FIRST ON FOX: Democrats' largest campaign fundraising platform says it has strengthened its donor verification standards days after House GOP investigators accused it of potentially taking in foreign donations for U.S. campaigns, according to a new letter obtained by Fox News Digital.

Attorneys for ActBlue sent a letter to the House of Representatives on Monday announcing it is launching a new "passport verification program" as part of its "ongoing investment in the security of contributions processed from donors located abroad."

House Republicans have for years accused ActBlue of having insufficient verification standards for weeding out illegitimate campaign donations.

The platform has long been used by a myriad of Democrats to raise money for their political campaigns, including Democratic leaders in the House and Senate. ActBlue said it paused donations from Americans abroad in 2025, however. 

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ActBlue has consistently denied wrongdoing in responses to Fox News Digital and communications to House investigators. Ten top figures within the company, including executives and founders, have pleaded the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering questions in both public and private sitdowns with GOP-led committees.

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But a new report released earlier this month, first reported by Fox News Digital, appears to show employees green-lighting donations despite some questions about where they came from.

Chief among the GOP's concerns is ActBlue's passport number verification. According to the report, the field only required the correct number of characters for a U.S. passport number rather than a valid code for a donation to be accepted.

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But the Monday letter said ActBlue's new program "adds passport-based identity verification as a further enhancement to ActBlue’s multi-layered approach to fraud and foreign-contribution prevention."

"In doing so, it also enables U.S. citizens located abroad—who have been unable to contribute on the ActBlue platform since 2025—to resume participating in the political process by supporting the candidates and causes of their choice," the letter said. "The new program uses the best available technology to allow eligible donors located abroad to verify their identity using a valid U.S. passport. It reflects substantial engineering investments by ActBlue to ensure that, as it resumes processing contributions from foreign addresses, its compliance systems can withstand scrutiny."

Committee on House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., said it amounted to a confession.

"This decision to implement a NEW passport verification program only confirms what we've been saying: ActBlue failed to verify the citizenship of individuals who made donations from abroad. That's unacceptable," Steil told Fox News Digital. "This new policy should have been in place on day one. Right now, far too many questions remain unanswered, including what percentage of the billions of dollars that have flowed through ActBlue came from illegal foreign sources. Chairman Jordan, Chairman Comer, and I will continue to seek answers for the American people."

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The probe is being co-led by his panel as well as House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky.

A spokesperson for Jordan told Fox News Digital, "This action confirms that the platform's fraud prevention measures were not as robust as [ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones] told Congress. We will continue to demand answers."

The GOP's earlier report cited a letter by Wallace-Jones to Steil, which maintained that donations on the platform made by people with addresses outside the U.S. required a passport number for verification.

But the Republicans' report alleged that the verification "only ensures that the entered passport number contains a certain number of characters, not that it is a valid U.S. passport number," rendering it an essentially meaningless step.

ActBlue told Fox News Digital in response to the report at the time, "There’s nothing to see here. After we released findings of a third-party forensic analysis that completely undermined a central claim that they have made against ActBlue, Republicans are refusing to move on."

"Instead, they are orchestrating another political stunt before rushing out of town weeks early to go campaign. This coordinated campaign against ActBlue isn’t about the facts, or legislating, it’s about Republicans’ efforts to silence organizations they believe threaten their agenda," the platform said.

A spokesperson for ActBlue pointed Fox News Digital to a blog post announcing the update when reached for comment.

"In 2025, amid unprecedented attacks from President Trump and his allies, our organization took the proactive step of temporarily suspending all contributions from outside the United States," the statement said. "ActBlue has now further enhanced its verification process to allow eligible Americans with a U.S. Passport who are located abroad to participate through the platform while maintaining the robust security and compliance standards that donors, campaign, and the public expect." 

It also said ActBlue "accurately described" its vetting process to Congress.

For most of my life, basketball has been at the center of everything I do.

I played 11 seasons in the NBA. I competed against some of the greatest athletes in the world. I know what it takes to reach the highest level of the game—the years of training, the sacrifices, the injuries.

But I didn’t become the player I was in front of thousands of people under the bright lights of an NBA arena.

I became that player in the hours no one saw.

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It happened in empty gyms, one practice at a time. One more shot. One more drill. One more day of showing up and doing the work. The moments that eventually looked big to everyone else were built on thousands of small ones that hardly anyone noticed.

I’ve come to believe courage works the same way.

