ReportWire

Tag: Jeffrey Epstein

  • 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

  • Will the Justice Department Even Try to Hold Epstein’s World Accountable?

    [ad_1]

    The DoJ apparently has better things to do.
    Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

    The United States Department of Justice is getting lapped by both Congress and the British authorities on follow-up investigations around the Epstein files. There’s no excuse for either. As British police arrest astonishingly powerful men for their dealings with Jeffrey Epstein and the U.S. House of Representatives tries to force titans of finance and politics to answer tough questions, our Justice Department lags far behind. It’s not even clear the DoJ is doing anything at all.

    Over in the U.K., law-enforcement officials have arrested former prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and former ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson. (Technically, both have been arrested but not yet formally charged, under a wrinkle in British legal procedure.) The putative defendants reportedly face potential charges of “misconduct in public office” for allegedly providing confidential government documents, including sensitive financial information about investment opportunities, to Epstein. (British authorities have accused neither man of participation in Epstein’s child sex-trafficking ring.)

    The British case is based in part on emails contained in the U.S. Justice Department’s own Epstein files, which were released less than a month ago. In a matter of weeks, British police investigated and arrested a former prince (Andrew) and a lord (Mandelson); have subjected both men, and others around them, to extensive questioning; and have conducted searches at properties associated with the subjects. Meanwhile, the most memorable step taken by our Justice Department since the release of the files was Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s public-service announcement that “the American people need to understand that it isn’t a crime to party with Mr. Epstein.”

    The contrast extends to the tone at the top. King Charles — an actual monarch who wears a literal crown and carries a scepter to work — has told British investigators (in American parlance) to do what you gotta do. Or, in the proper King’s English: “What now follows is the full, fair and proper process by which this issue is investigated in the appropriate manner and by the appropriate authorities. In this, as I have said before, they have our full and wholehearted support and cooperation. Let me state clearly: The law must take its course.” Other heads of state should follow the king’s hands-off example — in a case against his own brother Andrew, no less.

    Our own president isn’t quite of the same mind. He has long dismissed the Epstein case as a hoax, though it’s unclear what exactly he claims is fake. And he recently urged the American public to just get over it already. “I think it’s time now for the country to maybe get onto something else, like health care,” Trump responded when asked about the Epstein matter.

    The DoJ has dutifully adopted Trump’s recommended approach: myopia blended with dissembling and a pinch of proactive excuse-making. As Blanche explained earlier this month, “There’s a lot of correspondence. There’s a lot of emails. There’s a lot of photographs. But that doesn’t allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody.” Not exactly the tenacious prosecutorial posture Blanche and I learned during our concurrent early days at the Southern District of New York. But hey, if our Justice Department isn’t going to make meaningful use of its own Epstein files, at least others will.

    And then there’s Congress, which has taken a flawed but aggressive approach to its Epstein investigation. While a bipartisan (but mostly Democratic) coalition of lawmakers forced passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee has pressed forward with a series of aggressive subpoenas for testimony. Yes, the subpoenas are largely for political show, and no, the House has not extracted any damning admissions — but it’s putting powerful people on the spot and making them face meaningful questioning under oath.

    Last week, billionaire Les Wexner — whose name the DoJ originally redacted from a document listing him as an unindicted “co-conspirator” but then unredacted after Representative Thomas Massie publicly called out the redaction — faced five hours of questioning from the Oversight Committee. Wexner, a close associate of Epstein’s, claimed no knowledge of his friend’s criminality. Wexner also denied allegations that he had sexually abused Virginia Giuffre, who testified in 2016 that, as a minor, she had been trafficked to have sex with Wexner multiple times. (She died by suicide in 2025.)

    The beauty of being a federal prosecutor is you don’t have to take a blanket denial as the final word, even from an arrogant billionaire. People disclaim wrongdoing all the time. Sometimes they’re telling the truth; other times they aren’t. So ordinarily, given the lead provided by Congress, DoJ prosecutors may take Wexner’s testimony and subject it to rigorous testing — talk to other witnesses, examine emails and texts, check out phone, financial, and travel records. Yet we’ve seen no indication of DoJ doing any such thing.

    This week, the Clintons take their turn at the Oversight Committee’s deposition table. After a prolonged back-and-forth during which they played themselves into a strategic corner, the former First Couple relented and agreed to testify under the looming threat of a contempt-of-Congress charge supported by some bipartisan votes.

    The Hillary Clinton subpoena was an obvious stretch by a congressional committee seeking to drag in a boldface name. She had nothing to do with Epstein; the best that Republican committee chair James Comer could do in defense of the subpoena was to note that — brace yourself — Clinton had hired Ghislaine Maxwell’s nephew to work on her 2008 presidential campaign and later at State. Yes, that’s the headliner. Clinton proceeded to tear the committee a new one with her opening statement on Thursday and, predictably, nothing of relevant substance came of her testimony.

    But Bill Clinton will have to squirm when he answers questions today. The committee surely will confront the former president — a frequent flier on Epstein’s private jet — with photographs that show him partying with Epstein (not a crime, remember, per the deputy AG); swimming in a pool with Maxwell and a female whose identity has been redacted, and reclining in a hot tub at night, hands behind his head, along with a female whose image has been blacked out.

    Meanwhile, we’ve seen no sign that the Justice Department has subpoenaed or otherwise sought to interview Wexner or Clinton or any other powerful Epstein associate — and certainly not the most powerful of all former Epstein pals, Trump himself. (Notably, even the aggressive House Oversight Committee hasn’t sought testimony from the current president.)

