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Yahoo
8 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Newsom Hits Hard At 'Unmoored' Trump Amid Epstein Scandal: 'This Is Not The Same Trump'
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) came full swing at President Donald Trump Saturday, claiming the president is lying to cover up his involvement in convicted sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein's case. 'He's lying to cover up his prior lies and then lying again. Now he doesn't even know truth from fiction, and so look, he's caught it red handed,' Newsom told popular left-wing influencer Brian Tyler Cohen in an interview that aired Saturday. 'He's in the files. We know it, period, full stop.' Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi have received major backlash in the past few weeks over their handling of Epstein's files after hyping them up, then failing to release more information. Many of those outraged are the president's own supporters, who are beginning to turn on him over the issue. Meanwhile, news outlets have been resurfacing old videos, photos and documents that suggest a close friendship between the president and Epstein. 'His biggest supporters may have been the difference in the election, and he turned on them. He has zero loyalty,' Newsom said. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Bondi informed Trump in May that his name was in the files related to Epstein's case. 'He's part of this cover up, and he has confused even the most ardent observers here. I mean, you can't — the guy's a pretzel on this issue. Every hour, he contradicts a statement,' Newsom told Cohen. This week, Trump's former criminal defense attorney, now Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, met with Epstein's co-conspirator and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. The president told reporters that pardoning Maxwell is not something he has thought about, but noted that he is 'allowed to do it' 'This is sick stuff. This is sick,' Newsom said. 'I mean, if you're a conspiracy theorist, I mean, they're going to turn me into one. Why the hell are we even talking to her? What, a pardon for what? No, seriously, for what?' He added that Trump has seemed increasingly 'unmoored' as speculation grows about his past relationship with Epstein. 'He's lost a step,' Newsom said. 'This is not the same Trump 1.0. This is, something's off, increasingly off, and he's getting, he's unmoored in ways even by Trump's standards I haven't seen. I don't want to overstate this moment, but you can't understate. This is something, something ain't right, as they say.' Newsom went on to bash Trump over recent actions that some have speculated were intentional distractions from the Epstein scandal, such as threatening to strip Rosie O'Donnell of citizenship, vowing to put cane sugar in Coca-Cola, complaining about the name of the Washington Commanders and sharing a bizarre AI-generated video of Barack Obama being arrested. 'It reminds me of a punch drunk boxer. He's just wildly flailing. He's flailing. He's just zigging and zagging. He's desperate,' Newsom said. 'He's trying anything, trying to chum the waters, and it's not working. And normally it works for him. It's not working right now.' The governor told Cohen that Trump is 'going to have to do a lot more than he's done in the past to be able to dig his way out of this.' Related... Joe Rogan On Trump Administration's Handling Of Epstein Files: 'Do You Think We're Babies?' Trump Claims He 'Never Went' To Epstein's Island, Tells People To Focus On Bill Clinton Instead What To Know About Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's Longtime Collaborator
CNBC
10 minutes ago
- CNBC
Ghislaine Maxwell's meetings with Justice Department shrouded in secrecy
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche completed nine hours of meetings over two days with Ghislaine Maxwell on Friday but made no public statements about what she said or the next steps in the Justice Department's much-criticized Jeffrey Epstein investigation. Former prosecutors said it was highly unusual — and potentially unprecedented — for a the department's No. 2 official to personally interview a witness. Secrecy in a criminal investigation is normal, but the prosecutors involved in the case would typically be included in questioning. "I've never heard of a deputy attorney general doing anything like this before," said a former senior Justice Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Victims of Epstein and Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 of recruiting and grooming multiple teenage girls to be sexually abused by the late financier, questioned the lack of transparency as well. Jack Scarola, a lawyer representing roughly 20 Epstein victims, said he asked to attend the Maxwell interviews but was not included. Berit Berger, a former federal prosecutor in New York, said the interviews by Blanche, who worked as Trump's former defense lawyer, may be performative. "It may be just a way of being able to say, 'Look, we dotted every I and crossed every T,'" she said. "There's value to being able to say that we've tried to speak to everyone we possibly could, including the co-defendant." Attorney General Pam Bondi, Blanche and President Donald Trump himself have struggled to quell the uproar since the DOJ and FBI announced on July 6 that an exhaustive Epstein case review had not uncovered evidence that justified investigating other individuals. FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino — who have both spread conspiracy theories about the Epstein case — backed those findings and a DOJ decision to release no other Epstein case documents. Catherine Christian, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney and an NBC News legal analyst, said the Maxwell interviews could also be an effort to protect Trump, who now faces one of the largest political crises of his second term in the furor over the Epstein investigation. Trump, like dozens of other wealthy Americans, socialized with Epstein. He is among hundreds of individuals whose names appear in 100,000 pages of Epstein case documents reviewed by the DOJ and the FBI. "It's hard to believe this is anything but performative," Christian said. "Or Todd