
White House challenged over ‘no Epstein list' declaration after Attorney General said it was ‘sitting on her desk'
During a press conference on Monday (7 July), Karoline Leavitt was grilled by Fox News ' Peter Doocy on the Department of Justice 's new memo which made clear no further investigations will be launched into other individuals.
Mr Doocy asked the press secretary why Attorney General Pam Bondi had said in February that she had the client list 'ready to review' but now claims it does not exist.
Ms Leavitt replied: 'Yes, she was saying the entirety of all of those – paperwork – all of the paper in relation to Jeffrey Epstein's crimes. That's what the Attorney General was referring to and I'll let her speak for that.'
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Daily Mail
35 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Mexican officials reveal major update after two Aussie brothers and their American friend were 'gunned down' while on surfing trip
Another person has been charged over the alleged shooting death of two Australian brothers and their American friend while on a surfing trip in Mexico. Callum and Jake Robinson, from Perth, and their friend Jack Carter Rhoad, from San Diego, were on a surfing trip in Mexican state of Baja California when they were reported missing on April 27 last year. Their bodies were found a few days later on May 3 at the bottom of a well alongside a fourth body not directly linked to the case, reportedly that of a local rancher. Investigators previously said the three men were shot in the back of the head at their remote campsite with a single bullet each and that it appeared to be a robbery. Three locals were arrested last year and now Mexican prosecutors have revealed a fourth person - Irineo Francisco - has been arrested. Prosecutor Miguel Ángel Gaxiola Rodríguez also confirmed that his office had backed up the robbery theory and added there was no evidence of involvement from Mexico's notorious drug cartels. Irineo Francisco will join Jesús Gerardo, Ari Gisell, and Ángel Jesús - all of who have had their surnames suppressed - in court charged with the killings. Jake Robinson was a talented lacrosse player living in the US, while Callum was a doctor who had taken a trip to visit his brother, and Mr Rhoad was employed at a technology services company and was set to marry his fiancé in August last year. Mr Gaxiola Rodríguez has said the state had a strong case against the four alleged killers. 'We have compelling evidence, including witness statements, and we have found the vehicle,' he said. 'The objective is to ensure that the accused are brought to trial and convicted of the homicide and robbery.' Ms Gisell was the first alleged killer to be arrested on May 1 when she was pulled over for a routine traffic stop. She reportedly threw 100g of meth on the ground and tried to flee officers. After searching the vehicle, officers found an iPhone belonging to Mr Rhoad. She turned in Mr Gerado and told officers he had told her: 'I f***ed up three gringos.' Ms Gisell also turned in one of the other accused killers. The three men are looking at charges of aggravated homicide, aggravated robbery, violent robbery, grand theft auto and forced disappearance. Ms Gisell faces the same charges except forced disappearance. Three wooden statues have been installed overlooking the North Baja coast to commemorate the Perth brothers and their American friend. The Callum and Jake Robinson Foundation wrote on social media that the 'unveiling ceremony brought together surfers, representatives from the Australian embassy and the Baja California governor's office. 'After a few words were shared, the community honoured the boys with a traditional paddle out. 'We are deeply grateful for the continued love, remembrance, and support from around the world.'


