The Epstein Story Isn't Going Away

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist.  Especially Epstein.

 Julie K. Brown and Claire Healy at Miami Herald:

Three FBI interviews that contain graphic sexual and physical assault allegations against President Donald Trump were released Thursday by the Justice Department. The reports were follow-up interviews a woman gave to the FBI in 2019, when the agency was investigating Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking crimes.

There is no indication in the reports whether the FBI was able to verify her claims. The White House on Thursday called the woman’s allegations “baseless.” But a DOJ source told the Miami Herald that agents found her to be credible – and that they would not have interviewed her four times if they thought she was lying. In the end, she declined to cooperate with their investigation, and they lost touch with her, the source said.

Favour Adegoke at Yahoo:

Federal investigators have released a new legal document that contains several suspicious findings in relation to Epstein's death by suicide.

According to the New York Post, one of the guards tasked with monitoring Epstein's tier, Tova Noel, searched for the latest update on the sex offender just moments before he was found dead by hanging in his cell, and also made an unexplained bank deposit of $5,000 ten days prior.

Noel was one of the officers who were accused of falsifying records to claim they checked on Epstein throughout the night of his August 10, 2019, suicide.

However, the document reveals that she googled "latest on Epstein in jail" at 5:42 am and then again at 5:52 am. It was about 40 minutes after her colleague, correctional officer Michael Thomas, found Epstein dead.

The document notes that Noel also searched for furniture online and reportedly missed out on completing her routine checks on Epstein, while Thomas checked for motorcycles.

Epstein Files Release

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist.  Especially Epstein.

Aaron Blake at CNN:

President Donald Trump’s name shows up a lot in the latest batch of files, which includes material ranging from investigative documents to emails to news clips. A few of the mentions stand out so far.

First is an email chain from August 2025 in which an apparent FBI employee displays a list of apparently unsubstantiated tips involving Trump and Epstein – many of them quite salacious.

“Yellow highlighting is for the salacious piece,” one official writes to explain how the allegations were being sorted.

Trump has never been accused by law enforcement of Epstein-related wrongdoing, and he has denied engaging in any.

The allegations appear to be unverified, and the officials note that some are secondhand information. The document notes that in many instances, there was no contact made with the individuals who sent in the allegations, or no contact information was provided.

Some of the allegations were followed up on. One was sent to the FBI’s Washington field office to conduct an interview, and another was deemed not credible, according to the document.

There are also allegations made in the document against former President Bill Clinton, who has denied wrongdoing related to Epstein.


Two files featuring that particular email were later removed temporarily from DOJ’s website then restored. A DOJ official said the document had gone down “due to overload.”

It’s not clear why officials created the list of allegations related to Trump last year. But the political sensitivities of Trump’s proximity to Epstein – with whom he associated for years before Trump said he ended their relationship in the mid-2000s – were made abundantly clear last year when Trump at one point falsely denied having been told his name was in the files.

Gun Politics and the Killing of Alex Pretti

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. The DHS killing of a disarmed man is among the worst.

Stef W. Kight and Kate Santaliz at Axios:

Republican lawmakers are caught between the powerful gun lobby and top Trump officials over the deadly shooting of Minneapolis ICU nurse Alex Pretti.

Why it matters: The GOP has a long, mutually beneficial history with influential Second Amendment rights groups. The tragedy in Minneapolis is complicating their political messaging.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) was asked Tuesday about Trump's latest comments on Pretti carrying a gun. "One. It's a constitutional right. Two. It's legal under the laws of the state of Minnesota," Thune said. "Perhaps he didn't have ID, but with that exception, he was in compliance with the laws. He has a constitutional right."

Between the lines: "You can't have guns. You can't walk in with guns," President Trump told reporters on Tuesday in response to questions about the fatal shooting in Minnesota."I don't like the fact that he was carrying a gun that was fully loaded," Trump told Fox News later Tuesday.

...

The big picture: The Gun Owners of America released a statement after Pretti's death emphasizing that "peaceful protests while armed isn't radical — it's American."The Gun Owners Caucus of Minnesota criticized statements by FBI director Kash Patel, saying he was "completely incorrect on Minnesota law. There is no prohibition on a permit holder carrying a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines at a protest or rally in Minnesota."

The other side: "PRESIDENT TRUMP IS EXACTLY RIGHT," Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) told Axios on Tuesday. Norman said people shouldn't carry guns into situations where people are interfering with law enforcement operations.

The bottom line: The NRA has spent tens of millions of dollars on federal elections, primarily backing Republican candidates, according to data compiled by Open Secrets.That gives the gun rights group enormous leverage inside the party.

