The Justice Department has withheld some Epstein files related to allegations that President Trump sexually abused a minor, an NPR investigation finds. It also removed some documents from the public database where accusations against Jeffrey Epstein also mention Trump.
Some files have not been made public despite a law mandating their release. These include what appear to be more than 50 pages of FBI interviews, as well as notes from conversations with a woman who accused Trump of sexual abuse decades ago when she was a minor.
NPR reviewed multiple sets of unique serial numbers appearing before and after the pages in question, stamped onto documents in the Epstein files database, FBI case records, emails and discovery document logs in the latest tranche of documents published at the end of January. NPR’s investigation found dozens of pages that appear to be catalogued by the Justice Department but not shared publicly.
The Justice Department declined to answer NPR’s questions on the record about these specific files, what’s in them and why they are not published. After publication, the Justice Department reached out to NPR, taking issue with how its responses to questions were framed. Department of Justice spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre reiterated DOJ’s stance that any documents not published are privileged, are duplicates or relate to an ongoing federal investigation.
[…]
Other files scrubbed from public view pertain to a separate woman who was a key witness for the prosecution in the criminal trial of Epstein’s co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking. Maxwell is seeking clemency from Trump.
Some of those documents were briefly taken down and put back online last week, while others remain hidden, according to NPR’s comparison of the initial dataset from Jan. 30 with document metadata of those files currently on the Justice Department website.
What is the allegation?
The woman who testified in the Maxwell trial testified that Epstein took her to meet Trump at Mar-a-Lago when she was 14 years old. There’s more to that but we don’t know what it is.
At least Bill White, Donald Trump’s ambassador to Brussels, showed up when summoned by the foreign ministry over some undiplomatic interventions into Belgian politics. His counterpart in Paris, Charles Kushner, on Monday snubbed a similar call from French officials, deepening a standoff that shows no signs of calming. France cut off his contact with government officials after the no-show.
The presidential envoys, traditionally thought of as builders of bridges, have instead been publicly picking fights with their hosts in service of a boss who has made contempt for the European Union a pillar of his foreign policy.
“We don’t accept that foreign countries can come and interfere, can invite themselves into the national political debate, whatever the circumstances,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on France Info radio on Tuesday. “There is nothing more normal than summoning an ambassador when an explanation is needed.”
The arena where the conflict between MAGA and Europe is playing out most routinely is on the ground. While disputes between countries, even allies, are a regular part of international relations, it’s noticeable that the complaints are concentrated in countries that have governments that define themselves in part in opposition to domestic populist movements, often viewed as natural political allies for the US administration.
Trump himself hasn’t shied away either. The US president affirmed his “complete and total” endorsement of Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Washington DC on Thursday. Orban faces a tight election on April 12. And it’s not the first run-in between the French and Kushner, the father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. In August, Kushner sent his deputy to receive a dressing down after he sparked the French government’s ire with an editorial that accused President Emmanuel Macron of not doing enough to fight anti-semitism.
In Belgium, White, who only took up his post in November, also waded quickly into domestic politics in the notoriously politically fractious country.Last week the New Yorker was summoned by the country’s foreign minister after he accused the country of anti-semitism over a judicial investigation related to Jewish ritual circumcision in Antwerp, a city with a large orthodox Jewish community. White demanded that the case over whether three “mohels” — Jewish ritual circumcisers — were performing them without the required medical training be dropped. Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot accused White of peddling “dangerous disinformation that undermines the real fight against hatred.”
Who the hell do these people think they are??? Kushner is a convicted felon pardoned by Trump who is Trump’s worst choice for ambassador and is making that obvious every day.
This jerk in Belgium has gone after the EU Parliament, threatening visa restrictions against center left members who criticize American policies and has the temerity to call some ministers “rude.” Apparently, this a huge story in Belgium with the prime minister coming out yesterday saying, “it is not the role of an ambassador to sow discord in national politics.” No kidding.