    The DoJ’s apparent inaction is particularly galling given that prosecutors hold far more potent investigative tools than Congress does. Prosecutors have the vast resources of the Justice Department and FBI at their disposal, while Congress must make do with minimal investigative staff. Prosecutors can obtain search warrants and wiretaps, while Congress can’t. And prosecutorial subpoenas generally can be broader in scope than congressional subpoenas and are enforced more rigorously by the courts.

    The Justice Department has been flailing for months now to justify its inactivity. Back in July 2025, top DoJ officials released a memo declaring that, after an exhaustive review of over 300 gigabytes of information, “We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”

    Since then, the Justice Department has offered mixed messages (at best) about its ongoing investigative efforts. And while prosecutors could be moving stealthily behind the scenes, entirely undetectable to the public — I’m dubious, but it’s possible — we’ve seen zero public indication of actual in-the-field enforcement activity: no search warrants, no subpoenas, no interviews with key players, no arrests.

    Meanwhile, the British authorities and Congress forge ahead. It’s an embarrassing moment for our Justice Department’s leadership and a telling indictment of its own stubborn — and perhaps purposeful — indifference.


    See All



    [ad_2]

    Elie Honig

    Source link

  • Photo of Lutnick on Epstein’s island removed from Justice Department files now restored

    [ad_1]

    A photo released last month by the Justice Department as part of the Epstein files that showed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on Epstein’s island in the Caribbean was removed from the Justice Department’s website before being restored Thursday night. 

    The photo, which has been authenticated by CBS News, shows Epstein, Lutnick, and three other men standing over an oceanside cliff.

    The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, a nonprofit that preserves digital online content, downloaded the photo from the DOJ’s website on Jan. 31. It was also archived by Jmail, a web interface that was created to archive Epstein content.

    The photo was released under file No. EFTA01230639 on the DOJ’s website. At some point it was removed and the link pointed to a “Page not found.” However, within hours of publishing the story, it was restored Thursday night. 

    CBS News has reached out to the Commerce Department and the DOJ for comment.

    An undated photo of Jeffrey Epstein and Howard Lutnick (in blue shirt) on Epstein’s island.

    U.S. Department of Justice / Internet Archive


    Emails that were in the millions of newly released Epstein files showed that in 2012, Lutnick, his wife and their four children planned a visit to Little St. James, a private island where Epstein had an estate.

    The Free Press: WATCH: The Epstein Tapes, Part II: The Eye of the Law

    Lutnick was invited for lunch on Dec. 24, 2012, and later, Epstein’s assistant wrote on behalf of Epstein, “it was nice seeing you.”

    Lutnick, testifying before a congressional committee earlier this month, acknowledged visiting there with his family.

    “We had lunch on the island, that is true, for an hour,” Lutnick told lawmakers. “Then we left with all of my children, with my nannies and my wife all together. We were on family vacation. We were not apart. To suggest there was anything untoward about that in 2012, I don’t recall why we did it. But we did.”

    Lutnick has not been accused of any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein, and in the hearing said he had “nothing to hide — absolutely nothing.” 

    In recent weeks, though, Lutnick has faced criticism for his ties to Epstein, who was his neighbor in New York City. Lutnick had previously claimed to have cut off contact with Epstein in 2005.

    However, documents in the Epstein files showed the two were in business together as recently as 2014 over their shared dealings in a now-shuttered advertising company called Adfin. 

    The Epstein files showed that the two communicated about Adfin as late as 2018, with Epstein writing to Lutnick, “on another note what do you think the prospects for adfin are??”   

    Also in 2018, Lutnick emailed Epstein to apparently complain about an expansion plan for the Frick Collection art museum near their homes. 

    Lutnick warned Epstein that the renovation might “block your sunlight and views.”

    “You should put in a letter. I’m sending a lawyer. Don’t ignore this,” Lutnick wrote. 

    Epstein died in jail in 2019 after his arrest on federal charges of sex trafficking. His death was ruled a suicide.

    In:

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Bill Clinton to testify today before House committee investigating Epstein’s ties

    [ad_1]

    Former President Bill Clinton is set to face questions Friday from members of the Republican-led House Oversight Committee about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, making him the first sitting or former president to testify before members of Congress in over 40 years.

    Clinton will be deposed in a closed-door setting one day after the committee questioned his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for around six hours about what she knew about Epstein and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.

    Committee chair James Comer, R-Ky., said Thursday that he expected the former president’s deposition to take “even longer.” The meeting is taking place in Chappaqua, New York, where the Clintons have a house.

    The Clintons told the committee in sworn declarations last month that they had “no personal knowledge” of any “criminal activities” by Epstein or Maxwell.

    Clinton has said she has no recollection of ever having met Epstein, but Bill Clinton has acknowledged he flew on his plane in 2002 and 2003 while he was traveling internationally for the Clinton Foundation. In his declaration, Clinton said Epstein “offered a plane that was big enough to accommodate me, my staff and my U.S. Secret Service detail, in support of visiting the Foundation’s philanthropic work.”

    While President Donald Trump has accused Clinton of having taken dozens of trips to Epstein’s island in the Caribbean, Clinton said in his declaration that he was never there. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said in an interview with Vanity Fair last year that Trump “was wrong about that.”