Norman urged "Marshall Law" as a way of overturning the 2020 election. 

Kill, Lie, and Smear

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. The DHS killing of a disarmed man is among the worst.

This stabilized version is devastating to watch, because you can see the killer watch his colleague pull the firearm off of Alex, then look back him and start shooting. He waited until Alex was unarmed to murder him and should be in cuffs tonight. https://t.co/eDi3dyKJLI

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) January 25, 2026

Tapper plays Noem’s words over the video of the shooting and wow, is it damming. https://t.co/hfCtmTFvtR

— Rebecca Katz (@RebeccaKKatz) January 25, 2026

Devon Lum and Haley Willis at NYT:

Videos on social media that were verified by The New York Times appear to contradict the Department of Homeland Security’s account of the fatal shooting of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, 37, by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday morning.

The Department of Homeland Security said the episode began after a man “approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun” and they tried to disarm him. The statement did not specify whether the gun was in the man’s hands or merely on his body.

Footage shows Mr. Pretti was clearly holding a phone, not a gun, before the agents took him to the ground and shot him.

 Jonathan V. Last at The Bulwark:

If this were all that had happened it would have been bad enough. But it got worse.

At least some of the DHS agents involved in the killing attempted to leave the scene.

When local law enforcement arrived to begin an investigation, the DHS agents attempted to send them away and deny them access to the crime scene.

Someone—presumably within DHS—leaked to Fox that Pretti had a gun.

DHS put out a statement (repeated by Border Patrol official Greg Bovino in his press conference) claiming that “an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun. . . . The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted. . . . Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots. . . . The suspect also had 2 magazines and no ID—this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

These statements seem to be lies.

According to local law enforcement, Pretti had a concealed-carry permit and so was legally allowed to possess a firearm in public.

There is no evidence to suggest that Pretti brandished—or even touched—his weapon.

Instead, the available video evidence shows him holding his phone in front of him, in his right hand, and his left hand empty before being pepper-sprayed while attempting to help a fellow observer.

The deputy White House chief of staff, Stephen Miller, called Pretti a “domestic terrorist” and an “assassin.” In fact, Pretti was a registered nurse working in intensive care at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital.

So the government didn’t just use masked, armed, unidentified agents of the state to execute a citizen on the street, in broad daylight and in front of dozens of witnesses—it lied about the victim and what happened in the most brazen manner possible.

The government killed him. Then it smeared him.

And there is one more layer to consider: Less than three weeks ago DHS agents murdered another Minneapolis resident, Renee Nicole Good, in cold blood. And the agency’s response to that killing was not to regroup, retrain, and investigate, but to surge hundreds more of its agents into the city and deploy even more force against the city’s residents.

Which is where our obligation to witness comes in. The murder of Alex Jeffrey Pretti was not a mistake, or a tragedy, or a misunderstanding. It was a choice. The president of the United States and his regime saw what its masked agents had done to Renee Good and decided to do more of it, at a larger scale.

Killing Alex Jeffrey Pretti was the Trump administration’s policy.

Jack Smith: Trump Is a Criminal

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

From: Statement of Jack Smith Former Special Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice before the Committee on the Judiciary U.S. House of Representatives January 22, 2026

During my tenure as Special Counsel, we followed Justice Department policies, observed legal requirements, and took actions based on the facts and the law.  I made my decisions without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 presidential election.  President Trump was charged because the evidence established that he willfully broke the very laws that he took an oath to uphold.  Grand juries in two separate districts reached this conclusion based on his actions, as alleged in the indictments they returned.   

Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power.  President Trump attempted to induce state officials to ignore true vote counts; to manufacture fraudulent slates of presidential electors in seven states that he had lost; to force his own Vice President to act in contravention of his oath and to instead advance President Trump’s personal interests; and, on January 6, 2021, to direct an angry mob to the United States Capitol to obstruct the 1 congressional certification of the presidential election and then exploit the rioters’ violence to further delay it.  Over 140 heroic law enforcement officers were assaulted that day, a fact we should never forget.   

And, as set forth in the original and superseding indictments issued in the Southern District of Florida, President Trump stored classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago social club after he left office in January 2021 and he repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.  Highly sensitive information was held in non-secure locations, including a bathroom and a ballroom where events and gatherings took place.  Tens of thousands of people came to the social club during the time period when those classified documents were stored there. 

