ReportWire

Tag: Ghislaine Maxwell

  • Bill Clinton faces grilling from lawmakers over his connections to Jeffrey Epstein

    [ad_1]

    Former President Bill Clinton is testifying Friday before members of Congress investigating convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, answering for his connections to the disgraced financier from more than two decades ago.The closed-door deposition in Chappaqua, New York, will mark the first time a former president has been compelled to testify to Congress. It comes a day after Clinton’s wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sat with lawmakers for her own deposition.Bill Clinton has also not been accused of any wrongdoing. Yet lawmakers are grappling with what accountability in the United States looks like at a time when men around the world have been toppled from their high-powered posts for maintaining their connections with Epstein after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges in Florida for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.Hillary Clinton told lawmakers that she had no knowledge of how Epstein had sexually abused underage girls and had no recollection of even meeting him. But Bill Clinton will have to answer questions on a well-documented relationship with Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, even if it was from the late 1990s and early 2000s.Hillary Clinton said Thursday that she expected her husband to testify that he had no knowledge of Epstein’s sexual abuse at the time they knew each other.Republicans were relishing the opportunity to scrutinize the former Democratic president under oath.“The Clintons haven’t answered very many, if any, questions about their knowledge or involvement with Epstein and Maxwell,” Rep. James Comer, the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, said Thursday.“No one’s accusing, at this moment, the Clintons of any wrongdoing,” he added.Republicans finally get a chance to question Bill ClintonRepublicans have wanted to question Bill Clinton about Epstein for years, especially as conspiracy theories arose following Epstein’s 2019 suicide in a New York jail cell while he faced sex trafficking charges.Those calls reached a fever pitch late last year when several photos of the former president surfaced in the Department of Justice’s first release of case files on Epstein and Maxwell, a British socialite who was convicted of sex trafficking in December 2021 but maintains she’s innocent. Bill Clinton was photographed on a plane seated alongside a woman, whose face is redacted, with his arm around her. Another photo showed Clinton and Maxwell in a pool with another person whose face was redacted.Epstein also visited the White House several times during Clinton’s presidency, and the pair later made several international trips together for their humanitarian work.In the lead-up to the deposition, Bill Clinton has insisted he had limited knowledge about Epstein and was unaware of any sexual abuse he committed.“I think the chronology of the connection that he had with Epstein ended several years before anything about Epstein’s criminal activities came to light,” Hillary Clinton said at the conclusion of her deposition Thursday.Comer has pledged extensive questioning of the former president. He claimed that Hillary Clinton had repeatedly deferred questions about Epstein to her husband.Has a precedent been set?Democrats, who have supported the push to get answers from Bill Clinton, are arguing that it sets a precedent that should also apply to President Donald Trump, a Republican who had his own relationship with Epstein.“We’re demanding immediately that we ask President Trump to testify in front of our committee and be deposed in front of Oversight Republicans and Democrats,” Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the committee, said Thursday.Comer has pushed back on that idea, saying that Trump has answered questions on Epstein from the press.Democrats are also calling for the resignation of Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Lutnick was a longtime neighbor of Epstein in New York City but said on a podcast that he severed ties with Epstein following a 2005 tour of Epstein’s home that disturbed Lutnick and his wife.The public release of case files showed that Lutnick actually had two engagements with Epstein years later. He attended a 2011 event at Epstein’s home, and in 2012 his family had lunch with Epstein on his private island.“He should be removed from office and at a minimum should come before the committee,” Garcia said of Lutnick.Comer on Thursday said that it was “very possible” that Lutnick would be called to testify.

    CHAPPAQUA, N.Y. —

    Former President Bill Clinton is testifying Friday before members of Congress investigating convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, answering for his connections to the disgraced financier from more than two decades ago.

    The closed-door deposition in Chappaqua, New York, will mark the first time a former president has been compelled to testify to Congress. It comes a day after Clinton’s wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sat with lawmakers for her own deposition.

    Bill Clinton has also not been accused of any wrongdoing. Yet lawmakers are grappling with what accountability in the United States looks like at a time when men around the world have been toppled from their high-powered posts for maintaining their connections with Epstein after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges in Florida for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.

    Hillary Clinton told lawmakers that she had no knowledge of how Epstein had sexually abused underage girls and had no recollection of even meeting him. But Bill Clinton will have to answer questions on a well-documented relationship with Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, even if it was from the late 1990s and early 2000s.

    Hillary Clinton said Thursday that she expected her husband to testify that he had no knowledge of Epstein’s sexual abuse at the time they knew each other.

    Republicans were relishing the opportunity to scrutinize the former Democratic president under oath.

    “The Clintons haven’t answered very many, if any, questions about their knowledge or involvement with Epstein and Maxwell,” Rep. James Comer, the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, said Thursday.

    “No one’s accusing, at this moment, the Clintons of any wrongdoing,” he added.

    Republicans finally get a chance to question Bill Clinton

    Republicans have wanted to question Bill Clinton about Epstein for years, especially as conspiracy theories arose following Epstein’s 2019 suicide in a New York jail cell while he faced sex trafficking charges.

    Those calls reached a fever pitch late last year when several photos of the former president surfaced in the Department of Justice’s first release of case files on Epstein and Maxwell, a British socialite who was convicted of sex trafficking in December 2021 but maintains she’s innocent. Bill Clinton was photographed on a plane seated alongside a woman, whose face is redacted, with his arm around her. Another photo showed Clinton and Maxwell in a pool with another person whose face was redacted.

    Epstein also visited the White House several times during Clinton’s presidency, and the pair later made several international trips together for their humanitarian work.

    In the lead-up to the deposition, Bill Clinton has insisted he had limited knowledge about Epstein and was unaware of any sexual abuse he committed.

    “I think the chronology of the connection that he had with Epstein ended several years before anything about Epstein’s criminal activities came to light,” Hillary Clinton said at the conclusion of her deposition Thursday.

    Comer has pledged extensive questioning of the former president. He claimed that Hillary Clinton had repeatedly deferred questions about Epstein to her husband.

    Has a precedent been set?

    Democrats, who have supported the push to get answers from Bill Clinton, are arguing that it sets a precedent that should also apply to President Donald Trump, a Republican who had his own relationship with Epstein.

    “We’re demanding immediately that we ask President Trump to testify in front of our committee and be deposed in front of Oversight Republicans and Democrats,” Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the committee, said Thursday.

    Comer has pushed back on that idea, saying that Trump has answered questions on Epstein from the press.

    Democrats are also calling for the resignation of Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Lutnick was a longtime neighbor of Epstein in New York City but said on a podcast that he severed ties with Epstein following a 2005 tour of Epstein’s home that disturbed Lutnick and his wife.

    The public release of case files showed that Lutnick actually had two engagements with Epstein years later. He attended a 2011 event at Epstein’s home, and in 2012 his family had lunch with Epstein on his private island.

    “He should be removed from office and at a minimum should come before the committee,” Garcia said of Lutnick.

    Comer on Thursday said that it was “very possible” that Lutnick would be called to testify.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Bill and Hillary Clinton face House showdown over Epstein ties

    [ad_1]

    For some of their conservative critics, this is the scandal that could finally topple them. Their resistance to testifying proved futile. And now, staring down another epic fight, they’re harnessing their considerable political skills to try to turn the tables on their accusers.For Bill and Hillary Clinton, the 1990s are back.The Clintons are slated to testify Thursday and Friday in a House investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, part of a deal with Republicans after it became clear that Congress — with the help of some Democrats — was on track to hold them in contempt if they refused to cooperate. For the battle-hardened couple, it amounts to one more Washington brawl. And like so many of the battles that came before, this one is another mix of questionable judgment, sexual impropriety, money and power.Video above: Justice Department releases more than 3 million items in final batch of Epstein filesDuring his 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton pitched his candidacy as “two for the price of one,” previewing a presidential marriage like none that had come before, with a spouse whose professional credentials rivaled his. In the years since, that partnership helped the Clintons weather repeated scandals, including those so personal that many other relationships would have shattered. When his political career was ending, hers was ascending when she was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York, then served as secretary of state before becoming the Democratic nominee for president in 2016.For those who have long watched the Clintons, this moment is a reminder that the couple — weaned on the politics of the Vietnam War and Watergate — has never been far from the heat of a cultural fight. And with the Epstein case unfolding unpredictably around the world, the Clintons are once again ensnared in the scandal of the moment.“It’s kind of a sad but fitting coda to extraordinary political lives,” said David Maraniss, who has written two biographies of Bill Clinton.There’s no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of either Clinton when it comes to Epstein, a convicted sex offender who committed suicide in 2019 while he was in jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.But Epstein had ties to Bill Clinton for years, visiting the White House multiple times in the 1990s, according to visitor logs. After Clinton left office, Epstein was involved in his philanthropy and the former president flew multiple times on his private jet.“Traveling on Epstein’s plane was not worth the years of questioning afterward,” Bill Clinton wrote in his 2024 memoir. “I wish I had never met him.”Bill Clinton’s ties to EpsteinBy last summer, the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas for the Clintons. For months, Bill Clinton, 79, and Hillary Clinton, 78, largely ignored the matter in public, but that became harder to sustain in December when the former president was featured prominently in the first batch of Epstein files.Among thousands of documents made public, some photos showed him on a private plane, including one with a woman, whose face is redacted, seated alongside him with her arm around him. Another showed Bill Clinton in a pool with Epstein’s longtime confidant, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, and a person whose face was redacted. Yet another photo portrayed Bill Clinton in a hot tub with a woman whose face was redacted.The oversight panel’s chairman, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, threatened to hold the Clintons in contempt if they didn’t comply with the subpoenas, a historic move considering a former president has never been compelled to appear before Congress. Between his first and second terms, Donald Trump invoked that precedent to fend off a subpoena from the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.While there was no context surrounding the photos of Bill Clinton, they underscored how his political promise has always been tempered by personal indiscretions.The 1992 campaign that represented the emerging preeminence of the Baby Boom generation was the same one dogged by rumors of an affair with Gennifer Flowers. A presidency largely defined by economic prosperity was nearly derailed when Clinton was impeached in 1998 for lying under oath and obstructing justice when he denied engaging in a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.Each time, many Republicans thought they finally found leverage over the Clintons. But each time, the Clintons found a way out of the vise.Asa Hutchinson, the former Republican congressman from Arkansas who was a House manager during Clinton’s impeachment trial, described the couple as “a smart lawyer and brilliant communicator.”The Clinton playbook: fight back fiercelyAs each crisis surfaced, a pattern emerged: the Clintons fiercely denied the allegations and often dismissed women who came forward with claims. They villainized the GOP and re-centered the public’s attention on more favorable themes like the booming economy of the era.Bill Clinton, who famously told voters “I feel your pain,” always managed to stay connected with the public. Indeed, he enjoyed some of the highest approval numbers of his presidency during his impeachment inquiry and trial, when about 7 in 10 U.S. adults approved of the way he was handling his job.Hillary Clinton similarly dispatched Republicans who sensed an opening in her handling of a 2012 attack on a compound in Libya that killed four Americans. She came out of an 11-hour televised congressional hearing in 2015 appearing poised. Even the Republican chair of the committee probing the attack said he wasn’t sure she revealed anything new about an issue many in his party considered a scandal.That experience has informed how the Clintons are approaching this week’s testimony. Hillary Clinton has been especially vocal in calling for the proceedings to happen in public, rather than in private as Comer currently plans.“We have nothing to hide,” she told the BBC earlier this month.Bill Clinton’s communication operation has taken a sharper tone, recalling the political “war room” popularized during the 1992 campaign to respond to negative storylines.One release accused Comer of “lying in every appearance he’s made this week.” Another mocked GOP Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs of Arizona with a “hypocrisy award of the day,” noting how the Oversight Committee members defied subpoenas from the Jan. 6 panel.Meanwhile, the Clintons released a four-page letter to Comer on social media defiantly belittling a process they said was “literally designed to result in our imprisonment.”Much as they tried to refocus attention during the 1990s, the letter hit the White House for dismantling institutions, imposing a harsh immigration crackdown and pardoning those involved in the Capitol riot.Conservative attacks on the ClintonsThe Clintons’ rise to power paralleled the explosion of talk radio as a political force, with Rush Limbaugh using his daily show as a platform to constantly berate the White House. Today, conservative podcasters like Benny Johnson have filled Limbaugh’s space and were gleeful after the House panel moved last month to hold the couple in contempt.“Do you understand Donald Trump made good on his oldest promise arguably which is he told all of us 10 years ago that Hillary Clinton would be going to jail?” Johnson said last month.Still, some dynamics have changed.The lockstep support the Clintons enjoyed among congressional Democrats has eroded as a new generation of lawmakers has taken office — nine Democrats joined with Republicans on the House committee to advance the contempt resolution. Trump, who has faced scrutiny over his own ties to Epstein and may be uncomfortable with the precedent of forcing a former president to testify, has expressed rare concern for the Clintons.He told NBC News that it “bothers me that somebody is going after Bill Clinton.” He has described Hillary Clinton as a “very capable woman.”Even Hutchinson, who helped make the case for Bill Clinton’s impeachment, expressed sympathy for the couple.“It’s frustrating and disappointing that President Clinton and Secretary Clinton are having to go through this fact-finding ordeal,” he said. “That’s difficult for them.”