The Trump envoy to Poland calls himself a “not-so-secret agent of MAGA Judeo-Christian Conspiracy” and has been threatening the Polish government if it decides to tax big tech and had a meltdown when the speaker of the parliament refused to sign a letter nominating Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize.
I’m still waiting to see what Kimberley Guilfoyle will do in Greece. You can bet it’s going to be a doozy.
We shouldn’t be surprised because Trump has named only crony loyalists to all appointments in this administration and that, by definition, means they are terrible people. Of course they’re causing diplomatic incidents all over the world.
For some reason this has not been a live subject even after the massive coverage of Biden’s age. But the people are noticing:
Six in ten Americans, including a significant slice of Republicans, think President Donald Trump has become erratic as he ages, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.
The six-day poll concluded on Monday, the day before the 79-year-old president gives his annual State of the Union address to Congress following a month of angry reprimands of lawmakers and judges.
Overall, 61% of respondents in the poll said they would describe Trump as having “become erratic with age.” Some 89% of Democrats, 30% of Republicans and 64% of independents described him this way.
I would guess there are quite a few of those who think he’s always been erratic so the number of people who see him as unhinged is probably even higher.
The truth is that he has always been erratic but he was less sure of his instincts in the first term and is now convinced that he can literally do no wrong. No matter what, he always comes out on top and never suffered any consequences. In a way you can’t blame him. He never pays any price for anything he does.
Yesterday he said the polling was all fake but he also wondered aloud why he doesn’t get more support. Naturally he claimed that he has a silent majority, the last refuge of the scoundrel president.
Generic ballot: Democrats lead Republicans 52% to 42% among registered voters — a 10-point margin and the widest lead since we started this tracking poll
Presidential approval: 37% of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s job performance; 59% disapprove (net -22). Trump’s approval among political independents is just 20% in our data.
No positive issues left: Trump’s approval on border security — his one remaining bright spot — dropped from net +4 to net 0 over the last month. He is now underwater or even on every issue we test.
Trump approval on government funding collapses: Approval on government funding and social programs fell 7 points to net -26, the sharpest single-issue decline this month. Trump’s approval on health care also fell.
Spending priorities: Given a hypothetical $75 billion to spend on something, just 5% of Americans would spend it on immigration enforcement. 31% chose reducing grocery and housing costs.
Direction of country: Only 10% say things are going well in America. 52% say things are going poorly and major changes are needed.
Those are bad numbers.
I just watched a CNN segment in a Latino district in Texas that went heavily for Trump in 2024. Most of the Latino voters in the segment say they don’t like “the way he does things” but they think he’s doing a good job and will vote Republican in November. So, I don’t know. It’s possible that they were all just being tribal in front of the cameras and will vote differently or not vote at all. But it’s very hard for people to admit they messed up. I’m not sure they’re ever going to get there when it comes to Trump.
During the run-up to the Iraq War, one of the tropes that was passed around by the George W. Bush’s band of neoconservatives, who were at the height of their hubristic, premature victory celebration, was “Everybody wants to go to Bagdad, real men want to go to Tehran.” Twenty-three years later, at a time when he is reeling from collapsing poll numbers and a major economic and foreign policy setback from the Supreme Court, Donald Trump has taken the nation to the edge of war with Iran.
The U.S. has assembled a massive military force in the region. Two aircraft carriers are leading an armada of a dozen warships and what experts say is 40-50% of the country’s total global air power to threaten the Islamic Republic into — what we aren’t quite sure. The president, along with his Middle East envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, hasn’t exactly been forthcoming with a casus belli. In fact, no one knows precisely why the administration is threatening military action or what it wants Iran to do to stop it.
Some days, they say it’s about destroying Iran’s nuclear capability, which conflicts a bit with Trump’s declaration that he had “obliterated” it when U.S. and Israeli airstrikes hit nuclear facilities last summer. Last week he told reporters aboard Air Force One that he would send B-2 bombers to Iran “to knock out their nuclear potential” if they refused to agree to a nuclear deal. A few days later at the inaugural meeting of his Board of Peace, the president praised America’s “magnificent” B-2 bombers, saying they “went into Iran and it totally decimated the nuclear potential. When it decimated that, all of a sudden, we had peace in the Middle East.”