    Emails by Epstein the Justice Department released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act also indicated that Clinton did not go to the island, and Maxwell said in an interview with a top Justice Department official last year that he had never been there.

    “I do not recall speaking to Mr. Epstein for more than a decade prior to his 2019 arrest” on sex trafficking charges, Clinton’s declaration said. Epstein, who pleaded guilty in Florida to state charges of soliciting a minor in 2008, died in jail while he was awaiting trial on federal charges. Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking charges in 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

    Files related to the Epstein probes that have been released to date include numerous pictures of Bill Clinton with Epstein and Maxwell. In some of the photos, Clinton is shown in a hot tub, swimming in a pool with Maxwell and sitting at a table with a woman sitting on his leg.

    The pictures are undated, and it’s unclear where they were taken. None suggest any wrongdoing.

    The Oversight Committee in August subpoenaed the Clintons and several former top Justice Department officials to testify about Epstein. After months of back and forth, the former first couple agreed to testify as the House was moving toward voting on contempt resolutions for the Clintons.

    Democrats in the House of Representative released 19 images, including photos of Jeffrey Epstein with presidents Trump and Clinton, Ghislaine Maxwell, billionaire Bill Gates, film director Woody Allen and conservative firebrand Steve Bannon. NBC New York’s Jonathan Dienst reports.

    It’s very rare for a sitting or former president to appear before members of Congress. The last to do so was former President Gerald R. Ford in 1983, when he testified before a Senate subcommittee about planning for the bicentennial of the Constitution.

    Ford also answered questions from Congress as president, appearing before a House subcommittee in 1974 to testify about his pardon of Richard M. Nixon, his predecessor.

    The Democratic-led House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol subpoenaed Trump to testify in 2022. Trump challenged the subpoena, with his then-lawyer David Warrington, now the White House counsel, saying in a statement, “Long held precedent and practice maintain that separation of powers prohibits Congress from compelling a President to testify before it.”

    The committee withdrew the subpoena before it shut down at the end of 2022.

    Democratic members of the Oversight Committee have said its move against Bill Clinton sets a new standard — and one that should apply to the current president.

    “This committee has now set a new precedent about talking to presidents and former presidents, and 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,” the panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Robert Garcia of California, said Thursday. “And that should happen immediately.”

    In her opening statement Thursday, Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, accused the committee of focusing on her and her husband “in order to distract attention from President Trump’s actions and cover them up despite legitimate calls for answers.”

    “If this committee is serious about learning the truth about Epstein’s trafficking crimes, it would not rely on press gaggles to get answers from our current president on his involvement; it would ask him directly under oath about the tens of thousands of times he shows up in the Epstein files,” she said.

    Trump, who had a falling-out with Epstein before he was first charged criminally in 2006, has denied any wrongdoing, and authorities have not accused him of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. In November, Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton” and other Democrats. The status of that investigation is unclear.

    Asked this month about Clinton’s upcoming deposition, Trump said: “I think it’s a shame, to be honest. I always liked him.”

    [ad_2]

    Dareh Gregorian | NBC News

    Source link

  • Hillary Clinton’s Epstein deposition: Everything she told lawmakers

    [ad_1]

    Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told lawmakers that she does not recall ever encountering Jeffrey Epstein, in a closed-door deposition to the House Oversight Committee on Thursday.

    “I don’t know how many times I had to say I did not know Jeffrey Epstein. I never went to his island. I never went to his homes. I never went to his offices. So it’s on the record numerous times,” Clinton told reporters after the deposition.

    Earlier in the day, Clinton shared her opening statement of the deposition on X.

    “The Committee justified its subpoena to me based on its assumption that I have information regarding the investigations into the criminal activities of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Let me be as clear as I can. I do not,” Clinton said. “As I stated in my sworn declaration on January 13, I had no idea about their criminal activities. I do not recall ever encountering Mr. Epstein.”

    She continued, “I never flew on his plane or visited his island. I have nothing to add to that.”

    Clinton also told reporters that the end of the deposition was “quite unusual.”

    “I started being asked about UFOs and a series of questions about pizzagate, one of the most vile bogus conspiracy theories that was propagated on the internet,” she said.

    Representative Robert Garcia, a California Democrat and ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, called on committee Republicans to release the transcript from the deposition.

    “What I can say is that she, again, never met Jeffrey Epstein, never went to the island, never went to the plane and had no knowledge of any of his crimes,” Garcia told reporters.

    Representative James Comer, a Kentucky Republican and chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told reporters that he will not be releasing many details, but that the committee will try to get the video out “as quickly as possible, hopefully within the next 24 hours.” He said the transcript will be released as soon as Hillary Clinton’s lawyers approve it, adding that is the standard rule of a deposition.

    Clinton also said she wanted to commend Comer for raising questions about the areas of the investigation Clinton thought should be explored further.

    Why It Matters

    The closed-door depositions in the hometown of Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton in Chappaqua, a typically quiet hamlet about 30 miles north of New York City, come after months of tense back-and-forth between the former high-powered Democratic couple and the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee. It will be the first time that a former president has been forced to testify before Congress.

    Epstein was a sex offender and disgraced financier who was found dead in New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Epstein had social connections with many prominent people, including President Donald Trump and Bill Clinton. Neither has been accused of any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein, with Trump saying his relationship with him ended years before his death.