    WASHINGTON —

    For some of their conservative critics, this is the scandal that could finally topple them. Their resistance to testifying proved futile. And now, staring down another epic fight, they’re harnessing their considerable political skills to try to turn the tables on their accusers.

    For Bill and Hillary Clinton, the 1990s are back.

    The Clintons are slated to testify Thursday and Friday in a House investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, part of a deal with Republicans after it became clear that Congress — with the help of some Democrats — was on track to hold them in contempt if they refused to cooperate. For the battle-hardened couple, it amounts to one more Washington brawl. And like so many of the battles that came before, this one is another mix of questionable judgment, sexual impropriety, money and power.

    Video above: Justice Department releases more than 3 million items in final batch of Epstein files

    During his 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton pitched his candidacy as “two for the price of one,” previewing a presidential marriage like none that had come before, with a spouse whose professional credentials rivaled his. In the years since, that partnership helped the Clintons weather repeated scandals, including those so personal that many other relationships would have shattered. When his political career was ending, hers was ascending when she was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York, then served as secretary of state before becoming the Democratic nominee for president in 2016.

    For those who have long watched the Clintons, this moment is a reminder that the couple — weaned on the politics of the Vietnam War and Watergate — has never been far from the heat of a cultural fight. And with the Epstein case unfolding unpredictably around the world, the Clintons are once again ensnared in the scandal of the moment.

    “It’s kind of a sad but fitting coda to extraordinary political lives,” said David Maraniss, who has written two biographies of Bill Clinton.

    There’s no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of either Clinton when it comes to Epstein, a convicted sex offender who committed suicide in 2019 while he was in jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

    But Epstein had ties to Bill Clinton for years, visiting the White House multiple times in the 1990s, according to visitor logs. After Clinton left office, Epstein was involved in his philanthropy and the former president flew multiple times on his private jet.

    “Traveling on Epstein’s plane was not worth the years of questioning afterward,” Bill Clinton wrote in his 2024 memoir. “I wish I had never met him.”

    Bill Clinton’s ties to Epstein

    By last summer, the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas for the Clintons. For months, Bill Clinton, 79, and Hillary Clinton, 78, largely ignored the matter in public, but that became harder to sustain in December when the former president was featured prominently in the first batch of Epstein files.

    Among thousands of documents made public, some photos showed him on a private plane, including one with a woman, whose face is redacted, seated alongside him with her arm around him. Another showed Bill Clinton in a pool with Epstein’s longtime confidant, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, and a person whose face was redacted. Yet another photo portrayed Bill Clinton in a hot tub with a woman whose face was redacted.

    The oversight panel’s chairman, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, threatened to hold the Clintons in contempt if they didn’t comply with the subpoenas, a historic move considering a former president has never been compelled to appear before Congress. Between his first and second terms, Donald Trump invoked that precedent to fend off a subpoena from the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

    While there was no context surrounding the photos of Bill Clinton, they underscored how his political promise has always been tempered by personal indiscretions.

    The 1992 campaign that represented the emerging preeminence of the Baby Boom generation was the same one dogged by rumors of an affair with Gennifer Flowers. A presidency largely defined by economic prosperity was nearly derailed when Clinton was impeached in 1998 for lying under oath and obstructing justice when he denied engaging in a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

    Each time, many Republicans thought they finally found leverage over the Clintons. But each time, the Clintons found a way out of the vise.

    Asa Hutchinson, the former Republican congressman from Arkansas who was a House manager during Clinton’s impeachment trial, described the couple as “a smart lawyer and brilliant communicator.”

    The Clinton playbook: fight back fiercely

    As each crisis surfaced, a pattern emerged: the Clintons fiercely denied the allegations and often dismissed women who came forward with claims. They villainized the GOP and re-centered the public’s attention on more favorable themes like the booming economy of the era.

    Bill Clinton, who famously told voters “I feel your pain,” always managed to stay connected with the public. Indeed, he enjoyed some of the highest approval numbers of his presidency during his impeachment inquiry and trial, when about 7 in 10 U.S. adults approved of the way he was handling his job.

    Hillary Clinton similarly dispatched Republicans who sensed an opening in her handling of a 2012 attack on a compound in Libya that killed four Americans. She came out of an 11-hour televised congressional hearing in 2015 appearing poised. Even the Republican chair of the committee probing the attack said he wasn’t sure she revealed anything new about an issue many in his party considered a scandal.

    That experience has informed how the Clintons are approaching this week’s testimony. Hillary Clinton has been especially vocal in calling for the proceedings to happen in public, rather than in private as Comer currently plans.

    “We have nothing to hide,” she told the BBC earlier this month.

    Bill Clinton’s communication operation has taken a sharper tone, recalling the political “war room” popularized during the 1992 campaign to respond to negative storylines.

    One release accused Comer of “lying in every appearance he’s made this week.” Another mocked GOP Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs of Arizona with a “hypocrisy award of the day,” noting how the Oversight Committee members defied subpoenas from the Jan. 6 panel.

    Meanwhile, the Clintons released a four-page letter to Comer on social media defiantly belittling a process they said was “literally designed to result in our imprisonment.”

    Much as they tried to refocus attention during the 1990s, the letter hit the White House for dismantling institutions, imposing a harsh immigration crackdown and pardoning those involved in the Capitol riot.

    Conservative attacks on the Clintons

    The Clintons’ rise to power paralleled the explosion of talk radio as a political force, with Rush Limbaugh using his daily show as a platform to constantly berate the White House. Today, conservative podcasters like Benny Johnson have filled Limbaugh’s space and were gleeful after the House panel moved last month to hold the couple in contempt.

    “Do you understand Donald Trump made good on his oldest promise arguably which is he told all of us 10 years ago that Hillary Clinton would be going to jail?” Johnson said last month.

    Still, some dynamics have changed.

    The lockstep support the Clintons enjoyed among congressional Democrats has eroded as a new generation of lawmakers has taken office — nine Democrats joined with Republicans on the House committee to advance the contempt resolution. Trump, who has faced scrutiny over his own ties to Epstein and may be uncomfortable with the precedent of forcing a former president to testify, has expressed rare concern for the Clintons.

    He told NBC News that it “bothers me that somebody is going after Bill Clinton.” He has described Hillary Clinton as a “very capable woman.”

    Even Hutchinson, who helped make the case for Bill Clinton’s impeachment, expressed sympathy for the couple.

    “It’s frustrating and disappointing that President Clinton and Secretary Clinton are having to go through this fact-finding ordeal,” he said. “That’s difficult for them.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Bill and Hillary Clinton face House showdown over Epstein ties

    [ad_1]

