Latest news with #DOJ memo
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Deputy Attorney General to meet today with Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell
U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche is meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's former girlfriend, on Thursday in Florida, where she is serving time for her role in their sex trafficking scheme to abuse girls, according to a CNN report. Blanche had announced Tuesday that he had contacted Maxwell's attorneys to pursue any potential new leads as Trump's MAGA base excoriates the administration over its handling of the so-called 'Epstein Files.' A July 6 DOJ memo had concluded there were no more significant disclosures to be made in the case. Maxwell will be transported from Florida Correctional Institution-Tallahassee, where she is being held, to the U.S. attorney's office, which is located inside Tallahassee's federal courthouse, ABC News reported. Blanche declined to comment at the courthouse on Thursday morning but David Oscar Markus, an attorney for Maxwell, told ABC: "We're looking forward to a productive day.' Maxwell, 63, was sentenced to 20 years in 2021 for her role in a scheme to sexually exploit and abuse multiple girls with Epstein and is serving time at the federal prison. Her attorneys have taken an appeal of her conviction to the Supreme Court. On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that President Donald Trump was told in May by Attorney General Pam Bondi that his name appeared in the Epstein Files 'multiple times'. The president denied to reporters earlier this month that his name was in the files. Appearing in the files does not indicate that an individual has committed any wrongdoing, nor has Trump ever been accused of misconduct in connection with the Epstein case. 'This is another fake news story, just like the previous story by The Wall Street Journal,' White House communications director Steven Cheung told the WSJ about the claims Trump was named in the files. The president has filed a $10 billion defamation suit against the WSJ and its owners after it published a report last week claiming that Trump gave Epstein a bawdy birthday card in 2003. Trump has vehemently denied the claims. On Tuesday, the House Oversight Committee approved a subpoena for Maxwell. At the White House later that day, Trump said that the subpoena for Maxwell "sounds appropriate." Maxwell's brother praised Trump this week for making a 'positive statement' about his sister, in an interview five years ago, when the president said: 'I wish her well.' Appearing on Piers Morgan Uncensored, Ian Maxwell hailed Trump's 2020 remark. 'I don't think that anyone else showed the slightest piece of humanity, not anybody at that time, and yet he did. He didn't need to. He's the president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world. He could've just sloughed it off. He didn't. He made a positive statement. I am very grateful to that and I know Ghislaine was too,' he said. Last week, Trump requested Bondi release 'any and all pertinent' grand jury transcripts related to the Epstein case. So far two judges have denied Bondi's requests on legal grounds. The White House has been trying to quell the uproar, including from its MAGA base, following the DOJ's July 6 memo, which stated there was no 'client list' of high-profile associates linked to Epstein's sex trafficking scheme. The memo also confirmed the official investigation that the sex offender died by suicide in 2019 and said no further investigations were needed. Earlier this year, Bondi has said she had a 'truckload' of files to review from the FBI, and insinuated that the 'client list' was sitting on her desk. In February, she released 'Phase 1' of the files, a tranche of documents that included mostly publicly available information. After the July 6 DOJ memo was released, the president's MAGA following erupted, demanding more information. Democrats, as well as prominent members of Trump's own party, including his former Vice President Mike Pence, joined the calls for increased transparency around the case. Trump has pushed for the media and his supporters to move on. 'Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for years. You're asking — we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things. And are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable,' Trump replied to a reporter, who asked him about the Epstein memo at a Cabinet meeting on July 8. The president has used Truth Social to blast his 'past supporters' for buying into 'this 'bulls***,' hook, line and sinker.' He wrote: 'Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats' work, don't even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don't want their support anymore!' Earlier this week, a CNN reporter called Trump to ask about unearthed archived photos capturing Epstein at his 1993 wedding to Marla Maples, the president replied: 'You've got to be kidding me.' The phone call lasted just 30 seconds before Trump hung up, the network reported. Solve the daily Crossword
