After President Biden declared on Thursday that he would utilize executive privilege to deny the House Judiciary and Oversight committees’ request for access to audio recordings from special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents, Attorney General Merrick Garland — whom the committees may hit with a contempt of Congress resolution for defying the request — termed the request illegitimate, adding it would “harm their ability in the future to successfully pursue sensitive investigations.” Attorney General Garland defends President Biden’s decision to assert executive privilege over the audio of his Hur interview, saying it’s not a legitimate request and would “harm their ability in the future to successfully pursue sensitive investigations.” — Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) May 16, 2024   “It is the longstanding position of the executive branch held by administrations of both parties that an official who asserts the President’s claim of executive privilege cannot be prosecuted for criminal contempt of Congress,” Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte wrote in a letter. CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP Hur interviewed Biden in October 2023, then released his report in February 2024. The House Judiciary and Oversight committees subpoenaed the Justice Department for the audio recording, among other materials from Hur’s investigation. On February 27, Rep. James Comer, Chairman of the Oversight Committee, and Rep. Jim Jordan, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, wrote Garland: On February 12, 2024, the Committee on the Judiciary (“Judiciary Committee”), along with the Committee on Oversight and Accountability (“Oversight Committee”) and the Committee on Ways and Means, wrote you requesting a narrow and specific set of material in the possession of the Department of Justice relating to Special Counsel Robert K. Hur’s investigation of President Joe Biden’s “willful” mishandling of classified information. On February 16, the Department responded, failing to produce any of the requested material and stating instead that it was “working to gather and process” responsive documents.3 The Department, however, offered no timeframe by which it expected to make any productions or, indeed, any commitment that it would produce all of the material requested. … In its February 16 letter, the Department stated that it was reviewing responsive materials for “classification” and “confidentiality interests.” The Department provided no timeline by which its review would be complete or a commitment that it would produce all responsive material following the review. Additionally, the Judiciary and Oversight Committees believe that the information and documents requested are primarily unclassified. To the extent that the subpoenas compel the production of classified material, the Department may produce those materials under separate cover. Accordingly, considering the seriousness of this matter, please find the attached subpoena for the requested materials. Daniel Chaitin contributed to this article. Related: Biden Asserts Executive Privilege Over Tapes In Docs Probe

Aides to President Joe Biden are reportedly concerned about the “psychological torment” that may come with his son, Hunter Biden, going to trial in the coming months on gun and tax charges. POLITICO cited unnamed advisers who said members of the first family are fretting how the “weight” of Hunter Biden going to trial will affect President Biden in an already difficult time politically. The report also noted how President Biden has expressed fears about the possibility that his son, who is 54, will end up serving prison time. President Biden “worries about Hunter every single day, from the moment he wakes up to the moment he goes to sleep,” one of the advisers told POLITICO. “That will only pick up during a trial.” Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty to gun and tax charges in a pair of federal indictments. His gun trial in Delaware is expected to begin on June 3 after a judge rejected a bid to delay the prosecution. A trial in California for the tax charges is expected to start on June 20. Officials told POLITICO that the White House would not have a war room if the first trial began as planned, but one Biden ally said there could be a response if former President Donald Trump and House Republicans attempted to tie President Biden to attacks on Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden has already been roped into the corruption-focused impeachment inquiry into President Biden, participating in a closed-door deposition in late February to discuss his foreign business dealings that are under scrutiny. The November election is shaping up to feature a 2020 rematch between President Biden and Trump, who is trying to fend off multiple state and federal criminal cases while running for a second White House term. CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP As President Biden runs for re-election at the age of 81, he is attempting to shrug off questions about his mental and physical health. Repeated gaffes and stumbles have kept the issue in the spotlight. Axios published a report in late February in which Hunter Biden suggested that his fight to remain sober after well-documented struggles with drug abuse is intertwined with the 2024 election. “I have something much bigger than even myself at stake. We are in the middle of a fight for the future of democracy,” Hunter Biden said.

