal practice that’s been used by officials in many past cases, including by President Donald Trump. House investigators are looking into whether Biden really made the final sign-off himself on key decisions, however.

The office of former president Joe Biden was contacted for comment.