    Epstein visited Bill Clinton in the White House multiple times in the 1990s, according to visitor logs. After he left office, the former president flew multiple times on Epstein’s 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.”

    What To Know

    Hillary Clinton said the committee’s focus should be on the federal government’s handling of the investigations and prosecutions of Epstein. She said lawmakers subpoenaed eight law enforcement officials but heard testimony from only one. She also said five former attorneys general were allowed to submit statements saying they had no relevant information.

    “You have held zero public hearings, refused to allow the media to attend them, including today,” Hillary Clinton told the panel.

    She said the committee has made “little effort” to call individuals who show up most prominently in the released files.

    “This institutional failure is designed to protect one political party and one public official, rather than to seek truth and justice for the victims and survivors, as well as the public who also want to get to the bottom of this matter. My heart breaks for the survivors. And I am furious on their behalf,” she added.

    The former first lady also spoke about her work to stop abuses women and girls face in the U.S. and around the world, including human trafficking, forced labor and sexual slavery.

    “If you are new to this issue, let me tell you: Jeffrey Epstein was a heinous individual, but he’s far from alone,” she said. “This is not a one‑off tabloid fascination or a political scandal. It’s a global scourge with an unimaginable human toll.”

    She criticized the Trump administration, saying it “gutted” the State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Office by cutting more than 70 percent of the career civil and foreign service experts who worked to prevent trafficking crimes.

    “The message from the Trump administration to the American people and the world could not be clearer: Combating human trafficking is no longer an American priority under the Trump White House,” Hillary Clinton said.

    She outlined what actions she said a committee with elected officials committed to transparency would take in this inquiry, including ensuring the full release of Epstein‑related files, demanding testimony from prosecutors who negotiated Epstein’s plea deal and getting to the bottom of reports that the Department of Justice withheld FBI interviews in which a survivor accused President Donald Trump of “heinous crimes.”

    Instead, she argued, the committee has compelled her testimony despite her lack of direct knowledge, calling the effort a “distraction from President Trump’s actions.”

    “What is being held back? Who is being protected? And why the cover‑up?” she asked.

    When Will Bill Clinton Testify About Epstein?

    Bill Clinton is expected to testify in front of the House Oversight Committee on Friday.

    Was Hillary Clinton Mentioned in the Epstein Files?

    Hillary Clinton was mentioned in the Epstein investigative files released by the Department of Justice. She was mentioned in 802 documents, over 60 percent of which were related to her campaigns, fundraising and political messaging or her work as secretary of state, The Wellesley News reported.

    What Happens Next

    Bill Clinton is expected to testify in front of the House Oversight Committee on Friday.

    Do you have a story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have any questions about this story? Contact LiveNews@newsweek.com

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Audio of Epstein survivor’s account of the Clintons is AI

    [ad_1]

    A viral audio clip claims to reveal a victim’s testimony of abuse by former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on an island owned by sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

    This audio clip is not real. It was generated with artificial intelligence.

    Hillary Clinton testified Feb. 26 before the House Oversight Committee as part of a probe into Epstein. Bill Clinton is expected to testify Feb. 27. Neither Clinton has been accused of wrongdoing or charged with a crime in connection to Epstein’s offenses.

    A Feb. 24 TikTok shows an image of Epstein with Bill Clinton and plays an audio clip of what the post calls a “survivor.”

    “You want the truth about who spent the most time on that island? Fine, I’ll give it to you straight, no filter. The former president. You know exactly which one. Yeah, Clinton. The survivors still call him number one,” the narrator said.

    Other Instagram and Facebook users also shared the audio clip. One post claimed it was the voice of Epstein survivor Virginia Giuffre, who died in April 2025. 

    In her Feb. 26 opening statement before the House Oversight Committee, Hillary Clinton said, “I do not recall ever encountering Mr. Epstein. I never flew on his plane or visited his island, homes or offices.”

    Detection models, experts say the audio is AI-generated

    We traced the audio to The People’s Voice, a frequent source of misinformation. It published a video in November that it said included a “newly leaked recording” from Giuffre. 

    The People’s Voice also recently published an AI-generated audio of a supposed “whistleblower” talking about television host Ellen DeGeneres, claiming the Epstein files exposed her as a cannibal. We rated that claim Pants on Fire.

    We used the DeepFake-O-Meter, developed by the University at Buffalo Media Forensics Lab, to analyze the audio clip about the Clintons. Results from four out of five detection models showed it was likely AI-generated.

    When we uploaded the audio clip to the AI speech classifier from ElevenLabs — a company that specializes in AI audio generation — it said, “it’s very likely that this audio was generated with ElevenLabs.”

    We also asked multiple experts to analyze the audio, and they said it was AI-generated. V.S. Subrahmanian, a Northwestern University computer science professor, and Marco Postiglione, a postdoctoral researcher who works with him, used 83 deepfake detection algorithms to analyze the audio. Sixty-seven found the audio was more likely to be fake than real.

    Subrahmanian and Postiglione also pointed to other signs of AI generation, including that the narrative seems “structured like written prose rather than spontaneous speech.”

    Siwei Lyu, a University at Buffalo computer science and engineering professor, said the audio included a 13-second segment without audible breath intakes. “Each sentence also ends with an abrupt cut to silence rather than fading out naturally, missing the subtle room tone and vocal decay you’d expect from a genuine recording,” he said.