Only a few weeks ago, he was issuing bellicose threats to the regime that if they harmed any of the demonstrators who were taking to the streets in anti-government protests that he was willing to take military action. (So far, at least 7,000 have been verified dead by the Human Rights Activists News Agency, with other reports claiming upwards of 30,000 deaths.) Trump wrote on Truth Social that the government would “pay a big price” for the killings and urged people to “keep protesting.” He indicated that the U.S. was preparing to intervene on their behalf, bleating, “I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY. MIGA [Make Iran Great Again]!!!”
The president’s envoys are no more forthcoming with a rationale for the threatened military strikes. Needless to say, it’s difficult for them to make the demands for a halt to nuclear capability since the U.S. supposedly obliterated it. Nonetheless, Witkoff gamely claimed over the weekend that Iran could produce nuclear weapons in “less than a week.” Trump’s empathy and support for the country’s protesters, while commendable, is likewise hard to defend when the administration’s agents are shooting down its own citizens in the streets, so he appears to have gone quiet about that in recent days.
The president has not explicitly put regime change on the table as a desired outcome. But he has dropped cryptic hints, including a Truth Social post in the aftermath of the U.S.-Israeli airstrikes in June 2025 that referred to knowing the whereabouts of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and claimed he “would not let Israel…terminate his life.” After the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, such threats likely have more salience now.
War has a funny way of creeping up, and since we’ve had two long wars in the region in the past 20 years — and one short one in the previous decade — it’s quite easy to imagine how this could all hurtle out of control.
The bottom line is that nobody knows exactly why Trump has decided to threaten Iran now or what he hopes to achieve. When he took office in 2017, he inherited a formidable nuclear agreement with the country, which included an intrusive weapons inspection program, and he ripped it up solely because it was negotiated by Barack Obama’s administration. (Undoing everything his predecessors did was the only foreign policy he knew how to pursue, and he hasn’t learned much since then.) Whatever deal he might come up with will undoubtedly be much weaker.
The irony is that we find ourselves at this moment when Trump ran in 2016 as the anti-Iraq war crusader who blamed all the “stupid” leaders before him for getting the U.S. into the forever wars. His peacenik bonafides never seemed very believable considering his violent, hostile temperament, but they did become part of his brand. The neocons who promised that we would be greeted as liberators in Iraq were demeaned as hopeless romantics by the new America First faction, yet today we have Trump telling Iranian protesters that “help is on the way” — heartlessly raising expectations that America will intervene on their behalf in their internal battle for freedom.
Back in 2003, when those arrogant neocons were saying “real men want to go to Tehran,” the U.S. was in the throes of the reaction against 9/11. The devastation and fear that attack had caused throughout American society and around the world was extreme. People who had been angling to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein — followed by the Iranian regime, which was famously part of Bush’s “axis of evil” — saw an opening to remake the Middle East, and they used that emotional moment to push through their agenda. But at least they made an attempt, however fatuous, to persuade the American people and the country’s international allies that there was a reason for doing so.
Trump and his accomplices aren’t trying to persuade anyone. They don’t believe they need to.
Bush pushed hard for congressional support, which he got, and while he couldn’t get the United Nations to back his plan, he did manage to convince some European allies, mostly notably the United Kingdom, to join what he called “the coalition of the willing,” so he did go to war with a semblance of authorization and the support of the majority of the American people. But the administration had lied about Iraq’s nuclear weapons capability and its alleged ties to al Qaeda, and in the end that helped doom the war to failure.
Once again, we’re faced with a similar set of circumstances. As he has in the past, Trump may lose his nerve and back down by accepting some face-saving deal because he is pretty much out on a limb, serving only the interests of the Israeli government and a few Iran hawks in the GOP who are whispering furiously in his ear. Apparently, he didn’t think it would come to this.
