Former Democratic Attorney General Eric Holder, who served during former President Barack Obama’s tenure, played a key role in vouching for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as the Democratic Party’s 2024 pick for vice president before a massive fraud scandal rocked the Gopher State. 

‘There’s nothing that of any substance that was missed by our vetting team,’ Holder told CNN in an October 2024 interview as the federal election came down to its final days. 

Walz is in the midst of facing a sweeping fraud scandal involving alleged money laundering operations related to alleged fraudulent meal and housing programs, daycare centers and Medicaid services that prosecutors say could total as much as $9 billion, Fox News Digital has reported. Dozens of individuals have been charged amid the investigations, most of whom are from the state’s Somali community. 

The scandal led to Walz dropping his re-election bid to serve a third term as Minnesota governor. 

Walz has said he is ‘accountable for’ the scandal as the state’s top elected official, but has accused Republicans and the Trump administration of sensationalizing multibillion-dollar figures of alleged fraud. 

Walz bucked calls to step down as governor, declaring during a press conference Tuesday: ‘Over my dead body will that happen.’

More than a year ago, Walz’s run on the 2024 Democratic ticket catapulted his national name recognition after serving in politics for decades, including in the U.S. Congress from 2007 until 2019, before his election as governor. Ahead of his name being floated as a potential vice presidential contender, Walz was a relatively unknown name to everyday Americans. 

Then-Vice President Kamala Harris tapped Obama’s former attorney general to lead the vetting process of her potential running mates during the 2024 cycle. 

Holder is a longtime Obama ally and was one of the officials tasked with vetting Obama’s potential running mates back in the 2008 election cycle before landing on then-Delaware Sen. Joe Biden. 

Holder told the media in 2004 that Walz was not at the top of his list when vetting 11 candidates for Harris’ running mate, but that he moved up the list of names as Holder reviewed his ‘very impressive’ and ‘significant’ work in Minnesota, including signing a law in 2023 for universal free breakfast and lunch for all K-12 students in the state, KSTP reported in November 2024 ahead of the election. 

‘As part of the process, the vetting process, I looked at almost every YouTube he’s ever been on,’ Holder told KSTP of Walz. ‘Everything we could ever find about his media interactions and he’s a genuine nice guy. He’s got that Minnesota Nice thing.’

‘There was a chemistry that I saw, I actually saw that happen with Kamala Harris and with Tim Walz,’ Holder added at the time. ‘So it was a combination, I think, of accomplishments and chemistry that propelled him to the number two spot on the ticket.’

A source with knowledge of Walz’s vetting process told Fox News Digital that the fraud investigation was included in the vetting process, as details had already emerged during the governor’s 2022 re-election race. 

‘Governor Walz’s Department of Education had been in contact with the FBI regarding investigations into organizations diverting funds from child nutrition programs,’ the source explained. ‘This issue was not a factor in the 2024 presidential campaign, nor did Kamala Harris’s vice presidential choice ultimately prove to be a negative factor in the race.’ 

Walz’s emergence as the vice presidential pick quickly drew scrutiny over a string of past controversies, including allegations he exaggerated his military service, repeated misstatements about his presence during China’s Tiananmen Square massacre and questions about his handling of Minnesota’s 2020 riots — issues Republicans seized on as Democrats rushed to elevate him on the national stage. 

The 2024 election cycle was unprecedented for a multitude of reasons, most notably when then-President Biden dropped out of the race on July 21, 2024, amid mounting concerns over his health and a pair of assassination attempts on then-former President Donald Trump’s life. 

Holder joined CNN in October 2024 and defended the vetting process of Walz, calling him an ‘authentic guy, a person with a great record as the governor of Minnesota and who I think will be a superb vice president.’

‘He has resonated with the American people,’ Holder told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer at the time. ‘He has generated enthusiasm for the ticket. And I think that the slight exaggerations, misspeaking that he has done, and, again, for which he has, you know, taken responsibility, is not something that’s going to ultimately hurt him,’ he said of Walz’s past misstatements. 

Holder was pressed if he and ‘your team of lawyers (missed) important information about him during the vetting process,’ considering the previous misstatements. Walz, for example, claimed in 2018 he had carried ‘weapons in war,’ but had not been deployed to an active combat zone across his 24 years in the Army National Guard. 

