An unnamed employee of former President Donald Trump has retracted ‘false testimony’ to a grand jury after changing lawyers, federal prosecutors said Tuesday. 

The employee, referred to as ‘Trump Employee 4’ in court documents from special counsel Jack Smith’s office, retracted statements from an earlier testimony and gave information implicating Trump and others over alleged efforts to delete security footage at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. 

The court documents say Trump Employee 4 ‘repeatedly denied or claimed not to recall’ any contacts or conversations about security footage when they testified before a D.C. grand jury in March 2023. 

But in July, after being advised that he was a target of the investigation and that his lawyer might have a conflict of interest because of his representation of others in the probe, the witness received a new attorney from the federal defender’s office and provided the Justice Department with information that helped form the basis of the revised indictment against Trump, his valet Walt Nauta and a third defendant, Carlos De Oliveira, the court filing says.

The new information from the witness was presented to prosecutors weeks before Smith secured an updated indictment accusing Trump and two others in a plot to delete surveillance video at the Florida property.

Prosecutors described the witness interaction in a filing that seeks a hearing in Florida about potential conflicts of interest involving the defense lawyer, Stanley Woodward, who also represents Nauta. 

They said that encounter helps explain why they continued to use a grand jury in Washington to investigate potential false statements in that district even after they had secured an indictment in Florida. 

‘The target letter to Trump Employee 4 crystallized a conflict of interest arising from Mr. Woodward’s concurrent representation of Trump Employee 4 and Nauta,’ prosecutors wrote.

They added: ‘Advising Trump Employee 4 to correct his sworn testimony would result in testimony incriminating Mr. Woodward’s other client, Nauta; but permitting Trump Employee 4’s false testimony to stand uncorrected would leave Trump Employee 4 exposed to criminal charges for perjury.’

A trial has been set for May 20, 2024, in the classified documents case. Trump has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing.

Trump is facing another prosecution by Smith, over efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, as well as a criminal case in Georgia over attempts to subvert that state’s vote and another in New York in connection with hush money payments to a porn actor.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Candidates still have plenty of campaigning before the Republican Convention. Many in Wisconsin are still undecided on who they will vote for. 

Jessie Cannizzaro grew up visiting job sites alongside her father who ran his own plumbing business. 

‘I had helped him for years as growing up,’ Cannizzaro said. ‘I had a renewed interest as an adult doing the hands on, seeing what you accomplish at the end of the day. Working on paperwork doesn’t bring that same joy. And so I realized that the trades would be a better calling for me.’

At 80 years old, her father still takes up projects from time to time but didn’t exactly want his daughter following in his footsteps. 

‘He’s very old school, and I think part of it was he wanted to protect me. He didn’t think that the world was ready for women in nontraditional roles,’ Cannizzaro said. ‘Also, I think as every parent does, Dad had a vision of grandchildren and he thought that that would mean no grandkids. But you can do both. You don’t have to pick and choose.’

Thanks to the exposure she had at a young age, she started her own plumbing business. Next year she plans to take over as chair of the Associated Builders and Contractors of Wisconsin. She hopes to inspire more young people to pick up trade skills. 

‘I spend a lot of time advocating for two different associations. We go into schools. We used to just do high school and try to get to those kids and let them know that there were opportunities in the trades that existed. But a lot of times high schoolers have already decided they need to go to college,’ Cannizzaro said.

She notes that trade careers have high salaries and are in high demand. Most skilled jobs also aren’t under pressure from artificial intelligence. 

‘There are some advancements with different technology that’s come out, but you still need a service person to come to your door,’ Cannizzaro said. 

She’s undecided on who will get her vote in 2024 but wants to vote for someone who will address the need for more skilled workers. 

‘I think we have to start leading from the top to let people know that the trades deserve just as much respect that any college degree job also deserves,’ Cannizzaro said. ‘Right now that message isn’t being conveyed the way that we need it to. It’s something that often gets lost or forgotten about.’

Richard Gagliano is the director of apartment life at a student housing complex within the Milwaukee School of Engineering. He says he occasionally speaks with students about their political opinions. 