The president apparently gambled that bringing in a massive military force would force the Iranians’ hands. As Witkoff told Fox News on Saturday:
I don’t want to use the word ‘frustrated’… because [Trump] understands he’s got plenty of alternatives, but he’s curious as to why they haven’t… I don’t want to use the word ‘capitulated’, but why they haven’t capitulated. Why, under this sort of pressure, with the amount of sea power and naval power that we have over there, why haven’t they come to us and said, ‘We profess that we don’t want a weapon, so here’s what we’re prepared to do? And yet it’s hard to sort of get them to that place.
Trump doesn’t understand that some people don’t readily respond to violent threats and blackmail, which is, unfortunately, the only kind of “negotiation” he knows how to do. We may be about to learn, in living color, what a mistake it is to put someone like that in a position of power. At this point, all we can hope is that his inherent cowardice will win out over his monstrous ego one more time. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
This sign back in September drew three middle fingers out of three windows of one car. MAGA knows what it was promised, voted for, and didn’t get. MAGA hates being reminded.
It is State of the Union day. Brace tonight for a flood of BS from Donald Trump so furious it will make Daniel Dale’s head spin.
Trump promised a lot of things would happen on Day One. The BBC looks back at a few:
Reducing prices
What he’s said:
“When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on day one.” press conference, Aug 2024
What he’s done:
This is perhaps his biggest challenge, given how often inflation topped the list of voters’ priorities during the election campaign. In his inaugural address, Trump promised to “marshal the vast powers” of his Cabinet to rapidly bring down costs and prices, but it’s unclear how. One way, he says, is by increasing drilling to reduce energy costs.
A steep price rise in January, the biggest monthly increase for 16 months, has complicated Trump’s task. He blamed Joe Biden, who left office on 20 January, and Democratic spending. “I had nothing to do with it,” said Trump.
At other times, however, he has admitted it’s hard for US presidents to control prices. But economists warn some of his policies could fuel inflation and polling suggests voters would like to see him doing more.
Mass deportations
What he’s said:
“On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to get the criminals out.” 4 Nov 2024
What he’s done:
Immigration has perhaps been Trump’s main focus since taking power, with more than a dozen executive orders aimed at overhauling the system. His plan to deport foreign nationals in the country illegally, starting with those convicted of crimes, seems to have widespread public support.
But it is uncertain whether he will meet his promise to deport so many. A few raids have made headlines but the number of people being removed does not seem to be record-breaking, according to the daily figures.
In his first month in office, the US deported 37,660 people – less than the monthly average of 57,000 removals and returns in the last full year of Joe Biden’s administration, data obtained by Reuters shows.
A DHS spokesperson told the agency that Biden-era deportation numbers were higher because illegal immigration was higher. Nationwide border encounters decreased 66% in January compared to 2024, according to the White House.
Trump has succeeded in neutering much of the Bill of Rights in the process as well as terrorizing Americans from coast to coast.
January 6 pardons
What he’s said:
“I’ll be looking at J6 early on, maybe the first nine minutes.” Time Magazine, Dec 2024
What he’s done:
True to his word, hours after taking the presidential oath, Trump issued pardons and commutations that paved the way for the release of more than 1,500 people convicted or charged in connection with the US Capitol riot. A police officer who was punched that day told the BBC the pardons were a “slap in the face”.
Ending Ukraine War
What he’s said:
“They’re dying, Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying. And I’ll have that done – I’ll have that done in 24 hours.” CNN town hall, 2023
What he’s done:
Trump has initiated the first talks between the US and Russia since the start of the war, but Ukraine has vowed to reject any deal hatched without it, and there’s been an angry exchange between leaders. President Volodymyr Zelensky fears the US president delivering on his campaign promise to end the war but on Moscow’s terms and with no security guarantees. There is also anxiety in European capitals that they are being sidelined, and that Trump may dismantle some of the sanctions imposed on Russia as punishment for the invasion.
