Ghislaine Maxwell moved from federal jail to minimum-security prison camp
The US Bureau of Prisons said that 'Ghislaine Maxwell is in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons at the Federal Prison Camp (FPC) Bryan in Bryan, Texas', without giving a reason for the transfer.
The story was first reported
by the New York Sun
.
Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for sexually exploiting and abusing teenage girls, had been interviewed over the course of two days by Todd Blanche, the second-highest ranking official in the Department of Justice, and one of President Donald Trump's former lawyers.
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Maxwell's transfer is the latest development in a now weeks-long period of intense pressure being put on Trump about his attorney general's reneging on a promise to release documents related to the case against Epstein, often called the 'Epstein files'.
Epstein died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while he was awaiting trial for sex trafficking offences. A medical examiner ruled his death a suicide.
The Trump administrations U-turn on the president's campaign promise to release the files has been met with the sharpest rebukes from within his own MAGA base, many of whom had hoped the documents would reveal links between Epstein and prominent Democrats.
Trump has been on the back foot and has failed to make the story go away.
Virginia Roberts Giuffre, with a photo of herself as a teen, when she said she was abused by Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Prince Andrew, among others.
Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Trump had a close personal relationship with Epstein for years but the two fell out after the convicted sex offender 'stole' one of Epstein's victims, Virginia Guifree, from his Mar-a-Lago golf resort.
Related Reads
US Justice Department seeking to interview Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell
Wall Street Journal barred from covering Trump's Scotland visit after Epstein letter report
Virginia Giuffre alleged she was sex-trafficked to two 'respected politicians' and Prince Andrew
'People were taken out of the (Mar-a-Lago) spa, hired by him, in other words gone,' Trump said. 'When I heard about it, I told him, I said, 'Listen, we don't want you taking our people.'
'And then not too long after that, he did it again. And I said, 'Out of here.''
Giuffre, who said she was abused by Maxwell, Epstein and Britain's Prince Andrews,
among others,
died by suicide in April this year.
If you have been affected by any of the issues mentioned in this article, you can reach out for support through the following helplines. These organisations also put people in touch with long-term supports:
Samaritans
- 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org (suicide, crisis support)
Text About It
- text HELLO to 50808 (mental health issues)
Pieta House
– 1800 247 247 or text HELP to 51444 – (suicide, self-harm)
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RTÉ News
39 minutes ago
- RTÉ News
Can Trump's threatened tariffs make Russia end its war?
First it was 50 days. But that deadline hardly made the Kremlin blink. Then, earlier this week, US President Donald Trump gave Russia a new 10-day deadline to end its three-and-half-year war in Ukraine. It was a simple ultimatum from the US: sign up to a ceasefire agreement by next Friday or face 100% tariffs. A couple of weeks ago, the White House indicated that tariffs on Russia and its trading partners could be as high as 100%. Russian exports of oil and gas account for about 60% of the country's overall exports, according to various estimates. Given that the profits of Russian oil companies are taxed heavily by the Russian state, implementing such high tariffs would deny Russia much-needed revenue for its war in Ukraine. According to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a Helsinki-based thinktank, Russia has made more than €920bn on exports of fossil fuels since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Oil exports accounted for more than €630bn during that time. The Kremlin ignored Mr Trump's first 50-day ultimatum and has done the same with the new one, simply saying that the US president's comments were "noted". True to form, Russian President Vladimir Putin has not responded directly to Mr Trump's latest ultimatum to end the war. Russia's missile strikes on Ukrainian cities during this week have also indicated that Mr Trump's new deadline has not influenced Russia's war tactics. On Thursday, Russian strikes killed 31 people in Kyiv, including five children, and on Tuesday, Russian airstrikes on a prison and hospital in the Zaporizhzhia region killed 19 people. Russian forces are continuing their slow advance along the front, claiming to have captured Chasiv Yar on Thursday. Chasiv Yar is a strategically important but destroyed town in eastern Ukraine that has been fought over for 16 months. Ukraine