‘I was a history teacher and try to tell them is like, this is what it was like and this is this. It’s fun to challenge them,’ Gagliano said. 

One of his top issues is education at the high school and elementary school level. He thinks schools need to do more to help students graduate and advance to higher education or skilled learning. 

‘It’s not an issue of subject matter,’ Gagliano said. ‘I’m just more in favor of having the school board decide that with the teachers. They’re the professionals. And what should be done in those schools.’

Richard is undecided when it comes to who he will support for the presidency. He says candidates like Will Hurd, Mike Pence and Robert F Kennedy JR. have all peaked his interest, but he’s hoping a dark horse races forward to lead the pack. 

‘I love dark horses. I think that’s why none of my candidates ever won in the past,’ Gagliano said. 

Gagliano has supported candidates from both parties over the past four decades. Just a few include Bob Dole and Al Gore. In more recent elections he has backed Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. 

‘What my friends constantly say is, ‘Why Donald Trump?’ I truthfully thought Donald Trump was the guy who was going to come in and shake things up,’ Gagliano said. ‘Then he surprised me every day with what could possibly go wrong… Maybe Biden would bring us together. It didn’t work. But Hillary, I thought the glass ceiling, I didn’t vote for her when she ran against Trump, but I voted for her in the primary because I felt at that particular moment she might have been the best Democratic candidate.’

Emilio De Torre never misses an election and is the executive director of a local civic group. He lives in Milwaukee with his wife and three kids. He often considers his family when deciding who to vote for. 

‘School is very expensive,’ De Torre said. ‘We discuss what we’re considering for issues together as a family. I’ve got my oldest who just started college. One’s middle school, one’s in high school. So life gets a little costly.’

De Torre says health care and minimum wage are other top issues for him. He wants to hear from candidates that address those. 

‘I think that’s a strong economy and quality of life for our interdependence, and I think they should be co-equal goals,’ De Torre said. ‘For families choosing how they’re going to ensure their loved ones in their family, what they have to knock off the table. That’s a very costly option to weigh in when you’re also taking a look at how much you’re making per hour.’

De Torre works for a nonprofit. He says his company offers a $16 per hour minimum wage.

‘When I first came on as executive director three years ago, it was considerably less. And we found with so many folks having difficulties hiring people, that we needed to make it something so that people that worked there felt comfortable working there and they could maybe begin to think that this is a job I’d like to stay in,’ De Torre said. 

Sarah Grooms is also focused on economic issues. She works in finance and chairs the policy committee for the Waukesha County Business Alliance. 

‘We can kind of see it just with semiconductor chips recently, right. And all of the chaos that was caused during COVID and how we it just brought the entire supply chain to a halt,’ Grooms said. ‘So that’s just one little instance of the way that a foreign economy could affect ours if they choose to say, ‘we’re not going to sell you those anymore.’’

Grooms says her background aligns closely with libertarian ideals. She plans to vote in the Republican primary for a candidate who could address her top issues. 

‘There’s never a perfect candidate. And so it really comes down to who can work with as many people as possible to get what America needs,’ Grooms said. 

She hopes the more she hears from the candidates, the better she can decide on who to vote for. She also believes a lot of Wisconsin voters feel the same way.

‘I think there’s a reason that it’s always a battleground state,’ Grooms said. ‘I think there’s a reason that everyone needs to come here and prove their chops.’

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy was already a millionaire by the time he accepted the Soros scholarship he previously said he needed in order to pay for law school.

Ramaswamy defended himself last month for accepting a $90,000 award from the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, which was founded by Daisy and Paul Soros, the late older brother of liberal billionaire financier George Soros. 

Ramaswamy said that after graduating from Harvard, he ‘didn’t have the money’ to afford Yale Law School.

‘There was a separate scholarship that I won at the age of 24-25, when I was going to law school in my mid-20s, in my early 20s, when I didn’t have the money and it was a merit scholarship that hundreds of kids win, that was partially funded, not by George Soros, but by Paul Soros a relative, his brother,’ Ramaswamy said.

‘And to be perfectly honest with you, I would have had to be a fool to turn down that scholarship at the age of 24,’ he added.