    The voice’s pitch and delivery are also flat, said Hafiz Malik, University of Michigan – Dearborn electrical and computer engineering professor. He said it’s not likely for a human to speak for two minutes at the same rate without taking any pauses, like the voice in the audio clip does.

    The audio clip includes claims about the Clintons’ actions on Epstein’s island, Little Saint James in the U.S. Virgin Islands, including physical and verbal abuse of Epstein victims. 

    We found no verified reports of such anecdotes from Giuffre or other Epstein victims about the Clintons.  

    Did Giuffre say something about the Clintons?

    Giuffre’s memoir, “Nobody’s Girl,” published posthumously in 2025, mentioned that she was present when Epstein hosted Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore for dinner on separate occasions. She also talked about a time in 2022 when Bill Clinton flew on Epstein’s plane, but Giuffre didn’t go with them. She noted that Clinton has said the trip was a humanitarian mission.

    Giuffre also referred to a 2011 article that said she “had never been ‘lent out’” to the former president, referring to Bill Clinton. 

    The book doesn’t mention Hillary Clinton.

    We found no evidence that audio from Giuffre was released after her death. On April 29, 2025, her family released a photo of one of Giuffre’s handwritten journal entries where she said she stood with survivors and encouraged them to fight for their rights. 

    This audio clip that posts say is an Epstein victim talking about abuse by the Clintons is fake. We rate it Pants on Fire!

    [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

  • U.K.’s ex-ambassador to the U.S. arrested after Epstein files release

    [ad_1]

    British police have arrested the country’s former ambassador to the United States following weeks of revelations over his relationship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

    Peter Mandelson was detained amid an intensifying scandal after the Justice Department released millions of Epstein-related documents, some of which appear to show him leaking sensitive political and market information to the financier.

    Video on Sky News showed Mandelson being led from his home in north London wearing a gray sweater and black coat.

    London’s Metropolitan Police said in a news release that it was an update on an investigation into misconduct in public office offenses “relating to a former government minister.”

    “Officers have arrested a 72-year-old man on suspicion of misconduct in public office,” the force said in a statement, adding that he had been taken to be interviewed at a London police station. The statement did not name Mandelson, as is standard practice under British law.

    “This follows search warrants at two addresses in the Wiltshire and Camden areas,” it said, referring to a county around 100 miles to the west of London and an area in the north of the United Kingdom’s capital.

    Mandelson has denied any wrongdoing related to Epstein.

    As part of the Epstein files, emails from 2009 appear to show him passing on an assessment of potential policy measures. He also appeared to discuss a planned tax on bankers’ bonuses and confirm an imminent bailout package for the euro before it was announced.

    On Feb. 6, police searched two properties linked to Mandelson, who served as Britain’s ambassador to the U.S. between February and September 2025. Days earlier, the longtime political grandee who had a reputation as a ruthless political fixer, had stepped down as a member of the House of Lords.

    The Justice Department’s release of files relating to its investigation into Epstein have shaken the upper echelons of power across the globe, with high-profile figures being fired and resigning, and a number of active criminal investigations launched overseas.

    Mandelson’s arrest comes less than a week after the former Prince Andrew was arrested on the same offense. The royal was later released “under investigation,” meaning he was neither charged nor exonerated.

    Stripped of his royal titles and now known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, he was later pictured as he was driven away from Aylsham Police Station in Norfolk, roughly 50 miles from the Sandringham estate where he lives.

    Mountbatten-Windsor, who turned 66 on Thursday, the day of his arrest, has always denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.

    Mandelson began working for Britain’s Labour Party in the 1980s and rose to become a major figure, playing a key role in Tony Blair’s landslide election victory in 1997.

    He was forced to resign from Blair’s Cabinet twice, first over an undeclared bank loan and then after he intervened in a passport application by a foreign businessman.

    Mandelson was later made business secretary by Blair’s successor Gordon Brown, who would go on to appoint him to the House of Lords in 2008.

    It was known that he had a friendship with Epstein prior to the U.S. ambassadorial appointment by the current prime minister. Keir Starmer.

    After Mandelson was accused of passing sensitive information to the disgraced financier, the scandal ramped up the pressure on Starmer’s government, already weakened by record-low approval ratings, policy U-turns and cost-of-living pressures.

    Earlier this month, Starmer said Mandelson had “lied repeatedly” about the extent of his past contact with Epstein.

    An earlier release of some of the Epstein files showed Mandelson called Epstein “my best pal” in a 2003 birthday book.

    They also appear to show that the well-connected financier gave $75,000 in three payments to accounts linked to Mandelson or his then-partner in 2003 and 2004. Mandelson previously told the BBC that he had no record or recollection of receiving the sums and did not know whether the documents were authentic.

    The files also appear to confirm their friendship remained intact after Epstein pled guilty in June 2008 to charges of solicitation of prostitution and of solicitation of prostitution with a minor under the age of 18 — and was sentenced to 18 months in a minimum-security facility.

    Mandelson’s arrest is not related to these charges or any other sex offenses.

    The list of powerful people caught up in the widening Epstein files drama includes Thorbjørn Jagland, who was prime minister of Norway and went on to head the Nobel Committee and the Council of Europe; Tom Pritzker, executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels Corp., and former White House counsel in the Obama administration Kathy Ruemmler, among others.

    [ad_2]

    Henry Austin and Camille Behnke | NBC News

    Source link

  • Mar-a-Lago suspect Austin Tucker Martin was angry over Epstein files—report

    [ad_1]

    The armed man who was shot and killed by Secret Service agents after entering the secured perimeter of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Sunday morning was angry about the Jeffrey Epstein files, according to co-workers and a text message obtained by TMZ.

