That Nobel Peace Prize is a lock.
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Digby's Hullabaloo Posts
… that’s nobody’s been talking about
This has got to be one of the major reasons the Republicans are panicking over the Epstein files:
JP Morgan warned the US government about more than $1bn in transactions linked to Jeffrey Epstein that were possibly related to reports of human trafficking, new documents confirm.
The largest bank in the US filed a suspicious activity report (SAR) in 2019, just weeks after Epstein was found dead in a New York jail cell, about transactions linked to the paedophile financier and prominent business figures. It also flagged wire transfers made by Epstein to Russian banks.
JP Morgan’s report said it had flagged about 4,700 transactions, totalling more than $1bn, that were potentially related to reports of human trafficking involving Epstein, the New York Times reported. The report, filed during the last Trump administration, also flagged sensitivities around Epstein’s “relationships with two U.S. presidents”.
The report was included in a release of previously sealed court records that were made public on Thursday after requests from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The documents included other SARs that JPMorgan filed in the years before Epstein’s 2019 arrest about large cash withdrawals, the New York Times reported.
The 2019 report did not detail the nature of the transactions or why they were suspicious. But it identified transactions with Leon Black, the co-founder of the private equity firm Apollo Global Management who left the company in 2021; the hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin; the lawyer Alan Dershowitz; and trusts controlled by the retail tycoon Leslie Wexner.
The report identified $65m of wire transfers from the mid-2000s that appeared to move between multiple banks linked to Wexner’s trusts but it did not provide details about the transactions involving Black, Dubin or Dershowitz.
None of the individuals named in the report have been charged with crimes in relation to Epstein.
Here’s Jason Leopold of Bloomberg with more:
The money laundering probe adds a new layer to the narrative about how the government conducted its investigation into the notorious sex abuser. It also raises questions about what evidence prosecutors may have gathered, long before the public began demanding a full accounting of his case. If that investigation had continued, prosecutors may have been able to identify other individuals and institutions that facilitated his sex-trafficking operation, said Stefan Cassella, the former deputy chief of the Department of Justice’s Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section. They might also have recovered more restitution for his victims, Casella said.
The money laundering investigation was opened in February 2007, according to a former law enforcement official familiar with the case who requested anonymity because of the sensitivities surrounding Epstein. At around the same time, prosecutors focused on a pattern of transactions in which Epstein directed some of his employees to withdraw large amounts of cash to disburse to women around the world he was suspected of having victimized. That was used as the basis for a potential charge of operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business, the former law enforcement official said.
The lead prosecutor on the case, former Assistant US Attorney Marie Villafaña, requested that a grand jury issue subpoenas for “every financial transaction conducted by Epstein and his six businesses” dating to 2003, the emails show. Target letters were sent to three of his assistants alerting them that Epstein was under investigation for money laundering and other financial crimes. Villafaña also dispatched two agents to the houses of two secretaries.
The previously undisclosed details about the existence of a money laundering investigation puts a spotlight on Alex Acosta, the former US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida who signed off on Epstein’s controversial non-prosecution agreement.
Last month, Acosta was interviewed by lawmakers from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform about the Epstein case. He was peppered with questions by Democratic Rep. Melanie Stansbury about whether his office investigated Epstein for “potential financial crimes.” Acosta said, “I don’t recall a financial aspect,” according to a transcript of his interview the committee released this month. “We were focused on the inappropriate acts that took place in Palm Beach.”
The emails and documents obtained by Bloomberg show that Acosta was copied on correspondence related to the money laundering investigation.
[…]
In May 2007, Villafaña drafted a 53-page indictment and an 82-page prosecution memo, according to a 2020 Justice Department report that examined the integrity of the federal investigation. That report described Villafaña urging her superiors to move swiftly because she believed Epstein was continuing to sexually abuse girls. Instead, the report concluded, she was stonewalled by senior officials at the office who saw her as too aggressive. (The 2020 report does not mention any financial-crime element of the probe.)