When Ramaswamy accepted the award in 2011, he was a first-year law student at Yale and had been working for several years as an investment analyst at the hedge fund QVT Financial.

In 2011, the same year he accepted the award, Ramaswamy reported $2,252,209 in total income, according to his tax returns, which he released in June. He reported a total of $1,173,690 in income in the three years prior.

‘Vivek won a generic scholarship that hundreds of students win to attend graduate school,’ his campaign’s spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, told Fox News Digital. ‘It was funded by a relative of George Soros who is long dead.’

‘Vivek would have been a fool to turn down that scholarship – Anyone who would have shouldn’t get anywhere near the White House doing trade deals,’ she continued. ‘In fact, there’s only one candidate that will be on stage Wednesday night whom George Soros has said he wants to win this primary – and it’s not Vivek.’

McLaughlin was likely referring to comments Soros made at the Munich Security Conference in February.

Soros said he wanted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to win the Republican primary in the hope that former President Donald Trump would then mount a third-party campaign for president that would split the GOP vote and lead to a ‘Democratic landslide.’  

Federal agents arrested a Chicago-area woman Monday on a complaint accusing her of sending emails threatening to shoot former President Donald Trump and his son Barron, according to federal prosecutors and a criminal complaint.

Tracy Marie Fiorenza, 41, was arrested Monday morning on a charge of transmitting threats to kill or injure, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago. The case was filed earlier this month in U.S. District Court in southern Florida.

‘I will state that I will shoot Donald Trump Sr. AND Barron Trump straight in the face at any opportunity I get!,’ Fiorenza said in a May 21 email to the head of an educational institution in the Palm Beach, Florida, area, according to an affidavit accompanying the complaint.

Donald Trump’s primary residence is in Palm Beach.

Fiorenza allegedly wrote a similar email on June 5, saying she would ‘slam a bullet’ into Barron Trump ‘with his father IN SELF DEFENSE!,’ according to the affidavit submitted by a U.S. Secret Service agent.

Neither the headmaster nor the school where the emails were allegedly sent was named in the charging documents.

It wasn’t immediately clear if Fiorenza had an attorney who could speak on her behalf. No attorney is listed for her on the federal docket.

CBS News Chicago reported that Fiorenza made an initial appearance Monday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Chicago, and a judge said she must go to the district court in Florida to answer the charges. The judge will decide at a Wednesday hearing how she will be transferred.

Agents interviewed Fiorenza at the agency’s Chicago field on June 14 — during which she was shown copies of the emails, according to the affidavit.

The affidavit says Fiorenza lives in Plainfield, Illinois, a southwest Chicago suburb.

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The first Republican presidential primary debate will feature 8 candidates on the stage, the Republican National Committee announced Tuesday.

The debate, which Fox News will host on Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, will feature  North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, former Vice President Mike Pence, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, and Vivek Ramaswamy, the RNC has confirmed.

To make the stage, candidates were required to reach 1% in three national polls, or 1% in two national polls and two state-specific polls from the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

Additionally, to reach the debate stage, candidates were required to have 40,000 unique donors to their campaign committee (or exploratory committee), with ‘at least 200 unique donors per state or territory in 20+ states and/or territories,’ according to the RNC criteria.

The candidates were also required to sign a pledge agreeing to support the eventual Republican presidential nominee; agreeing not to participate in any non-RNC-sanctioned debates for the rest of the 2024 election cycle; and agreeing to data-sharing with the national party committee, the RNC noted last month.

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Former President Donald Trump has refused to sign such a pledge, despite meeting the rest of the debate criteria.

The first presidential debate of the 2024 election cycle will air on Fox News, and Rumble is the online live-streaming partner. Young America’s Foundation is also a partner in the first debate.

Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser and Brandon Gillespie contributed to this report.

Tennessee state Rep. Gloria Johnson, the lone Democratic member of the ‘ Tennessee Three ‘ who narrowly survived a Republican-led expulsion effort, has launched an exploratory committee as she considers running for the seat held by U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn in 2024.