    The man, identified as 21-year-old Austin Tucker Martin of North Carolina, sent a message to a co-worker on February 15 where he said “evil is real and unmistakable” while referring to the files, TMZ reported.

    He also wrote: ”The best people like you and I can do is use what little influence we have. Tell other people about what you hear about the Epstein files and what the government is doing about it. Raise awareness,” according to the message obtained by the outlet.

    According to TMZ, Martin’s co-workers at Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club said he became fixated on Epstein after the Justice Department’s latest release of records from its investigative files on the late convicted sex offender. They said Martin, who TMZ reported was a Trump supporter, was disturbed by what he viewed as a government cover-up and regularly spoke about powerful people “getting away with it.”

    Newsweek has not independently verified the contents of the text message or the accounts provided by Martin’s co-workers to TMZ.

    Martin was confronted by two Secret Service agents and a Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputy near the north gate of the property holding what officials described as a shotgun and gas canister.

    Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said Martin was ordered to drop the items. He put down the gas canister but “raised the shotgun to a shooting position,” Bradshaw said at a brief press conference on Sunday.

    The two agents and the deputy “fired their weapons to neutralize the threat.”

    This is a developing story. More to follow.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Kate Middleton makes first public appearance since former Prince Andrew’s arrest

    [ad_1]

    NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

    Kate Middleton made her first public appearance on Saturday, two days after former Prince Andrew was arrested in connection to his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

    The Princess of Wales attended a championship rugby match between England and Ireland in Twickenham, London. 

    “Congratulations Ireland,” she wrote of the team that beat England 42-21 on her Instagram page. “Always a pleasure to see @englandrugby in action at Twickenham @sixnationsrugby.”

    The 44-year-old, who attended the match without her husband, Prince William, is a patron of the Rugby Football Union and Rugby Football League.

    ANDREW DODGES POLICE PROBE BUT KING CHARLES’ EPSTEIN ‘NIGHTMARE’ ISN’T OVER: EXPERTS

    Kate Middleton made her first public appearance since ex-Prince Andrew’s Thursday arrest at a rugby match on Saturday.  (David Rogers/Getty Images)

    She appeared to be all smiles as she sat next to injured England player Fin Baxter while she watched the match which wearing an England rugby scarf. 

    The princess and William haven’t yet spoken out on Andrew’s arrest, although Buckingham Palace put out a statement on their behalf following the most recent Epstein files release.

    “I can confirm the prince and princess have been deeply concerned by the continuing revelations,” a palace spokesperson told the BBC earlier this month. “Their thoughts remain focused on the victims.”

    The former prince, who is now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, was arrested on his 66th birthday Thursday at Sandringham, where he currently lives, and later released after an 11-hour detention. He has not been charged and denies all the allegations of wrongdoing against him.

    EPSTEIN PROBE LEADER COMER SAYS ‘NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW’ AFTER EX-PRINCE ANDREW ARREST

    Kate Middleton shaking hands with a rugby player

    Kate Middelton meets with the father of a rugby player on Saturday.  (Dan Mullan/RFU/The RFU Collection via Getty Images)

    Andrew had been accused of sexual assault by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, who claimed she was forced to have sex with the prince when she was underage. Giuffre died last year.

    Buckingham Palace also released a statement from King Charles III on Thursday following Andrew’s arrest.

    “I have learned with the deepest concern the news about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and suspicion of misconduct in public office. What now follows is the full, fair and proper process by which this issue is investigated in the appropriate manner and by the appropriate authorities.”

    “As this process continues, it would not be right for me to comment further on this matter. Meanwhile, my family and I will continue in our duty and service to you all,” he added.

    LIKE WHAT YOU’RE READING? CLICK HERE FOR MORE ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

    Kate Middleton laughs with the president of the Irish Rugby Union

    Kate Middleton laughs with John O’Driscoll, president of the Irish Rugby Football Union, on Saturday.  (David Rogers/Getty Images)

    Andrew was stripped of his royal titles last October, and forced to leave his home at the Royal Lodge in Windsor for a smaller home on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk.

    CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT NEWSLETTER

    The government is also considering removing Andrew, who is eighth in line to the throne, from the line of succession. Edward VIII was the last royal to be removed from the line of succession when he abdicated in 1936. Queen Elizabeth II’s father became king in his place.

    Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in the back of a car after release

    Former Prince Andrew was arrested on Thursday.  (Reuters/Phil Noble TPX Images of the Day)

    “The government is considering any further steps that might be required, and we’re not ruling anything out,” announced James Murray, the government’s chief secretary to the Treasury.

    CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

    The Crown Prosecution Service has said that misconduct in public office has a maximum sentence of life in prison.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office

    [ad_1]

    WE’RE FOLLOWING THIS BREAKING NEWS STORY THIS MORNING. ANDREW MOUNTBATTEN-WINDSOR, THE BROTHER OF KING CHARLES, IS NOW IN POLICE CUSTODY. LET’S GET RIGHT TO OUR BREAKING NEWS DESK AND TODD KAZAKIEWICH FOLLOWING THOSE DETAILS FOR US. TODD, ANTOINETTE AND DOUG. GOOD MORNING. THESE DETAILS ARE JUST COMING IN. THE FORMER PRINCE, AS YOU SAID, NOW KNOWN SIMPLY AS ANDREW MOUNTBATTEN-WINDSOR, HAS BEEN ARRESTED ON SUSPICION OF MISCONDUCT IN PUBLIC OFFICE. THE THAMES VALLEY POLICE, WHICH COVERS AREAS WEST OF LONDON INCLUDING MOUNTBATTEN, WINDSOR’S FORMER HOME, SAID IT WAS, QUOTE, ASSESSING REPORTS THAT THE FORMER PRINCE SENT TRADE REPORTS TO CONVICTED SEX OFFENDER JEFFREY EPSTEIN IN 2010. THE POLICE FORCE DID NOT NAME MOUNTBATTEN-WINDSOR AS THE PERSON UNDER ARREST. THAT IS STANDARD PRACTICE UNDER UK LAW. POLICE DESCRIBED THE PERSON UNDER ARREST AS, QUOTE, A MAN IN HIS 60S. PICTURES ONLINE APPEARED TO SHOW POLICE CARS AND OFFICERS OUTSIDE HIS HOME. RECAPPING OUR BREAKING NEWS, FORMER PRINCE ANDREW, NOW KNOWN AS ANDREW MOUNTBATTEN-WINDSOR, HAS BEEN ARRESTED IN THE UK ON SUSPICION OF MISCONDUCT IN PUBLIC OFFICE. HE IS IN POLICE CUSTODY. SEARCHES A

    Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office

    Updated: 3:19 AM PST Feb 19, 2026

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    U.K. police arrested Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on Thursday on suspicion of misconduct in public office.Thames Valley Police, an agency that covers areas west of London, including Mountbatten-Windsor’s former home, said it was “assessing” reports that the former Prince Andrew sent trade reports to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2010.The assessment followed the release of millions of pages of documents connected to a U.S. investigation of Epstein. Mountbatten-Windsor features a number of times in the documents.The police force did not name Mountbatten-Windsor, as is normal under U.K. law. But when asked if he had been arrested, the force pointed to a statement saying that they had arrested a man in his 60s. Mountbatten-Windsor is 66.“Following a thorough assessment, we have now opened an investigation into this allegation of misconduct in public office,” the statement said. “We understand the significant public interest in this case, and we will provide updates at the appropriate time.”Mountbatten-Windsor has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in his relationship with Epstein. Last fall, King Charles III stripped Andrew of his royal titles, including the right to be called a prince, as he tried to insulate the monarchy from the continuing revelations about his younger brother’s relationship with Epstein. Those revelations have tarnished the royal family for more than a decade.Images circulated online appeared to show unmarked police cars at Mountbatten-Windsor’s home, Wood Farm on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, with plainclothes officers appearing to gather outside.

    LONDON —

    U.K. police arrested Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on Thursday on suspicion of misconduct in public office.

    Thames Valley Police, an agency that covers areas west of London, including Mountbatten-Windsor’s former home, said it was “assessing” reports that the former Prince Andrew sent trade reports to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2010.

    The assessment followed the release of millions of pages of documents connected to a U.S. investigation of Epstein. Mountbatten-Windsor features a number of times in the documents.

    The police force did not name Mountbatten-Windsor, as is normal under U.K. law. But when asked if he had been arrested, the force pointed to a statement saying that they had arrested a man in his 60s. Mountbatten-Windsor is 66.

    “Following a thorough assessment, we have now opened an investigation into this allegation of misconduct in public office,” the statement said. “We understand the significant public interest in this case, and we will provide updates at the appropriate time.”

    Mountbatten-Windsor has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in his relationship with Epstein. Last fall, King Charles III stripped Andrew of his royal titles, including the right to be called a prince, as he tried to insulate the monarchy from the continuing revelations about his younger brother’s relationship with Epstein. Those revelations have tarnished the royal family for more than a decade.

    Images circulated online appeared to show unmarked police cars at Mountbatten-Windsor’s home, Wood Farm on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, with plainclothes officers appearing to gather outside.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • King Charles fears Andrew scandal not over as Epstein fallout threatens monarchy: experts

    [ad_1]

    NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

    King Charles’ strategy to contain the fallout surrounding Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is unraveling, multiple royal experts told Fox News Digital.

    As the fallen prince turns 66 on Feb. 19, the monarch is said to be increasingly concerned that more accusations about his brother’s connection to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein could soon come to light.

    “The road is narrowing for Andrew as unprecedented bombshell revelations drop daily,” British broadcaster and photographer Helena Chard told Fox News Digital.

    ANDREW FACES FINAL HUMILIATION AS KING CHARLES ERASES ROYAL LEGACY COMPLETELY WITH ‘NOT MUCH SYMPATHY’: EXPERT

    The former Prince Andrew and King Charles III attend Katharine, Duchess of Kent’s requiem mass service at Westminster Cathedral on Sept. 16, 2025, in London. The monarch stripped his disgraced brother of his princely title on Oct. 30, 2025. (Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images)

    “There is an air of chaos as King Charles is also seemingly being pushed down this narrowing road,” she shared. 

    “The public is calling for accountability, and it seems the royal family can’t get ahead of the curve, let alone on top of the current public outcry. As King Charles endures a verbal battering, being thrown into the pot of blame, many wonder if he can read the room.”

    King Charles looking up in a dark blue suit against a green backdrop.