As I testify before the Committee today, I want to be clear: I stand by my decisions as Special Counsel, including my decision to bring charges against President Trump.  Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity.  If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat.  No one should be above the law in our country and the law required that he be held to account.  So that is what I did.  To have done otherwise on the facts of these cases would have been to shirk my duties as a prosecutor and a public servant, which I had no intention of doing.  This is why I appreciate the opportunity to appear today and to correct the false and misleading narratives advanced about our work.  I am prepared to do so while adhering to the Justice Department’s authorization governing the scope of my testimony and while constrained by Judge Cannon’s order restricting the discussion of Volume II of my report regarding the classified documents case.  To that end, and as a result of Judge Cannon’s order and the Justice Department’s interpretation of that order, I will not be able to discuss the contents of Volume II of my report, and can only discuss matters with respect to that case that are set forth in the indictment or other public filings.  Similarly, I cannot discuss the contents of the documents at issue in the case due to their sensitive nature.imilarly, I cannot discuss the contents of the documents at issue in the case due to their sensitive nature.

Trump's Corruption: $1.4 Billion

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist. Trump is abusing his power to increase his wealth.

NYT editorial:

A review by the editorial board relying on analyses from news organizations shows that Mr. Trump has used the office of the presidency to make at least $1.4 billion. We know this number to be an underestimate because some of his profits remain hidden from public view. And they continue to grow.

A hotel in Oman. An office tower in western India. A golf course on the outskirts of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. These are a few of the more than 20 overseas projects the Trump Organization is pursuing, often requiring cooperation with foreign governments. These deals have made millions for the Trumps, according to Reuters. And the administration has sometimes treated those same governments favorably. One example: The administration agreed to lower its threatened tariffs on Vietnam about a month after a Trump Organization project broke ground on a $1.5 billion golf complex outside of Hanoi. Vietnamese officials ignored their own laws to fast-track the project.

Amazon paid far more for the rights to “Melania” than the next highest bidder — and far more than the company has previously paid for similar projects, according to The Wall Street Journal. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chairman and one of the world’s richest people, has many reasons to curry favor with the administration, including antitrust regulation, Amazon’s defense contracts and his space company’s federal contracts.

...

Mr. Trump’s sale of crypto has been by far his biggest moneymaker, according to Reuters. People who hope to influence federal policy, including foreigners, can buy his family’s coins, effectively transferring money to the Trumps, and the deals are often secret. One that has become public: A United Arab Emirates-backed investment firm announced plans last year to deposit $2 billion into a Trump firm — two weeks before the president gave the country access to advanced chips.

The Public Cools on ICE

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

GOP consultant Rob Stutzman: " Really is stunning that Trump Admin has taken their greatest asset, immigration enforcement, and turned into a negative with performative BS that Americans have grown weary of."

Andrew Romano, at Yahoo:

In the days since Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed in Minneapolis by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, federal officials have argued that Good’s death was “a tragedy of her own making,” as Vice President JD Vance put it.

"The woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting,” President Trump claimed on social media. “Then [she] violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense.”

But most Americans disagree, according to a new Yahoo/YouGov poll.

The survey of 1,709 U.S. adults, which was conducted from Jan. 8 to Jan. 12, finds that only slightly more than a quarter (27%) think last week’s shooting was “justified.” Nearly twice as many Americans — a 52% majority — say the shooting was not justified.

 A release from Quinnipiac:

Days after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent fatally shot a Minneapolis woman in an incident that was captured on video, voters 82 - 18 percent say they have seen a video of the shooting and a majority (53 percent) think the shooting was not justified, 35 percent think it was justified, and 12 percent did not offer an opinion, according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea-ack) University national poll of registered voters released today.

There are differences based on political party and gender.

Republicans (77 - 10 percent) think the shooting was justified, while Democrats (92 - 4 percent) and independents (59 - 28 percent) think the shooting was not justified.

Men are divided with 42 percent thinking the shooting was justified, while 44 percent of men think the shooting was not justified. Thirty percent of women think the shooting was justified, while 61 percent of women think the shooting was not justified.
"More than eight in ten American voters say they've seen the video. But should the shooting have happened? The majority say the shots should not have been fired by the ICE agent, while more than one third believe the shooting was justified,"said Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy.

Forty percent of voters approve of the way U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, is enforcing immigration laws, while 57 percent disapprove. This is largely unchanged since Quinnipiac University's July 16, 2025 poll.

In today's poll, Republicans (84 - 12 percent) approve of the way ICE is enforcing immigration laws, while Democrats (94 - 4 percent) and independents (64 - 33 percent) disapprove.

Thirty-six percent of voters approve of the way Kristi Noem is handling her job as Secretary of Homeland Security, while 52 percent disapprove, and 12 percent did not offer an opinion.