The evidence Villafaña collected was serious enough that she wrote in the prosecution memo that Epstein should be charged with money-laundering and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, according to the former law enforcement official. The indictment, a copy of which hasn’t been publicly released, was never filed and remains shrouded in secrecy.
It’s always important to follow the money. Epstein had way more of it than ever made any sense. And while he was certainly sex trafficking to many of his rich friends, there was almost certainly more to it than that.
This is a rich vein that has to be followed up. The Democrats should not let up one bit.
Brian Beutler published what he thinks is the best speech given in recent times by a nation’s leader. It happens to be from French president Emmanuel Macron in Germany:
We are under attack from outside. We are under attack from enemies of democracy. We need to recognize this.… When propagandists from authoritarian regimes attack our public spaces and social networks with disinformation, we are under threat from outside. When authoritarian regimes come to spread their messages, we are threatened from outside. But we would be very naive not to see that from within, we are turning against ourselves….
We have allowed a democratic public space to develop where everyone is hooded and anonymous, where the rule is that you have to insult others if you want to be popular, where you don’t know, in this public space…whether you are dealing with real people or fake people, and where you give equal value to someone who shouts much louder and tells you: ‘This vaccine is not a vaccine. What you are telling me is false and spreads the worst kind of misinformation.’ We live in a public space that looks like this. How can you expect there not to be immense democratic fatigue and people increasingly heading towards nervous breakdowns? I will put it more bluntly. We have been incredibly naive in entrusting our democratic space to social networks that are controlled either by large American entrepreneurs or large Chinese companies, whose interests are not at all the survival or proper functioning of our democracies….
Look at the epidemic of mental health issues and eating disorders among our teenagers and young people. It is entirely correlated with the emergence of these social networks. We have allowed public spaces to develop where everything is done to prevent reason, since, ultimately, the order of merit is that emotion is superior to argument and that negative emotion is superior to positive emotion. This is a complete bias towards our democracies going to extremes, towards noise and fury prevailing over reasoned argument, towards music quickly disappearing to make way for shouting, and towards algorithms designed to promote cognitive excitement, overreaction, and the volume of what we like or dislike, again favoring extremes, because at the heart of these models is the monetization of your presence in order to sell it to advertisers.
We did not design our democracies for this. We are a long way from the democratic agora of antiquity. And so, if we Europeans do not wake up and say, ‘We want to take back control of our democracies,’ I can tell you this: within 10 years, all those who are playing on or with this [digital] infrastructure will have won. And we will be a continent, like many others, of conspiracy theorists, extremists, noise and fury. If we believe in democratic order, let us put science and knowledge back at the heart of things, let us put scientific authority back at the heart of things, let us put culture, education and learning back at the heart of things, let us protect our teenagers and young people from these social networks, let us give these social networks rules so that they have, in a way, the same rules as those of the democratic space, meaning that there are no hidden people, meaning that there are no fake accounts creating false excitement. And let us enforce the same rules. When you have a newspaper, you are responsible for what is published in it. When you have a social network, you must be responsible for what is published on it. Otherwise, racism, anti-Semitism and hatred of others will triumph on our continent. We have the means to rebuild a 21st-century democracy. We just need to take that leap. It’s up to us to do it.
He’s not wrong.
Beutler notes that one other leader who has come close and it will surprise you:
The closest contender would be Joe Biden, who echoed Dwight Eisenhower in his own farewell address: “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead…. President Eisenhower spoke of the dangers of the military-industrial complex. He warned us then about, and I quote, ‘the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power….’ Six decades later, I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well.”
Last night Elon Musk was back at Mar-a-lago partying at Trump’s table.
Here he is dancing along with the richest man in the world. Let them eat Teslas!!!
How the cult sees it:
“Don’t let them make you break the law,” read new digital billboards on expressways near U.S. Southern Command headquarters in Doral, Florida, where the U.S. military’s ongoing operations in the Caribbean Sea are being overseen
The billboards were put up in response to the ongoing military strikes ordered by President Donald Trump’s administration, in what the White House and Pentagon have described as a concerted campaign against “narcoterrorists.”
