New lawsuit on Jeffrey Epstein case seeks records of Trump administration communications
The group Democracy Forward sued the Justice Department and the FBI for senior administration officials' communication about Epstein documents and any regarding correspondence between him and Trump.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, appears to the be first of its kind. The group says it submitted requests under the Freedom of Information Act for the records related to communications about the case in late July that have not yet been fulfilled.
'The court should intervene urgently to ensure the public has access to the information they need about this extraordinary situation,' said Skye Perryman, the president and CEO of the Democratic-aligned group, in a statement. The federal government often shields records related to criminal investigations from public view.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Democracy Forward has filed dozens of lawsuits against Trump's Republican administration, challenging policies and executive orders in areas including education, immigration and health care.
The Epstein case has been subject to heightened public focus since the Justice Department said last month it would not release additional documents from the case, despite assurance from Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The decision sparked frustration and anger among online sleuths, conspiracy theorists and elements of Trump's base who had hoped to see proof of a government cover-up.
The Trump administration has sought to unseal grand jury transcripts, though that has been denied by a judge in Florida. U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg in West Palm Beach said the request to release grand jury documents from 2005 and 2007 did not meet any of the extraordinary exceptions under federal law that could make them public.
A similar request for the work of a different grand jury is pending in New York.
The House Oversight Committee has also subpoenaed the Justice Department for files on the investigation, part of a congressional probe that lawmakers believe may show links to Trump and other former top officials.
Since Epstein's 2019 death in a New York jail cell as he awaited trial for sex trafficking charges, conservative conspiracists have stoked theories about what information investigators gathered on the wealthy financier and who else knew about his sexual abuse of teenage girls.
Trump has denied prior knowledge of Epstein's crimes and says he cut off their relationship long ago, and he has repeatedly tried to move past the Justice Department's decision not to release a full accounting of the investigation. But lawmakers from both major political parties have refused to let it go.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
23 minutes ago
- New York Post
Kohberger's ‘living hell,' Trump wants more control of DC police and Zelensky on US / Russia summit
Bryan Kohberger, the man convicted of slaughtering four University of Idaho students in 2022 is being hazed in prison and the guards are letting it slide, President Trump is planning to ask Congress for a crime bill that will allow the feds to control the DC Police longer and Ukrainian President Zelensky catches up with President Trump ahead of Friday's key meeting with Vladimir Putin.
New York Post
23 minutes ago
- New York Post
Joe Rogan once again rips ICE raids: ‘Great, you're going to get rid of the landscaper'
Joe Rogan once again criticized the Trump administration's immigration raids, telling a MAGA lawmaker on Wednesday that people were protesting deportations because they were thinking, 'Great, you're going to get rid of the landscaper.' Rogan pressed Rep. Anna Paulina Luna to defend her claims about recent immigration protests and challenged the scope of federal enforcement, using his podcast to question whether the government has gone far beyond its promise to target dangerous offenders. During a conversation Wednesday on 'The Joe Rogan Experience,' Luna, a Florida Republican, alleged that demonstrations against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in June were fueled by 'Chinese money.' 4 Joe Rogan is a critic of certain aspects of the Trump administration's immigration policies. The Joe Rogan Experience Rogan said he was open to the idea, but reminded her that the public anger also reflected fear about how the raids were being carried out. 'I absolutely believe this is true,' he said, before adding, 'but also, it was in reaction to some of the ICE raids.' Rogan described why he thinks the response was so strong, arguing that people recoiled at the idea of officers grabbing ordinary workers. 'It was a visceral reaction that a lot of people had to the idea of people just showing up and pulling people out of schools and pulling people out of Home Depot and pulling people that were just hard-working people,' he said. 'That's what freaks people out.' He later summed up how many voters saw the administration's pledge, saying the expectation was the removal of violent criminals rather than tradesmen and day laborers. 4 Federal agents, including members of ICE, drag a man away after his court hearing as they patrol the halls of immigration court at the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building in New York City last month. Getty Images 'When people thought about ICE, they thought, 'Great, we're going to get rid of the gang members,' they didn't think, 'Great, you're going to get rid of the landscaper.'' The exchange underscored a growing split between tough rhetoric around border enforcement and what critics say is the reality on the ground. Rogan has backed President Donald Trump and his hard-line agenda, but he has increasingly criticized how immigration sweeps have been conducted. The podcast host pushed back on the familiar refrain that migrants should simply 'get in line' legally, arguing that many of those doing low-wage work lack the resources to navigate the system. 