‘No, I don’t think we did,’ Holder responded about whether his team missed anything on Walz’s record. ‘I mean, I don’t think that we were surprised by any of the things that he has said. And as what he has indicated is that sometimes he misspoke, but he is — unlike Donald Trump, who lies like all the time. Tim Walz has made some misstatements that he has said, you know, I was wrong in saying that, apologized for making the misstatements.’

Walz has been directly implicated in the Minnesota fraud schemes, though the Trump administration has pinned some of the blame on the governor. 

‘I think Tim Walz should resign,’ Vice President JD Vance told the media Thursday during a White House press briefing. ‘Because it’s very clear either that he knew about the fraud in Minneapolis, he knew about the welfare fraud, or at the very least, he looked the other way. I mean, this is not this is not like Lex Luther, right? This is not movie villain fraud. This is the lowest IQ possible fraud.’

Amid the fraud investigations, federal law enforcement converged on Minneapolis in January. A fatal shooting broke out in a residential area Jan. 7 when a woman allegedly attempted to use her car as a weapon against immigration officers in what the Department of Homeland Security called an ‘act of domestic terrorism.’ The woman was shot and killed, sparking fierce condemnation from Democrats and Trump critics, including some lawmakers referring to the incident as a ‘murder.’ 

Fox News Digital also reached out to Walz’s office and Obama’s office regarding the 2024 vetting process considering the fraud investigations, but did not immediately receive replies. 

Fox News Digital’s Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report. 

Tense scenes played out in the House of Representatives on Tuesday night as a group of moderate Republicans took a stand against a trio of GOP-led labor rule bills.

One of those bills failed to pass, while the other two were quickly scuttled to avoid the same fate — an embarrassing blow to House Republican leadership and the majority of GOP lawmakers who supported them.

It’s an example of a situation that has been growing increasingly common in Congress’ lower chamber as Republicans wrestle with a party-line majority of anywhere between three and one vote, depending on attendance that day.

‘We’ve got simple bills like this that should be a no-brainer, and we’ve got several moderate Rs that are going to kill the bill,’ Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., told Fox News Digital on the sidelines just before the first bill failed. ‘What I foresee, and you’re seeing it in appropriations bills, they don’t care about guys like me … they’re just working with the Democrats to pass them.’

Several Republicans who spoke with Fox News Digital this week said there’s growing concern about Democrats growing their number of legislative victories despite Republicans holding the gavel — or potentially using their numbers to take over the agenda.

As Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., put to reporters last week, ‘We are one flu season away from losing the majority.’

Steube said he did not believe Democrats could actually take the speaker’s gavel but conceded the situation was tenuous. He pointed to the recent sudden death of Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif., as an example.

‘You’re a heart attack and a car accident away from the majority. There’s people in our conference that are not young people. I mean, you saw what just happened with LaMalfa. In my opinion, he was young, 65. We have people who are much older in the conference,’ he said Tuesday night.

‘Now, Democrats couldn’t take over the gavel, but like, what you’re seeing here, you’ve got attendance issues, you’ve got seven Republicans voting with the Democrats. You lose more than two, you’re toast.’

Despite that, however, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., denied there was a fight for the agenda on Tuesday night.

‘We’re totally in control of the House,’ he told reporters. 

He added, however, that leaders were watching attendance closely.

‘They’d better be here,’ Johnson said of his members. ‘I told everybody, and not in jest, I said, no adventure sports, no risk-taking, take your vitamins. Stay healthy and be here.’

It comes after several recent incidents that have put their tenuous grasp on the House in perspective for Republicans.

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., abruptly resigned earlier this year after publicly falling out with President Donald Trump. Rep. Jim Baird, R-Ind., returned on Tuesday badly bruised from a car accident that he spent the week prior recovering from.

And just this week, Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., said he is home recovering from major brain surgery. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., is in his district caring for his ill wife.

Beyond conversations about their own mortality, it’s also spurred discussion among some Republicans about what unexpected life events could do to their majority.

‘The margins are really, really close. A few of us were in a car the other day, driving … if that became an accident, that would have tipped the scale. So I think it’s a concern to be vigilant, prudent, and just understand that the consequences of an accident may have, you know, consequences outside of the norm,’ Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., told Fox News Digital.