Leftists are enraged after Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker’s commencement address at Benedictine College went viral earlier this week, and a petition calling for the Catholic player to be dismissed collected over 100,000 signatures. Butker, a three-time Super Bowl champion, delivered the commencement address at the Catholic liberal arts college in Atchison, Kansas, last weekend. During the address, he pulled no punches, calling out President Joe Biden’s support for abortion and criticizing LGBTQ “Pride month.” A Change.org petition created on Monday now calls on the Chiefs to “Dismiss Harrison Butker for Discriminatory Remarks.” “The harmful remarks made by Harrison Butker, kicker of the Kansas City Chiefs, during his commencement address at Benedictine College were unacceptable. His comments were sexist, homophobic, anti-trans, anti-abortion and racist,” the petition states. “These dehumanizing remarks against LGBTQ+ individuals, attacks on abortion rights and racial discrimination perpetuate division and undermine human rights.” The Change.org petition, which has a 150,000-signature goal, has reached over 106,000 signatures as of Thursday morning. Butker has proven himself to be one of the best kickers in the league. He is currently 2nd in NFL history in all-time field goal percentage at 89.1%, and he led the league in made field goals in 2019. “Our nation is led by a man who publicly and proudly proclaims his Catholic faith, but at the same time is delusional enough to make the sign of the cross during a pro-abortion rally,” Butker said in the speech. “He has been so vocal in his support for the murder of innocent babies that I’m sure to many people, it appears you can be both Catholic and pro-choice,” he added. At another point in the speech, the kicker called out the “deadly sin sort of pride that has a month dedicated to it” and blasted those “behind the COVID lockdowns, to the people pushing dangerous gender ideologies onto the youth of America,” adding “they all have a glaring thing in common — they are Catholic.” CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP “This is an important reminder that being Catholic alone doesn’t cut it,” Butker told the graduating class. Many people on social media also got riled up over Butker’s advice for the Catholic women who were about to walk across the aisle, telling them that “it cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.” The NFL’s senior vice president and chief diversity and inclusion officer released a statement, distancing the league from Butker’s remarks. “Harrison Butker gave a speech in his personal capacity,” Jonathan Beane told PEOPLE. “His views are not those of the NFL as an organization. The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes our league stronger.”

Big Tech giant Google is manipulating consequential U.S. elections by shifting “millions of votes,” according to the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, Dr. Robert Epstein. Daily Wire host Michael Knowles sat down with Epstein, the head of the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, for an in-depth interview that streamed last week. During the discussion, the two discussed Epstein’s research into how Google uses its powerful tools to influence elections, and Epstein warned of how the Big Tech company could affect the 2024 election. “You are a very serious person with a very lengthy career and all sorts of credentials and publications. I do want to begin though, with this Google elections question,” Knowles said. “How bad is it?” “It’s much worse than you think. So however bad you think it is, it’s much worse,” Epstein replied. “So I can just give you two numbers and maybe that will summarize it for you. Google alone in this year’s presidential election, if we don’t do some extraordinary things to stop them, which might be impossible, Google alone will be able to shift between 6.4 million and 25.5 million votes in the presidential election,” he added. Knowles asked Epstein to explain how he came up with the estimate. “Does that include campaigns buying advertisements, which obviously could shift votes, but there would be a paper trail there? And that’s kind of fair game. You can buy TV ads, right?” Knowles asked. Epstein shook his head and alleged that what Google is doing is much more nefarious. CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP “All the usual forms of influence are, as you just implied, they’re competitive. Because they’re competitive, they’re net effect on elections, even the dirty tricks,” Epstein said. “The net effect is relatively small. I mean, here and there, it’s a few thousand votes for sure. And yes, this year the Dems might be doing ballot harvesting better than the Republicans are this year.” “But with Google and a couple of other tech companies, but mainly Google, there’s a problem,” he added. “If the platform itself wants to support one candidate or one party, there’s nothing you can do. Google’s home page is seen 500 million times a day just in the United States. What I found Google’s home page right now, every now and then, in a partisan fashion, they’re sending out register to vote reminders.” Epstein said that Google’s register-to-vote reminders are pushed to potential Democratic voters at about “two and a half times the rate” that they are pushed to potential Republican voters. Along with the get-out-to-vote notifications, Epstein also warned about how Google has adjusted search results in the past and said he is concerned that Google seeks to do more ahead of the 2024 election to put its weight on the scales. “Just to drive this point home, if Google is doing something like that, which they are, because we’re measuring it, then at some point, they’re going to send out partisan mail in your ballot reminders, and at some point, they’re going to send out partisan go vote reminders. And they’re also, stacking the deck in their search results.” “There’s extraordinary bias in Google search results sufficient to shift millions of votes in this year’s election. And we’ve been doing this kind of monitoring since 2016,” he added. “So I can tell you about the number of votes they shifted in many elections, not just what they’re shifting right now.”