4 Rogan pressed Rep. Anna Paulina Luna to defend her claims about recent immigration protests. The Joe Rogan Experience 'If you're just a landscaper, you're just a guy who lives in a third-world country and you want a better life, and you say, 'I heard you can get across, and I heard when you get across you can get work,'—like what is that guy going to do?' he asked. 'That guy doesn't have the money to hire a lawyer.' Luna responded by pointing to the policies of the Biden and Obama administrations, but the two agreed on two themes often heard from both sides of the debate: companies should not rely on undocumented labor, and the border should be secure. Last month, Rogan criticized enforcement tactics as overly broad, saying the focus has landed on the wrong targets. 'It's insane,' he said on his show last month. 4 Rogan said that some who supported Trump assumed that the administration would target violent offenders. The Washington Post via Getty Images 'The targeting of migrant workers—not cartel members, not gang members, not drug dealers. Just construction workers. Showing up in construction sites, raiding them. Gardeners. Like, really?' He added, 'I don't think anybody would have signed up for that.' Trump has repeatedly pledged to pursue 'the worst of the worst,' but a review by ABC News shows that people without criminal records have increasingly been swept up, reinforcing Rogan's argument that the practice no longer matches the promise. While the podcast host praised Trump's broader agenda, he has rejected aspects of its execution. He has also criticized the administration on unrelated issues, accusing it of 'gaslighting' around the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. According to the Associated Press, the large majority of those in ICE custody at the end of June had no criminal convictions, a data point that contrasts with campaign promises to focus on serious offenders. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told The Post that '70% of ICE arrests are of illegal aliens who have charges or convictions in the US.' 'And that's just the tip of the iceberg: that statistic does not account for foreign fugitives, terrorists, gang members, and human rights abusers or individuals who have criminal records in foreign countries,' the spokesperson added. The Post has sought comment from Luna and the White House.
Los Angeles Times
23 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Trump's deal with Nvidia puts our national security on sale to the highest bidder
One thing that can be said about Donald Trump's transactional approach to policy-making is that, as destructive as it might be to our economic health, it gives business leaders clear options to get what they want out of the White House. The latest case-in-point are the deals struck by chipmakers Nvidia and AMD to secure licenses to export their products to China. The White House named the price — 15% of their revenues from such sales — and the companies assented willingly. Never mind that the exports originally had been banned — by the Biden administration and Trump himself — because of national security concerns. Never mind that the U.S. constitution explicitly prohibits charging any tax or duty on exports. Never mind that a stack of U.S. laws, including the Export Control Reform Act of 2018, which Trump signed, don't provide a pay-to-play escape clause from export restrictions. Never mind that the exports may strengthen the domestic industry and even its military of China, a country that has been the consistent target of Trump trade policies. Despite all that, Trump treated the deals as a win for the U.S. Explaining his side of the conversation when Nvidia asked for relief from the export ban, he related, 'I said, 'If I'm going to do that, I want you to pay us as a country something, because I'm giving you a release.'' Under the circumstances, it shouldn't be surprising that some trade professionals and investors see something corrupt in the arrangements. Among them is Christopher Padilla, an export control official under George W. Bush, who told the Washington Post: 'Export controls are in place to protect national security, not raise revenue for the government. This arrangement seems like bribery or blackmail, or both.'' Nvidia, as it happens, has a written anti-corruption policy stating, 'We do not tolerate bribery or corruption in our business.' The policy bars 'promising, offering, providing, or authorizing the provision of money or anything of value ... to obtain, retain, or direct regulatory approvals, contracts, business, or other benefits.' When I asked Nvidia about the deal, the company referred me to the sole comment it has made in response to questions about it: 'We follow rules the U.S. government sets for our participation in worldwide markets.' AMD didn't respond to my request for comment. These deals are unprecedented; as the Financial Times observed, citing trade experts, 'no US company has ever agreed to pay a portion of their revenues to obtain export licenses.' There's no question that Nvidia lobbied ferociously for a lifting of the export ban. The company made a $1-million contribution to Trump's inaugural committee. Its CEO, Jensen Huang, met directly with Trump to discuss the ban; media reports say that Trump initially demanded a 20% fee, but Huang negotiated it down to 15%. As has been the case with other Trump-negotiated trade deals, the details of this one are murky in the extreme. The terms haven't been reduced to writing. Indeed, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that its 'legality ... is still being ironed out by the Department of Commerce,' with an eye toward replicating it with other companies. Among the questions is how the fee would be paid, and how the money would be spent. Still, what's known has caused concern for export regulators, experts and legislators. 