We tend to notice courage in the big moments—the speech, the protest, the public stand, the moment someone refuses to back down. But courage is usually built long before anyone is watching.

It is built every time you decide that fear will not make your decisions for you.

I learned that lesson long before I understood how important it would become in my life.

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I grew up in Turkey. When I was a boy, some kids in my neighborhood once handed me an American flag and a lighter and told me to burn it.

I didn't understand why I was supposed to hate a country I had never seen or people I had never met. So I went home and asked my mother what I should do.

She gave me advice I have never forgotten: "Don't hate anyone before you meet them."

It was a small moment.

But small moments have a way of shaping a life.

Years later, I came to the United States to play basketball. I remember hearing one of my teammates openly criticize the president of the United States. I was shocked. I thought he was crazy.

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Where I came from, criticizing the person in power could carry severe consequences. Here, my teammate laughed and explained something that Americans grow up knowing: This is America. You are allowed to disagree with your government. You are allowed to criticize your leaders. You are allowed to speak.

That freedom fascinated me. But eventually, it would still wind up costing me a lot.

As my basketball career grew, so did my platform. And I began using it to speak about human rights abuses in Turkey and to criticize President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's government. Of course I could have stayed quiet, and that would have been much easier and safer. It was a small moment, but I knew it could have an impact. So I spoke.

And it was then that I saw the power of one person speaking up. The Turkish government revoked my passport. Arrest warrants were issued for me. My father was imprisoned. My family suffered because of my decisions. I narrowly escaped attempts to detain me abroad. Eventually, the Turkish government placed a $500,000 bounty on my head.

Speaking up cost me and those I loved enormously. But once you understand what it means to be free, silence comes with a cost of its own.

Later, I began speaking out about the Chinese Communist Party and its treatment of Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers, and others. I wore shoes onto NBA courts carrying messages the Chinese government did not want displayed.

Again, I knew there could be consequences.

Again, I spoke anyway.

Again, there was a cost.

That’s why, when I finally became an American citizen, I chose a new last name: Freedom.

I didn't choose it because freedom is an abstract idea to me. I chose it because I know what life looks like when it disappears.

Freedom is the ability to ask a question powerful people would rather not answer. It is the right to challenge institutions. It is the right to say something unpopular without surrendering your dignity or your voice.

Freedom comes with costs too. This country has seen the cost at which freedom was obtained. And we still see the cost of keeping it. But freedom only survives when we accept that cost and continue to exercise it.

That lesson has stayed with me far beyond basketball, Turkey, or China. Because once you have decided that some principles are worth defending despite enormous consequences, you cannot suddenly decide that other difficult questions are better left alone because people might criticize you.

That is why I am speaking now about women’s sports.

I spent most of my life competing at the highest levels of basketball. I know what athletes sacrifice for a chance to compete. I know what it means to dedicate years of your life to becoming a fraction of a second faster, a little stronger, a little better.

And I believe women and girls deserve to know that the opportunities they are working toward will be protected.

At the heart of this debate is a biological reality: Men and women are different, and those differences matter in competitive sports.

Saying that has become controversial, but I don't believe it should be.

Every person deserves dignity and respect. That principle matters deeply to me. I have spent years speaking for people around the world whose basic human dignity has been denied.

But respecting every human being does not require us to pretend that biological differences do not exist.

We should be capable of doing both.

We can treat people with compassion and still ask difficult questions. We can disagree without hatred. We can protect the dignity of every individual while protecting fair competition for female athletes.

And we should be able to have that conversation openly, because I have learned something over the years about controversial issues: The moment people become afraid to ask the question is often the moment when asking it matters most.

Female athletes should not have to worry that defending their own sports will cost them teammates, endorsements, playing time, or their reputations. Coaches shouldn't have to whisper what they believe behind closed doors. Parents shouldn't be afraid to ask whether the rules governing their daughters' competitions are fair.

Whatever our disagreements, those conversations should be possible in a free country.

I know what it feels like when they aren't. There is a reason I carry the word "Freedom" everywhere I go.

Freedom isn't just something written into a constitution or celebrated once a year. It is something we practice. We practice it when the crowd is cheering. We practice it when people are criticizing us. And perhaps most importantly, we practice it when standing alone would be easier than speaking up.

Somewhere today, a little girl is standing in an empty gym working on her jump shot. She's putting in one more practice. One more drill. One more shot.

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Nobody is watching. But those quiet hours could someday become something extraordinary. I know, because mine did.