denied that the town had been lost. If there are any moves inside the Kremlin towards agreeing a ceasefire deal by next Friday, then its leadership is hiding it very well indeed. During the week, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia had "developed an immunity" to Western sanctions after years of being sanctioned, while other senior officials aired similar views. Many analysts agree that Russia's economy has largely weathered more than three years of Western penalties - actions that included sanctions on Russian banks, freezing their assets and excluding them from using the global system for international payments. The West also set a price cap in late 2022 of $60 per barrel on Russian maritime exports of oil. However, Russia has continued to export its oil to buyers from non-sanctioning countries through its so-called 'shadow fleet'. These are mostly aging tankers with opaque maritime histories, registered in third-party countries to circumvent sanctions. The EU's latest batch of sanctions last month - the 18th so far - aims to make it harder for Russia to transport its oil around the world by lowering the price cap to $47 per barrel and blacklisting more than 100 of the shadow fleet's vessels from docking at ports across the EU. So Mr Trump's threat to impose 100% tariffs on Russia and its trading partners is a novel move to reduce the Kremlin's ability to collect oil revenues and thereby dent its war chest. "If the US comes with secondary sanctions on Russian oil, I can't see a bolder play," Ben McWilliams, an energy expert at the Bruegel thinktank in Brussels, told RTÉ News. "It's playing all their cards and that's trying to exert maximum pressure on Russia through energy," Mr McWilliams added. China buys almost half of all Russian crude oil exports, followed closely by India. Turkey and the EU both account for about 6% each of total Russian oil exports - most Russian crude oil flowing into the EU is bought by Hungary and Slovakia via pipeline. Russia also sells smaller volumes of oil to other markets including Myanmar, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Pakistan and Venezuela. The loss of revenue from those smaller markets is surmountable for Russia. However, a reduction in Chinese or Indian imports of the commodity would deny the Kremlin vital revenue for its war. Last year, China's level of Russian crude oil imports reached a record high of 108 million tonnes, according to data from China's national customs authority. Those imports account for about 20% of all Chinese oil consumption and are estimated to be worth about $62bn in 2024, based on analysis by the Centre of Eastern Studies in Warsaw and MERICS, a Berlin-based thinktank that focuses on China. In April, after the Trump administration imposed 145% tariffs on Chinese imports, Beijing hit back with high 110% tariffs of its own on US goods. A truce has been in place between Washington and Beijing since May, with the US reducing its tariffs to 30% and China to 10%. Statements from senior Chinese officials earlier this week suggest Beijing is unlikely to yield to pressure from Washington to stop buying Russian oil. "China will take energy supply measures that are right for China based on our national interests," Guo Jiakun, spokesperson for China's foreign affairs ministry, told reporters. Tariff wars have no winners. Coercion and pressuring cannot solve problems," he added. India might be more likely to reconsider reducing the amount of Russian oil it buys, if faced with 100% tariffs. On Friday, the US hit India with 25% tariffs on its imported goods - just one of many countries whose goods are to be levied by the US as part of Mr Trump's plan to, as he sees it, address US trade imbalances with other countries. The $60 price cap in late 2022 drove down the price of Russian oil exports, leading India to buy up much larger quantities of the stuff than it did before the war - it now buys more than two million barrels of oil a day from Russia, equivalent to about 2% of the world's total supply. Russian crude oil now accounts for about 35% of India's oil imports. Those purchases were valued at an estimated $50bn last year, according to India's government data, sourced by Reuters. New Delhi's reaction to the 25% levies has been to engage in trade talks. Mr Trump has also threatened to impose additional economic penalties on India for trading with Russia. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this week that India's purchase of Russian oil was "a point of irritation" so it looks like the US sees India's heavy reliance on Russian oil as a deal breaker in their overall trade talks. A number of Indian state oil refineries stopped buying Russian oil in the past week, buying more oil from Gulf States instead, an indication that American pressure is working. Reduced oil exports to India would force Russia to find substitute markets to make up for the shortfall. "Russia could still manage to get many barrels to market. You could still imagine small markets, each taking 50,000 barrels or something," Mr McWilliams said. "The question would be, at what price," he added, pointing to the cheaper price that buyers from India and China paid for Russian oil after European demand all but disappeared in 2022. If India and another big economy such as Turkey stop buying Russian oil, then buyers in other markets might have more leverage to offer lower prices for Russian crude, he argued. Turkey is the world's largest importer of Russian oil products such as diesel, heating oil and jet fuel. However, Turkey has also played a key role recently in US efforts to broker a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine. Turkish diplomats have mediated three brief face-to-face meetings between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in Istanbul since May. Unleashing 100% tariffs on Turkey for buying Russian oil would jeopardise Turkey's eagerness to work alongside the US as a mediator. Turkey, a NATO member, is also one of the few countries that Russia views as an acceptable mediator. Mr Trump's threat of 100% tariffs is unlikely to sway Russia to stop its war immediately, nor in the weeks ahead. The Kremlin has been quite clear that it plans to weather new sanctions. Imposing high tariffs on China for trading with Russia could also set off a new, all-out trade war between Beijing and Washington. But tariffs could force India and a number of other smaller economies that buy Russian oil imports to buy elsewhere and that lost revenue would dent the Russian state's war economy in the months ahead. The big unknown factors are whether Mr Trump will follow through on his tariff threats and whether Mr Putin might yet come up with a diplomatic ploy to delay them.
Irish Times
2 hours ago
- Irish Times
South Park isn't letting go of Donald Trump's hambone any time soon
'I don't know what more we could possibly say about Trump ,' Trey Parker, one of the creators of South Park, told Vanity Fair shortly before the US presidential election of 2024. The magazine took this to mean the series was 'about done with satirising the Republican candidate'. If that was the team's intention, then intervening events have brought about a change in strategy. The candidate became president again. The president flailed like a maniac. Some of the metaphorical broken crockery belonged to South Park's corporate master. The Comedy Central satire has rarely been so explicit in its attacks on an individual as it was on Trump in the first episode of the 27th season. Broadcast on July 23rd, Sermon on the 'Mount – a reference to both its guest star Jesus Christ and Paramount, the cable channel's parent company – began with a characteristic double-edged dig at Trump's war on the liberal media. READ MORE Eric Cartman, perennially bigoted id-monster, is outraged that the administration has cancelled his favourite show on National Public Radio. We are encouraged to believe South Park's creators are equally appalled at this curtailment of cultural expression, but most of the laughs come from Cartman, hitherto a hate listener, ranting about the unintentionally hilarious enemies he will no longer get to snort at. The show is, he explains, 'where all the liberals bitch and moan about stuff'. Jesus turns up to evangelise at South Park Elementary. The town's residents wonder if that is strictly constitutional. 'I didn't want to come back,' the risen Lord eventually mutters fearfully to assembled multitudes. 'But I had to because it was part of a lawsuit and the agreement with Paramount.' This references Trump's recent suit against Paramount over an episode of the news show 60 Minutes, broadcast on the conglomerate's CBS network, and allows wider connection to be made with capitulations to the president's legal Panzerkorps elsewhere in the media. [ Maureen Dowd: CBS caving to Trump is sickening. At least South Park will still hold people accountable Opens in new window ] All of that was typically bold – The Simpsons' erstwhile digs at its own Fox network were generally more playful – but it was the depiction of Trump himself that really got media-watchers gasping. Like their version of Saddam Hussein, he is seen cosying up to a giant, oddly sensitive Satan, who expresses himself unimpressed by the imperial crown jewels. 'I can't even see anything, it's so small,' the Lord of the Flies says of Trump's penis. At the close, now bespectacled and talkative, the first member dangles from a hyperrealistic, AI-generated version of the naked Trump. How do we know this attack struck home? Because the White House said it didn't. 'This show hasn't been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention,' a hopelessly needy White House statement whined. 