The Verge
15-07-2025
- Politics
- The Verge
The MAGA backlash over Epstein isn't dying down
On July 12th, the political world experienced an unprecedented phenomenon: President Donald Trump got ratioed on his own social media platform, and it was on a post about Jeffrey Epstein — someone who, according to Trump, 'nobody cares about.' Clearly, his followers on Truth Social disagreed. As of today, this post has 43.2k likes, 13.7k ReTruths, and 48K comments, nearly all of which express fury about the information — or lack thereof — that the Trump administration has provided about the well-connected billionaire, who died in prison shortly after being arrested for alleged sex trafficking of minors. Last week, after months of promises to release more information about the Epstein investigation, the Department of Justice and FBI released a joint memo, stating that there was no list of high-powered 'clients' who joined Epstein in his activities, no evidence that Epstein blackmailed anybody, and that Epstein did actually die by suicide. Even though Trump's Truth Social post was trying to address the attacks on Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was partly responsible for publishing the Epstein memo (and, according to conspiracy theorists, the reason why the supposed client list isn't being made public), his followers didn't care. 'We want the ELITE PEDOS exposed! You promised us that,' one user responded, in a post with 19.6K likes. 'Pam promised us that. Kash [Patel, FBI Director] promised us that. Now it's OUR fault bc we want that promise fulfilled and call Pam out every time she lies? What else has she lied to us about?' The like-to-comment ratio shows how thoroughly the Epstein files have jeopardized the MAGA base's relationship with Trump. Over the past several months, the administration has had mixed success in keeping the populist base in its corner, due to things like Trump's tariffs and the 'big, beautiful bill,' to the point that the possibility of a 'MAGA civil war' keeps emerging in the news cycle. Most times, those brewing fights get extinguished before they go further. But the backlash to the Epstein files is unusually fierce and may not be extinguished as easily, if at all. The source of the conflagration: the world of MAGA influencers, whose audiences implicitly trust them to carry out the 'America First' agenda. Their status and functions vary wildly: media moguls like Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, and Steve Bannon; solo talents like Laura Loomer, Candace Owens, and Nick Fuentes; political organizers like Charlie Kirk; content creators like Cattturd; and hundreds of others who've established lucrative careers by attacking the globalist elite online. They're normally pro-Trump, and many of them now have access to the White House. Some of them even brag about having Trump's cell phone number. But now they won't stop talking about how angry they are about the flimsiness of the Epstein files, which means their followers won't let go of it either. 'The real question is not 'was Jeffrey Epstein a weirdo who was abusing girls?' The real question is why was he doing this, on whose behalf, and where did the money come from,' Carlson said during a keynote speech at a Turning Point USA summit on July 11th. He then insinuated that Epstein was running a blackmail operation on behalf of a foreign government — possibly Israel, though he caveated with 'there's nothing antisemitic about saying that' and that 'every single person in Washington, DC,' suspected that Epstein was a Mossad asset. Bannon agreed with him at the same conference, while Loomer, who once got three members of the National Security Council fired, called for Bondi to be fired, accusing her of 'harming Trump's administration [and] embarrassing all of his staff and advisors.' Even the influencers that wield direct government power are starting to revolt. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene demanded that the administration reveal the truth about Epstein 'and the rich powerful elites in his circle.' And last week, several mainstream outlets reported that Dan Bongino, a right-wing podcaster who was appointed to serve as deputy director of the FBI, had threatened to resign unless Bondi was fired. According to Axios, Bongino was so upset about the rollout of the Epstein evidence — including a video taken of Epstein's cell phone on the day of his death, which had a full minute missing from it, fueling even more conspiracy theories — that he screamed at her in front of Trump and his senior advisors, and then took a day off from work. Trump's 10-year relationship with the MAGA base has been an endless cycle of breaking and making up: Trump does something that infuriates the base, they revolt, Trump smooths things over, and the base goes back to loving the president. In every case, he's always assisted by a network of online MAGA