Ending birthright citizenship
What he’s said:
Trump told NBC in December he “absolutely” planned to end birthright citizenship on day one: “If somebody sets a foot of just a foot… on our land, congratulations. You are now a citizen of the United States of America. Yes, we’re going to end that.”
What he’s done:
In one of the first acts of his second presidency, Trump ordered an end to an automatic right to American citizenship currently received by nearly anybody born on US soil. Birthright citizenship is not the norm around the world, and Trump’s move targets those who are in the US illegally or on temporary visas.
Opponents say the plan interferes with a right that was established by an amendment to the US Constitution nearly 160 years ago. And the issue could be heading for the Supreme Court – the highest in America – after an appeals court ruled against Trump, upholding a legal block on his plan.
Trump tonight will huff, and he’ll puff, and he’ll blow the House chamber audience’s ears back. It is a good bet that any numbers he cites and any accomplishments he claims from his first year back in office are as solid as investments in cryptocurrency.
And tariffs, tariffs, tariffs. Good for whatever ails ya. But not good for reducing prices on groceries and other items. The Ukraine war drags on. Oh, and Trump releasing the Epstein files as he promised during his campaign took a literal act of Congress in November. The Epstein class coverup continues. Overseas, heads roll. And in exceptional America, rich pedophiles are exceptions.
“ICE is teaching cadets to violate the Constitution”
ICE is lying to the public and to the Congress about its training processes, a former ICE academy trainer and lawyer told Democrats in Congress at a forum on Monday. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) hosted. No Republicans attended.
“ICE is teaching cadets to violate the Constitution,” Ryan Schwank declared (Minneapolis Star Tribune):
Ryan Schwank, who resigned from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Feb. 13, told the forum that ICE is training new agents to violate Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.
“ICE is lying to Congress and the American people about the steps it is taking to ensure its 10,000 new officers faithfully uphold the Constitution,” Schwank, who joined ICE as legal counsel in 2021, said in the draft.
Former ICE Employee: I swore an oath to protect the nation when I signed up. I followed it when I resigned a little over a week ago. I am duty bound to report the legally required training program at the ICE academy is deficient, defective, and broken. I received secretive orders… pic.twitter.com/uKFbV5zDYd
Senate Democrats released several dozen pages of internal ICE documents describing how, Schwank said, the Department of Homeland Security has reduced new recruit training to a “husk.” More than a dozen practical exams have been eliminated, including “judgment pistol shooting” and “criminal encounters,” MS Now reports:
The agency also appears to have cut courses in “use of force simulation training” and legal trainings on “criminal vs. removal proceedings,” among other topics, from the training curriculum, the documents indicate. And they suggest that, contrary to acting ICE Director Todd Lyons’ testimony to Congress earlier this month, new ICE officers receive 250 fewer hours of training compared to prior recruits.
Spokespeople for ICE did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s questions Monday about the documents.
“For the last five months, I watched ICE dismantle the training program,” Mr. Schwank said at a forum held in Washington by congressional Democrats. “Cutting 240 hours of vital classes from a 584-hour program — classes that teach the Constitution, our legal system, firearms training, the use of force, lawful arrests, proper detention and the limits of officers’ authority.”
He added: “New cadets are graduating from the academy despite widespread concerns among training staff that even in the final days of training, the cadets cannot demonstrate a solid grasp of the tactics or the law required to perform their jobs.”
Some of the previously unreported documents released on Monday indicate that ICE officers are now training for significantly fewer hours than they did before President Trump’s hiring surge. Others suggest that several training classes appear to have been cut from the required syllabus, including one titled “Use of Force Simulation Training” and others on immigration law and ICE’s legal authorities.
Americans have seen the results in dozens of witness videos. In the thuggish behavior agents exhibit on the street. In the casual violence. In the blatant violation of civil rights. In the illegal entry of homes without a judicial warrant. In the the barking of “18 USC 111” and threats to detain nonviolent citizen-observers. In DHS agents’ flagrant disregard of the U.S. Constitition, not only by ICE but Customs and Border Protections (CBP).