Blanche, just wanting to have her on the record saying, 'Yes, President Trump had nothing to do with any of this. He was not a client.'" Maxwell's lawyer, David Oscar Markus, is a top Florida criminal defense lawyer and a friend of Blanche's. Blanche appeared on Markus' podcast in 2024, where the host praised Blanche's legal skills. After Friday's meeting with Blanche and Maxwell, Markus told reporters that the deputy attorney general "did an amazing job" and asked Maxwell thorough questions. "She was asked maybe about 100 different people," said Markus, who did not disclose which individuals Maxwell was questioned about. "She answered questions about everybody, and she didn't hold anything back," he said. "They asked about every single, every possible thing you could imagine, everything." A senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said that Maxwell was granted limited immunity by the Justice Department to answer questions about the Epstein case. Granting limited immunity is common in criminal cases and allows defendants to provide information without fear that it will be used against them in court. The immunity is "limited" because it only applies if the defendant is telling the truth. If it is determined that a defendant lied during the interviews, then the agreement becomes void. Prosecutors can take into consideration a defendant's cooperation and recommend a plea deal or a reduced sentence. This is not expected in Maxwell's case, as she has already been convicted and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. Maxwell's lawyer, Markus, has argued that Maxwell's trial was unfair and an appeal of her conviction is pending before the Supreme Court. Trump, like all presidents, has the power to pardon or commute the sentence of anyone convicted of a federal crime. Asked about Epstein's case on Friday morning, Trump said the focus should be on other people who socialized with Epstein, such as former President Bill Clinton and Larry Summers, the former treasury secretary and Harvard University president. "You should focus on Clinton," the president told reporters. "You should focus on the president of Harvard, the former president of Harvard. You should focus on some of the hedge fund guys." "I'll give you a list. These guys lived with Jeffrey Epstein. I sure as hell didn't," Trump said. Asked if he was considering granting Maxwell a pardon or commuting her sentence, Trump said, "It's something I haven't thought about." "I'm allowed to do it," he added. Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor in New York, said she believes the recent firing of Maurene Comey, a lead prosecutor in the Maxwell case and the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, was an effort to give Trump appointees full control of the Maxwell case, limit transparency and silence dissent. "That does not seem coincidental. It seems like they wanted Maurene not to be present in the Department of Justice," Rocah said. "To be able to say, 'What the heck, you can't go talk to my client or my defendant.'" Rocah, a Democrat who served as Westchester County district attorney from 2020 to 2024, criticized Blanche's meetings with Maxwell, saying his apparent failure to include a prosecutor with deep knowledge of her crimes was unfair to Epstein's victims. "The head of that entire institution that is supposed to be about protecting victims is talking to her, giving her a platform to say God knows what, without much way to verify it or not," Rocah said. "The real people who could test her truth-telling are the people who worked on the case, not Todd."
CBS News
10 minutes ago
- CBS News
3 charged in armed South Side kidnapping of 2-year-old girl to remain in jail
Three people are facing several charges in the kidnapping of a two-year-old girl who was found safe earlier this week. Prosecutors said the child's mother kidnapped her from her grandmother's house at gunpoint, with the help of two armed men. All three appeared together in front of a judge Saturday afternoon. The judge said the child's mother is the mastermind in what he called a kidnapping scheme that involved guns, death threats, and even leveraging her child's location for her own release. In court, prosecutors said 22-year-old Angelique Mobley and 33-year-old Lamon Weathers were dating during the kidnapping. They said Mobley and Weathers, 27-year-old Matthew Price, and another unknown person somehow gained access to the 2-year-old's grandmother's building near 48th Street and Michigan Wednesday morning. The judge said they had cased the building before forcing their way in and threatening the child's great uncle and girlfriend at gunpoint before taking off with the grandmother's purse, keys, and car. Mobley was armed with a wrench while Weathers and Price had guns. The crew told police they ditched the grandmother's car before returning to their own car and taking off with Mobley's 2-year-old daughter. Prosecutors say they dropped the little girl off with a relative of Weathers in Danville, Illinois. After a quick Google search, the relative saw a news story about the missing child and called the police, which led to her rescue. Police caught up with Mobley and Weathers. Prosecutors said that's when Mobley told police she would tell them where her baby was if they let her go. The state also pointed to a Facebook live by Mobley in which she said she was going to take her child back from the grandmother. The judge expressed concerns about the background of the three. Mobley has two pending retail theft charges. Price, who said he's a full-time babysitter with a battery and gun arrest. And weathers, who was arrested in a security uniform and says he's an associate pastor, has seven felony convictions, including an aggravated assault charge he just pleaded guilty to earlier this month. On top of a kidnapping charge for all three, Mobley is facing residential burglary. Weathers and Price are charged with home invasion with a firearm. Price is also facing a stolen vehicle charge. All three were ordered to remain in jail. The judge said that Mobley, the child's mother, could expect a possible fourth charge of home invasion. They're all expected back in court later this week. It's unclear if the fourth person involved has been identified or arrested by police.