The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Blood and bravado: the Trump shooting upended an election and shook the US
Blake Marnell was standing in the front row, about 10 yards from Donald Trump, when the shots rang out. He watched the Secret Service pile on the former US president. 'I was able to see him standing and I could see the blood on his ear,' Marnell recalls. 'When he put his fist up, I remember yelling, 'Yes! Yes! Yes!'' Sunday marks one year since the assassination attempt on Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and a week that changed US politics. Eight days later then-president Joe Biden, 81, dropped out of the election race amid concerns over his mental and physical decline. The twin shocks to the system of July 2024 continue to echo. Trump's supporters hailed his survival as proof of divine intervention. He declared in his inaugural address in January: 'I was saved by God to make America great again.' He has governed with a zealous self-belief that earns comparisons with authoritarians from history. Democrats, meanwhile, continue to wrestle the fallout of Biden's late withdrawal. Some argue that he could have pushed on and won; most believe that he left the race too late and paved the way for Trump's return to the White House. Younger voters accuse the party establishment of betrayal and beat the drum of generational change. What few dispute is that the shooting of Trump was indicative of a culture of political violence that has taken hold over the past decade, with recent examples including the murder of a Minnesota politician and her husband. It also set in motion a news cycle that has barely drawn breath over the past year as the most unconventional president of modern times dominates the national consciousness. For Marnell, who lives in San Diego, California, that hot summer's day in Butler began like dozens of the other Trump rallies he has been to before and since. He was wearing a 'brick suit' that symbolises the president's border wall and looked up at a giant screen that displayed a chart detailing US-Mexico border crossings. Trump had his head turned to the right to review the graphic when the gunfire began and nicked his right ear. 'I didn't even recognise them as gunshots,' 60-year-old Marnell said in a phone interview. 'I thought they might be firecrackers.' For several long seconds there was pandemonium. Firefighter Corey Comperatore was killed while David Dutch and James Copenhaver were both hospitalised with injuries. Secret Service agents killed the gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, whose motives remain a mystery, and rushed on top of Trump, whose fate was initially uncertain. 'There was every range of emotion in the crowd. There was anger. There were people who turned around and were yelling at the TV cameras. There were people who were in prayer. There were people crying. There were people who were in disbelief. It was just an incredible gamut and range of reactions.' But what happened next became the stuff of political legend. Trump rose, pumped his fist and beseeched his followers to 'Fight! Fight! Fight' even as blood streaked his face. The resulting image flashed around the world and is still displayed in the West Wing and worn on T-shirts by his 'Make America great again' (Maga) acolytes. Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: 'He showed courage and determination when you'd think the first thing somebody wants to do is slink away and save themselves. His response was to be the medieval chieftain who was rallying his troops round the banner and showing that he was undeterred to fight, to use his word. It was incredibly moving.' Biden was quick to call Trump and express sympathy. On 17 July, Biden tested positive for Covid-19. On 19 July, Trump, wearing a patch on his ear, delivered a 90-minute address at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, where some delegates wore ear patches in solidarity. Then, on 21 July, Biden suddenly announced that he was stepping aside and would not be the Democratic nominee for president. The writing had been on the wall since his disastrous debate performance against Trump the previous month. Party leaders such as Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer had urged him to withdraw. Finally, he yielded. Even by the standards of the Trump era, it had been a jaw-dropping eight days. Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: 'There have been dramatic weeks and months but, in an election campaign, there's just nothing like it in all of American history.' Journalist Chris Whipple was working on a different project when he heard the news of Biden's exit, 'realised this was the political story of the century', and pivoted to writing a book that would become Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History. 'It created that devastating split screen between the strengths of Trump and the weakness of Biden,' Whipple said. 'The image of Trump rising off that stage with blood on his cheeks and his fist in the air mouthing 'fight, fight, fight' was devastating in comparison to the image of Biden shortly thereafter climbing off Air Force One with Covid headed to his bunker in Rehoboth Beach, standing on those steps, looking lost and gripping the handrail.' In their new book 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America, journalists Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf write how Trump's future chief of staff, Susie Wiles, told him after the assassination attempt: 'You do know this is God.' At first Trump was silent, they write, but by the next day he was telling everyone: 'If anyone ever doubted there was a God, that proved there was.' Numerous speakers at the Republican convention insisted that Trump had been spared by God so that he could pursue his mission. The Detroit pastor Lorenzo Sewell refers to it as a 'millimetre miracle'. Whipple