In Quinnipiac University's July 16, 2025 poll, 39 percent approved, 50 percent disapproved, and 11 percent did not offer an opinion.

In today's poll, Republicans (77 - 12 percent) approve of the way Noem is handling her job as Secretary of Homeland Security, while Democrats (85 - 4 percent) and independents (57 - 30 percent) disapprove.

1,133 self-identified registered voters nationwide were surveyed from January 8th - 12th with a margin of error of +/- 3.7 percentage points, including the design effect.

The Killing of Renee Good

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments

Myah Ward at Politico:

The Trump administration’s rapid and aggressive response to the Minnesota shooting has prompted quiet concern among some administration allies, as well as former and current Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

Particular anguish centers around how quickly Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, in public remarks from Brownsville, Texas, on Wednesday insisted that Renee Good, the 37-year old woman killed by an ICE officer, had committed an act of “domestic terrorism” and tried to “ram them with her vehicle.”

...

Just hours after the shooting in Minneapolis, DHS declared on X that the woman’s actions were an act of “domestic terrorism.” Noem gave live remarks soon after echoing this conclusion. White House officials argued the same, all before an investigation had really begun.

“Whatever outcome this investigation produces, I don’t see how anyone’s gonna believe it when the secretary already is firmly — and doubled down on — a conclusion without knowing all the facts,” said John Sandweg, who led ICE from 2013 to 2014 under the Obama administration.

Former FBI agent Asha Rangappa shreds the administration's story:

To me, the relevant window of time in assessing whether Ross reasonably believed that Good posed an imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury can only begin from the moment Good accelerates. It could not be while she is reversing the vehicle, because we know that he voluntarily moves in front of her while she is doing that. And, as noted above, at the point where Good does accelerate, Ross has already 1) switched his phone to leave his shooting hand free; 2) moved in front of the vehicle; and 3) has his hand on the weapon in the holster. All of these are anticipatory, not reactive, movements.

The relevant window ends the moment Good drives away. There is no reason to believe Good poses a threat to anyone at that point (leaving aside that she has been shot) — she is not armed and dangerous, or fleeing from the scene of a violent crime, etc. And yet, Ross 1) continues to fire at her; 2) yells an expletive at her; and 3) continues filming. These are the actions of someone who is pissed off, not someone who believes their life has just been threatened.

 Josephine Walker at Axios:

Americans now disapprove of ICE and support protests against the agency, according to a new poll conducted the same day a federal officer fatally shot a 37-year-old mother in Minneapolis.

Why it matters: President Trump's immigration crackdown is a cornerstone of his agenda, but ICE and Homeland Security tactics have repeatedly sparked protests and legal challenges. The agency's net approval fell 30 percentage points in a year.

Driving the news: A YouGov poll of over 2,600 U.S. adults on Jan. 7, found people don't like the way ICE operates.About 52% either somewhat or strongly disapproved of how ICE was handling its job, compared to 39% who somewhat or strongly approved.

Just 27% said the agency's tactics were "about right" compared to 51% who called them "too forceful". Another 10% said they were "not forceful enough."

A 44% plurality of adults approved of recent ICE protests, while 42% disapproved.

By the numbers: ICE had a +16 net approval rating last February at the start of Trump's second term, according to YouGov.

Jack Smith Testimony

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

On New Year's Eve, the GOP majority on the House Judiciary Committee released the transcript of special counsel Jack Smith's December 17 testimony.

For nearly three decades I have been a career prosecutor. I have served during both Republican and Democratic administrations and I've been guided by those principles in every role I've held. I continued to honor those principles when I was appointed to serve 7 as special counsel in November of 2022. 

The decision to bring charges against President Trump was mine, but the basis for those charges rests entirely with President Trump and his actions, as alleged in the indictments returned by grand juries in two different districts. Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump  engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power.

Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President  Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents. 

I remain grateful for the counsel, judgment, and advice of my team as I executed my responsibilities. I am both saddened and angered that President Trump has sought revenge against career prosecutors, FBI agents, and support staff simply for doing their jobs  and for having worked on those cases. These dedicated public servants are the best of us, and they have been wrongly vilified and improperly dismissed from their jobs.

I made my decisions in the investigation without regard to President Trump's political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 Presidential election. We took our actions based on the facts and the law, the very lessons I learned early in my career  as a prosecutor. We followed Justice Department policies and observed legal requirements.

The timing and speed of our work reflects the strength of the evidence and our  confidence that we would have secured convictions at trial. If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat.

Recent narratives about my team's work are false and misleading, including stories about our collection of toll records.  Toll records were sought for historical telephone routing information, collected after calls had taken place, identifying the incoming and outgoing call numbers, the time of the  calls and their duration. Toll records do not include the content of calls. Those records  were lawfully subpoenaed and were relevant to complete a comprehensive investigation.