The strikes are illegal and immoral. They aren’t even war crimes because there is no war. They’re just straight up mass murder.
The veterans behind the billboards at Win Without War and About Face: Veterans Against The War, describe it differently, calling them “ongoing lawless strikes on boats near the South American coasts.”
The billboards are part of a very public pressure campaign run by veterans at the two organizations in response to the Trump administration’s unprecedented use of the military — the increasing use of the National Guard for domestic policing and an active duty force build-up in the Caribbean of nearly 10,000 troops, warships, guided missile destroyers, surveillance aircraft, and drones.
It’s even worse than we knew. Per Politico:
Defense Department officials do not know precisely who they have killed in multiple military strikes against alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean that have claimed the lives of at least 57 people, according to Democratic lawmakers who attended a classified House briefing on the issue Thursday.
The meeting with members of the House Armed Services Committee — which comes amid bipartisan requests from members of Congress for more legal justification for the deadly strikes — was conducted by department policy officials but no military lawyers, who were pulled from the briefing shortly before it started.
Lawmakers at the briefing said they were not given an explanation for the change and were left frustrated over the lack of clarity on the justifications for the military actions.
“[The department officials] said that they do not need to positively identify individuals on these vessels to do the strikes, they just need to prove a connection to a designated terrorist organization or affiliate,” said Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.). “When we tried to get more information, we did not get satisfactory answers.”
Democrats who attended the briefing said Republicans also pressed the administration officials for more information, which suggests there is some bipartisan momentum for more oversight.
They don’t know who they are murdering and they don’t care. And now we know that they’re killing them on the basis of some “connection” to a “terrorist organization or affiliate.” We have no idea how they define any of that. What’s a connection? What’s an affiliate? And what fucking authority allows them to kill people based on any of this???
I’ve seen the government use the U.S. military to do some heinous things in my time, but this may be the most blatantly illegal without even the fig leaf of a believable rationale.
Politico interviewed an expert on international law who has recently published a book about the efforts to bring war criminal Augusto Pinochet to justice. He explains that as a head of state Pinochet had immunity but was arrested in the UK anyway and their high court ruled in a landmark case that he could be extradited to Spain under a warrant. It was found for the first time that where international crimes are concerned immunity is not absolute.
Anyway:
According to Philippe Sands, who frequently argues before international tribunals, the administration’s actions are “contrary to the basic precepts of international law.” The question, of course, is what that means as a practical matter and whether foreign governments — including the countries whose citizens have been killed in the attacks — might try to do anything about it…
The concern is, of course, that an American president could be said to have been given a greenlight to commit torture, to disappear people, to murder people — even to commit genocide, if it’s on that kind of scale — or other crimes against humanity.
Now I’m not sure that’s what the majority intended to do, but it’s an issue that is going to have to be watched very closely going forward. That’s largely because, in many respects, the U.S. led the world in 1945 in creating this new order. And the concern is, if the U.S. leaves the table, who’s left to pick up the pieces?
[…]
Just to be clear, my own position is that for a serving president, obviously, immunity on criminal process has got to be pretty watertight. And you can imagine that you don’t want frivolous cases brought under criminal process, in relation to a former president or former head of state, but in my view the Supreme Court offered no evidence of such cases.
But I went back to speak to one of the Law Lords — the UK justices who dealt with the Pinochet case — to ask him what he thought about the center of gravity of the reasoning — which seems to be that an American president should not be concerned, in taking important actions, that at some point in the future they might be subject to criminal process.
And David Hope, Lord Hope, told me it was a “ridiculous” argument. I think that captures the views of a lot of people
He says this is indicative of an overall rejection of international law by the United States. (He doesn’t specifically name the American right wing, but that’s who’s doing it.)
What is striking about the Supreme Court judgment is that it seems to be motivated by a similar instinct.