added: 'To this day the true believers think this was God's plan and maybe – without playing armchair psychologist – it's contributed to a kind of fearlessness in Trump that I'm not sure we saw in the first term. Some might say recklessness. It changed Trump. It changed the country.' Conversely, the Democrats have still not recovered from the debacle of Biden's late departure. His anointed successor, Kamala Harris, had only 107 days to campaign and ignited a burst of Democratic enthusiasm, notably at the party convention and when she debated Trump. But it was too little too late and she lost both the electoral college and the national popular vote. Whipple commented: 'It was a seismic political event and the reverberations continue to this day. His 11th-hour abdication, leaving Kamala Harris with too short a runway to mount a winning campaign, obviously is historic and there is to this day a lot of anger among Democrats about the fact that Biden should have stepped away a year earlier or more. 'That has real political ramifications. We're seeing it in the popularity of Zohran Mamdani in New York and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. It's not just their message which is appealing to so many but also the fact that they're anti-establishment. Biden and his gang have come to represent the corrupt Democratic establishment because of his last-minute abdication. You're seeing an anti-establishment revolt.' Biden's determination to cling on has been the subject of Democratic hand-wringing – and several books – though he insists he has no regrets. Many in the party wish he had stepped aside after the 2022 midterm elections so it could have held an open primary contest to find an heir apparent. Now Democrats find themselves leaderless and, according to a March poll, at a record low approval rating of 29%. Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist and political commentator, said: 'The real fallout was the lack of a clear successor to President Biden. 'Had there been a real primary process that would have been able to unfold over the course of a year and a half, it would have weeded out the contenders and pretenders and would have put forward a ticket that, even if they ended up losing, could still have been very much part of the conversation heading into 2028. Instead, we're starting 2028 already behind.' How elections are won and lost is always complex. With inflation and immigration looming large, there is no guarantee that another Democratic candidate would have beaten Trump. Nor will it ever be known how determinative his made-for-TV response to the assassination attempt was. But it did have some important consequences. Within minutes of the shooting, Elon Musk, the tech billionaire, announced his endorsement of the former president. Musk would go on to spend a record of about $280m in backing Trump and Republican candidates, then lead the president's assault on the federal bureaucracy until their spectacular falling-out. The Meta chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, also praised Trump's reaction, calling his raised fist 'one of the most badass things I've ever seen in my life'. Zuckerberg went on to attend Trump's inauguration and make changes to Meta such as ending third-party fact-checking, removing restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender identity and bringing political content back to users' feeds. The events of one year ago may also have shaped Trump's psychology, fuelling an impatient, seize-the-day approach to the presidency that sets the news agenda at breakneck speed, knocks opponents back on their heels and brooks no compromise. Olsen said: 'Trump dialed it up to 11 on his inauguration. A lot of that is the indirect influence of his survival of the assassination attempt. This is a man who is going with his instincts and going to do what he's going to do and not going to prioritise – he's going to push everything everywhere all at once.' Trump has survived legal troubles and taken on the elites and won, at least in his own mind, Olsen added. 'I don't think he thinks he's invincible but he feels vindicated. Coupled with a sense of vulnerability means this is a guy who knows that everything could end tomorrow and believes he's been proven right, so he's darn well going to use the time that he has left to him to move forward to do even more that he believes is right.'


The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Iran says it would resume nuclear talks if US guaranteed no further attacks – Middle East crisis live
Update: Date: 2025-07-13T09:25:45.000Z Title: Abbas Araghchi Content: June attacks by the US and Israel on Iran struck but did not fully destroy nuclear facilities Yohannes Lowe Sun 13 Jul 2025 11.25 CEST First published on Sun 13 Jul 2025 10.03 CEST From 10.03am CEST 10:03 Welcome to our live coverage of the Middle East, with a focus on the prospect of US-Iran nuclear talks restarting. According to state media, Iran's foreign minister, , said on Saturday that his country would be willing to re-engage in nuclear talks with Washington if there were assurances of no more attacks against it. Araghchi served as lead negotiator in the strained nuclear talks with the US over the summer, which collapsed after Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran's nuclear sites on 13 June, including at the key Natanz nuclear site as well as at ballistic missile sites. Referring to the subsequent 12-day Israeli bombardment of Iran's nuclear and military sites, and the US airstrike on 22 June, Araghchi said that if the US and others wish to resume talks with Iran, then: First of all, there should be a firm guarantee that such actions will not be repeated. The attack on Iran's nuclear facilities has made it more difficult and complicated to achieve a solution based on negotiations. Both Iran and the US struck Iranian nuclear facilities in June but did not