She deserves the freedom to chase that dream. She deserves a fair opportunity to see how far her work can take her. And she deserves adults who are willing to have difficult conversations today about how we protect that opportunity tomorrow.

Big change rarely begins with a big moment. It begins when someone decides to speak. Then someone else does. And someone else.

Until one day, the thing that once required courage simply becomes common sense.

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"It is not something that has been put to rest," said Nicole Parker, a Fox News contributor and former FBI special agent.

She addressed a case that has captivated America and has people asking, "Where is Lynette Hooker?"

It's been six months since the 55-year-old Michigan mother vanished while on a sailing vacation with her husband in the Bahamas.

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No one has seen nor heard from Hooker since April 4.

According to her husband, Brian, she "went overboard" from a dinghy in Hope Town after the couple went out for drinks that evening. They were making their way back to their sailboat "Soulmate," he told investigators.

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He was initially detained, questioned and then released by Bahamian authorities. He has not been charged with any crime or accused of wrongdoing.

"Just because the public doesn’t exactly see what’s happening, doesn’t mean that it’s not happening behind the scenes," Parker said.

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The U.S. Coast Guard Investigative Service continues to actively investigate the case; the agency seized "Soulmate" in May.

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They also sent a team of divers to search for any trace of Lynette at the beginning of June. Agents returned to the U.S. with the Hookers' dinghy that was sent to a forensics lab for testing.

WATCH: COAST GUARD VIDEO REVEALS SEIZURE OF BRIAN HOOKER'S SAILBOAT AFTER WIFE'S BAHAMAS DISAPPEARANCE

"Certain pieces of evidence were sent to the FBI lab and to Quantico for investigation, for them to analyze it, and that takes time," Parker said.

She went on to say, "They're trying to reconstruct a potential crime scene that occurred in the waters."

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Parker was the FBI's Crimes on the High Seas Coordinator and said she knows firsthand how frustrating the slow-moving investigative process can be.

"There were times when even I myself as an investigator, I wanted things to move more quickly. I wanted results, I want it to happen, but these types of cases, they do take time," she said.

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Lynette's mother, Darlene Hamlett, came forward in July and said publicly she believes her daughter made it back to "Soulmate" before she vanished.

"She made it back to the boat, and there was foul play," Hamlett told Fox News Digital. She did not elaborate on how she reached that conclusion but said she has been limited by the Coast Guard in what she can publicly discuss.

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"Remember, there was no one else on the water with them," Parker said.

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She said the limited release of information "doesn't mean that there isn't work going on behind the scenes," she said.

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As the search for any clues in Lynette's case continues, Parker said investigators are working around the clock.

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"They're doing everything that they can to bring answers. At the end of the day, that's what Lynette deserves."

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Brian appears to be living a peaceful and quiet life staying at his mother's home in Citrus Heights, California – northeast of Sacramento.

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Fox News Digital spotted Hooker walking dogs, chatting with neighbors, making trips to a local pharmacy, and even collecting neighbors' trash items up and down the street.

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He has not made any recent public statements about his wife's disappearance.

Fox News Digital has reached out to Brian Hooker's attorney for comment. The FBI and Coast Guard declined to comment.

Hannah Hirsh, a former stripper of five years who left the sex industry after an encounter with Jesus, is at peace now, even as she discusses the "dark" life she escaped to help save other women from a similar fate.

"A lot of the things that I saw while I was in that life for five years was very dark. You see a lot of addiction. I even got involved into addiction myself. You see drugs. You see alcohol… you even see trafficking," Hirsh told Fox News Digital.

"[To the] women just wanting to go to the club and thinking, ‘I can just go and make some quick money,’ you don't realize the door that you're opening, and you don't realize all of the darkness that comes with it… This all comes with that lifestyle and just feeling empty inside, feeling dead inside and just going against your morals just for money," she continued.

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"I fell into the temptation [of stripping] because of the allure of money… [That’s what] stripping glamorizes [and] society glamorizes this lifestyle and portrays it to be something it's not," Hirsh added.

"If you've actually lived inside of it, you know that while you are doing this, you are not happy," she relayed.

Hirsh’s career in the sex industry came to a halt when the clubs in her area shut down during the pandemic of 2020. The abrupt halt prompted her to sit in silence with God, a reality she describes as pulling her heart out of that line of work and closer to Him.

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"Society makes it seem like this luxurious lifestyle is the goal, but what I have truly learned is the goal is Jesus. The goal is eternal life. That is the true goal. And true riches are found in God," Hirsh continued.