Johnson, 61, filed the exploratory paperwork — a step that usually comes just before officially launching a campaign — late last week. Doing so allows her to start raising money to support efforts like traveling and polling without officially becoming a candidate. It’s not required to run for political office but it can help boost a candidate’s profile.

‘Tennessee has a Senator that stands with bullies, I have a reputation for standing up to bullies,’ Johnson said in a statement. ‘I’m taking a serious look at this race and having great conversations with folks who are hungry for better leadership in Washington.’

In ruby red Tennessee, Johnson is expected to face an uphill battle if she advances to face Blackburn. The state hasn’t elected a Democrat to a statewide office since 2006.

Johnson has long been a vocal critic of Blackburn and other top Tennessee Republican leaders during her time in office. However, it wasn’t until this spring that her political career received a national boost after she participated in a pro-gun control protest inside the Tennessee Capitol that attracted thousands of protesters demanding lawmakers address the state’s lax gun laws.

The demonstration came just days after a shooter opened fire at a private Christian school in Nashville, killing three children and three adults. With tensions running high, Johnson joined fellow Democratic Reps. Justin Pearson and Justin Jones as they approached the front of the House floor without permission with a bullhorn, joining the chants and cries for action by protesters in the public galleries and outside of the chamber.

Republican lawmakers quickly called for their expulsion because they broke protocol and disrupted House proceedings. Pearson and Jones, who are both Black, were expelled, while Johnson, who is white, was spared by one vote, though Republicans denied that race was a factor. Pearson and Johnson were reinstated on an interim basis and were reelected to their positions last week.

All three will join their legislative colleagues later this month for a special session to address possible changes to the state’s gun control laws. Republican lawmakers initially declined to do so before adjourning their regular session in April. Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who has pushed for changes to keep guns away from people deemed to pose a threat to harm themselves or others, is calling them back into session.

Blackburn’s first Senate race took place in 2018, when she defeated Democratic former Gov. Phil Bredesen by almost 11 percentage points.

Blackburn’s win, where she also became Tennessee’s first female U.S. senator, marked a stark rightward shift in the state’s Republican Party leaders. While former GOP senators from the Volunteer State were known for taking more centrist positions, Blackburn launched her senate campaign by touting that she was a ‘hardcore, card-carrying Tennessee conservative’ and aligned herself closely to former President Donald Trump.

In 2021, she vowed to oppose the electoral college results that affirmed President Joe Biden’s win, but later backed down after watching the Jan. 6 insurrection unfold from inside the U.S. Capitol.

‘At the urging of Washington liberals, Gloria Johnson has taken another critical step towards joining liberal Democrat Marquita Bradshaw in the Tennessee Senate Democratic Primary,’ said Blackburn’s campaign spokesperson, Abigail Sigler. ‘Both of them are radical socialists who are aligned with Joe Biden’s failed policies that are making Tennesseans’ lives tougher every day.’

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President Biden had an awkward moment with Democratic Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz Monday while on a trip to the state still reeling from the devastating wildfires that killed at least 114 people and left hundreds more missing earlier this month.

At the conclusion of a press conference after surveying the damage from the wildfire in Lahaina on Maui, Schatz was picked up by the podium microphone offering a sip of water to Biden who didn’t respond before awkwardly walking away.

It appeared as if Biden heard Schatz, but it’s unclear why he didn’t respond.

Fox News Digital reached out to Schatz’s office and the White House for comment.

Biden’s visit came amid criticism from both sides of the aisle that he has been publicly quiet toward Hawaii and its residents following the tragic fire.

The criticism started after Biden — who was vacationing on a Delaware beach — was asked about Hawaii’s rising death toll and said he had ‘no comment.’ The remark was widely condemned as dismissive of the struggle Hawaiians were enduring.

Maui County and the Maui Police Department confirmed the number of dead on Sunday, but that number could increase as investigators continue to search the area.

Fox News’ Lawrence Richard contributed to this report.

President Biden, while visiting the fire-ravaged remains of Maui, said he knows what it is like to lose a home, recalling that 15 years ago lightning started a fire in his residence in Delaware.