    For some of their conservative critics, this is the scandal that could finally topple them. Their resistance to testifying proved futile. And now, staring down another epic fight, they’re harnessing their considerable political skills to try to turn the tables on their accusers.For Bill and Hillary Clinton, the 1990s are back.The Clintons are slated to testify Thursday and Friday in a House investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, part of a deal with Republicans after it became clear that Congress — with the help of some Democrats — was on track to hold them in contempt if they refused to cooperate. For the battle-hardened couple, it amounts to one more Washington brawl. And like so many of the battles that came before, this one is another mix of questionable judgment, sexual impropriety, money and power.Video above: Justice Department releases more than 3 million items in final batch of Epstein filesDuring his 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton pitched his candidacy as “two for the price of one,” previewing a presidential marriage like none that had come before, with a spouse whose professional credentials rivaled his. In the years since, that partnership helped the Clintons weather repeated scandals, including those so personal that many other relationships would have shattered. When his political career was ending, hers was ascending when she was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York, then served as secretary of state before becoming the Democratic nominee for president in 2016.For those who have long watched the Clintons, this moment is a reminder that the couple — weaned on the politics of the Vietnam War and Watergate — has never been far from the heat of a cultural fight. And with the Epstein case unfolding unpredictably around the world, the Clintons are once again ensnared in the scandal of the moment.“It’s kind of a sad but fitting coda to extraordinary political lives,” said David Maraniss, who has written two biographies of Bill Clinton.There’s no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of either Clinton when it comes to Epstein, a convicted sex offender who committed suicide in 2019 while he was in jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.But Epstein had ties to Bill Clinton for years, visiting the White House multiple times in the 1990s, according to visitor logs. After Clinton left office, Epstein was involved in his philanthropy and the former president flew multiple times on his private jet.“Traveling on Epstein’s plane was not worth the years of questioning afterward,” Bill Clinton wrote in his 2024 memoir. “I wish I had never met him.”Bill Clinton’s ties to EpsteinBy last summer, the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas for the Clintons. For months, Bill Clinton, 79, and Hillary Clinton, 78, largely ignored the matter in public, but that became harder to sustain in December when the former president was featured prominently in the first batch of Epstein files.Among thousands of documents made public, some photos showed him on a private plane, including one with a woman, whose face is redacted, seated alongside him with her arm around him. Another showed Bill Clinton in a pool with Epstein’s longtime confidant, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, and a person whose face was redacted. Yet another photo portrayed Bill Clinton in a hot tub with a woman whose face was redacted.The oversight panel’s chairman, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, threatened to hold the Clintons in contempt if they didn’t comply with the subpoenas, a historic move considering a former president has never been compelled to appear before Congress. Between his first and second terms, Donald Trump invoked that precedent to fend off a subpoena from the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.While there was no context surrounding the photos of Bill Clinton, they underscored how his political promise has always been tempered by personal indiscretions.The 1992 campaign that represented the emerging preeminence of the Baby Boom generation was the same one dogged by rumors of an affair with Gennifer Flowers. A presidency largely defined by economic prosperity was nearly derailed when Clinton was impeached in 1998 for lying under oath and obstructing justice when he denied engaging in a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.Each time, many Republicans thought they finally found leverage over the Clintons. But each time, the Clintons found a way out of the vise.Asa Hutchinson, the former Republican congressman from Arkansas who was a House manager during Clinton’s impeachment trial, described the couple as “a smart lawyer and brilliant communicator.”The Clinton playbook: fight back fiercelyAs each crisis surfaced, a pattern emerged: the Clintons fiercely denied the allegations and often dismissed women who came forward with claims. They villainized the GOP and re-centered the public’s attention on more favorable themes like the booming economy of the era.Bill Clinton, who famously told voters “I feel your pain,” always managed to stay connected with the public. Indeed, he enjoyed some of the highest approval numbers of his presidency during his impeachment inquiry and trial, when about 7 in 10 U.S. adults approved of the way he was handling his job.Hillary Clinton similarly dispatched Republicans who sensed an opening in her handling of a 2012 attack on a compound in Libya that killed four Americans. She came out of an 11-hour televised congressional hearing in 2015 appearing poised. Even the Republican chair of the committee probing the attack said he wasn’t sure she revealed anything new about an issue many in his party considered a scandal.That experience has informed how the Clintons are approaching this week’s testimony. Hillary Clinton has been especially vocal in calling for the proceedings to happen in public, rather than in private as Comer currently plans.“We have nothing to hide,” she told the BBC earlier this month.Bill Clinton’s communication operation has taken a sharper tone, recalling the political “war room” popularized during the 1992 campaign to respond to negative storylines.One release accused Comer of “lying in every appearance he’s made this week.” Another mocked GOP Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs of Arizona with a “hypocrisy award of the day,” noting how the Oversight Committee members defied subpoenas from the Jan. 6 panel.Meanwhile, the Clintons released a four-page letter to Comer on social media defiantly belittling a process they said was “literally designed to result in our imprisonment.”Much as they tried to refocus attention during the 1990s, the letter hit the White House for dismantling institutions, imposing a harsh immigration crackdown and pardoning those involved in the Capitol riot.Conservative attacks on the ClintonsThe Clintons’ rise to power paralleled the explosion of talk radio as a political force, with Rush Limbaugh using his daily show as a platform to constantly berate the White House. Today, conservative podcasters like Benny Johnson have filled Limbaugh’s space and were gleeful after the House panel moved last month to hold the couple in contempt.“Do you understand Donald Trump made good on his oldest promise arguably which is he told all of us 10 years ago that Hillary Clinton would be going to jail?” Johnson said last month.Still, some dynamics have changed.The lockstep support the Clintons enjoyed among congressional Democrats has eroded as a new generation of lawmakers has taken office — nine Democrats joined with Republicans on the House committee to advance the contempt resolution. Trump, who has faced scrutiny over his own ties to Epstein and may be uncomfortable with the precedent of forcing a former president to testify, has expressed rare concern for the Clintons.He told NBC News that it “bothers me that somebody is going after Bill Clinton.” He has described Hillary Clinton as a “very capable woman.”Even Hutchinson, who helped make the case for Bill Clinton’s impeachment, expressed sympathy for the couple.“It’s frustrating and disappointing that President Clinton and Secretary Clinton are having to go through this fact-finding ordeal,” he said. “That’s difficult for them.”

    WASHINGTON —

    For some of their conservative critics, this is the scandal that could finally topple them. Their resistance to testifying proved futile. And now, staring down another epic fight, they’re harnessing their considerable political skills to try to turn the tables on their accusers.

    For Bill and Hillary Clinton, the 1990s are back.

    The Clintons are slated to testify Thursday and Friday in a House investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, part of a deal with Republicans after it became clear that Congress — with the help of some Democrats — was on track to hold them in contempt if they refused to cooperate. For the battle-hardened couple, it amounts to one more Washington brawl. And like so many of the battles that came before, this one is another mix of questionable judgment, sexual impropriety, money and power.

    Video above: Justice Department releases more than 3 million items in final batch of Epstein files

    During his 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton pitched his candidacy as “two for the price of one,” previewing a presidential marriage like none that had come before, with a spouse whose professional credentials rivaled his. In the years since, that partnership helped the Clintons weather repeated scandals, including those so personal that many other relationships would have shattered. When his political career was ending, hers was ascending when she was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York, then served as secretary of state before becoming the Democratic nominee for president in 2016.

    For those who have long watched the Clintons, this moment is a reminder that the couple — weaned on the politics of the Vietnam War and Watergate — has never been far from the heat of a cultural fight. And with the Epstein case unfolding unpredictably around the world, the Clintons are once again ensnared in the scandal of the moment.

    “It’s kind of a sad but fitting coda to extraordinary political lives,” said David Maraniss, who has written two biographies of Bill Clinton.

    There’s no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of either Clinton when it comes to Epstein, a convicted sex offender who committed suicide in 2019 while he was in jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

    But Epstein had ties to Bill Clinton for years, visiting the White House multiple times in the 1990s, according to visitor logs. After Clinton left office, Epstein was involved in his philanthropy and the former president flew multiple times on his private jet.

    “Traveling on Epstein’s plane was not worth the years of questioning afterward,” Bill Clinton wrote in his 2024 memoir. “I wish I had never met him.”

    Bill Clinton’s ties to Epstein

    By last summer, the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas for the Clintons. For months, Bill Clinton, 79, and Hillary Clinton, 78, largely ignored the matter in public, but that became harder to sustain in December when the former president was featured prominently in the first batch of Epstein files.

    Among thousands of documents made public, some photos showed him on a private plane, including one with a woman, whose face is redacted, seated alongside him with her arm around him. Another showed Bill Clinton in a pool with Epstein’s longtime confidant, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, and a person whose face was redacted. Yet another photo portrayed Bill Clinton in a hot tub with a woman whose face was redacted.

    The oversight panel’s chairman, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, threatened to hold the Clintons in contempt if they didn’t comply with the subpoenas, a historic move considering a former president has never been compelled to appear before Congress. Between his first and second terms, Donald Trump invoked that precedent to fend off a subpoena from the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

    While there was no context surrounding the photos of Bill Clinton, they underscored how his political promise has always been tempered by personal indiscretions.

    The 1992 campaign that represented the emerging preeminence of the Baby Boom generation was the same one dogged by rumors of an affair with Gennifer Flowers. A presidency largely defined by economic prosperity was nearly derailed when Clinton was impeached in 1998 for lying under oath and obstructing justice when he denied engaging in a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

    Each time, many Republicans thought they finally found leverage over the Clintons. But each time, the Clintons found a way out of the vise.

    Asa Hutchinson, the former Republican congressman from Arkansas who was a House manager during Clinton’s impeachment trial, described the couple as “a smart lawyer and brilliant communicator.”

    The Clinton playbook: fight back fiercely

    As each crisis surfaced, a pattern emerged: the Clintons fiercely denied the allegations and often dismissed women who came forward with claims. They villainized the GOP and re-centered the public’s attention on more favorable themes like the booming economy of the era.

    Bill Clinton, who famously told voters “I feel your pain,” always managed to stay connected with the public. Indeed, he enjoyed some of the highest approval numbers of his presidency during his impeachment inquiry and trial, when about 7 in 10 U.S. adults approved of the way he was handling his job.

    Hillary Clinton similarly dispatched Republicans who sensed an opening in her handling of a 2012 attack on a compound in Libya that killed four Americans. She came out of an 11-hour televised congressional hearing in 2015 appearing poised. Even the Republican chair of the committee probing the attack said he wasn’t sure she revealed anything new about an issue many in his party considered a scandal.

    That experience has informed how the Clintons are approaching this week’s testimony. Hillary Clinton has been especially vocal in calling for the proceedings to happen in public, rather than in private as Comer currently plans.

    “We have nothing to hide,” she told the BBC earlier this month.

    Bill Clinton’s communication operation has taken a sharper tone, recalling the political “war room” popularized during the 1992 campaign to respond to negative storylines.

    One release accused Comer of “lying in every appearance he’s made this week.” Another mocked GOP Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs of Arizona with a “hypocrisy award of the day,” noting how the Oversight Committee members defied subpoenas from the Jan. 6 panel.

    Meanwhile, the Clintons released a four-page letter to Comer on social media defiantly belittling a process they said was “literally designed to result in our imprisonment.”

    Much as they tried to refocus attention during the 1990s, the letter hit the White House for dismantling institutions, imposing a harsh immigration crackdown and pardoning those involved in the Capitol riot.

    Conservative attacks on the Clintons

    The Clintons’ rise to power paralleled the explosion of talk radio as a political force, with Rush Limbaugh using his daily show as a platform to constantly berate the White House. Today, conservative podcasters like Benny Johnson have filled Limbaugh’s space and were gleeful after the House panel moved last month to hold the couple in contempt.

    “Do you understand Donald Trump made good on his oldest promise arguably which is he told all of us 10 years ago that Hillary Clinton would be going to jail?” Johnson said last month.

    Still, some dynamics have changed.

    The lockstep support the Clintons enjoyed among congressional Democrats has eroded as a new generation of lawmakers has taken office — nine Democrats joined with Republicans on the House committee to advance the contempt resolution. Trump, who has faced scrutiny over his own ties to Epstein and may be uncomfortable with the precedent of forcing a former president to testify, has expressed rare concern for the Clintons.

    He told NBC News that it “bothers me that somebody is going after Bill Clinton.” He has described Hillary Clinton as a “very capable woman.”

    Even Hutchinson, who helped make the case for Bill Clinton’s impeachment, expressed sympathy for the couple.