'Export controls are a frontline defense in protecting our national security,' tweeted Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the House select committee on the Chinese Communist Party, 'and we should not set a precedent that incentivizes the Government to grant licenses to sell China technology that will enhance its AI capabilities.' The effect of this deal on other companies also raises the hackles of economists and trade experts. 'Other American semiconductor companies like Qualcomm and Intel may say, 'If we develop this cutting-edge chip and the government decides that it has some national security interest in that chip, we might have some of our revenue taken away as well,'' says Kyle Handley, a trade economist at UC San Diego, 'so they may decide not to do the R&D investments and the innovation and hire the workers to develop those things.' The revenue payback 'will certainly have a chilling effect,' Handley told me, because the government fee 'might make the initial investment appear uneconomical.' That's especially so if the administration tries to apply the arrangement to industries such as software or pharmaceuticals. The export charge could become a particular burden on startups — Nvidia plainly has enough money to pay the fee, but many other innovative companies wouldn't. Whether or how the export tax can be stopped is an open question. For one thing, it's unclear who would have standing to bring a lawsuit to stop it. Nvidia and AMD have accepted the deal, so they presumably wouldn't file a case. Companies that fear the imposition of export fees on their own products might have to wait until they could show concrete damage to their own interests in order to bring a case in federal court. As long as manufacturers such as Nvidia are willing to bow to Trump's demands, he may have a clear field. If a legal challenge does emerge, the administration has tried to characterize the export fee as something other than a tax in order to circumvent the constitutional prohibition. Nvidia developed the H20 chip at the heart of its deal specifically to address an export ban the Biden administration imposed on the company's sales to China in 2023. The Chinese government, however, isn't enamored of the chip. Chinese regulators have been pressuring domestic companies to avoid the chips out of cybersecurity concerns, including suspicion that the chips could contain hidden code that could subject them to outside control. (Nvidia has denied that the chips contain any such back-door exposure.) The chips also are outmoded for some AI applications compared to the company's top-of-the-line Blackwell series, which are still subject to a U.S. export ban. As my colleague Queenie Wong reported, Trump seems to think that he and Nvidia's Huang had put something over on the Chinese. Trump called the H20 chip 'obsolete' and said Huang was 'selling a essentially old chip.' But others say the H20s may yet be preferable to Chinese-designed chips for Chinese firms, although Chinese products are consistently improving. 'The H20 is a potent accelerator of China's frontier AI capabilities, not an outdated AI chip,' as 20 former government trade officials told Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who oversees trade policy, in a July 28 letter. 'If the U.S. backs off of export controls to China, we believe that China's next generation of frontier AI will be built on the backs of the H20,' the officials wrote. The chip 'will not simply power consumer products or factory logistics; they will enable autonomous weapons systems, intelligence surveillance platforms, and rapid advances in battlefield decision-making.' How the export deal may affect Nvidia's top or bottom lines is murky, though its immediate effect doesn't seem all that significant. In May, the company announced a $4.5-billion writedown of unsold H20 inventories in the first quarter ended April 27 because of the U.S. ban on H20 sales. But it still recorded $23.3 billion in operating profit for the quarter on sale of $44.1 billion. For its last full fiscal year ended Jan. 26, Nvidia reported a pre-tax profit of $84 billion profit on sales of $130.5 billion. In stock market terms, Nvidia is the world's most valuable company, with a market value of $4.4 trillion; its price-earnings multiple is a robust 58.4. With a gain in share price so far this year of nearly 35%, it's one of a handful of AI-related companies that has kept the market buoyant despite investor concerns about a developing economic slowdown due in part to Trump's trade policies. But the company is looking ahead to further incursions into the China market over the long term. 'The China market is about $50 billion a year,' Huang told Taiwan-based technology strategist Ben Thompson in May, bemoaning the need to leave behind 'the profits that go with that, the scale that goes with that, the ecosystem building that goes with that' while the export ban was in place. So it made sense to allow Nvidia to extract revenue and profits from the cross-border trade. China is sure to power ahead on AI technology with or without Nvidia's chips, Huang said — 'anybody who thought that one chess move to somehow ban China from H20s would somehow cut off their ability to do AI is deeply uninformed.'