"This fast-paced lifestyle [is] glamorized by society, but it is not glamorous at all. This is coming from someone who lived it," she added.

Hirsh went on to share that "most of the women" in the stripping are "on drugs" and "drinking every single day to numb" themselves to their work.

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"You're constantly being degraded on a daily basis. So, it's not empowering you at all — it's actually belittling you and making you feel less than. But because you are walking away with money, you think that it's empowering you, but just as fast as that money comes is just as fast it goes," she revealed.

"What goes through my mind when I go into the strip club is that these women need God… I go in there and I tell them what they need to hear, what God is placing in my spirit to tell them because my job is to just plant the seed, but God is the one that's going to make the seed grow," she continued.

Hirsh founded "Kept by Grace Ministry" shortly after reconnecting with her faith, and visits strip clubs regularly to pull women out of the sex industry.

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"For the Christians that believe strippers are beyond saving, I would say that they don't have a true relationship with the Lord… Jesus sat and ate with prostitutes. Jesus was going to those that the Pharisees were calling too dirty… So for the Christians that believe that strippers are too far gone, I would say that you need to understand the heart of God because no stripper, nobody is too far gone for God. No matter what they have done, God can redeem anybody," Hirsh said.

The people who oversee the largest budget in the world, who are in charge of an entity ultimately responsible for the largest number of employees in the U.S., and who are put in charge specifically to represent constituents somehow have no broad fiduciary duty — Congress.

In most large businesses, and certainly every publicly traded one, a board of directors is put in place to represent that business’s stakeholders. This is referred to as a fiduciary duty, which in layman’s terms, is a legal obligation to act in the best interests of those you represent. It also comes with consequences, because as a fiduciary, you can be sued for putting your interests ahead of those you represent or for negligence or bad judgment.

Fiduciary relationships come into place not only in companies, but for certain financial advisory relationships and trustees as well. The fiduciary relationship is a legal one, which means those in charge must legally act honestly and with care, avoid conflicts of interest and be trustworthy to the parties they represent.

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Somehow, Congress has managed to avoid this. Sure, they take a "moral" oath and have some fairly weak, in my opinion, disclosure and ethics rules. But the people who are in charge of making laws and passing budgets (if you can call regular and overwhelming overspending a "budget") have no true legal, fiduciary role.

We have seen and paid the price for this. The national debt exceeds $40 trillion. Congress spends around $7 trillion a year, $2 trillion more than it takes in. They have been at the center of driving massive inflation for the American people. We, as a country, are now paying more for the interest on our debt than we are for the defense of our country, the latter being one legitimate thing government should be doing.

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We have seen Congress write and pass laws that tip the scales in favor of certain groups at the expense of others. We have seen them enrich themselves through stock trading (despite the STOCK Act of 2012).

We have seen calls for term limits, an issue which the majority of Americans favor, be ignored, sometimes even leaving members of Congress with clearly diminished capacity in their roles.

As I have written about previously, I am often asked if the national debt crisis is solvable. And the answer comes always in two parts: we do have the tools to do so, but we do not have the political structure to do so.

If Congress has no obligation to do what is in our best interest instead of theirs, if we cannot hold them accountable for misdeeds, and if our only real recourse is threatening to vote them out of office, nothing is going to change.

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It is truly not right that those who act in the capacity of others on serious legal and financial matters in the private sector have a fiduciary obligation to those they represent, yet the behemoth that our government has become bears no such obligation, including from those who represent the American people.

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When individuals bear no requirement to act in the best interests of those they represent, and they are given access to great power and other people’s money, of course, we are going to end up with massive debt and a dysfunctional country.

We should require care, trust and duty from our representatives. And it should be a legal obligation, not a theoretical one.

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FIRST ON FOX — A former senior federal prosecutor who served in the Biden administration has been hit with a criminal investigation referral asking the Justice Department to look into whether she misled federal agents about her role in an investigation, Fox News Digital has learned.

Jina Choi joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California in late 2023, shortly after which Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney Ismail Ramsey tapped her to lead its Corporate and Securities Fraud Section, which handles major corporate and securities cases across the Bay Area, including Silicon Valley.

Before joining the office, however, Choi had represented IRL, a social-media startup co-founded by Abraham Shafi. The company was built around organizing and connecting people through events. IRL shut down in 2023 after a board-directed investigation concluded that 95% of its users were likely bots, a finding Shafi disputed. Shafi was later indicted in 2025 on federal fraud and obstruction charges.