    “It’s frustrating and disappointing that President Clinton and Secretary Clinton are having to go through this fact-finding ordeal,” he said. “That’s difficult for them.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • LA Olympics leader Wasserman will sell talent agency in wake of Epstein emails discovery

    [ad_1]

    Casey Wasserman, the chairman of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics organizing committee, is selling his eponymous talent agency in the wake of the release of emails between himself and Ghislaine Maxwell.Wasserman’s emails with Maxwell were revealed by his appearance in recently released government files on Jeffrey Epstein. Wasserman, whose agency represents some of the top pop music artists in the world, has not been accused of any wrongdoing.The recently released documents revealed that in 2003 he swapped flirtatious emails with Maxwell, who would years later be accused of helping Epstein recruit and sexually abuse his victims. Wasserman said in a Friday evening memo to his staff that he has begun the process of selling the company, according to a company spokesperson who provided the memo to The Associated Press.Wasserman’s memo to staff said that he felt he had become a distraction to the company’s work.”During this time, Mike Watts will assume day-to-day control of the business while I devote my full attention to delivering Los Angeles an Olympic Games in 2028 that is worthy of this outstanding city,” the memo stated.The memo arrived days after the LA28 board’s executive committee met to discuss Wasserman’s appearance in the Epstein files. The committee said it and an outside legal firm conducted a review of Wasserman’s interactions with Epstein and Maxwell with Wasserman’s full cooperation.The committee said in a statement: “We found Mr. Wasserman’s relationship with Epstein and Maxwell did not go beyond what has already been publicly documented.” The statement also said Wasserman “should continue to lead LA28 and deliver a safe and successful games.”Wasserman has said previously that he flew on a humanitarian mission to Africa on Epstein’s private plane at the invitation of the Clinton Foundation in 2002. Exchanges between Wasserman and Maxwell in the files include Wasserman telling Maxwell: “I think of you all the time. So, what do I have to do to see you in a tight leather outfit?”His agency, also called Wasserman, has lost clients over the Maxwell emails. Singer Chappell Roan and retired U.S. women’s soccer legend Abby Wambach are among them.Wasserman said in his memo to staff that his interactions with Maxwell and Epstein were limited and he regrets the emails.”It was years before their criminal conduct came to light, and, in its entirety, consisted of one humanitarian trip to Africa and a handful of emails that I deeply regret sending. And I’m heartbroken that my brief contact with them 23 years ago has caused you, this company, and its clients so much hardship over the past days and weeks,” the memo said.

    LOS ANGELES —

    Casey Wasserman, the chairman of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics organizing committee, is selling his eponymous talent agency in the wake of the release of emails between himself and Ghislaine Maxwell.

    Wasserman’s emails with Maxwell were revealed by his appearance in recently released government files on Jeffrey Epstein. Wasserman, whose agency represents some of the top pop music artists in the world, has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

    The recently released documents revealed that in 2003 he swapped flirtatious emails with Maxwell, who would years later be accused of helping Epstein recruit and sexually abuse his victims. Wasserman said in a Friday evening memo to his staff that he has begun the process of selling the company, according to a company spokesperson who provided the memo to The Associated Press.

    Wasserman’s memo to staff said that he felt he had become a distraction to the company’s work.

    “During this time, Mike Watts will assume day-to-day control of the business while I devote my full attention to delivering Los Angeles an Olympic Games in 2028 that is worthy of this outstanding city,” the memo stated.

    The memo arrived days after the LA28 board’s executive committee met to discuss Wasserman’s appearance in the Epstein files. The committee said it and an outside legal firm conducted a review of Wasserman’s interactions with Epstein and Maxwell with Wasserman’s full cooperation.

    The committee said in a statement: “We found Mr. Wasserman’s relationship with Epstein and Maxwell did not go beyond what has already been publicly documented.” The statement also said Wasserman “should continue to lead LA28 and deliver a safe and successful games.”

    Wasserman has said previously that he flew on a humanitarian mission to Africa on Epstein’s private plane at the invitation of the Clinton Foundation in 2002. Exchanges between Wasserman and Maxwell in the files include Wasserman telling Maxwell: “I think of you all the time. So, what do I have to do to see you in a tight leather outfit?”

    His agency, also called Wasserman, has lost clients over the Maxwell emails. Singer Chappell Roan and retired U.S. women’s soccer legend Abby Wambach are among them.

    Wasserman said in his memo to staff that his interactions with Maxwell and Epstein were limited and he regrets the emails.

    “It was years before their criminal conduct came to light, and, in its entirety, consisted of one humanitarian trip to Africa and a handful of emails that I deeply regret sending. And I’m heartbroken that my brief contact with them 23 years ago has caused you, this company, and its clients so much hardship over the past days and weeks,” the memo said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Epstein Files Spark Calls for Casey Wasserman to Step Down

    [ad_1]

    The latest drop of the Epstein Files has revealed emails between the current chair of the Olympics and Ghislaine Maxwell

    The most recent drop of investigative files from Jeffrey Epstein’s case is stirring controversy as Los Angeles prepares for the 2028 Olympic Games. Provocative emails between the Chair of the LA28 Olympics, Casey Wasserman, and Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s accomplice, were released on Friday.

    In the emails between Wasserman and Maxwell, sent in March and April of 2003, the two carried on in flirtatious exchanges and discussed traveling to each other’s respective cities. 

    “​​So what do I have to do to see you in a tight leather outfit?” Wasserman wrote. 

    Wasserman, the CEO of Wasserman, a sports marketing and talent agency, was married to Laura Ziffren at the time the emails were sent. Aside from the emails, Wasserman’s name can also be found on flight logs from Epstein’s private aircraft. 

    Following the release from the Department of Justice, Wasserman stated he regrets the communications with Maxwell, saying he never had any ties to Epstein aside from a “well-documented” humanitarian trip in which he used his private plane. 

    “I deeply regret my correspondence with Ghislaine Maxwell which took place over two decades ago, long before her horrific crimes came to light,” Wasserman stated.

    L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn is now calling for the resignation of Wasserman. 

    “Having him represent us on the world stage distracts focus from our athletes and the enormous effort needed to prepare for 2028,” the 4th District supervisor stated. 

    Scroll to continue reading

    Wasserman is not the only high-profile name from the Epstein files with a role in the 2028 Olympic Games. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Aug. 5, 2025, establishing the White House Task Force of the 2028 Summer Olympics and naming himself chair. 

    In response, Wasserman publicly gifted Trump a full set of original 1984 Olympic Medals to commemorate the president’s new position. The 1984 Summer Olympics, during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, were the last time the Olympic Games were held in Los Angeles.

    “Can I say that I won them athletically?” Trump joked during the White House ceremony, in which Wasserman laughed and responded, “Yes, sir.”

    [ad_2]

    Taylor Parise

    Source link

  • DOJ Claims Epstein Files Letter From Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar Is Fake

    [ad_1]

    No prior connection between Jeffrey Epstein and Nassar was publicly known. The note makes a reference to “our president”—at that point, Donald Trump, in his first term—and a seeming predilection for “young, nubile girls.” Epstein’s opening greeting also may refer to an intention to end his own life.

    The additional files related to Jeffery Epstein released by the Justice Department on Tuesday, December 23 include a note addressed to “L.N.” signed by “J. Epstein.”

    “Dear L.N.,” the letter reads, “As you know by now, I have taken the ‘short route’ home. Good luck! We shared one thing … our love and caring for young ladies and the hope they’d reach their full potential. Our President also shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by, he loved to ‘grab snatch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair.”

    [ad_2]

    Kase Wickman

    Source link

  • DOJ restores Trump photo to Epstein files after determining no victims depicted

    [ad_1]

    NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

    The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said Sunday it restored a photo featuring President Donald Trump to its latest release of Jeffrey Epstein–related documents after a review determined the image did not depict any Epstein victims.

    In a post on X, the DOJ said the photo was initially taken down “out of an abundance of caution” after the Southern District of New York flagged it for additional review to protect potential victims.

    Following a review, officials concluded no Epstein victims were shown in the photograph, and it was reposted without “alteration or redaction,” according to the DOJ.

    “The Southern District of New York flagged an image of President Trump for potential further action to protect victims,” the DOJ wrote. “Out of an abundance of caution, the Department of Justice temporarily removed the image for further review. After the review, it was determined there is no evidence that any Epstein victims are depicted in the photograph, and it has been reposted without any alteration or redaction.”

    JEFFREY EPSTEIN ACCOMPLICE GHISLAINE MAXWELL MOVES TO VACATE CONVICTION DAYS BEFORE DEADLINE TO RELEASE FILES

    The DOJ said the photo was initially taken down “out of an abundance of caution” after the Southern District of New York flagged it for additional review to protect potential victims. (Department of Justice)

    Earlier Sunday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the removal of the photo had “nothing to do with President Trump” and was instead driven by concerns for the women depicted, he said during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

    The explanation came after reports that at least 16 files had disappeared from the DOJ’s Epstein-related public webpage less than a day after they were posted on Friday, without public notice or an initial explanation, The Associated Press reported.

    EPSTEIN FILES EXPLODE OPEN AS DOJ DETAILS DISCOVERY OF POWERFUL FIGURES AND MORE THAN 1,200 VICTIMS

    Department of Justice building.

    The Department of Justice headquarters is seen on February 19, 2020, in Washington, D.C. (Drew Angerer)

    The missing files included one that showed a series of photos displayed on a cabinet and inside a drawer. In the drawer, there was a photo of Donald Trump pictured alongside Melania Trump, Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, AP reported.

    On Saturday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee criticized the removal of the photo, writing, “We need transparency for the American public.”

    “This photo, file 468, from the Epstein files that includes Donald Trump has apparently now been removed from the DOJ release,” Democrats on the House Oversight Committee posted on X. “[Attorney General Pam Bondi] is this true? What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”

    HOUSE VOTES OVERWHELMINGLY TO FORCE DOJ TO RELEASE JEFFREY EPSTEIN FILES

    Epstein and Maxwell smiling.

    The Department of Justice released a trove of Epstein documents on Dec. 19 following President Trump’s signature on the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November.  (Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)

    The DOJ released the trove of files after The Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed by President Trump on Nov. 19, 2025, required AG Pam Bondi to release all unclassified records, communications and investigative materials related to Epstein within 30 days.

    CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

    The agency posted thousands of pages on a government website Friday related to Epstein’s and Maxwell’s sex-trafficking cases. The files were released as the result of a deadline imposed by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

    Fox News Digital’s Lori Bashian contributed to this report.

    Sophia Compton is a Writer at Fox News Digital. Sophia was previously a business reporter covering finance, energy and tourism and has experience as a TV news producer. She graduated with a journalism degree in 2021 from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • At least 16 files have disappeared from the DOJ webpage for documents related to Jeffrey Epstein

    [ad_1]

    NEW YORK — At least 16 files disappeared from the Justice Department’s public webpage for documents related to Jeffrey Epstein – including a photograph showing President Donald Trump – less than a day after they were posted, with no explanation from the government and no notice to the public.

