
Major broadcaster is slammed for calling Ghislaine Maxwell a VICTIM
Speaking on Greg Kelly Reports the longtime Trump loyalist portrayed Maxwell as a sympathetic figure, w hile discussing the crisis around the Jeffrey Epstein files, despite her conviction on child sex trafficking and exploitation.
Kelly was talking about Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche two-day meeting with Maxwell to discuss the case.
'[Maxwell] has also been subpoenaed by the oversight committee, I think this is great. I do have a feeling that she just might be a victim, she just might be,' Kelly said.
'There was a rush to judgement there was a lot of chaos there for a while, granted she hung out with Jeffrey Epstein, and I know that's apparently not good.'
Maxwell is serving 20 years behind bars on child sex trafficking charges for her role in helping Epstein exploit and abuse multiple minors over the course of a decade.
Epstein's victims alleged they were procured by Maxwell and passed around his billionaire friends and associates who regularly visited his homes, which included his private island. He was found dead in his cell from an apparent suicide while awaiting trial.
Kelly's remarks have been circulated on social media where they were roundly slammed.
Ghislaine Maxwell is serving 20 years behind bars on child sex trafficking charges for her role in helping Epstein procure victims
One person commented: 'Just when you don't think they can be more depraved then they prove you wrong.'
Maxwell reached out to the Department of Justice to set up the meetings with Blanche, ABC News reported.
She apparently requested what's known as 'proffer immunity' so that anything she revealed couldn't be used against her at a later date.
It is provided to people under investigation or facing charges to determine the value of a possible witness. Maxwell has already been tried and convicted.
Maxwell's lawyer David Oscar Markus said after her questioning: 'There have been no asks and no promises.'
Many believe Maxwell appears to be angling for a pardon from President Donald Trump after she 'didn't hold back' during questioning.
She completed a second day of interviews with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on Friday afternoon.
Markus claimed that his client spoke with Blanche about '100 different people' in relation to Epstein's alleged child sex trafficking ring.
He also said Maxwell is being used as the 'scapegoat' in the entire Epstein case and has been 'treated unfairly for the past five years '.
Her attorney said that they had not put in a formal request with the White House for a pardon for Maxwell after the conclusion of the second day of questioning.
But Markus did not rule out taking that action in the future, saying 'things are happening so quickly.'
'The president said earlier he has the power to do so, we hope he exercises that power in the right way,' he said of a potential commutation.
Trump refused to rule out invoking his presidential pardon powers for Maxwell saying: 'I'm allowed to do it, but it's something I haven't thought about.'
CNN's Maggie Haberman appeared on Friday night's The Source with Kaitlan Collins stating that if Trump did so, he would 'infuriate the MAGA base'.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The Independent
23 minutes ago
- The Independent
Tulsi Gabbard becomes ‘weapon of mass distraction' as Trump White House grapples with Epstein fallout
Critics have accused Tulsi Gabbard of trying to shield Donald Trump's administration from scrutiny through her recent claims that top Obama administration officials should be prosecuted for leading a 'coup' against the president in 2016 by investigating Russian efforts to help his campaign. The allegations and conspiracy theories 'would be sad if they weren't so dangerous,' Democratic Rep. Jason Crow told Fox News on Sunday. 'She has turned herself into a weapon of mass distraction, is what I've been calling it." Crow accused Trump's national intelligence director of 'trying to curry and get back into favor with Donald Trump and has concocted these theories to do so,' an apparent reference to Gabbard and Trump's public disagreement over the state of Iran's nuclear program. This month, Gabbard spearheaded the release of materials regarding the then-outgoing Obama administration's attempts to probe Russian influence operations during the 2016 election. Critics saw the release as an attempt to distract from continued criticism of the Trump administration for its handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and the president's ties to the late financier, who died in prison while awaiting a federal sex trafficking trial. 'Nothing in this partisan, previously scuttled document changes that,' Senator Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told The Hill after the disclosures. 'Releasing this so-called report is just another reckless act by a Director of National Intelligence so desperate to please Donald Trump that she is willing to risk classified sources, betray our allies, and politicize the very intelligence she has been entrusted to protect,' he said. Gabbard claims the Obama materials, including a declassified 2020 Republican report from the House intelligence committee, reveal his 'years long coup' against Trump. She claims that top Obama officials pushed to override past intelligence findings to allege that Russians specifically wanted to boost the Trump campaign, rather than undermine faith in the U.S. election system more generally, and has called for Obama and others to face criminal charges. Trump has echoed such claims, sharing a fake, AI- generated video of Obama being arrested and thrown in jail on his Truth Social account. As evidence of the alleged coup, Gabbard honed in on past conclusions that Russian actors did not successfully hack digital voting infrastructure or change vote counts, suggesting these findings clashed with intelligence officials' later assessments that Russia sought to help Trump. Susan Miller, a former CIA officer who helped oversee the 2017 intelligence assessment, said Gabbard was 'lying.' 'We definitely had the intel to show with high probability that the specific goal of the Russians was to get Trump elected,' Miller told NBC News, adding that intelligence officials had briefed Trump on their findings and he had thanked them. 'At the same time, we found no two-way collusion between Trump or his team with the Russians at that time,' she said. Obama's office issued a rare public statement denouncing Gabbard's allegations. 'These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction. Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes,' a spokesperson said. The White House has pushed back against the argument that Gabbard's investigation is a partisan play. 'The only people who are suggesting that the director of national intelligence would release evidence to try to boost her standing with the president are the people in this room who constantly try to sow distrust and chaos among the president's Cabinet,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a Wednesday briefing. 