January 6th was an attack on the structure of our democracy in which over 140 heroic law enforcement officers were assaulted. Over 160 individuals later pled guilty to  assaulting police that day.  Exploiting that violence, President Trump and his associates tried to call Members of  Congress in furtherance of their criminal scheme, urging them to further delay certification  of the 2020 election. 

I did not choose those Members, President Trump did. 

 

Epstein Redactions

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist.  Especially Epstein.

Joe Walsh at CBS:

The Justice Department released thousands of new records on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on Friday, but at least 550 pages in the documents are fully redacted, CBS News has found.

The newly released files included photos of several prominent people in Epstein's orbit, images from his homes and investigative records that detail disturbing allegations against the late sex offender. But the heavy redactions in many of the records have drawn criticism from Democrats and some Republicans, as the department defends its handling of the files.

One series of three consecutive documents — totaling 255 pages — is entirely redacted, with each page covered by a black box. A fourth 119-page document labeled "Grand Jury-NY" is also entirely redacted. It's unclear what proceedings it stemmed from, but the document listed immediately before it is a transcript in which a prosecutor asks a grand jury in 2020 to consider evidence for a superseding indictment of Epstein's convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Pete Hegseth and War Crimes

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima at WP:

The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.

A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.

The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.

Hegseth’s order, which has not been previously reported, adds another dimension to the campaign against suspected drug traffickers. Some current and former U.S. officials and law-of-war experts have said that the Pentagon’s lethal campaign — which has killed more than 80 people to date — is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution.

The alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not, as the Trump administration has tried to argue, in an “armed conflict” with the U.S., these officials and experts say. Because there is no legitimate war between the two sides, killing any of the men in the boats “amounts to murder,” said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces for seven years at the height of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign.

Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,” said Huntley, now director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law.

Trump has a history of condoning war crimes.  Steve Benen reported in 2018:

On his first full day as president, Donald Trump traveled to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, spoke in front of a memorial wall, and delivered one of the strangest presidential speeches I’ve ever seen.

Trump attacked journalists, lied about the size of his inaugural crowd, assured those in attendance about how impressed he was with his intellect, reflected on the number of instances in which he appeared on the cover of Time magazine, and speculated about taking Iraqi oil.

But the Washington Post reported this week on something else that happened when the president visited the CIA and “was ushered up to the agency’s drone operations floor.”

Trump urged the CIA to start arming its drones in Syria. “If you can do it in 10 days, get it done,” he said, according to two former officials familiar with the meeting.

Later, when the agency’s head of drone operations explained that the CIA had developed special munitions to limit civilian casualties, the president seemed unimpressed. Watching a previously recorded strike in which the agency held off on firing until the target had wandered away from a house with his family inside, Trump asked, “Why did you wait?” one participant in the meeting recalled.

For those with a moral compass, such a comment is obviously jarring, especially coming from a president. But for those who’ve covered Trump’s public positions, this isn’t too surprising.

In December 2015, near the height of the race for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, then-candidate Trump endorsed torturing detainees — even “if it doesn’t work” in producing valuable intelligence — simply because he saw it as a worthwhile thing to do.

He added soon after, “[T]he other thing is with the terrorists, you have to take out their families. When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. But they say they don’t care about their lives. You have to take out their families.”

Epstein, Epstein, Epstein

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist.  Especially Epstein.

Erica L. Green, Glenn Thrush, and Alan Feuer at NYT:

When a trove of Jeffrey Epstein’s emails were made public this week, Donald J. Trump’s name was all over them. But on Friday, when Mr. Trump demanded that the Justice Department investigate a list of powerful men mentioned in the emails, his own name was nowhere to be seen — he had singled out only Democrats.

Equally remarkable was how quickly Attorney General Pam Bondi acquiesced to his demand, even though four months ago the Justice Department formally declared that nothing in the Epstein files warranted further investigation.

That about-face, as much as any action Ms. Bondi has taken this year, demonstrated the near-complete breakdown of the Justice Department’s traditional independence to prosecute cases based on facts and the law, as opposed to presidential fiat. And, crucially, it could foreclose any further disclosures of the Epstein files.

...

Ms. Bondi’s decision to press forward with the investigation is a complete turnaround from a memo issued by the Justice Department and the F.B.I. in July, which said that officials had thoroughly scrutinized the Epstein files and had found nothing in them that could sustain opening further inquiries into anyone else.