destroy the Iranian nuclear programme, likely setting it back by a couple of months, according to an early Pentagon intelligence assessment of the attack. The Trump administration, which claims that Iranian nuclear facilities were completely destroyed in the attacks, insists that Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. Following the airstrikes, Iran suspended cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which led to the departure of inspectors. Iran says it is not developing nuclear weapons and that its enrichment of uranium is for peaceful purposes. Iran is maintaining a fragile ceasefire with the US and Israel but the risk exists of the crisis flaring up into further warfare unless a diplomatic agreement is found soon. We'll continue to bring you the latest developments and analysis throughout the day, stay with us. 11.25am CEST 11:25 Patrick Wintour The Guardian's diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, filed this report last week: European nations will act to impose 'dramatic sanctions' on Iran in the coming weeks if it does not end the uncertainty about its nuclear programme, including by allowing the return of UN inspectors, the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, has warned. He also told the Commons that Iran could not assume Israel would not strike its nuclear sites again. His tough warning was echoed by the French foreign ministry, which is working closely with the UK in an attempt to persuade Iran to end its new ambiguity about its nuclear intentions and re-engage in talks with the US. The UK, France and Germany – the E3 – signed the original nuclear deal with Iran in 2015 and according to its terms can impose 'snapback' UN sanctions without the risk of a security council veto, so long as they act by its expiry in October. Alternatively, they could table a UN resolution to delay the snapback by some months if Iran shows a willingness to negotiate. The three countries are also using their power to reimpose UN sanctions as a lever to persuade the US to join the talks with the Iranians, but have so far had no success. You can read the full story here: 10.47am CEST 10:47 Israel claims it acted because Tehran was within reach of a nuclear weapon. US intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency had assessed Iran last had an organised nuclear weapons program in 2003, though Tehran had been enriching uranium up to 60% — a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%. 10.38am CEST 10:38 During the 12-day war, Israeli airstrikes killed hundreds of people, including civilians, and injured thousands of others in Iran, according to official figures. As we have already mentioned, the war on Iran – cast as a preemptive attack for self-defence – was launched by Israel and later joined in by the US. Israel claimed the attacks were necessary before its adversary got any closer to building an atomic weapon, although experts and the US government had assessed that Iran was not actively working on such a weapon before the strikes. Israel has acknowledged being hit by more than 50 missiles during its war with Iran, resulting in at least 28 deaths, but the true extent of the damage may never be known due to stringent media restrictions. 10.20am CEST 10:20 The Iranian foreign minister's comments about the possibility of restarting nuclear talks follow Donald Trump's Monday meeting with his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, where he reportedly said he was open to lifting sanctions on Iran. Earlier this month, the US issued a new wave of sanctions against Iranian oil exports. 'I would love to be able to, at the right time, take those sanctions off,' Trump told a journalist at the White House on Monday night. During the meeting with Netanyahu, Trump also said he 'hoped' that the US would not strike Iran again. 'They want to work something out,' he said. 'They're very different now than they were two weeks ago.' Updated at 10.24am CEST 10.03am CEST 10:03 Welcome to our live coverage of the Middle East, with a focus on the prospect of US-Iran nuclear talks restarting. According to state media, Iran's foreign minister, , said on Saturday that his country would be willing to re-engage in nuclear talks with Washington if there were assurances of no more attacks against it. Araghchi served as lead negotiator in the strained nuclear talks with the US over the summer, which collapsed after Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran's nuclear sites on 13 June, including at the key Natanz nuclear site as well as at ballistic missile sites. Referring to the subsequent 12-day Israeli bombardment of Iran's nuclear and military sites, and the US airstrike on 22 June, Araghchi said that if the US and others wish to resume talks with Iran, then: First of all, there should be a firm guarantee that such actions will not be repeated. The attack on Iran's nuclear facilities has made it more difficult and complicated to achieve a solution based on negotiations. Both Iran and the US struck Iranian nuclear facilities in June but did not destroy the Iranian nuclear programme, likely setting it back by a couple of months, according to an early Pentagon intelligence assessment of the attack. The Trump administration, which claims that Iranian nuclear facilities were completely destroyed in the attacks, insists that Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. Following the airstrikes, Iran suspended cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which led to the departure of inspectors. Iran says it is not developing nuclear weapons and that its enrichment of uranium is for peaceful purposes. Iran is maintaining a fragile ceasefire with the US and Israel but the risk exists of the crisis flaring up into further warfare unless a diplomatic agreement is found soon. We'll continue to bring you the latest developments and analysis throughout the day, stay with us.