Schwank said the assertion by Homeland Security leaders that cadets receive the same training in a shorter time frame “is a lie.”
“This means that cadets are not taught what it means to be objectively reasonable, the very standard which the law requires them to meet when deciding whether or not to use deadly force,” he said. “Our jobs as instructors are to teach them so well they can make split-second decisions about what they can and cannot do in life-or-death situations. Yet in the name of churning out an endless stream of officers, DHS leadership has dismantled the academic and practical tests that we need to know if cadets can safely and lawfully perform their job.”
Schwank said he was shown the secret memo authorizing forceful home entry on his first day as a training instructor. He was told to teach its contents but not to take notes on it or discuss its existence.
“Never in my career had I ever received such a blatant unlawful order, nor one conveyed in such a troubling manner,” he said. “Incredibly, I was being shown this memo in secret by my supervisor, who made sure that I understood that disobedience would cost me my job.”
Schwank received the training job because his predecessor was forced to resign after refusing to teach the memo.
The ICE memo by Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons authorizes “ICE agents to forcibly enter into certain people’s homes without a judicial warrant, consent, or an emergency,” the Associated Press reported last month:
The memo authorizes ICE officers to use force to enter a residence based solely on a more narrow administrative warrant to arrest someone with a final order of removal, a move that advocates say collides with Fourth Amendment protections and upends years of advice given to immigrant communities.
In essence, Lyons claims that he has a “cover your ass” legal opinion from the DHS Office of the General Counsel that permits ICE agents to violate the Constitution, you know, to get the job done.
Trump: "Fake polls — I got one today. I saw one today that I'm at 40%. I'm not at 40%. I'm at much higher than that. I'd love to run against anybody. The real polls say 'you'd kill everybody, it wouldn't even be close.'" pic.twitter.com/X0DBmbG1bX
Actually it was 36%. But the cross tabs are even worse:
Enten: "It's the weakest Donald Trump has ever been with independents. Look at this drop! At this point a year ago Donald Trump was at -13. Look at this — minus 47 points among independents! The lowest Donald Trump has ever been in either of his two terms." pic.twitter.com/QRbJv4mAiy
Trump alludes to his bad polls: "It just amazes me that there is not more support out there. We actually have a silent support." pic.twitter.com/qhbB7iwWea
There’s just no end to the Epstein liars. We knew Commerce Sec. Howard Lutnick met with Epstein on the island with his wife, children and nannies (which is gross in itself) but there are even more lies:
Lutnick has had a big problem since the trove was released last month. He previously insisted he and his wife cut ties with Epstein in 2005, after they moved next door to Epstein’s mansion in New York City. In an interview last year, Lutnick said that Epstein had given them an unsettling tour of his home and that he vowed he would “never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.
But the files showed that Lutnick and his family visited Epstein on his private island in 2012, that Epstein in 2017 donated $50,000 to a charity dinner honoring Lutnick, and that the following year the two communicated about countering an expansion of a neighboring museum.
Earlier this month, CBS News revealed more on their connection by reporting that Lutnick and Epstein each signed a contract in 2012—four years after Epstein pleaded guilty to sex crimes—to invest in a digital ad technology company called AdFin Solutions Inc. The deal was dated just five days after Lutnick and his family visited Epstein on his private island. Lutnick signed on behalf of a limited liability company controlled by Cantor Fitzgerald, the investment firm where he served as CEO.
Lutnick’s camp has tried to minimize his involvement with Epstein through their shared investment in AdFin. A spokesperson for the Commerce Department told CBS News, “Secretary Lutnick had limited interactions with Mr. Epstein in the presence of his wife and has never been accused of wrongdoing.” And a source close to Lutnick told the network that Cantor was “a small minority investor” in the venture. This source added that at “the time of doing the deal, as a minority investor, Mr. Lutnick would not have any knowledge of who the other investors were.”