Still, if an investigation into any one of the targets suggested by Mr. Trump were to ultimately start, it could allow the Justice Department to refuse to release any further files related to Mr. Epstein by claiming that the disclosures could harm continuing inquiries.

In his social media post connecting Democrats with Mr. Epstein, Mr. Trump named Mr. Clinton, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and the venture capitalist and megadonor Reid Hoffman

 

President Trump just attacked me and lied about me. I haven’t called him at all, but I did send these text messages today. Apparently this is what sent him over the edge.

The Epstein files.

And of course he’s coming after me hard to make an example to scare all the other… pic.twitter.com/EcUzaohZZs

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) November 15, 2025

Trump calls Marjorie Taylor Greene “Marjorie Traitor Green” on Truth Social. Is Speaker Johnson ok with this? pic.twitter.com/2S2PNz8F20

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) November 15, 2025

Trump Scandals, Mid-November

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments. . Scandals persist.  Especially Epstein. 

Michael Gold at NYT:

House Democrats on Wednesday released emails in which Jeffrey Epstein wrote that President Trump had “spent hours at my house” with one of Mr. Epstein’s victims, among other messages that suggested that the convicted sex offender believed Mr. Trump knew more about his abuse than he has acknowledged.

Mr. Trump has emphatically denied any involvement in or knowledge of Mr. Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation. He has said that he and Mr. Epstein, the disgraced financier who died by suicide in federal prison in 2019, were once friendly but had a falling out.

But Democrats on the House Oversight Committee said the emails, which they selected from thousands of pages of documents received by their panel, raised new questions about the relationship between the two men. In one of the messages, Mr. Epstein flatly asserted that Mr. Trump “knew about the girls,” many of whom were later found by investigators to have been underage. In another, Mr. Epstein pondered how to address questions from the news media about their relationship as Mr. Trump was becoming a national political figure.

Jeffrey Epstein in 2018: "i know how dirty donald is." pic.twitter.com/JYUscFmjdW

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) November 12, 2025

 

Kevin Breuninger at CNBC:

President Donald Trump has doled out dozens of executive clemency grants in the past few weeks alone, issuing pardons and commutations to major business figures, political supporters and other allies.

Some hope he’s just getting started.

Trump started wielding his presidential mercy powers aggressively on the first day of his second term, when he pardoned roughly 1,500 people who were charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Presidential pardons erase federal criminal convictions, while commutations shorten or cancel prison sentences, and sometimes related fines.

In subsequent months, clemency recipients have included a slew of well-known names, including former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, ex-Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer, Nikola founder Trevor Milton, reality TV stars Julie and Todd Chrisley, disgraced former U.S. Rep. George Santos and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao.

On Monday, Trump granted largely symbolic pardons to more than six dozen people who were involved in efforts to overturn his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race, U.S. pardon attorney Ed Martin revealed on social media. The people included in the batch of pardons are not facing federal charges related to the 2020 election. The presidential pardon power does not extend to state-level prosecutions.

That group includes Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s onetime personal lawyer and former New York City mayor, as well as his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

 

Trump v. the Rule of Law

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments, such as the extrajudicial killing of people allegedly running drugs on the high seas.

Charlie Savage at NYT:

Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and former top Justice Department lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, said Mr. Trump’s actions demonstrated an indifference to law that threatened to hollow it out.

“Nixon tried to keep his criminality secret, and the Bush administration tried to keep the torture secret, and that secrecy acknowledged the norm that these things were wrong,” Professor Goldsmith said. “Trump, as he often does when he is breaking law or norms, is acting publicly and without shame or unease. This is a very successful way to destroy the efficacy of law and norms.”

...

Even if the Justice Department memo that somehow blesses the killings lacks much actual legal analysis and even if a future administration rescinds it, its existence essentially forecloses any prospect of future prosecutions. It is hard to prove someone intentionally committed a crime when the Justice Department itself said at the time that the action was lawful.

Two decades ago, Professor Goldsmith took over the Office of Legal Counsel and withdrew memos issued under the Bush administration that blessed the C.I.A.’s torture program. Reflecting on that period in a memoir, he called such memos get-out-of-jail-free cards.

...

The administration has found a two-part hack to the system in which executive branch lawyers are supposed to independently determine the legal boundaries within which policymakers may act.

The first is that Mr. Trump has told executive branch lawyers that they may not question any legal judgment that he — or Attorney General Pam Bondi, subject to his “supervision and control” — already decided. “The president and the attorney general’s opinions on questions of law are controlling on all employees in the conduct of their official duties,” Mr. Trump declared in a February executive order.