'And it's not working,' she said. Multiple assessments have backed up the intelligence community's original findings of a general, one-way Russian influence operation that sought to boost Trump through tactics like hacking Democratic party materials and spreading disinformation online, even though the Trump campaign itself wasn't shown to have collaborated on the effort. Special counsels have investigated both the underlying 'Russiagate' claims and the origins of the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign without uncovering any intentional 'coup' by the Obama administration. A bipartisan 2020 report by the Senate Intelligence Committee — which Marco Rubio was leading at the time — concluded intelligence officials put together a 'coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case of unprecedented Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.' During the 2024 election, Trump and his allies campaigned on a promise to rid the federal government, and in particular U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, of politicization, arguing he had been a victim of partisan backlash — with two impeachments, two federal indictments and several criminal and civil cases, including a felony conviction on 34 counts. Since taking office, however, Trump has faced criticism that he is in fact driving politicization of those same entities, through actions like sanctioning law firms that worked with political opponents and calling for the prosecution of his various real and perceived critics. Over the weekend, the president ranted on social media and threatened to prosecute Kamala Harris, Oprah Winfrey and Beyonce while lashing out at news networks whose 'licenses could, and should, be revoked,' claiming without evidence that Democrats spent millions 'probably illegally' seeking high-profile celebrity endorsements during the 2024 campaign.


Daily Mail
23 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Former MSNBC anchor makes startling admission about Trump despite recent polling
Ex-MSNBC star Chris Matthews believes 'the country is moving toward' Donald Trump as he suffers some negative polling. The former Hardball host had toed the liberal line as recently as April, when he drew a mocking tweet from a White House spokesperson for criticizing Trump's tariff plans. However, in a weekend interview with disgraced former PBS anchor Charlie Rose, Matthews believes the American people are more aligned with the president than ever. 'To be honest with you, the country is moving towards Trump,' he said, dismissing polls showing he's losing popularity. 'These polls, they come out and show him not doing well — I don't buy that. His strength is still greater than the Democratic strength. He is a stronger public figure than the Democratic people,' Matthews added. Matthews showed what he meant by having to go all the way back to former President Barack Obama to name a Democrat as popular as Trump is. 'Obama still has tremendous charisma — but Trump has strength. And I think that's what all voters look for,' he said. 'They want a president who is a strong figure. And he's got it. It's just there. And half the country buys it.' He also praised what Trump has done on immigration, as well as his foreign policy with regard to the drone strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. Matthews did dampen ideas of Trump running for a third term but noted that the president was easily more popular and influential than Elon Musk, dismissing any idea of Musk's America Party succeeding. '[Musk] plays the same role as Ross Perot,' he said, referencing the infamous third party candidate who hurt Republicans in the 1992 and 1996 elections and consider those who vote for his party unserious. While some polls have shown Trump on a downward slope, the president improved a hair with voters according to a new exclusive Daily Mail/J.L. Partners poll, even as they give him failing grades for his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Forty-nine percent of voters now approve of Trump's job performance as president, up one point from the tracking survey conducted earlier in July. But he remains underwater as 51 percent disapprove of Trump's job performance, down one point from earlier in the month. The margin of error in the survey of 1,007 registered voters is 3.1 percent. The poll numbers suggest Trump is surviving politically during a punishing news cycle consumed by the Epstein files and his administration's failure to disclose them as he promised during his presidential campaign. The president's job approval is up one percentage point from June and remains his highest rating since May. 'The news saga might have seemed terrible for Trump in the last few days, but it isn't having an impact on his approval rating,' James Johnson, JL Partners co-founder told the Daily Mail. 'In fact, we think it's going up, from 48 percent to 49 percent, making this his best approval rating since May. His ratings with the base is holding up too, unchanged on 91 percent with Republicans,' Johnson continued. But Trump's strong job approval ratings does not carry over to his handling of the Epstein files. Forty-two percent of voters disapprove of his handling of the issue while just 27 percent approve. A significant number of voters, 20 percent, did not appear to care about the case as they neither approved nor disapproved Trump's handling of the issue. In the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump referred to the ongoing saga as a 'witch hunt' indicating he was tired of answering questions from the media about it. Despite the president's best efforts to put the issue behind him, few voters believe in the administration's assessment of the case. Only fifteen percent in the poll said they believed the Justice Department's memo released by Attorney General Pam Bondi concluding that Epstein committed suicide in prison and that the infamous pedofile did not have a 'client list' they could release. Forty-seven percent said they did not believe the administration's account of the Epstein case, and that they believed there was more secrets to uncover. Twenty-three percent said they believed the Trump administration memo, but that there was more to uncover in the case. 'This is despite voters disapproving of his handling of the Epstein scandal. What explains the difference? Voters simply do not rate it highly on their list of priorities,' Johnson said. Ninety percent of the Republican voter base continue to grant the president solid approval ratings, despite their misgivings about the Epstein files. The poll was conducted as Trump furiously contested a Wall Street Journal report that he had signed a letter to Epstein for his 50th birthday which concluded: 'Happy Birthday - and may every day be another wonderful secret,' and featured a hand-drawn image of a naked woman as well as his signature. Trump decried the news article as 'fake' and filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the company. 'They are judging Trump on other issues - such as the economy, the southern border, and how he is actually running the country. Their grumbles on the Epstein handling are not enough for them to turn on their man,' Johnson said. While the majority of Republicans, 52 percent, give Trump a passing grade on his handling of the Epstein files, just 13 percent of Independent voters feel the same way. Fifty percent of independent voters in the survey said they disapproved of the way the Trump administration has handled the Epstein files case.