That is misleading. Emails and documents in the massive Epstein release not yet reported reveal that Lutnick went on to become a prominent figure in AdFin—not merely a minority investor—and that he and his company were financially interconnected with Epstein in the venture for at least six years. They also show that Cantor essentially took over AdFin, as Epstein played a role as an investor in the struggling firm. It is highly improbable that Lutnick did not know Epstein was a key shareholder.
Come on:
An email exchange from May 28, 2018, shows “HWL” (Lutnick’s middle name is William) discussing AdFin with Epstein—an apparent sign that Lutnick was aware of Epstein’s involvement in the company and that he maintained a business relationship with Epstein far longer than he has acknowledged.
In this exchange, the two discussed AdFin’s status. Epstein asked HWL, “what do you think the prospects for adfin are?” In an email marked “confidential” and “the sole property of Cantor Fitzgerald LP and its affiliates,” HWL replied, “Producing revenue finally. This is their year. Next 12 months they need to become economically self sufficient.
This is long after everyone knew that Epstein was a criminal and even longer since Lutnick supposedly was so offended about seeing the massage table in the middle of the room at Epstein’s house (which was next door to his own) that he vowed to never speak to him again.
The British government is arresting people for similar behaviors. Lutnick remains by Trump’s side, completely insulated from scrutiny along with dozens of others, including the president himself.
The Department of Justice spoke four separate times to a woman who credibly accused Donald Trump of having sex with a minor he met through Jeffrey Epstein—but most accusations against the president appear to have been removed from the government’s documents on the alleged sex trafficker.
A 21-page slideshow buried in the massive trove of Epstein-related documents included allegations that sometime between 1983 and 1985, Trump forced a woman to give him oral sex when she was in her early teens. When the woman bit down on Trump’s exposed penis, he allegedly punched her in the head and kicked her out. That same woman told the DOJ that Epstein had introduced her to Trump in 1984.
Yet last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi insisted that there was “no evidence” that Trump had committed any crime—adding to the growing pile of denials from Trump officials that constitute a sweeping cover-up of the president’s alleged wrongdoing.
Justice Department records indicate that the FBI spoke to this woman not once but at least four separate times, according to independent journalists Roger Sollenberger and Nina Burleigh. Now those records appear to have been removed from public viewing—despite the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which requires all documents relating to the alleged sex trafficker to be made public.
Sollenberger discovered a record of four separate interviews, which took place in the summer of 2019, in a separate database of documents downloaded from the government’s public files on Epstein. That document indicated that the first of the four interviews was conducted on July 24, 2019, and the last conducted on October 16, 2019. That document was given to Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyers as part of her trial, though the specific allegations predated Maxwell’s involvement with Epstein, Sollenberger wrote.
The woman’s first interview was entered into the FBI’s case files on August 9, 2019, just one day before Epstein was found dead in his jail cell. FBI agents typically have a deadline of five working days to file interview write-ups, indicating an abnormal 16-day gap, Sollenberger noted.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon permanently barred the Justice Department from releasing special counsel Jack Smith’s final report describing President Donald Trump’s stockpiling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and allegations that he obstructed government efforts to reclaim them.
Cannon lit into Smith for a “brazen stratagem”: compiling the detailed report even after she ruled in July 2024 his appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional and dismissed the case against Trump and two co-defendants. The Justice Department had appealed Cannon’s decision but dropped the case altogether after Trump’s election.
“Special Counsel Smith and his team went ahead for months, undeterred, preparing [the classified documents report] using discovery collected in connection with this proceeding and expending government funds in the process,” Cannon wrote in a 15-page ruling issued Monday. “To say this chronology represents, at a minimum, a concerning breach of the spirit of the Dismissal Order is an understatement, if not an outright violation of it.”
The Trump-appointed judge said releasing the report now would “contravene basic notions of fairness and justice” and amount to a “manifest injustice” because the case never reached a jury. It could also risk revealing information protected by attorney-client privilege and grand jury secrecy, she said.