'No fourth-rate show can derail President Trump's hot streak.' Asked, at the Comic-Con event in San Diego, what he made of the response, Parker, sitting beside his collaborator Matt Stone, did not break a smile before snapping: 'We're terribly sorry.' The reply needed no ironic intonation to confirm its insincerity. And they are not finished. There was no episode this week, but a teaser trailer for next Wednesday's outing has Trump feeling up Satan's leg at a public event. South Park isn't loosening its jaws from this hambone. Why does this matter more than the countless volleys that have come Trump's way over the past decade? A glance (just a glance, I promise) at the increasingly feeble Saturday Night Live gives a few clues. The sheer flaccidity of the sketch show's satire is one factor. Another is that sense of us knowing which wet-liberal safe house the SNL team emerge from each miserably predictable weekend. These skits are not intended to irritate the Maga base. They are there to comfort those already certain of their own cosy opposition. Remember the execrable 'cold open' that had a white-clad Hillary Clinton – in the supportive form of Kate McKinnon – warble Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah to a blubbing audience straight after the real Hillary lost to Trump? Such obsequiousness towards a politician (any politician) would be inconceivable on South Park. Over the past 28 years Stone and Parker have made a virtue of wrong-footing those who think they have the team's politics nailed down. Way back in 2005, scores of leftish critics raged that Team America: World Police, their now-classic 'Supercrappymation' feature, spent as much time slagging off liberal celebrities as attacking the administration. 'People assumed that Trey and I were going to devote every frame to bringing down George Bush,' Stone, laughing, told me at the time. One side has never forgiven them. The other may not forget their current jihad against Trump. But that uncertain political territory is the best place for satirists to pitch base camp. Nobody should feel safe. They could be after your penis next.
Irish Independent
2 hours ago
- Irish Independent
Ukrainian drones hit Russian energy and defence infrastructure in response to deadly strikes on Kyiv and Kharkiv
Russian officials report three dead in strikes as Trump issues new deadline to Putin Rescuers lay toys and flowers on the site of Russia's Thursday night missile strike in Kyiv that hit a house and left 31 dead, including five children. Photo: AP A drone attack on the Rostov region, on the border with Ukraine, killed one person, acting governor Yuri Slyusar said. Further from the front line, a woman was killed and two other people were wounded in a drone strike on business premises in the Penza region, according to regional governor Oleg Melnichenko. In the Samara region, falling drone debris sparked a fire that killed an elderly resident, regional governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said. Russian officials did not name specific facilities which were hit, but Ukrainian authorities later said they had targeted key sites in Russia's energy and defence sectors late on Friday in retaliation for deadly Russian strikes on Ukrainian cities earlier this week. Ukraine's general staff said it struck the Ryazan and Novokuibyshevsk oil refineries, a fuel storage facility in Voronezh, and a defence-linked electronics manufacturer in Penza. According to the Ukrainian air force, Russia launched 53 drones and decoys at Ukraine overnight into yesterday. It said that air defences shot down or jammed 45 drones. Eleven people were wounded in an overnight drone strike on the Kharkiv region, governor Oleh Syniehubov said yesterday. The reciprocal drone strikes followed a day of mourning in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Friday, after a Russian drone and missile attack killed 31 people, including five children, and wounded more than 150. The continued attacks come after US President Donald Trump on Tuesday gave Russian President Vladimir Putin a shorter deadline - August 8 - for peace efforts to make progress. Mr Trump said on Thursday that special envoy Steve Witkoff is heading to Russia to push Moscow to agree to a ceasefire in its war with Ukraine and has threatened new economic sanctions if progress is not made. Meanwhile, Ukraine's anti-corruption bodies said yesterday they had uncovered a major graft scheme that procured military drones and signal jamming systems at inflated prices, two days after the agencies' independence was restored following major protests. The independence of Ukraine's anti-graft investigators and prosecutors, NABU and SAPO, was reinstated by parliament on Thursday after a move to take it away resulted in the country's biggest demonstrations since Russia's invasion in 2022. In a statement published by both agencies on social media, NABU and SAPO said they had caught a sitting lawmaker, two local officials and an unspecified number of national guard personnel taking bribes. None of them were identified. . Join the Irish Independent WhatsApp channel Stay up to date with all the latest news Russia Ukraine Donald Trump