The referral represents an unusually aggressive challenge to the conduct of a former prosecutor involved in the broader matter.

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Cully Stimson, acting director of the Heritage Foundation’s Legal Policy Center and himself a former federal prosecutor, told Fox News Digital that, while it is common for defense teams to attack prosecutors, resorting to a criminal investigation referral is rare.

The referral, sent on Tuesday by a lawyer Shafi retained separately from his defense, turns on whether Choi remained involved in the IRL investigation after joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office despite being screened from the matter because of her prior representation of the company. The Justice Department generally has no obligation to respond to referrals like this.

Prosecutors said Choi was walled off from the federal investigation involving IRL and Shafi. But Shafi’s lawyer now alleges that internal communications and an FBI interview report show she remained involved in the matter and later understated that involvement to federal agents.

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The FBI declined to comment when reached by Fox News Digital.

In the criminal referral sent to the Justice Department on Tuesday, Shafi’s lawyer asked federal authorities to investigate whether Choi made false statements about her role in the investigation into IRL.

The federal investigation into IRL predated Choi’s arrival at the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors have said she was screened from the matter because of her prior representation of the company.

Shafi’s defense claims to have obtained internal emails sent by Choi as well as FBI interview memoranda recounting a conversation she had with federal agents from the prosecution. Shafi’s lawyer argues the documents contradict Choi’s account to agents.

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While Choi’s communications are quoted or described in public court filings, the government filed the underlying email exhibits under seal or as sealed exhibit slipsheets. As a result, the public cannot independently inspect the original documents or assess their full context.

Choi worked for IRL as outside counsel before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, according to court filings. During this time, Shafi’s defense alleged in its motion to dismiss the case against him that Choi attempted to get federal authorities to target Shafi to shield other stakeholders at the firm. The government denied this characterization, acknowledging that she advocated that the firm itself not be targeted, but disputing that she wanted the government to go after Shafi.

The tech founder’s defense argues that Choi’s prior representation of IRL created a conflict of interest. Prosecutors have said she was walled off from the investigation because of that prior relationship. As of publishing, no ruling has been made finding that Choi operated under a conflict of interest that warrants dismissal.

Shafi’s lawyer argues that documents they obtained tell a different story.

ODNI SENDS CRIMINAL REFERRALS TO DOJ FOR EX-IG, WHISTLEBLOWER TIED TO TRUMP IMPEACHMENT

The FBI, which was investigating the Shafi case, interviewed Choi in July and questioned her about her role in the IRL investigation, according to the referral. Choi allegedly told agents that she did "not have any kind of role in the investigation."

An internal message purportedly obtained by the defense, however, quotes her as saying, "I talked to [her predecessor]] and I wanted to see if it would be ok to add [him] to the IRL team to help move it along."

In other instances, documents obtained by the defense allegedly show that she inquired about the name of the FBI agent working on the IRL case and that she sent press coverage of the case against Shafi to other prosecutors.

At one point during her FBI interview, Shafi's lawyer claims Choi said that she was not aware "who was assigned to the case team."

PROSECUTOR OUSTED AFTER ALLEGED ROMANCE WITH ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT SEX-CRIME SUSPECT: 'PATTERN OF MISCONDUCT'

According to the criminal investigation referral, Choi "admitted keeping a written case tracker on which ‘the SHAFI investigation was listed.’" The defense claims that the U.S. Attorney’s Office refused to turn over the case tracker by describing it as a "privileged and internal work product."

Shafi was charged with wire fraud, securities fraud and obstruction a few months after Choi left the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The charges stem from allegations that he misled investors by misrepresenting user growth on his platform. Prosecutors allege that he used paid advertising to attract people to IRL, then passed off the resulting growth as organic while raising about $170 million from investors.

He also stands accused of misusing investors’ funds for clothing, home furnishings, travel, hotels and wedding-related costs. The founder’s lawyer argues that Choi’s alleged false statements to federal agents, coupled with her prior representation of IRL, taint the charges against Shafi.

JACK SMITH DOUBLES DOWN AGAINST GOP ACCUSATIONS HE LIED UNDER OATH

Shafi’s defense has a strong incentive to prove that Choi acted improperly, as doing so could seriously derail the prosecution of their client.

"Here, the defense's allegations are troubling if true, because if their allegations end up being true, there was spillage," Stimson told Fox News Digital. "And that would mean some other members of that office are therefore conflicted, and it could result in the entire office being conflicted if a judge found that the taint was so bad that it permeated the whole office."