I mean, these are smart and savvy people. They will have known this will be read not just in the United States, but around the world. It’s a way of signaling that this stuff that was done in 1945 at Nuremberg and later in respect to Rwanda and in Yugoslavia — and the emergence of the International Criminal Court and these indictments that take place now — we have grave concerns about them.
We don’t need any laws when we have Emperor Orange Julius Caesar running the world. He will simply tell people to do the right thing and they will. So, case closed.
Obviously, the idea that the Supreme Court of the United States actually seems bought in on that idea is simply stunning. It’s right out of Idiocracy.
He goes on to point out that for the past 80 years the U.N/ charter has been very clear that a military response can only be legal in the case of an armed attack. (And yes, I know that the United States has danced on the head of a pin many times attempting to rationalize their decisions, but this is way beyond any precedent.)
But this is the kicker:
It’s not only that, but once you start saying that entities which basically exist not to destroy the United States, but to make money from the people in the United States — that’s essentially what they’re motivated by — if you start saying that people are combatants, that they are the enemy, that they are warriors who can be destroyed by the use of force, why can’t others make the same argument in relation to other categories of people?
They can make that argument against Americans right here in our own country! It’s exactly what Rodrigo Duterte did in the Philippines ( he is now awaiting trial for that in the Hague) and which Donald Trump complimented him for doing. If anyone can be called an “affiliate” of terrorism by having a connection to a drug cartel in some obscure, undefined way, Trump believes he has the legal right to murder them.
He certainly believes he has the right to murder anyone he chooses around the world on that basis. Why wouldn’t he? As he says every single day”I’m allowed to do it. I’m allowed to do anything I want.”
Sands continues:
I think most reasonable people across the political spectrum have concluded that this is a matter of international law. Using military force to take out drug couriers, drug carriers, narco-traffickers, and so on and so forth is contrary to the basic precepts of international law. Those precepts provide that action is to be governed by criminal law, not the law of armed conflict.
Read the whole thing. It’s obvious as a matter of domestic law, international law and common sense that Trump and his henchmen are murdering people on the high seas and they’re doing it under the presumption that the president is immune from all accountability and his pardon power protects everyone who carries out his murderous orders. They certainly aren’t concerned about international law — and frankly, they aren’t the first. After all, the U.S. has never signed on to the International Criminal Court.
Here’s a pertinent quote that just shows you how low we have sunk:
Chief prosecutor (and U.S. Supreme Court Justice on leave from the court) Robert Jackson:
“There will be no immunity in the Nuremberg tribunal for former leaders, because that is an obsolete relic. And in any event, it’s not what we do in the United States.”
Well…
Joe Neguse show how to reframe the media’s irrelevant or loaded questions. More like this please.
Like cruelty, that is the point
The Nazis were meticulous about their record-keeping. Not so Donald Trump. He famously absconded with hundreds of classified government records and stored them in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom. He demolished the East Wing of the White House without so much as a “by your leave” from officials entrusted with caretaking our national historic landmarks. Dotting i’s and crossing t’s is not exactly Trump’s idiom. Neither is professional law enforcement.
Secretary Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and her Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) goons are nothing like professional law enforcement. From the bad-faith criminal indictment of Democratic officials in Chicago; to the indiscriminate firing of tear gas and pepper bullets into crowds; to the arresting of anyone agents spot with brown skin (including U.S. citizens); to arrest threats against Americans legally monitoring ICE in their neighborhoods; to tricking out masked ICE agents in green camouflage and military tactical gear instead of DHS uniforms; law enforcement is not the point of DHS actions. Nor is obeying the law they purport to uphold. Terrorizing the civilian population is.
Federal immigration officers are using chemical irritants to disperse protesters in ways that violate American policing norms and are testing the boundaries of use-of-force laws, video footage from Chicago shows, in some cases hitting demonstrators directly with the munitions.
Since September,
… federal officers have thrown chemical agents out of vehicles on city streets, creating a hazard for motorists. They have thrown tear-gas canisters near stores and schools, exposing children, pregnant women and older people to the noxious gas. And on numerous occasions federal officers have fired pepper balls directly at protesters — in one case, striking a pastor in the head.