    The missing files, which were available Friday and no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showing a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, was a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

    The Justice Department didn’t answer questions Saturday about why the files disappeared but said in a post on X that “photos and other materials will continue being reviewed and redacted consistent with the law in an abundance of caution as we receive additional information.”

    Online, the unexplained missing files fueled speculation about what was taken down and why the public was not notified, compounding long-standing intrigue about Epstein and the powerful figures who surrounded him. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee pointed to the missing image featuring a Trump photo in a post on X, writing: “What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”

    SEE ALSO | Top DOJ official denies there’s any effort to redact mentions of President Trump from Epstein files

    The episode deepened concerns that had already emerged from the Justice Department’s much-anticipated document release. The tens of thousands of pages made public offered little new insight into Epstein’s crimes or the prosecutorial decisions that allowed him to avoid serious federal charges for years, while omitting some of the most closely watched materials, including FBI interviews with victims and internal Justice Department memos on charging decisions.

    Scant new insight in the initial disclosures

    Some of the most consequential records expected about Epstein are nowhere to be found in the Justice Department’s initial disclosures, which span tens of thousands of pages.

    Missing are FBI interviews with survivors and internal Justice Department memos examining charging decisions – records that could have helped explain how investigators viewed the case and why Epstein was allowed in 2008 to plead guilty to a relatively minor state-level prostitution charge.

    The gaps go further.

    The records, required to be released under a recent law passed by Congress, hardly reference several powerful figures long associated with Epstein, including Britain’s former Prince Andrew, renewing questions about who was scrutinized, who was not, and how much the disclosures truly advance public accountability

    Among the fresh nuggets: insight into the Justice Department’s decision to abandon an investigation into Epstein in the 2000s, which enabled him to plead guilty to that state-level charge, and a previously unseen 1996 complaint accusing Epstein of stealing photographs of children.

    The releases so far have been heavy on images of Epstein’s homes in New York City and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with some photos of celebrities and politicians.

    There was a series of never-before-seen photos of former President Bill Clinton but fleetingly few of Trump. Both have been associated with Epstein, but both have since disowned those friendships. Neither has been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein and there was no indication the photos played a role in the criminal cases brought against him.

    Despite a Friday deadline set by Congress to make everything public, the Justice Department said it plans to release records on a rolling basis. It blamed the delay on the time-consuming process of obscuring survivors’ names and other identifying information. The department has not given any notice when more records might arrive.

    That approach angered some Epstein accusers and members of Congress who fought to pass the law forced the department to act. Instead of marking the end of a yearslong battle for transparency, the document release Friday was merely the beginning of an indefinite wait for a complete picture of Epstein’s crimes and the steps taken to investigate them.

    “I feel like again the DOJ, the justice system is failing us,” said Marina Lacerda, who alleges Epstein started sexually abusing her at his New York City mansion when she was 14.

    Many of the long-anticipated records were redacted or lacked context

    Federal prosecutors in New York brought sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail after his arrest.

    The documents just made public were a sliver of potentially millions of pages records in the department’s possession. In one example, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Manhattan federal prosecutors had more than 3.6 million records from sex trafficking investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, though many duplicated material already turned over by the FBI.

    Many of the records released so far had been made public in court filings, congressional releases or freedom of information requests, though, for the first time, they were all in one place and available for the public to search for free.

    Ones that were new were often lacking necessary context or heavily blacked out. A 119-page document marked “Grand Jury-NY,” likely from one of the federal sex trafficking investigations that led to the charges against Epstein in 2019 or Maxwell in 2021, was entirely blacked out.

    Trump’s Republican allies seized on the Clinton images, including photos of the Democrat with singers Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. There were also photos of Epstein with actors Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey, and even Epstein with TV newscaster Walter Cronkite. But none of the photos had captions and was no explanation given for why any of them were together.

    The meatiest records released so far showed that federal prosecutors had what appeared to be a strong case against Epstein in 2007 yet never charged him.

    Transcripts of grand jury proceedings, released publicly for the first time, included testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who described being paid to perform sex acts for Epstein. The youngest was 14 and in ninth grade.

    One had told investigators about being sexually assaulted by Epstein when she initially resisted his advances during a massage.

    Another, then 21, testified before the grand jury about how Epstein had hired her when she was 16 to perform a sexual massage and how she had gone on to recruit other girls to do the same.

    “For every girl that I brought to the table he would give me $200,” she said. They were mostly people she knew from high school, she said. “I also told them that if they are under age, just lie about it and tell him that you are 18.”

    The documents also contain a transcript of an interview Justice Department lawyers did more than a decade later with the U.S. attorney who oversaw the case, Alexander Acosta, about his ultimate decision not to bring federal charges.

    Acosta, who was labor secretary during Trump’s first term, cited concerns about whether a jury would believe Epstein’s accusers.

    He also said the Justice Department might have been more reluctant to make a federal prosecution out of a case that straddled the legal border between sex trafficking and soliciting prostitution, something more commonly handled by state prosecutors.

    “I’m not saying it was the right view,” Acosta added. He also said that the public today would likely view the survivors differently.

    “There’s been a lot of changes in victim shaming,” Acosta said.

    Jennifer Freeman, an attorney representing Epstein accuser Maria Farmer and other survivors, said Saturday that her client feels vindicated after the document release. Farmer sought for years documents backing up her claim that Epstein and Maxwell were in possession of child sexual abuse images.

    “It’s a triumph and a tragedy,” she said. “It looks like the government did absolutely nothing. Horrible things have happened and if they investigated in even the smallest way, they could have stopped him.”

    ___

    Associated Press journalists Ali Swenson, Christopher L. Keller, Kristin M. Hall, Aaron Kessler and Mike Catalini contributed to this report.

    The video in the player above is from a previous report.

    Copyright © 2025 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

    [ad_2]

    AP

    Source link

  • Latest details on the new batch of Epstein files and photos

    [ad_1]

    The Justice Department released thousands of files relating to Jeffrey Epstein on Friday, including photos featuring people like former President Bill Clinton and Mick Jagger. However, survivors are concerned with how much information was redacted from the files.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Epstein Files Photos: 11 Disgusting Things From the Latest Document Drop

    [ad_1]

    When thousands of new documents from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation were released on Friday evening, journalists and citizen investigators across the nation were greeted by one of the most reassuring phrases in the English language: “CSAM NOT SCANNED.” CSAM, an abbreviation for child sex abuse material, is the current law enforcement term for what might previously be known as child pornography. Seeing the term dozens of times across the 3 gigabytes of new Epstein material is a sign that the FBI has more specific documentation of the late abusers’ crimes, but the bureau will not be disseminating it.

    The remaining array of photographs and heavily redacted documents provide more insight into Epstein’s relationships with celebrities, along with detritus from the FBI’s years-long investigation. The 2019 searches of his townhome on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and compound on Little Saint James Island in the Caribbean yielded hundreds of pictures, and those have been made public with very few redactions. In these images, the framed photos presumably showing victims are obscured.

    The releases also contain hundreds of photos from Epstein’s own personal collection, including photos from a Rolling Stones concert and one that shows Epstein posing with Micheal Jackson. There are photos that show him cuddling with Ghislaine Maxwell as they visit haute locations like St. Tropez and Brunei, and others that show him shooting guns on his Zorro Ranch property in New Mexico. The CSAM disclaimer appears most frequently in these sections, along with a few photos of disembodied female buttocks, presumably belonging to known adults.

    And while the FBI withheld the worst of its Epstein material, there are still plenty of unpleasant sights to be seen for anyone with the stomach to dig through. Here, Vanity Fair looks at them so you don’t have to:

    A phrenology head

    Epstein had an abiding interest in race science, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that a desk at his home on Little Saint James Island prominently displays the sort of white phrenology bust you would find in the possession of a 19th century eugenicist.

    Former President Bill Clinton in a hot tub

    When the DOJ gave Fox News an early selection of files, the department led with photos of the former Democratic president—including one where Clinton is shirtless, reclining in a hot tub. Political motivations aside, it’s not hard to tell why the Trump administration might have wanted to foreground this image. There are hundreds of pictures in Friday’s drop, but it really is one of the strangest.

    (In response, Clinton’s spokesperson, Angel Ureña said that the Trump Justice Department’s political aims explain the inclusion of the photo. “There are two types of people here. The first group knew nothing and cut Epstein off before his crimes came to light,” he said. “The second group continued relationships with him after. We’re in the first. No amount of stalling by people in the second group will change that.”)

    Weird art featuring children

    There may be no CSAM, but the drop still includes plenty of figurative art featuring children. Epstein’s townhouse had a lifesized bronze sculpture of a little boy on a stairwell landing. He had a Henry Darger-esque painting of other nude children frolicking in a bedroom.

    Epstein doing a mud mask

    You can’t find the energy to run an unimaginably large sex trafficking scheme without indulging in a bit of self care every now and then. There are a few photos showing Epstein as he kicks back and indulges in a spa day. The nastiest one of them is a close up of his face slathered in a bile-green mask.

    A taxidermied tiger and a (potentially) taxidermied dog

    Epstein’s townhouse, which was constructed to the 19th century, had very little inside that referenced the opulence of the Gilded Age. But one sitting room was decorated with period details. The decor looks nice enough that you might miss its creepiest touches—like a taxidermied tiger in repose, and what definitely looks like a stuffed dog in an active pose.

    A phone message from Jean-Luc Brunel about sexual problems

    One piece of paper in the files shows notes from a message that Brunel left for Epstein on April 4, 2005. “He spoke to the doctor about your symptoms,” it read. “It can be cured but you have to move.” The message ends with a stern warning—failure to heed this might lead to results “which can shorten your sex life.”

    Maxwell putting Epstein’s toes in her cleavage

    The erstwhile couple seemed to have plenty of downtime on Epstein’s private jet while they traveled from place to place. There are plenty of photos that show them getting a little silly, but the weirdest one is a closeup of Maxwell grabbing Epstein’s feet and stuffing his toes down the front of her blouse.

    A letter from a supporter

    The FBI search of the townhouse uncovered a letter from someone named Steven from Buffalo, New York, which reads like a perverted pep talk to cheer Epstein up before he faces consequences for his crimes.

    [ad_2]

    Erin Vanderhoof

    Source link

  • Here’s Who’s In the Epstein Files

    [ad_1]

    Many familiar faces and names are mentioned or pictured in the redacted documents, among them former President Bill Clinton, Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly known as Prince Andrew, until he was recently stripped of his royal titles in connection with the Epstein scandal), and even Winnie the Pooh and Piglet (one victim claimed that Epstein took her to Disneyland, and photos are included in the data dump).

    Michael Jackson, Bill Clinton and Diana Ross.Department of Justice.

    Image may contain Jeffrey Epstein Face Head Person Photography Portrait Toy Adult Accessories Glasses and Clothing

    Jeffery EpsteinDepartment of Justice.