He also warned his fellow Republicans, as a former Navy SEAL, to be mindful of unsafe situations.

‘Say some evil mind wants to change the majority in the House — we don’t have the same protection that the president does. And that’s why I say just remain vigilant,’ Zinke said. ‘I have faith that we’ll continue, but I think it should be a concern, because it’s a big deal to change power outside of a normal election cycle.’

One House Republican speaking to Fox News Digital anonymously pointed out that there appeared to be more Democrats than Republicans voting on a slate of bills — albeit, relatively uncontroversial ones — on Monday night.

‘I’d guess they’re terrified,’ the lawmaker said of GOP leaders on Tuesday. ‘Sometimes life happens — look at Derrick Van Orden … car accidents, COVID, or flu. I mean, I don’t think we had the majority last night.’

‘They’re going to have to get smart about the calendar, probably break some arms,’ that GOP lawmaker said. ‘It’s kind of unprecedented. I don’t know how it would work. Say, unfortunately, someone else passed. You can’t fix that. You may have to wait a few months. You might have to strip committees. There’s a whole lot of uncharted waters to deal with.’

There are also more than a dozen GOP lawmakers running for higher office — something that could also spur absences, as South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., pointed out.

She dismissed fears of Democrats taking over the agenda, however.

‘Certainly there’s concern with the slim majority. There are many of us that are running for higher office as well, and as the debate season gets underway, there’s going to be members that miss votes to make debates and to be campaigning,’ Mace said.

Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., told Fox News Digital he was not worried about Democrats taking over the floor but conceded there was tension over the slim margins for Republicans.

‘I know they’re carefully watching attendance,’ Ogles said. ‘I think the joke is that no two members should travel together at this point.’

But not all House Republicans are agonizing over how the politics of the situation are playing out.

One moderate GOP lawmaker who spoke with Fox News Digital anonymously said the thin majority could save Republicans in the middle from taking politically perilous votes.

‘It gives folks in the center a little more juice on preventing bills from coming to the floor,’ they said.

An example they used is Thursday morning’s expected vote on a bill dealing with the joint-employer labor rule, telling Fox News Digital, ‘There’s an active effort among pro-labor Republicans to block that from coming to the floor, and we can only really get that done in our majority.’

Claims that a mysterious ‘sonic weapon’ was used in Venezuela have fueled speculation about exotic U.S. military technology and its potential effects on the human body.

One eyewitness account from a Venezuelan guard, shared on social media by White Hosue press secretary Karoline Leavitt, claimed the weapon brought Venezuelan and Cuban security forces to their knees, ‘bleeding through their nose’ and vomiting blood. 

While the Trump administration has not confirmed what weapon, if any, may have been used, defense experts point to a well-known acoustic device that has been in use for years. 

Known as a long-range acoustic device, it’s been described as the ‘voice of God,’ according to Mark Cancian, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel and senior adviser for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The device deploys a directed, short-range ‘cone of sound.’ 

‘It’s not like a microphone, you know, where everybody’s neighborhood, it’s only within this cone,’ said Cancian. 

U.S. operators may have deployed it as they were landing on the ground in Caracas, Venezuela, as a way to disorient security forces and warn them to drop their weapons.  

LRADs can project spoken commands at intense volumes or emit a loud, piercing tone designed to get attention and deter movement. At close range, the sound can be painful and disorienting, and in extreme cases can damage hearing or rupture eardrums, but the devices are not designed to cause lasting physical harm.

It can cause pain and temporary disorientation, and can cause ruptured eardrums, but is not designed to inflict long-term damage. 

U.S. forces used them for crowd control in Iraq when Iraqis got too close to U.S. military installments, according to Cancian. 

The devices can reach up to 140 decibels of sound. The intensity drops quickly with distance and angle. This is why operators can stand nearby but outside the beam.

Other defense analysts say the account raises questions that go beyond conventional acoustic devices.

For decades, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has studied nonlethal technologies intended to temporarily incapacitate adversaries without causing permanent injury. Publicly available research has explored acoustic and electromagnetic effects designed to overwhelm the senses, disrupt balance or motor control, and render targets briefly unable to fight or maneuver.