The parents of a West Virginia middle school girl say they were “horrified” when their daughter told them a trans-identifying boy was sexually harassing her at school, and were “hurt and shocked” by the school’s lackluster response. Abigail and Holden Cross are the parents of 15-year-old Adaleia, who played track and field alongside a trans-identifying boy when the two were classmates at Bridgeport Middle School. It was in eighth grade when the trans-identifying boy began regularly sexually harassing Adaleia both in the locker rooms and on the field, her parents said. “When she told us these things we were horrified and immediately reported it to coaches and the school,” Adaleia’s mother Abigail told The Daily Wire. “The school told our daughter that they were going to investigate and not to say anything, and then we never heard back from them again. Nothing changed for our daughter and she didn’t get any help.” Adaleia described dealing with the boy’s sexual harassment in a statement she submitted as part of a lawsuit by several states against the Biden administration’s new Title IX rules, which prohibit schools from enforcing blanket bans on trans-identifying males in girls’ sports. At first, she tried her best to ignore the boy’s inappropriate sexual comments, but they became “much more aggressive, vile, and disturbing,” Adaleia said in her statement. Sometimes the boy’s comments were “just annoying,” like saying she had a “nice butt,” she said. However, towards the end of eighth grade the boy, who claimed to be a girl, was telling her to “suck my d***” two to three times a week. He also told her, “I’m gonna stick my d*** into your pu***,” sometimes adding “and in your a**” as well.” “These comments were disturbing and caused me deep distress,” Adaleia said in her statement. She tried to change in the bathroom stall whenever she could to avoid changing in front of her biologically male classmate, but time was often short before practice, she said. She also said the trans-identifying boy would taunt her about his sexuality — she recalled the boy telling her, “You have more testosterone than I do, and I am still beating you.” Her parents say they had to get a lawyer involved to even get a response from the school about her complaints, and the school sent them a letter saying it had found no evidence of their claims. “So really nothing has been done at this point,” Adaleia’s father Holden said. “We would really like to just make it to where girls have a safe space to compete, change in their locker rooms, when they’re most vulnerable.” “We were just so hurt and shocked and just taken aback by their response that we just have been doing everything since then to try to take action and to tell the truth about what’s going on so this won’t happen to our daughter again or hopefully any other girls,” Abigail Cross said. In her statement, Adaleia said she does not want her younger sister who is “very shy” to go through what she went through. “Emotionally, it got our daughter down towards the end of last year,” her father said. “It’s been a lot for us. It’s been a lot for our daughter. It’s been a lot for our other two kids who have to lose time with us for various different reasons.” Next year the trans-identifying boy is set to enter high school where Adaleia is now, and they may compete alongside each other again. Both play the trumpet in the marching band as well. This prospect is “weighing on her heavily,” her parents said. A year ago, Adaleia competed against the boy in several track and field events at the Harrison County Middle School Championships. Last month, five middle school girls from a different school refused to compete against the same trans-identifying boy at this year’s championship event. One by one, the five girls stepped into the starting area and then stepped out, video of the competition shows. The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is representing Adaleia’s family in the lawsuit from West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana against the Biden administration. “The Biden administration’s radical attempt to redefine sex in Title IX to include gender identity is really gutting equal opportunities for women,” ADF legal counsel Rachel Rouleau told The Daily Wire. “This will take out women’s privacy and safety like we’re seeing in this case with Adaleia.” The case has a hearing scheduled for June 10 where the judge will weigh whether the Title IX changes will go into effect on August 1 or be blocked pending the lawsuit against them. “We’re very hopeful that these rules will not go into effect, and women and girls can be protected,” Rouleau said.