The use of tear gas has persisted in recent days despite a court order forbidding officers from using chemical agents against demonstrators and journalists unless they pose a safety threat. Last week, Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol official leading the Chicago operation, was videotaped throwing a tear-gas canister into a crowd. In another incident, immigration officers deployed tear gas as families were walking to a Halloween parade.
The big-numbers-obsessed Donald Trump and white nationalist, deportation tsar Stephen Miller are more interested in sweeping up and out as many warm, brown bodies as possible as quickly as possible. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights be damned. Splitting up families and traumatizing children be damned. Humane treatment be damned. Professional law enforcement norms (and proper vetting and training) be damned.
The through line here is an intimidation campaign being carried out in front of our kids, or even targeting our kids. Maybe you missed it in the crush of other horrific headlines, but earlier this week, after federal authorities released tear gas just before a parade on the city’s Northwest Side, a U.S. district court had to declare to our federal government that children should not be tear-gassed for the crime of showing up to holiday celebrations: “Kids dressed in Halloween costumes walking to a parade do not pose an immediate threat to the safety of a law enforcement officer,” U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis told Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino, a man who hates Halloween for children but loves to cosplay for work every day, in a hearing Tuesday. “You can’t use riot-control weapons against them,” she continued. “These kids, you can imagine their sense of safety was shattered on Saturday. And it’s going to take a long time for that to come back, if ever.”
Federal judges be damned too.
This post by David Bier of the Cato Institute grabbed me by the throat this week.
Right up front: I am not an attorney.
The agent makes sure to cite 18 USC 111 not once but twice as intimidation. He’s counting on the woman to not know what it says. That code section requires that an offender must have “forcibly” impeded, intimidated, or interfered with the federal agent. “Forcibly” is the first word in subsection 1. The DOJ’s Criminal Resource Manual on 18 USC 111 emphasizes that “the element of force” or “a threat of force” is “an essential element of the crime.” Or there is no crime. The agents above are making an empty threat to get her to stop filming them.
Here’s another example.
These are not uniformed law enforcement professionals as much as unqualified, undertrained administration thugs preparing Americans for seeing troops in the street as soon as Trump can concoct a semi-plausible excuse for invoking the Insurrection Act and putting active duty troops in the streets. (See update below.)
When someone suggests that this is what Americans voted for last November, show them these.
View on Threads
View on Threads
View on Threads
This is America on Trump.
View on Threads
UPDATE: Via Jason Satler. Here’s the full speech.
* * * * *
Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?
No King’s One Million Rising movement
50501
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
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Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
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Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense
“A Little Party Never Killed Nobody”
Two federal judges on Friday afternoon ordered the Donald Trump administration to continue funding Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits that expired at midnight. Both found that the administration acted unlawfully in refusing to tap emergency funds reserved for such a situation.
But this is Donald Trump. He’s made a practice of sniffing at court orders (New York Times):
Late on Friday, President Trump said that the administration would provide the funding for food stamps in November once a federal court could clarify “how we can legally” supply the money. But he indicated that a delay was inevitable.
“It is already delayed enough due to the Democrats keeping the Government closed through the monthly payment date,” he wrote on social media, “and, even if we get immediate guidance, it will unfortunately be delayed while states get the money out.”
Trump just discovered the word groceries early last year. Only a lunatic would appeal the court orders and further delay 40 million hungry Americans from buying them. But we’ll see.
Fresh off of demolishing the East Wing of the White House to erect a garish, 90,000 sq-ft ballroom funded by billionaires and megacorporations, Trump jetted off to Mar-a-Lago for an opulent, Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party for more rich friends. Associated Press White House Correspondent Danny Kemp posted a photo reporting “Official theme is Gatsby and ‘a little party never killed nobody’,” a song from the 2013 film The Great Gatsby.
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Do you think anyone will notice? Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) did: “The way he rubs his inhumanity in Americans’ face never ceases to stun me.”