    [ad_2]

    Kase Wickman

    Source link

  • Steve Bannon, Woody Allen, Bill Gates, and More: The New Set of Jeffrey Epstein Photos

    [ad_1]

    In the latest round of yearslong scrutiny related to Jeffrey Epstein’s trail of sexual abuse and the high-profile company he kept, MAGA architect Steve Bannon has played a prominent part, with a recently released cache of emails between him and Epstein showing the two men exchanging advice about a range of political and media issues. On Friday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released yet another batch of materials from Epstein’s estate, which added a visual component to the stew of intrigue. Among the 19 images on display was one of Bannon and Epstein, standing in front of a mirror and gazing at their half-smiling reflections as Epstein snapped a photo with his iPhone.

    As with Bannon, the men depicted in these photos, which were gleaned from Epstein’s email account and released without additional context or details of their provenance, are already known to have associated with Epstein. They include Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Larry Summers, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, and, in four instances, Woody Allen. (Representatives for these men and Bannon did not immediately return requests for comment.) One image features a bowl of condoms, produced by a New York novelty shop, bearing a caricature of Trump’s face with the text “I’m HUUUUGE!” Another shows Trump standing among six women wearing Hawaiian leis whose faces have been concealed, his arm around one of their waists.

    House Oversight Committee Democrats.

    Image may contain Steve Bannon Jens Scheiblich Clothing Coat Jacket Adult Person Pants Accessories and Glasses

    House Oversight Committee Democrats.

    “It is time to end this White House cover-up and bring justice to the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful friends,” House Oversight Committee member Robert Garcia said in a statement. “These disturbing photos raise even more questions about Epstein and his relationships with some of the most powerful men in the world. We will not rest until the American people get the truth. The Department of Justice must release all the files, NOW.”

    The photos come a week before a deadline established by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed into law last month, which requires the DOJ to release all unclassified materials related to its investigations of Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell within 30 days. The scope of that release remains unclear: The bill includes a provision that the DOJ is permitted to withhold certain information that “would jeopardize an active federal investigation,” and just days before it was signed, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him.”

    Image may contain Donald Trump Accessories Jewelry Necklace Adult Person Wedding Face Head Art and Collage

    House Oversight Committee Democrats.

    Image may contain Cushion Home Decor Clothing Pants Adult Person Face Head Photography Portrait and Formal Wear

    House Oversight Committee Democrats.

    The new images offer some glimpses of Epstein’s MO when it came to collecting influential friends and associations. There is an element of haphazardness, for instance, in a new image of Bannon and Allen engaged in ostensibly affectionate conversation, and Epstein was long known for bringing together successful figures from seemingly far-flung worlds at his Manhattan gatherings. While the release of new Epstein materials invariably provides new fodder for observers of the broader spectacle—earlier on Friday, the New York Post reported that his antique Viennese desk went up for sale at a New Jersey auction house—it has also, in the lead-up to the release of the Epstein files, sometimes come with real consequences. Summers, who is pictured in the new images on a plane with Allen, took a leave of absence from Harvard and resigned from several advisory roles after cozy emails between him and Epstein surfaced last month.

    [ad_2]

    Dan Adler

    Source link

  • Justice Department requests to unseal Epstein, Maxwell grand jury records

    [ad_1]

    The Justice Department on Friday asked a court to unseal grand jury transcripts in the sex trafficking cases of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

    The motion, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida by Attorney General Pam Bondi, follows the congressional passage this week of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a bill that compels the Justice Department to release all unclassified records related to Epstein within 30 days.

    “In the light of the Act’s clear mandate, the Court should authorize the Department of Justice to release the grand jury transcripts and lift any preexisting protective orders that would otherwise prevent public disclosure,” the Justice Department wrote in its motion.

    It stated that it would “make appropriate redactions of victim-related and other personal identifying information.”

    The motion, which was also signed by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and U.S. Attorney Jason Quinones, asks the court to “lift any and all preexisting protective orders that would prevent the Department from complying with the Act.”

    The Justice Department filed an expedited ruling given the Epstein Act’s 30-day deadline.  

    President Trump, who at one time had a friendship with Epstein and had been against the bill, dropped his opposition and signed it into law on Wednesday. Mr. Trump, who cut ties with Epstein years ago, has not been accused of wrongdoing.

    In July 2019, a New York federal grand jury indicted Epstein on child sex trafficking charges, about five weeks before he was found dead in a Manhattan jail. His death was later ruled a suicide.

    Then, in June 2020, a New York federal grand jury indicted Maxwell, Epstein’s former partner, of conspiring with Epstein and helping to facilitate and operate his sex trafficking ring. She was convicted in December 2021 and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

    This marks the latest attempt by the Justice Department to unseal Epstein and Maxwell’s grand jury records.

    In August, a New York judge denied a similar Justice Department request to unseal grand jury material in the Maxwell case, arguing that anyone “who reviewed these materials expecting, based on the Government’s representations, to learn new information about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes and the investigation into them, would come away feeling disappointed and misled. There is no ‘there’ there.”

    Epstein, a wealthy financier known for his connections to political elites and high-profile people, was under federal probes for decades over allegations of sex trafficking. In 2008, he pleaded guilty in Florida to state charges of soliciting prostitution in exchange for having a federal case against him dropped. He served 13 months in county jail and had to register as a sex offender.

    The Epstein case received renewed attention starting in July when the Justice Department released a two-page memo stating that a “systematic review” had “revealed” that Epstein had “incriminating ‘client list,’ and that “no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions.”  

    The memo, which prompted an outcry from Epstein accusers, came after Bondi had said in a February interview that there was an Epstein client list “sitting on my desk right now.” 

    Several batches of Epstein-linked documents have been intermittently released throughout the years. The latest such release occurred earlier this month, when a tranche of tens of thousands of pages of documents were released by both House Democrats and the House Oversight Committee. 

    Joe Walsh and

    Jacob Rosen

    contributed to this report.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • At Trump’s urging, Bondi says US will investigate Epstein’s ties to Clinton and other political foes

    [ad_1]

    Acceding to President Donald Trump’s demands, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday that she has ordered a top federal prosecutor to investigate sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to Trump political foes, including former President Bill Clinton.Bondi posted on X that she was assigning Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton to lead the probe, capping an eventful week in which congressional Republicans released nearly 23,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate and House Democrats seized on emails mentioning Trump.Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years, didn’t explain what supposed crimes he wanted the Justice Department to investigate. None of the men he mentioned in a social media post demanding the probe has been accused of sexual misconduct by any of Epstein’s victims.Hours before Bondi’s announcement, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he would ask her, the Justice Department, and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Clinton and others, including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and LinkedIn founder and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman.Trump, calling the matter “the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans,” said the investigation should also include financial giant JPMorgan Chase, which provided banking services to Epstein, and “many other people and institutions.”“This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats,” the Republican president wrote, referring to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of alleged Russian interference in Trump’s 2016 election victory over Bill Clinton’s wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.Asked later Friday whether he should be ordering up such investigations, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One: “I’m the chief law enforcement officer of the country. I’m allowed to do it.”In a July memo regarding the Epstein investigation, the FBI said, “We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”The president’s demand for an investigation — and Bondi’s quick acquiescence — is the latest example of the erosion of the Justice Department’s traditional independence from the White House since Trump took office.It is also an extraordinary attempt at deflection. For decades, Trump himself has been scrutinized for his closeness to Epstein — though like the people he now wants investigated, he has not been accused of sexual misconduct by Epstein’s victims.None of Trump’s proposed targets were accused of sex crimesA JPMorgan Chase spokesperson, Patricia Wexler, said the company regretted associating with Epstein “but did not help him commit his heinous acts.”“The government had damning information about his crimes and failed to share it with us or other banks,” she said. The company agreed previously to pay millions of dollars to Epstein’s victims, who had sued arguing that the bank ignored red flags about criminal activity.Clinton has acknowledged traveling on Epstein’s private jet but has said through a spokesperson that he had no knowledge of the late financier’s crimes. He also has never been accused of misconduct by Epstein’s known victims.Clinton’s deputy chief of staff Angel Ureña posted on X Friday: “These emails prove Bill Clinton did nothing and knew nothing. The rest is noise meant to distract from election losses, backfiring shutdowns, and who knows what else.”Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl, but was spared a long jail term when the U.S. attorney in Florida agreed not to prosecute him over allegations that he had paid many other children for sexual acts. After serving about a year in jail and a work release program, Epstein resumed his business and social life until federal prosecutors in New York revived the case in 2019. Epstein killed himself while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Summers and Hoffman had nothing to do with either case, but both were friendly with Epstein and exchanged emails with him. Those messages were among the documents released this week, along with other correspondence Epstein had with friends and business associates in the years before his death.Nothing in the messages suggested any wrongdoing on the men’s part, other than associating with someone who had been accused of sex crimes against children.Summers, who served in Clinton’s cabinet and is a former Harvard University president, previously said in a statement that he has “great regrets in my life” and that “my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgement.”On social media Friday night, Hoffman called for Trump to release all the Epstein files, saying they will show that “the calls for baseless investigations of me are nothing more than political persecution and slander.” He added, “I was never a client of Epstein’s and never had any engagement with him other than fundraising for MIT.” Hoffman bankrolled writer E. Jean Carroll’s sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against Trump.After Epstein’s sex trafficking arrest in 2019, Hoffman said he’d only had a few interactions with Epstein, all related to his fundraising for MIT’s Media Lab. He nevertheless apologized, saying that “by agreeing to participate in any fundraising activity where Epstein was present, I helped to repair his reputation and perpetuate injustice.”Bondi, in her post, praised Clayton as “one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country” and said the Justice Department “will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people.”Trump called Clayton “a great man, a great attorney,” though he said Bondi chose him for the job.Clayton, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term, took over in April as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York — the same office that indicted Epstein and won a sex trafficking conviction against Epstein’s longtime confidante, Ghislaine Maxwell, in 2021.Trump changes course on Epstein filesTrump suggested while campaigning last year that he’d seek to open up the government’s case files on Epstein, but changed course in recent months, blaming Democrats and painting the matter as a “hoax” amid questions about what knowledge he may have had about Epstein’s yearslong exploitation of underage girls.On Wednesday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released three Epstein email exchanges that referenced Trump, including one from 2019 in which Epstein said the president “knew about the girls” and asked Maxwell to stop.White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt accused Democrats of having “selectively leaked emails” to smear Trump.Soon after, Republicans on the committee disclosed a far bigger trove of Epstein’s email correspondence, including messages he sent to longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon and to Britain’s former Prince Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Andrew settled a lawsuit out of court with one of Epstein’s victims, who said she had been paid to have sex with the prince.The House is speeding toward a vote next week to force the Justice Department to release all files and communications related to Epstein.“I don’t care about it, release or not,” Trump said Friday. “If you’re going to do it, then you have to go into Epstein’s friends,” he added, naming Clinton and Hoffman.Still, he said: “This is a Democrat hoax. And a couple, a few Republicans have gone along with it because they’re weak and ineffective.”__Bedayn reported from Denver. Associated Press writer Chris Megerian aboard Air Force One contributed to this report.