Can Kasapoglu, a defense analyst at the Hudson Institute, said such research has fueled speculation about more advanced incapacitation systems, but stressed there is no public evidence any experimental DARPA technology was used in Venezuela. 

‘There are some non-lethal technologies that DARPA has been working on, including acoustic weapon systems, sound waves, and also some neurological weapon systems that do not kill, but cause an unbearable sensation that you feel that you simply become inoperable in the battlefield,’ he said. 

While the symptoms described in the post shared by Leavitt are unverified, ‘they align closely with examples of DARPA research.’

The White House and Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.

In addition to the reported sound offense, the U.S. launched a cyberattack that knocked out communications systems as operators were landing in Caracas, Venezuela. 

‘It was dark, the lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have, it was dark, and it was deadly,’ Trump previously said. 

‘We were on guard, but suddenly all our radar systems shut down without any explanation,’ the local guard said in the account shared by Leavitt. ‘The next thing we saw were drones, a lot of drones, flying over our positions. We didn’t know how to react.’

Once operators were on the ground, ‘At one point, they launched something; I don’t know how to describe it,’ he said. ‘It was like a very intense sound wave. Suddenly I felt like my head was exploding from the inside.’

The effects were extreme, according to the guard. 

‘We all started bleeding from the nose,’ he said. ‘Some were vomiting blood. We fell to the ground, unable to move. We couldn’t even stand up after that sonic weapon — or whatever it was.’

The physical effects described by the guard go well beyond what experts say LRADs are known to cause. 

Vomiting blood, in particular, is not a typical reaction to acoustic exposure, raising questions about whether the account exaggerates the effects, misattributes their cause, or reflects a different factor entirely.

Experts caution that while directional acoustic devices are real and widely used, there is no publicly known ‘sonic weapon’ capable of producing the extreme injuries described — and no official confirmation that any such system was used in Venezuela.

Venezuela’s interior minister Diosdado Cabello said 100 people were killed in the Maduro operation. Cuba has said 32 members of its security forces, which were guarding Maduro, were killed in the operation. 

Seven U.S. service members were injured in the operation but none were killed.

Hillary and Bill Clinton are both now risking possible criminal charges after defying subpoenas to appear before the House Oversight Committee.

Hillary Clinton was compelled to sit for a sworn deposition behind closed doors on Wednesday morning as part of the House’s bipartisan probe into Jeffrey Epstein.

However, the former secretary of state refused to appear, and the House Oversight Committee will begin contempt of Congress proceedings, a source familiar told Fox News Digital.

She was expected to skip the meeting after her and former President Bill Clinton’s attorneys wrote to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., arguing the subpoenas were not legally enforceable.

A committee aide said earlier that the committee would initiate contempt of Congress proceedings ‘in the coming days’ if she did not appear. Comer is already moving forward with contempt proceedings against Bill Clinton.

The lawyers’ letter argued Comer’s subpoenas were ‘invalid and legally unenforceable, untethered to a valid legislative purpose, unwarranted because they do not seek pertinent information, and an unprecedented infringement on the separation of powers.’

It also compared Comer’s leadership of the probe to Joseph McCarthy’s 1950s-era abuse of congressional power, while pointing out that President Donald Trump has publicly called for the federal government to look into Bill Clinton’s Epstein ties.

‘Mindful of these defects, we trust you will engage in good faith to de-escalate this dispute,’ the letter said.

Comer told reporters Tuesday that he read the letter but suggested his probe would be undeterred.

The former president similarly skipped his own scheduled deposition on Tuesday, prompting Comer to say his panel would move ahead with advancing a contempt of Congress resolution against him next week.

Such resolutions need to advance through the relevant committees before being considered in a House-wide vote.

It’s then up to the Department of Justice (DOJ) on whether to pursue the resulting criminal referral if a majority of House lawmakers vote to make it.

Contempt of Congress charges are a misdemeanor that carry up to a year in jail and a maximum fine of $100,000.

Former Trump advisors Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro were notably charged and convicted of contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas by the now-defunct select committee on the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

The former first couple were two of 10 people subpoenaed by Comer as part of the panel’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. The subpoenas were issued following a bipartisan vote by an Oversight subcommittee panel during an unrelated hearing on illegal immigration.