influencers who are effectively his proxies — enforcing message discipline when interacting with their audiences, amplifying his talking points, defending him from his haters, and making sure the base sticks with him no matter what. But the strength of an influencer, especially a MAGA influencer, is that they don't have to rely on elite-controlled media — cable and broadcast news, print journalism, etc. — to build their massive followings. In fact, they could use their internet platforms to hold those powerful elites accountable, touting themselves as 'independent' content creators, which works exceedingly well when they can present themselves as outsiders deliberately shut out of the system and therefore need subscribers to pay a monthly fee to support their mission. Unfortunately, they now have unprecedented access to the president, which makes them insiders with power — and their followers sure would love for them to use it to get to the bottom of things. It doesn't help that there's no 'deep state' to hide behind this time, and it may be the reason why QAnon — another powerful conspiracy theory that involved pedophile elites in Washington — hasn't revived itself. Trump could easily attack the career agents at the FBI and DOJ for investigating him during his first term, but upon his reelection, he purged those agencies and immediately chose MAGA influencer loyalists to run them. (Prior to becoming FBI director, Patel had a podcast, wrote a children's book about 'King Donald,' and opened his own merch store.) The Epstein files have scrambled MAGA influencers, who now have to decide what is more important to them: access and loyalty to Trump or maintaining their brand It's no wonder why the Epstein files have scrambled MAGA influencers, who now have to decide what is more important to them: access and loyalty to Trump or maintaining their brand. If they want to stay loyal to their followers and their brand reputation, they should be trying to get to the truth of Epstein's death. But if they were trying to do that — or at least, convincing their insatiable audience that they were working on it — it would jeopardize their relationship with the Trump administration, or worse, Trump himself. The cullings are already underway, if Alex Jones is to be believed. On July 13th, he alleged that Trumpworld surrogates had started reaching out to 'talk show hosts and journalists and influencers,' threatening to cut off their access if they kept going on about Epstein. 'You'll never be invited to a Trump event again. You'll never be invited to the White House. You'll never be any other stuff. You're not getting any conservative sponsorship, no campaign contribution, ads running next cycle if you do this. That's been going on,' Jones claimed. 'That, A, is not very moral, that's how the Democrats try to censor and control, and then B, it's gonna create a mega-Streisand effect, as I said seven, eight days ago. And that is exactly what all of this has done.' A few of the influencers, however, are circling the wagons again. 'Honestly, I'm done talking about Epstein for the time being. I'm going to trust my friends in the administration. I'm going to trust my friends in the government to do what needs to be done,' Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk said on his podcast yesterday, reiterating that he would support whatever the Trump administration concluded on the matter. Kirk, a key player in Trump's political machine, also distanced himself from Carlson's Epstein conspiracies, which were made at his youth group's conference. 'I think that there was plenty of, let's say, speeches that were directed towards this topic this last weekend. So we don't need to spend our valuable time on this program relitigating it,' Kirk said. Around that time, other influencers began attempting to deflect the Epstein flack Around that time, other influencers began attempting to deflect the Epstein flack: promising that the government was about to start a real investigation soon (Benny Johnson), attacking Carlson as 'not trustworthy' and 'obsessed [with] making everything about Jews' (Loomer), suggesting that maybe 'demons' were at work and not the government (Mike Cernovich), or hyping up a new discovery about Lee Harvey Oswald and the CIA (Rep. Anna Paulina Luna). But a growing faction of influencers are going the other way with Carlson, Greene, and Jones: Candace Owens, who's attacking the former Israeli prime minster about the Mossad; Matt Walsh, who wants the 'evildoers [to] be dragged in front of us, weeping and begging for mercy'; white nationalist Nick Fuentes, who accused TPUSA world of 'appeasing' a base that wanted 'authentic opposition to organized Jewish influence'; and Tim Pool, who pointed out the strange new messaging coming out of the White House influencer pool, 'After speaking with my friends in government and also private island equity holdings I have decided that no one cares about Epstein anyway. I mean, like who? Lol who's Epstein amirite?'