“While it is true that former special counsels have released final reports at the conclusion of their work,” Cannon wrote, “it appears they have done so either after electing not to bring charges at all or after adjudications of guilt by plea or trial. The Court strains to find a situation in which a former special counsel has released a report after initiating criminal charges that did not result in a finding of guilt.”
Oh please. Everyone knows she had her thumb on the scale of that case and she will forever be known as Trump’s lackey.
It’s really a shame that we haven’t been able to see that report because it is the most damning of the cases. Trump stole documents and blabbed about classified intelligence to anyone who would listen. We know this for a fact. It would have been nice to see the whole thing put down in one place for posterity if nothing else.
I would imagine this report will be hidden in the same place they hid the torture report during the Obama administration. Someday they will come out and I have no doubt they will take your breath away.
I think what’s most alarming about this is how he’s got so many people who absolutely know it’s idiotic going along with it. Even CEOs, investment bankers and economists have kowtowed to this daft idea which is just astonishing.
Now that the Supremes have struck down his tariffs regime you might think that he would at least give lip service to going to Congress as the majority opinion clearly indicated that he must do. But no. That would require that he change and he just doesn’t do that.
True to his philosophy of never accepting a defeat, he’s already battling back after the Supreme Court declared his exercise of emergency trade war powers unlawful. Ahead of his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Trump is vowing to avenge the most damaging loss of his second term by promising even higher duties on imports. Many Republicans, however, would prefer a course correction as midterm elections loom.
The president’s defiance bringsgreat political risks for him and his party, and new uncertainties for an uneven economy. It is also already opening a new lane for Democratic attacks. But he’s still convinced tariffs will unlock booming prosperity, even if a likelier outcome is a heavier affordability burden on millions of American voters.
“What the Supreme Court said is that the president cannot use the IEEPA, the Emergency Economic Powers Act, to do this,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday. “The president does have other authorities.”
[…]
Trump will press on for two main reasons.
First, he believes in tariffs with evangelical intensity. His faith in them is so intense it blanks out any evidence they are a tax on consumers or that they don’t work. He regards globalization’s gutting of industrial heartlands where he won millions of votes as vindication of protectionist views he’s held since the 1980s.
“I have very effectively utilized tariffs over the past year to make America great again,” the president said Friday, ignoring new data that shows an unmoving annual trade deficit and declining manufacturing jobs.
The second reason for Trump’s refusal to bend is that tariffs are a means to his ultimate ends of unfettered presidential authority and rejection of a constitutional system that by design shares power across government. This was highlighted by the most revealing comment from Trump’s fulminating press conference Friday following the court’s decision, when he was asked why he didn’t just work with Congress to pass new tariffs.
“I don’t have to. I have the right to do tariffs,” he said.
Yes, he’s five years old.
He is ranting and raving as usual but unless he decides to just openly defy the Court’s ruling (which still might happen) he has had his sails trimmed a bit:
Trump has used tariffs more expansively than any modern president, in a way that stretches far beyond economic policy. If a foreign nation angers him, it’s punished — as with Brazil, which got a 50% tariff slap for investigating his friend former President Jair Bolsonaro over alleged election-meddling. If a world leader shows insufficient deference, their nation pays the price. Trump has explained, for example, that he hiked tariffs on Switzerland after taking exception to how its leader “talked to us” — apparently referring to former President Karin Keller-Sutter.
But showing such muscle will be harder going forward.
Alternative powers Trump now plans to use to maintain tariffs contain compliance requirements and more limited authorities that may mean he can’t use levies as a personal thermostat to crank up heat according to his whim.
Unfortunately, it may be that his answer to that is to use the military instead of tariffs to threaten those he thinks have disrespected him. He’s already done that to some extent (at least threat of it, as with Greenland.) For now he’s going to be a tiny bit constrained by the other tariff authorities. It’s better than nothing.