More illegal immigrants have evaded border authorities and entered the United States since President Joe Biden took office than during the previous decade. New data on “gotaways,” immigrants who are seen crossing the U.S. border and entering the country illegally while successfully evading law enforcement, shows that such illegal entries have exploded under the Biden administration, according to Fox News, which obtained the data via an open records request. The records show that from fiscal year 2010 through fiscal year 2020, more than 1.4 million gotaways were recorded entering the country illegally. The number of such illegal entries tagged in a year ranged from a low of about 86,000 in 2011 to nearly 172,000 in 2013. During Biden’s term, the number of gotaways seen but not apprehended has jumped substantially, increasing every year of Biden’s presidency. In fiscal year 2021, the Department of Homeland Security recorded 387,398 gotaways. The next year, the number rose to 606,131. In fiscal year 2023, the number rose again to 670,674. Altogether, roughly 1.6 million illegal immigrants were seen entering the country and evading apprehension from 2021-23, more than the entire decade from fiscal years 2010-2020. EXCLUSIVE: Internal CBP data I obtained via FOIA request reveals 13 years of known gotaways data at the border, showing gotaways have *exploded* under the Biden admin compared to the Trump & Obama years. This is the first time these numbers have ever been revealed. FY2010… pic.twitter.com/LUQU5v87b2 — Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) May 15, 2024 CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP The data on gotaways comes as a report indicates that Biden is planning to take executive action on the border to limit immigration if encounters pass a certain threshold. The president is considering signing an executive order that would shut down the border once encounters hit 4,000 per day. Total encounters do not include numbers from gotaways, which came within 30,000 of hitting the benchmark last fiscal year. In 2019, Jeh Johnson, who served as Homeland Security secretary during the Obama administration, said that a daily encounter average of 1,000 per day would overwhelm Border Patrol. At 4,000 per day, he said the border would be in “crisis.” Johnson said he would start every day looking at apprehension numbers from the day before. “And I’d look at them every morning, it’d be the first thing I’d look at. And I probably got too close to the problem, and my staff will tell you if it was under 1,000 apprehensions the day before, that was a relatively good number, and if it was above 1,000, it was a relatively bad number, and I was gonna be in a bad mood the whole day,” Johnson said at the time. “On Tuesday, there were 4,000 apprehensions. I know that a thousand overwhelms the system. I cannot begin to imagine what 4,000 a day looks like, so we are truly in a crisis.”

The president of Sonoma State University (SSU) in California has been placed on leave after sending an email on Tuesday announcing an agreement with anti-Israel protesters. SSU President Ming-Tung “Mike” Lee announced that the agreement with students who had set up camp on the school’s Person Lawn to protest Israel would include an “academic boycott” of Israel, The Press Democrat reported. The boycott would mean that SSU would not pursue or engage with any study abroad programs with Israeli state institutions, KCRA reported. This was part of four “points of agreement” Lee agreed to with the protesters to get them to remove their camp. Also part of the agreement was a promise to disclose university vendor contracts and seek “divestment strategies,” the outlet reported. Lee also said the university would create an advisory council of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Last week, survivors of the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel sued SJP and other anti-Israel groups, claiming the group had links to the terrorist organization Hamas, the Intercept reported. On Wednesday, one day after Lee sent his email, California State University Chancellor Mildred Garcia issued a statement denouncing the agreement and saying the email had been sent “without the appropriate approvals.” “The Board’s leadership and I are actively reviewing the matter and will provide additional details in the near future. For now, because of this insubordination and consequences it has brought upon the system, President Lee has been placed on administrative l​eave,” Garcia wrote. “I want to acknowledge how deeply concerned I am about the impact the statement has had on the Sonoma State community, and how challenging and painful it will be​ for many of our students and community members to see and read. The heart and mission of the CSU is to create an inclusive and welcoming place for everyone we serve​, not to marginalize one community over another,” she added. Lee sent another email late Wednesday announcing his leave and acknowledging the agreement was a mistake. CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP “My goal when meeting with students at the encampment was to explore opportunities to make meaningful change, identify common ground and create a safe and inclusive campus for all. I now realize that many of the statements I made in my campus-wide message did just the opposite,” he said, according to the Press Democrat. “In my attempt to find agreement with one group of students, I marginalized other members of our student population and community. I realize the harm that this has caused, and I take full ownership of it.” Stephen Bittner, chair of SSU’s history department and director of its Center for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide,​ told the Press Democrat that he was “completely blindsided” by the provisions in the agreement Lee made with the protesters. “The academic boycott of Israel is atrocious and morally reprehensible, in my view,” he told the outlet before Lee was placed on leave. “It is contrary to the values of scholarly freedom, and free exchange, that are supposed to be at the center of any university.”

His hand was sliced clean off, but he managed to walk over to it and grab it off the ground

'Really, really unusual'

'The New York trial of Trump is a national scandal'