    NEW YORK —

    Acceding to President Donald Trump’s demands, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday that she has ordered a top federal prosecutor to investigate sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to Trump political foes, including former President Bill Clinton.

    Bondi posted on X that she was assigning Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton to lead the probe, capping an eventful week in which congressional Republicans released nearly 23,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate and House Democrats seized on emails mentioning Trump.

    Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years, didn’t explain what supposed crimes he wanted the Justice Department to investigate. None of the men he mentioned in a social media post demanding the probe has been accused of sexual misconduct by any of Epstein’s victims.

    Hours before Bondi’s announcement, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he would ask her, the Justice Department, and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Clinton and others, including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and LinkedIn founder and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman.

    Trump, calling the matter “the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans,” said the investigation should also include financial giant JPMorgan Chase, which provided banking services to Epstein, and “many other people and institutions.”

    “This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats,” the Republican president wrote, referring to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of alleged Russian interference in Trump’s 2016 election victory over Bill Clinton’s wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

    Asked later Friday whether he should be ordering up such investigations, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One: “I’m the chief law enforcement officer of the country. I’m allowed to do it.”

    In a July memo regarding the Epstein investigation, the FBI said, “We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”

    The president’s demand for an investigation — and Bondi’s quick acquiescence — is the latest example of the erosion of the Justice Department’s traditional independence from the White House since Trump took office.

    It is also an extraordinary attempt at deflection. For decades, Trump himself has been scrutinized for his closeness to Epstein — though like the people he now wants investigated, he has not been accused of sexual misconduct by Epstein’s victims.

    None of Trump’s proposed targets were accused of sex crimes

    A JPMorgan Chase spokesperson, Patricia Wexler, said the company regretted associating with Epstein “but did not help him commit his heinous acts.”

    “The government had damning information about his crimes and failed to share it with us or other banks,” she said. The company agreed previously to pay millions of dollars to Epstein’s victims, who had sued arguing that the bank ignored red flags about criminal activity.

    Clinton has acknowledged traveling on Epstein’s private jet but has said through a spokesperson that he had no knowledge of the late financier’s crimes. He also has never been accused of misconduct by Epstein’s known victims.

    Clinton’s deputy chief of staff Angel Ureña posted on X Friday: “These emails prove Bill Clinton did nothing and knew nothing. The rest is noise meant to distract from election losses, backfiring shutdowns, and who knows what else.”

    Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl, but was spared a long jail term when the U.S. attorney in Florida agreed not to prosecute him over allegations that he had paid many other children for sexual acts. After serving about a year in jail and a work release program, Epstein resumed his business and social life until federal prosecutors in New York revived the case in 2019. Epstein killed himself while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

    Summers and Hoffman had nothing to do with either case, but both were friendly with Epstein and exchanged emails with him. Those messages were among the documents released this week, along with other correspondence Epstein had with friends and business associates in the years before his death.

    Nothing in the messages suggested any wrongdoing on the men’s part, other than associating with someone who had been accused of sex crimes against children.

    Summers, who served in Clinton’s cabinet and is a former Harvard University president, previously said in a statement that he has “great regrets in my life” and that “my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgement.”

    On social media Friday night, Hoffman called for Trump to release all the Epstein files, saying they will show that “the calls for baseless investigations of me are nothing more than political persecution and slander.” He added, “I was never a client of Epstein’s and never had any engagement with him other than fundraising for MIT.” Hoffman bankrolled writer E. Jean Carroll’s sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against Trump.

    After Epstein’s sex trafficking arrest in 2019, Hoffman said he’d only had a few interactions with Epstein, all related to his fundraising for MIT’s Media Lab. He nevertheless apologized, saying that “by agreeing to participate in any fundraising activity where Epstein was present, I helped to repair his reputation and perpetuate injustice.”

    Bondi, in her post, praised Clayton as “one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country” and said the Justice Department “will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people.”

    Trump called Clayton “a great man, a great attorney,” though he said Bondi chose him for the job.

    Clayton, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term, took over in April as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York — the same office that indicted Epstein and won a sex trafficking conviction against Epstein’s longtime confidante, Ghislaine Maxwell, in 2021.

    Trump changes course on Epstein files

    Trump suggested while campaigning last year that he’d seek to open up the government’s case files on Epstein, but changed course in recent months, blaming Democrats and painting the matter as a “hoax” amid questions about what knowledge he may have had about Epstein’s yearslong exploitation of underage girls.

    On Wednesday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released three Epstein email exchanges that referenced Trump, including one from 2019 in which Epstein said the president “knew about the girls” and asked Maxwell to stop.

    White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt accused Democrats of having “selectively leaked emails” to smear Trump.

    Soon after, Republicans on the committee disclosed a far bigger trove of Epstein’s email correspondence, including messages he sent to longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon and to Britain’s former Prince Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Andrew settled a lawsuit out of court with one of Epstein’s victims, who said she had been paid to have sex with the prince.

    The House is speeding toward a vote next week to force the Justice Department to release all files and communications related to Epstein.

    “I don’t care about it, release or not,” Trump said Friday. “If you’re going to do it, then you have to go into Epstein’s friends,” he added, naming Clinton and Hoffman.

    Still, he said: “This is a Democrat hoax. And a couple, a few Republicans have gone along with it because they’re weak and ineffective.”

    __

    Bedayn reported from Denver. Associated Press writer Chris Megerian aboard Air Force One contributed to this report.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Analyzing the Trump references in the latest Epstein emails released

    [ad_1]



    Analyzing the Trump references in the latest Epstein emails released – CBS News










































    Watch CBS News



    New emails released by Democrats in the House Oversight Committee appear to depict how Jeffrey Epstein referred to Trump in private conversations. CBS News’ Scott MacFarlane and Nancy Cordes report.

    [ad_2]
    Source link

  • Ghislaine Maxwell’s Trump remarks come under scrutiny over Epstein emails

    [ad_1]

    Ghislaine Maxwell‘s statement she had never seen Donald Trump at Jeffrey Epstein‘s house has come under fresh scrutiny after emails were newly released by the House Oversight Committee.

    Trump has been under mounting pressure over his friendship with Epstein since July when the D.O.J. and F.B.I. released a memo stating there was no evidence of a blackmail operation by Epstein, no Epstein client list and there would be no further charges in the case. Administration officials had previously suggested they would release the Epstein files.

    Now more than 20,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate have been released by the House Oversight Committee containing emails sent between Epstein and his ex-girlfriend Maxwell.

    Newsweek has contacted Maxwell’s attorney in an email sent outside of regular working hours.

    The emails appear to show that in April 2011, Epstein wrote to Maxwell: “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. [Victim] spent hours at my house with him.”

    The White House said the victim whose name was redacted was Virginia Giuffre who “repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever.” Trump has always denied knowledge of Epstein’s federal crimes.

    The messages appear to cast doubt on Maxwell’s own account in an interview with the D.O.J. conducted in July by Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general.

    According to a transcript of the interview, Maxwell said: “I think they were friendly like people are in social settings. I don’t … I don’t think they were close friends or I certainly never witnessed the president in any of … I don’t recall ever seeing him in his house, for instance.”

    The new email does not make clear whether Maxwell “witnessed” the president at Epstein’s house but certainly suggests she may have known Trump had been there with Giuffre for hours and did not disclose that to the D.O.J.

    Responding to the email release, author and political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen wrote on X that Ghislaine Maxwell “lied about Trump never going to Epstein’s house (directly contradicted by her email correspondence with Epstein)”.

    Trump responded to the new emails on Truth Social: “The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects. Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap.

    “The Democrats cost our Country $1.5 Trillion Dollars with their recent antics of viciously closing our Country, while at the same time putting many at risk — and they should pay a fair price. There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!””

    This is a developing story and will be updated.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Epstein emails say Trump ‘knew about the girls’ and spent time with a victim

    [ad_1]

    More documents related to Jeffrey Epstein were handed over to the House Oversight Committee this week, including the letter and drawings signed with President Donald Trump’s name in the so-called birthday book. Now ahead of the public release on Monday, Democrats on the committee posted on social media revealing the page first reported on by the Wall Street Journal back in July. While old images circulating online of his signature on other documents do seem to resemble the signature in the. The president has repeatedly denied writing the letter and sued the Wall Street Journal for defamation. White House press secretary Caroline Levitt said in part, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it. The committee also released Epstein’s last will and testament, entries from his address book and the 2007 non-prosecution agreement between Epstein and the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. The panel has been investigating the Epstein case and subpoenaed the estate for documents as part of its ongoing probe. We’ve got *** lot more documents we expect to get in. Uh, we’re gonna bring *** lot of people in for depositions, so this investigation is moving along very rapidly and hopefully we’ll get some answers for and some justice very soon. But some say the committee isn’t going far enough. In *** separate effort, *** bipartisan pair of House lawmakers is working to force *** vote on *** measure calling for the full release of documents related to Epstein. They need 218 signatures on *** discharge petition in order to bypass leadership and force the vote, reporting at the White House, I’m Julie Vanbrook.

    Epstein emails released by Democrats say Trump ‘knew about the girls’ and spent time with a victim

    Updated: 8:11 AM PST Nov 12, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    Disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein wrote in a 2011 email that Donald Trump had “spent hours” at Epstein’s house with a victim of sex trafficking and said in a separate message years later that Trump “knew about the girls,” according to communications released Wednesday.The emails made public by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee add to the questions about Trump’s friendship with Epstein and about any knowledge he may have had in what prosecutors call a yearslong effort by Epstein to exploit underage girls. The Republican president has consistently denied any knowledge of Epstein’s alleged crimes and has said he ended their relationship years ago.The messages are part of a batch of 23,000 documents provided by Epstein’s estate to the Oversight Committee. The release resurfaces a storyline that had shadowed Trump’s presidency during the summer when the FBI and the Justice Department abruptly announced that they would not be releasing additional documents that investigators had spent weeks examining, disappointing conspiracy theorists and online sleuths who had expected to see new revelations.In an April 2, 2011, email to Ghislaine Maxwell, an Epstein girlfriend now imprisoned for conspiring to engage in sex trafficking, Epstein wrote, “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump. (Redacted name) spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75 % there.”Maxwell replied the same day: “I have been thinking about that.”The name of the person said to have spent time with Trump was blacked out of the email, but House Democrats identified the person as a “victim.”In a separate 2019 email to journalist Michael Wolff, who has written extensively about Trump, Epstein wrote of Trump, “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt accused the Democrats of having “selectively leaked emails” to “create a fake narrative to smear President Trump.”She said in a statement that the unnamed person referenced in the emails is Virginia Giuffre, who had accused Britain’s Prince Andrew and other influential men of sexually exploiting her as a teenager and who died by suicide in April. Andrew has rejected Giuffre’s allegations and said he didn’t recall meeting her.Leavitt said in a statement that Giuffre had “repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever and ‘couldn’t have been friendlier’ to her in their limited interactions.”“The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club decades ago for being a creep to his female employees, including Giuffre,” the statement said. “These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again.”Giuffre came forward publicly after an initial investigation ended in an 18-month Florida jail term for Epstein, who made a secret deal to avoid federal prosecution by pleading guilty instead to relatively minor state-level charges of soliciting prostitution. He was released in 2009.In subsequent lawsuits, Giuffre said she was a teenage spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida, club, when she was approached in 2000 by Maxwell.Epstein took his own life in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges.Lawyers for Maxwell, a British socialite, have argued that she never should have been tried or convicted for her role in luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. She is serving a 20-year prison term, though she was moved from a low-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas after she was interviewed in July by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

    WASHINGTON —

    Disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein wrote in a 2011 email that Donald Trump had “spent hours” at Epstein’s house with a victim of sex trafficking and said in a separate message years later that Trump “knew about the girls,” according to communications released Wednesday.