Daily Beast noticed: Trump Gathers MAGA Pals for Tone-Deaf ‘Gatsby’ Theme Party
Hours before more than 40 million Americans were due to lose their SNAP benefits, the president and his court of cronies banqueted in style.
The Irish Star noticed: Trump seen at Mar-a-Lago Halloween party with dubious theme before SNAP aid ends
The president threw an opulent party at his Mar-a-Lago resort as more than 40 million low-income Americans faced losing SNAP aid.
Newsbreak: Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Gatsby Bash Hits a Nerve as SNAP Benefits Hang by a Thread
Only Donald Trump could throw a party that looks like a scene from The Great Gatsby while millions of Americans’ food aid is vanishing.
The Daily Mirror: Donald Trump spotted at Mar-a-Lago Halloween party with questionable theme hours before SNAP aid ends
President Donald Trump attacked Democrats in a rant about being forced to pay SNAP benefits during the government shutdown — even as he threw a glitzy Great Gatsby-themed party at Mar-a-lago.
Retweet these every chance you get today. Make sure everyone sees.
I want to know who this guy is sitting to Trump’s right. Anyone know? Rubio is to his left.
* * * * *
Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?
No King’s One Million Rising movement
50501
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense
Spooky beauty:
The genetic anomaly testifies to the good progress of the Lynx pardinus conservation plans in the two countries of the Iberian Peninsula, after releases began in 2011 when the species was on the verge of extinction.
The white ghost of the Mediterranean forest. This is how Ángel Hidalgo, an amateur nature photographer, has described his latest find while reviewing the images from one of his photo-trapping cameras, placed in the depths of one of Jaén’s mountain ranges in southern Spain.
Hidalgo has managed to record an Iberian lynx with leucism, a genetic condition that causes a partial or total lack of pigmentation in its skin, although not in the eyes, as would occur in the case of albino animals.
According to local media ‘Ahora Jaén’, this unprecedented discovery took place on 22 October in the province of Jaén.
The place where this specimen of ‘Lynx pardinus’ has been recorded in the wild, as attested by the absence of a tracking collar, is kept secret. The Iberian lynx, despite the conservation efforts of the Spanish and Portuguese authorities, is still listed as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
It’s a sign. Of what I don’t know, but it is. There’s someone in that cat and it’s bringing us a message.
Also:
I don’t believe in certain coincidences bc that’s two rare animal sightings in a short time. https://t.co/hTtM5zBDtq pic.twitter.com/DW6nCBHW67
— Simply AJ aka Tom Bombadil (@AJpart2EW) October 30, 2025
As one wag said: “I don’t believe in certain coincidences bc that’s two rare animal sightings in a short time.”
My BFF and I were once in a very small town in central Pennsylvania during hunting season eating breakfast in a diner right out of a David Lynch fever dream. Suddenly everyone got up and ran to the window to watch an albino buck run through the town and disappear through the heavy fog hanging over the cemetery and disappear. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it. It wasn’t Halloween but I’ve often thought about it on this day.
Happy Halloween everyone.
🚨 CHARLIE KIRK’S WIDOW STUNS TPUSA CROWD
— HustleBitch (@HustleBitch_) October 30, 2025
Erika Kirk just stepped on stage and people online instantly noticed something.
What do you see? pic.twitter.com/6ML63YsCrs
In the last couple of days we’ve seen Vance saying that it’s understandable that people don’t want to live next door to foreigners and confessing that his wife is not a Hindu as we’ve been told but rather an agnostic which is actually even worse in the eyes of the Christian Right. And he expressed hope that she would come to her senses and convert to Christianity, reassuring the audience at Turning Point that at least he’s training his children to be Catholic.
Now this.
What a partnership that would be. The Christian influencer widow and the shape-shifting opportunist. I can’t see why the MAGA faithful would object. Trump’s been divorced twice and has kids with three different women and they worship him. It might even be a selling point for JD who isn’t exactly known as a ladies man which they seem to like in their leaders both religious and political. I think it could work.