South Wales Argus
an hour ago
- South Wales Argus
Starmer to raise Gaza ceasefire and UK steel tariffs in Trump meeting
The Prime Minister will travel to Ayrshire, where the US president is staying at his Turnberry golf resort, for wide-ranging discussions on trade and the Middle East as international alarm grows over starvation in Gaza. The two leaders have built a rapport on the world stage despite their differing political backgrounds, with Mr Trump praising Sir Keir for doing a 'very good job' in office ahead of their talks on Monday. But humanitarian conditions in Gaza and uncertainty over US import taxes on key British goods in America threaten to complicate their bilateral meeting. The US president has been playing golf at his Turnberry resort in Scotland (PA) Peace talks in the Middle East came to a standstill last week after Washington and Israel recalled negotiating teams from Qatar, with White House special envoy Steve Witkoff blaming Hamas for a 'lack of desire' to reach an agreement. Since then, Israel has promised military pauses in three populated areas of Gaza to allow designated UN convoys of aid to reach desperate Palestinians. But the UK, which is joining efforts to airdrop aid into the enclave and evacuate children in need of medical assistance, has said that access to supplies must be 'urgently' widened. In his talks with Mr Trump, Sir Keir will 'welcome the President's administration working with partners in Qatar and Egypt to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza', Number 10 said. 'He will discuss further with him what more can be done to secure the ceasefire urgently, bring an end to the unspeakable suffering and starvation in Gaza and free the hostages who have been held so cruelly for so long.' The leaders will also talk 'one-on-one about advancing implementation of the landmark Economic Prosperity Deal so that Brits and Americans can benefit from boosted trade links between their two countries', it said. The agreement signed at the G7 summit last month slashed trade barriers on goods from both countries. But tariffs for the steel industry, which is of key economic importance to the UK, were left to stand at 25% rather than falling to zero as originally agreed. Concerns had previously been raised that the sector could face a levy of up to 50% – the US's global rate – unless a further agreement was made by July 9, when Mr Trump said he would start implementing import taxes on America's trading partners. But that deadline has been and gone without any concrete update on the status of UK steel. Downing Street said that both sides are working 'at pace' to 'go further to deliver benefits to working people on both sides of the Atlantic' and to give UK industry 'the security it needs'. The two leaders are also expected to discuss the war in Ukraine, which Number 10 said would include 'applying pressure' on Vladimir Putin to end the invasion, before travelling on together for a private engagement in Aberdeen. It comes after Mr Trump announced he had agreed 'the biggest deal ever made' between the US and the European Union after meeting Ursula von der Leyen for high-stakes talks at Turnberry on Sunday. After a day playing golf, the US leader met the President of the EU Commission to hammer out the broad terms of an agreement that will subject the bloc to 15% tariffs on most of its goods entering America. This is lower than a 30% levy previously threatened by the US president. The agreement will include 'zero for zero' tariffs on a number of products including aircraft, some agricultural goods and certain chemicals, as well as EU purchases of US energy worth 750 billion dollars (£558 billion) over three years. Speaking to journalists on Sunday about his meeting with Sir Keir, Mr Trump said: 'We're meeting about a lot of things. We have our trade deal and it's been a great deal. 'It's good for us. It's good for them and good for us. I think the UK is very happy, they've been trying for 12 years to get it and they got it, and it's a great trade deal for both, works out very well. 'We'll be discussing that. I think we're going to be discussing a lot about Israel. 'They're very much involved in terms of wanting something to happen. 'He's doing a very good job, by the way.' Mr Trump's private trip to the UK comes ahead of a planned state visit in September.