Stimson also said that, in his experience, individual U.S. Attorneys’ Offices generally operate with significant independence on casework, cautioning against attributing Choi’s alleged conduct to the Biden administration more broadly.

As of publishing, Choi has not been charged with any crime or disciplined for any professional misconduct in connection with the Shafi prosecution.

Choi did not respond to a request for comment when reached by Fox News Digital.

In the summer of 2012 — when knuckleballer R. A. Dickey came out of nowhere to win the Cy Young award — I discovered my sons in our backyard teaching themselves the pitch. The knuck, a slow trick pitch that doesn’t spin, has a storied history of elevating longshots, retreads and dreamers to the major leagues — even the Hall of Fame.

I resolved to see how far my kids could go. On the decade-long odyssey that followed, I learned that not only baseball-crazy boys harbored knuckleball dreams. Two wealthy business moguls did too. Their intersecting lives are one of the strange but true stories in my new book, "School of Hard Knucks: My Three Sons and Baseball’s Wildest Pitch."

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Brooklyn real estate investor Howard Rich, a free-market guy who founded Americans for Limited Government, had Mets season tickets six rows behind home plate — the ideal place to watch Dickey’s knuckleball baffle hitters in 2012.

"If the knuckleball’s so hard to hit," Rich ’ s wife Andrea asked one game, "why does only one pitcher throw it in the major leagues?"

Great question, Rich thought. This was a market failure. He’d fix it by opening a school — the International Knuckleball Academy (IKA). He hired two minor league knucklers, Chris Nowlin and Zach Staniewicz to run it.

On the other side of the globe, a 36-year-old South Korean who made a fortune in video games had never given up on his boyhood dream of playing pro baseball.

"I thought if I could master the knuckleball," Min Hur told me, "I might still have a chance."

Hur converted the roof of his Seoul office building into a personal training facility, with a retractable dome and cutting-edge pitch tracking technology. He’d also reached out to the greatest knuckleballer of all, Phil Niekro.

"Phil invited me to his home in Atlanta and over a month taught me everything from the grip to the philosophy behind the pitch. He became my great mentor."

Hur worked with another knuckleball legend, Charlie Hough, too.

"He could take the spin off the ball pretty darn well," Hough recalled.

In 2013, Hur hired a well-connected agent who got him tryouts with the Rangers, Mariners, and Diamondbacks. They all passed on Hur. Then the Rockland Boulders, an independent minor league team in upstate New York, agreed to give him a look.

Min’s chauffeur drove him and his translator up from Manhattan every day of tryouts. He made the team and stepped away from his businesses to focus on his knuckleball career.

The Boulders promoted Hur’s pro debut as" Min-Sanity," playing off the NBA’s "Lin-Sanity" craze when point guard Jeremy Lin caught fire with the Knicks.

Min bussed up spectators from New York’s Korean neighborhoods and flew his family in from Seoul. They watched him pitch three innings and surrender five runs on five hits and four walks. He also hit three batters.

Howard Rich read all about it, and wondered if Hur would want to partner with the IKA. He called Nowlin.

" There’s a Korean billionaire in New York right now, and he loves knuckleballs," said Rich. "Set up a meting for us."

Rich, Hur, Nowlin, and Staniewicz had dinner in Koreatown, but much was lost in translation. Hur remembers talking about knuckleballs, but nothing about an academy.

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Rich forged ahead with the IKA, renting Dodgertown, the one-time spring training complex of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Staniewicz worried.

"It’s hard enough to find people who want to throw the knuckleball, much less pay thousands of dollars a week to try to learn it," he told me. "That cut the pool of possible clients from, like, ten to two."

Rich offered a financing plan. He told me about it last year when he took me to a Mets game.

"I hired a hot-shot attorney to draft a contract so players could come for free, but if any went on to throw, say, ten pitches in the majors, we'd get a small percentage of their pay."

Even still, the International Knuckleball Academy shut its doors before a single aspiring knuckler walked through them.

Min Hur is still at it. I recently met him at a batting cage in Lower Manhattan. He’d flown in from Australia after a stint with the Melbourne Aces and was rendezvousing with a knuckleball coach from Buffalo named Joe Gannon.

Hur’s now 50 years old. That’s ancient for most baseball players, but not too old for a knuckleballer. So the dream lives on.

"I’m better than ever," he told me.