‘I don’t want to compare difficulties, but we have a little sense, Jill and I, of what it was like to lose a home,’ Biden said. ‘Years ago, now, 15 years, I was in Washington doing ‘Meet the press’… Lightning struck at home on a little lake outside the home, not a lake a big pond. It hit the wire and came up underneath our home, into the…air condition ducts.

‘To make a long story short, I almost lost my wife, my 67 Corvette, and my cat,’ the president added.

This is not the first time Biden has recalled the story.

In November 2021, he said his house burned down with his wife Jill Biden inside, before trying to correct himself.

At the time, he was speaking in New Hampshire about the bipartisan infrastructure plan when he said, ‘Without this bridge, as I said earlier, it’s a 10-mile detour just to get to the other side. And I know, having had a house burn down with my wife in it – she got out safely, God willing – that having a significant portion of it burn, I can tell: 10 minutes make a hell of a difference.’

He also mentioned the story in 2013, claiming a fire ‘destroyed a significant portion’ of his New Hampshire home.

A 2004 report from the Associated Press, archived by LexisNexis, said lightning struck the Bidens’ home and started a ‘small fire that was contained to the kitchen.’ The report said firefighters got the blaze under control in 20 minutes and that they were able to keep the flames from spreading beyond the kitchen.

LONDONDERRY, N.H. – Republican Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire has some advice for the GOP candidates on stage at Wednesday’s first presidential nomination debate.

‘You’ve got to explain where you are with your policy. Where you are with your background,’ Sununu emphasized in a Fox News Digital interview. ‘But you’ve got to go beyond that. It’s not just issue and policy based. And it’s not just in attack mode either. They’ve got to show that charm, that charisma, that likability. Likability is so important in a race like this.’

The popular GOP governor, who seriously mulled a presidential run of his own before deciding against it in June, also stressed that the candidates need to exude ‘charisma, charm, inspiration. Something exciting. Something fun. Something that people say ‘wow. That’s something I can get behind.’’

Sununu called the debate – a Fox News-hosted showdown in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – ‘an awesome opportunity for all these candidates to stand up – not just to show that they deserve to be on the stage – but to show that they deserve to be the leader of the free world. That’s really the differentiator. People want someone that inspires them. Some charisma.’

Sununu’s a debate veteran, debating over a dozen times as he won election and re-election to four two-year terms as New Hampshire governor since 2016. 

The governor, a vocal GOP critic of Donald Trump, has repeatedly argued the former president – the current commanding front-runner for the Republican nomination – can’t win next year’s general election. Sununu’s been teaming up with many of Trump’s rivals as they campaign in New Hampshire, which holds the first primary and second overall contest in the GOP nominating calendar. Sununu has repeatedly said he’ll endorse a presidential candidate ahead of his state’s primary.

‘My endorsement. It will move things a little bit but not really,’ the governor said. ‘Endorsements are way overrated. Way, way overblown. Especially in a place like New Hampshire. These candidates have to earn it on their own.’

In a New York Times op-ed on Monday, Sununu reiterated his message that as the ‘governor of the first-in-the-nation primary state’ he will ‘do everything [he] can to help narrow the field.’

The governor spotlighted that multiple GOP candidates have ‘compelling stories’ and that Americans need to see that the ‘Republican Party is able to refocus the conversation where it needs to be, on a nominee dedicated to saving America.’

Sununu joined former ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in late June at a New Hampshire GOP summer cookout and fundraiser, where he praised her as he introduced the Republican presidential contender.

‘He’s a great friend. He’s a great governor, and he’s going to be an important person in this primary. And I think that he’s got a lot of knowledge about the people of New Hampshire, and I think he’s got a lot of knowledge of what it takes to win here, so I think he’s going to be incredibly important,’ Haley told Fox News at the event.

Besides Haley,  former Vice President Mike Pence, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, ex-CIA spy and former Rep. Will Hurd of Texas and environmental lawyer and high-profile vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who’s primary-challenging President Biden for the Democratic nomination — have all met with Sununu over the last few months. And three other candidates — Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and former Governors Chris Christie of New Jersey and Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas — huddled in-person with Sununu earlier this year.