    The emails, made public by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, add to the questions about Trump’s friendship with Epstein and about any knowledge he may have had in what prosecutors call a yearslong effort by Epstein to exploit underage girls. The Republican president has consistently denied any knowledge of Epstein’s alleged crimes and has said he ended their relationship years ago.

    In one 2011 email to Ghislaine Maxwell, an Epstein girlfriend now imprisoned for conspiring to engage in sex trafficking, Epstein wrote, “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump.” He added that Trump had “spent hours at my house” with a person whose name is blacked out of the emails but who House Democrats identified as a “victim.” Epstein wrote that Trump “has never once been mentioned.”

    In a separate email to journalist Michael Wolff, who has written extensively about Trump, Epstein wrote of Trump, “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”

    The White House did not immediately return a message seeking comment Wednesday.

    Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges.

    Lawyers for Maxwell, a British socialite, have argued that she never should have been tried or convicted for her role in luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. She is serving a 20-year prison term, though she was moved from a low-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas after she was interviewed in July by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Jeffrey Epstein said Trump

    [ad_1]

    Washington — Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday released emails exchanged between Jeffrey Epstein and others about President Trump.

    Among the documents is a 2011 message from Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell, his longtime associate, that said Mr. Trump “spent hours at my house” with one of Epstein’s victims, whose name is redacted. In another email in 2019 to author Michael Wolff, Epstein wrote, “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”

    Maxwell was convicted of conspiring in Epstein’s sex trafficking ring and is serving a 20-year prison sentence. Wolff has written several books about Mr. Trump. 

    House Democrats said the emails were turned over by Epstein’s estate, which they said released more than 23,000 documents that lawmakers are now reviewing.

    Mr. Trump has previously said he cut ties with Epstein years ago, and he has not been accused of wrongdoing.

    CBS News has reached out to the White House for comment. CBS has not independently verified the emails. 

    In one of the messages from Epstein to Maxwell, dated April 2, 2011, the late financier wrote, “i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump. [Victim 1] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned.”

    Maxwell then replies, “I have been thinking about that…”

    In a second email that appears to be from Epstein to Wolff, dated Jan. 31, 2019, Epstein references a victim, whose name is redacted, and mentions Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s South Florida resort. 

    “Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever. of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop,” the message from Epstein reads.

    In the third exchange released by House Democrats, which appears to be between Epstein and Wolff, Wolff writes on Dec. 15, 2015, “I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you–either on air or in scrum afterwards.”

    According to the email exchange, Epstein then replies, “if we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?” Wolff responds, “I think you should let him hang himself. If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt. Of course, it is possible that, when asked, he’ll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.”

    Mr. Trump announced his first run for the White House in June 2015 and would have been on the campaign trail when the emails between Wolff and Epstein were exchanged.

    Wolff authored a book about the first few months of Mr. Trump’s first term in office, titled “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” that was released in 2018.

    Mr. Trump and Epstein were friends for years and ran in the same social circles in New York and Florida from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. But the president said they had a falling out around 2004, more than a decade before Epstein was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges in 2019.

    Epstein died by suicide at a Manhattan correctional facility while awaiting trial. 

    The new release comes amid a push for more transparency on the Epstein files in Congress. The House is set to return Wednesday for the first time since Sept. 19. The lower chamber has been away from Washington while the Senate worked through an impasse on reopening the government. The House’s absence meant the newest member, Democrat Adelita Grijalva, was not sworn in, preventing her from becoming the final signature needed on a discharge petition to circumvent House GOP leaders and force a vote on a measure to compel the Justice Department to release all of the files from its investigation into Epstein. Grijalva is expected to sign the petition after she’s sworn in on Wednesday, starting the clock on the process to move forward with the bill. A vote likely wouldn’t come until next month.

    Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, urged the Justice Department in a statement Wednesday to make the Epstein files public “immediately,” pledging that the panel “will continue pushing for answers and will not stop until we get justice for the victims.”

    “The more Donald Trump tries to cover up the Epstein files, the more we uncover,” Garcia said. “These latest emails and correspondence raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the President.”

    Several tranches of records have been turned over to congressional investigators, including from Epstein’s estate. The House Oversight Committee has also sought information from a slew of former attorneys general and FBI directors, as well as former President Bill Clinton.

    Lawmakers have also questioned Alex Acosta, who was the top federal prosecutor in South Florida when prosecutors investigated Epstein in the 2000s. Prosecutors entered into a deal with Epstein that allowed him to avoid federal prosecution and plead guilty to state prostitution charges.

    Acosta went on to serve as Labor secretary during Mr. Trump’s first term but resigned in 2019 amid questions about his handling of Epstein’s case.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • What Made King Charles FINALLY Pull The Trigger On Andrew – Perez Hilton

    [ad_1]

    The other shoe finally dropped on Thursday, and so did the hammer — right on Prince Andrew‘s head. Well, scratch that — on the head of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. Because he ain’t even a prince anymore!

    Yes, King Charles III officially kicked his brother out of the royal family, taking away the keys to the Royal Lodge and stripping him of his titles. He’s not longer the Duke of York, no longer HRH, and no longer a prince.

    All we’d heard was that Prince William was pushing for this move and that Charles didn’t have the heart to do it. This is years in the making, of course. So what changed? What affected the conscience of the king?

    It’s a simpler answer than we expected. It was Virginia Robert Giuffre.

    Related: Virginia Giuffre Describes ‘Prime Minister’ Who Tortured Her In Posthumous Memoir!

    Jeffrey Epstein‘s most vocal victim, the first to go public with her claims against the billionaire AND against Andrew, died earlier this year. Supposedly by suicide. But before that she wrote her memoir, Nobody’s Girl. The book was published posthumously this month, and the details she included seem to be what finally tipped the scales. Sources told Us Weekly the monarch made the ultimate decision because of the latest developments, including the new speculation that Andrew tried to smear Virginia’s name. But what really moved the needle this month are the previously unheard allegations in her book.

    Virginia wrote about her first time meeting Andrew, how he was so good at guessing her age — just 17 years old — because, as he told her, he had daughters of his own who weren’t much younger. Disgusting.

    The infamous photo of Prince Andrew with Virginia Roberts, who says she was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein to have sex with the Royal when she was just 17. / (c) BBC/WENN

    We can’t help but wonder if Charles saw the headlines or was told the particulars by aides who read the tell-all. But apparently it was enough. And the royal family hinted at who changed their minds by finishing their declaration:

    “Their Majesties wish to make clear that their thoughts and utmost sympathies have been, and will remain with, the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse.”

    It breaks our hearts realizing Virginia will never know about the blow she was able to deal to her alleged abuser. We just hope this continues, and ALL the men involved in Epstein’s underage sex trafficking ring start to finally face REAL consequences.

    [Image via BBC/DOJ/MEGA/WENN.]

    [ad_2]

    Perez Hilton

    Source link

  • Epstein Victim Reveals Prince Andrew & Ghislaine Maxwell’s HORRIFYING Convo About Beatrice & Eugenie! – Perez Hilton

    [ad_1]

    Every new detail that comes out about Jeffrey Epstein and his circle just reminds us what a monster this man was — and why we should never stop fighting to uncover the names of every participant in his underage sex trafficking ring.

    One name that’s been out there maybe the longest? Prince Andrew.

    The royal family’s black sheep has never been formally charged with a crime, but he has been accused of engaging in the sex trafficking. Victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre claimed Epstein sent her to have sex with Andrew more than once, including when she was just 17 years old. As disgusting as that is — considering Andrew would have been 41 at the time — it’s worse when you factor in his daughters.

    The infamous photo of Prince Andrew with Virginia Roberts, who says she was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein to have sex with the Royal when she was just 17. / (c) BBC/WENN

    Andrew’s own children Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie were 12 and 11, respectively, when Andrew allegedly had sex with Virginia for the first time.

    Related: Virginia Giuffre Describes ‘Prime Minister’ Who Tortured Her In Posthumous Memoir!

    You might think Andrew compartmentalized this fact when he was having sex with a teen girl. But it was apparently front of mind. In her posthumous memoir, Virginia describes the first night she met Andrew. She says Epstein’s Ghislaine Maxwell introduced them — and challenged the Prince to guess Virginia’s age.

    “The Duke of York, who was then 41, guessed correctly: 17. ‘My daughters are just a little younger than you,” he told me, explaining his accuracy.’”

    Ew. Ew ew ewwww! He said this to her?! He could tell how young she was because of how she resembled his own young daughters?!? JFC, man.

    Princess Eugenie and Beatrice with Prince Andrew in 2006
    Princess Eugenie and Beatrice with Prince Andrew in 2006. (c) Z.Tomaszewski / WENN

    And if you think that’s disturbing, it gets worse when Maxwell responds:

    “As usual, Maxwell was quick with a joke: ‘I guess we will have to trade her in soon.’”

    WTF. What the actual bleeding EFF.

    “We will have to trade her in”? As in… trade her in because she’s too old? For what, girls even younger? As in, closer in age to his own daughters? Or was she actually joking about trading her for Beatrice and Eugenie??

    Any possible interpretation we can think of is more horrifying than the last. JFC, these people…

    We have to say, this is even more horrifying when you take into account Epstein’s claims that Sarah Ferguson brought the princesses along with her when she visited him after he got out of prison. You know, the first time he evaded sex trafficking charges. That would have been just a few years after the meeting Virginia described. The idea of Beatrice and Eugenie coming face to face with that monster after this convo? Shivers.

    [Image via DOJ/MEGA/WENN.]

    [ad_2]

    Perez Hilton

    Source link