The second is that Mr. Trump has been declaring that as president, he has determined that the factual and legal scenarios exist that are necessary for him to exercise various extraordinary powers.

The two tactics combined create a gigantic loophole. Mr. Trump is able to dictate his own factual and legal realities, and executive branch lawyers who want to keep their jobs must treat them as settled. The result is that Mr. Trump can order agencies to take actions to which independent-minded lawyers might have raised legal objections.

In August, Trump said:" I have the right to do anything I want to do. I'm the president of the United States."

In February, he posted an apocryphal quotation from Napoleon: "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law."

In 2019, he said: "Then I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President."

Coins of the Realm

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments. 

Military officers sometimes hand out challenge coins. Tom Nichols at The Atlantic:

FBI Director Kash Patel has created such a coin for himself that he’s now handing out, and Americans can only wish that he’d take them all and lock them in his desk, never to be seen again.

The coins are, to put it gently, ridiculous. On one side, they have what appears to be the symbol of the Punisher, a Marvel character. The Punisher is a vigilante who does … well, vigilante stuff, killing evildoers at will as revenge for the death of his family. The symbol is popular with a lot of people, including criminals, law-enforcement officers, soldiers, and some extremist groups such as the anti-government Three Percenters. None of this is good, especially because the character’s creator long ago admitted that the symbol was partly inspired by the Nazi SS’s Totenkopf, or “Death’s Head,” uniform insignia. (The author of the series also notes that the Punisher hates cops, something the police officers wearing the mark don’t seem to get.)

This is illegal on its face. Changing the design of coins requires Congressional legislation, which won’t happen while the Senate filibuster remains in place. Trump coins would be counterfeit. /1 pic.twitter.com/szBNWFfoir

— Jeff George (@webdevjeffus) October 4, 2025

Crooked and Vengeful

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is has been full of ominous developments.

Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman at NYT:

President Trump’s handpicked federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia is racing to present a case against James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, to a grand jury before a deadline early next week, according to officials familiar with the situation.

Lindsey Halligan, a former defense lawyer for Mr. Trump who was hastily appointed after the president forced out her predecessor last week, is rushing to draft an indictment under withering pressure from the White House. The president has demanded the department go after one of his foremost enemies, even though career prosecutors determined there was insufficient evidence to indict Mr. Comey.

Prosecutors have been looking into whether Mr. Comey should be charged with lying to Congress in connection to the F.B.I. investigation of Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia, which the president claims was a witch hunt aimed at destroying him.

Ms. Halligan, who had no experience as a prosecutor before her recent appointment, could seek to bring charges as early as Thursday, but is expected to take action by Tuesday, when the statute of limitations on Mr. Comey’s congressional testimony expires, according to officials who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

The latest on Cash Homan:

Fola Akinnibi, Rachel Adams-Heard, and Sophie Alexander at Bloomberg:

Earlier this year, as a surge in arrests pushed immigration detention centers across the US to their limits, the Trump administration wanted more jail space. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was leading the way on a $45 billion project to detain more immigrants than ever, but the effort was stalling.

White House border czar Tom Homan, who’d said he was picked to run the biggest deportation operation in US history, helped keep the process going — working to move immigration detention contracts through the Department of Defense.

But Homan wasn't supposed to be involved in contracting at all. Former consulting clients of the border czar were seeking lucrative detention-related work that the administration’s agenda promised. And federal regulations advise those who’ve recently consulted for companies competing for government business not to involve themselves in the contracting process. To quell any concerns, Homan said in December he would recuse himself from anything having to do with government contracts.

In June, it became clear that wasn’t the case. According to a detailed account of a Defense Department meeting that month, a Navy official noted Homan’s participation in a military contracting process, saying the border czar had been “briefed by industry,” government parlance for meeting with private companies seeking contracts. Homan was then expected to discuss the matter with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, according to the account.

Covering Up Cash Homan and Corrupting DOJ

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments. Last week, a gunman murdered Charlie Kirk. Trump and his followers are exploiting the tragedy to attack their opponents.  Trump is also covering for his friends.

Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian at MSNBC:

In an undercover operation last year, the FBI recorded Tom Homan, now the White House border czar, accepting $50,000 in cash after indicating he could help the agents — who were posing as business executives — win government contracts in a second Trump administration, according to multiple people familiar with the probe and internal documents reviewed by MSNBC.

The FBI and the Justice Department planned to wait to see whether Homan would deliver on his alleged promise once he became the nation’s top immigration official. But the case indefinitely stalled soon after Donald Trump became president again in January, according to six sources familiar with the matter. In recent weeks, Trump appointees officially closed the investigation, after FBI Director Kash Patel requested a status update on the case, two of the people said.

Alan Feuer, Glenn Thrush, Maggie Haberman and Devlin Barrett at NYT:

President Trump demanded on Saturday that his attorney general move quickly to prosecute figures he considers his enemies, the latest blow to the Justice Department’s tradition of independence.

“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post addressed to “Pam,” meaning Attorney General Pam Bondi. “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”

Mr. Trump named James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director; Senator Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California; and Letitia James, the New York attorney general, saying he was reading about how they were “all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.”

Asked later by reporters about his message for Ms. Bondi, Mr. Trump said, “They have to act. They have to act fast.”

Apparently, Trump did not mean for the post to go public:

Trump criticizes Pam Bondi for not charging his adversaries quickly enough, in a Truth Social post that looks a lot like a DM. https://t.co/fDMqVwXGF2 pic.twitter.com/Re4IjAgc0t

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) September 20, 2025

 

Divider

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments. Last week, a gunman murdered Charlie Kirk.

Peter Baker at NYT:

The first few minutes of President Trump’s Oval Office address after the assassination of Charlie Kirk last week followed the conventional presidential playbook. He praised the victim, asked God to watch over his family and talked mournfully of “a dark moment for America.”

Then he tossed the playbook aside, angrily blaming the murder on the American left and vowing revenge.

That was stark even for some viewers who might normally be sympathetic. When Mr. Trump appeared later on Fox News, a host noted that there were “radicals on the right,” just as there were “radicals on the left,” and asked, “How do we come back together?” The president rejected the premise. Radicals on the right were justified by anger over crime, he said. “The radicals on the left are the problem,” he added. “And they’re vicious. And they’re horrible.”

... 

 “If I take care of the base, everything else will take care of itself,” he once told Anthony Scaramucci, a former ally who briefly served in Mr. Trump’s first-term White House.

While he made few nods toward working across the aisle in his first term, Mr. Trump has all but abandoned any efforts at bipartisanship in his second. He does not invite Democratic leaders to the White House for talks, nor does he brief them on major national security events.

Russell T. Vought, his budget director, complained in July that “the appropriations process has to be less bipartisan.”

...

His critics fear that Mr. Trump will now use the Kirk assassination to go further on liberal organizations and institutions, a view encouraged in ominous social media posts by Stephen Miller, the president’s deputy chief of staff and a leader of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.\

“In recent days we have learned just how many Americans in positions of authority — child services, law clerks, hospital nurses, teachers, gov’t workers, even DOD employees — have been deeply and violently radicalized,” Mr. Miller wrote on Saturday, suggesting that their responses to Mr. Kirk’s killing were unacceptable. “The consequence of a vast, organized ecosystem of indoctrination.”

Mr. Trump is certainly right that his opponents have called him a “fascist” and “Nazi.” But his outrage at incendiary rhetoric is situational. In the same Fox News interview last week in which he complained about excesses by the left, he referred to Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist and front-runner for mayor of New York, as a “communist.” Even more than in his first term, Mr. Trump lately has referred to political rivals and journalists as “evil.”

Trump Will Use the Murder to Punish His Opponents

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments. This week, a gunman murdered Charlie Kirk.

Emily Davies and Michael Birnbaum at WP:

“There is an ideology that has steadily been growing in this country which hates everything that is good, righteous and beautiful and celebrates everything that is warped, twisted and depraved,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller wrote Thursday on X. “It is an ideology at war with family and nature. It is envious, malicious, and soulless.”

Other senior administration officials spoke of a broad plan to focus on public speech and rhetoric, declaring that those who speak in violent terms about Trump and his allies will face consequences. Some suggested a more expansive campaign, calling out schoolteachers and college instructors who have made public statements criticizing Kirk since his death, and promising to deport noncitizens who do the same.

The statements from Trump and his top advisers provided early insight into how the president will respond to both the personal loss and political juncture he faces in the wake of Kirk’s fatal shooting Wednesday on a Utah college campus. Trump appeared to be positioning himself to launch a campaign against some of Kirk’s — and his — opponents who have spoken out since the conservative activist’s death.

...

Miller called out “people in positions of institutional authority,” noting the social media posts of “educators, health care workers, therapists, government employees” who he said had cheered Kirk’s death. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said he had directed consular officials “to undertake appropriate action” against foreign visa applicants and holders who praised or rationalized the shooting.

EARHARDT: We have radicals on the right as well. How do we fix this country?

TRUMP: I'll tell you something that's gonna get me in trouble but I couldn't care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don't want to see crime. The radicals on the left… pic.twitter.com/snOESz3x5a

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 12, 2025