    King Charles III has been receiving treatment for an undisclosed form of cancer since February 2024. (Justin Tallis – WPA Pool/Getty Images)

    Chard’s comments followed remarks by Vanity Fair correspondent and royal author Katie Nicholl, who told the outlet the 77-year-old king is concerned “that more is yet to come.”

    WATCH: KING CHARLES MUST ‘CONTROL’ THE HOUSE OF WINDSOR: AUTHOR

    “There’s a sense of not knowing what is coming next, and that is destabilizing,” an insider told the outlet. “The king has done everything he can; he has stripped Andrew of his titles, removed him from his home, and is trying to keep Andrew out of the picture, but it is proving to be impossible.”

    On Oct. 30, the king stripped his disgraced brother of his princely title and evicted him from his royal mansion.

    Prince Andrew in a suit and top hat looking at a woman wearing a light pink suit and floral hat as Jeffrey Epstein looks on.

    This undated photo shows Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein at Ascot in the U.K. (Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images)

    Demands had been growing for Buckingham Palace to act amid reports about Andrew’s friendship with Epstein and renewed allegations from one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, whose posthumous memoir was released that month.

    Queen Elizabeth and the former Prince Charles sitting side-by-side in royal regalia on gold thrones.

    Queen Elizabeth II and the former Prince Charles during the state opening of Parliament on Oct. 14, 2019, in London. Charles ascended to the throne upon the death of his mother in 2022. (Paul Edwards – WPA Pool/Getty Images)

    Andrew, long regarded as the late Queen Elizabeth II’s favorite son, faced renewed public outrage after emails also revealed he stayed in contact with Epstein longer than he previously admitted.

    Andrew now lives on the king’s Sandringham estate, Britain’s Press Association reported. He is temporarily staying at Wood Farm cottage while his permanent residence, Marsh Farm cottage, undergoes repairs. According to multiple reports, the king is personally funding Andrew’s living arrangements.

    A black and white picture of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor kneeling over an unidentified woman.

    In photos released by the Department of Justice, Andrew can be seen kneeling over an unidentified woman. (Department of Justice)

    “King Charles hasn’t completely kicked Andrew to the curb, funding Andrew’s living situation at present,” Chard explained. “His reasoning is likely due to a mix of family obligations and a desire to maintain control over the situation. Supporting Andrew privately allows the king to manage the narrative and minimize damage to the monarch. The irony is that it isn’t going to plan.”

    CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT NEWSLETTER

    Prince Andrew looking disressed in a dark suit and tie in front of a church.

    Prince Andrew was officially stripped of his royal titles and honors by King Charles III on Oct. 30, 2025. He will no longer be styled “Prince Andrew” or “His Royal Highness”, and will instead be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor (Steve Parsons – WPA Pool/Getty Images)

    “Despite Andrew’s tarnished reputation, King Charles agreed to look out for his brother,” Chard continued. 

    “He made that promise to their mother. The queen had a strong sense of duty and family obligation, which may have led her to request that King Charles look after Andrew. Andrew’s emotional and overall well-being was of great importance to her.”

    A photo of Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell found in the Justice Department's latest release of Epstein files.

    A photo of Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell was found in the Justice Department’s previous release of Epstein files. (Department of Justice)

    Royal experts told Fox News Digital that Charles has every reason to worry about how Andrew’s past could impact the monarchy’s future.

    King Charles in uniform looking ahead in England.

    King Charles III is said to be concerned that more bombshells involving his disgraced brother could come to light and rock the monarchy. (Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

    Andrew’s swift relocation came as Thames Valley Police confirmed they were investigating claims that Epstein flew another woman to Britain to have sex with the king’s brother. A lawyer for the alleged victim told the BBC the encounter occurred in 2010 at Andrew’s former residence, Royal Lodge.

    The allegations are separate from those made by Giuffre, who claimed she had been trafficked to Britain to have sex with Andrew in 2001, when she was just 17.

    Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre

    Virginia Giuffre holds a photo of herself as a teen, when she says she was abused by Jeffrey Epstein.  (Emily Michot/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

    Mountbatten-Windsor also appeared multiple times in the 3 million pages of documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice. 

    LIKE WHAT YOU’RE READING? CLICK HERE FOR MORE ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

    Queen Elizabeth and the former Prince Andrew in deep conversation.

    Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was known as the late queen’s favorite son. (Mark Cuthbert/UK Press via Getty Images)

    In an email dated March 23, 2011, an attorney for an exotic dancer alleged that Epstein and Mountbatten-Windsor asked her to take part in a threesome at the sex offender’s Florida home, according to The Associated Press.

    Mountbatten-Windsor has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein and has not responded publicly to the new trafficking claim.

    Prince Andrew Virginia Roberts

    A photo from 2001 that was included in court files shows Prince Andrew with his arm around the waist of 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre, who says Jeffrey Epstein paid her to have sex with the prince. Andrew has denied the allegations. In the background is Epstein’s girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.  (U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals)

    Paul Burrell, Princess Diana’s former butler and author of “The Royal Insider,” told Fox News Digital that “the weight of monarchy weighs heavily” on the king.

    Book cover for Paul Burrell's The Royal Insider.

    “The Royal Insider: My Life with the Queen, the King and Princess Diana” by Paul Burrell is out now. (Hachette Mobius)

    “He is a father, a brother, a husband,” he said. “He has the weight of everybody on his shoulders. I often think to myself, he waited so long for this job. He waited so long to be king and wanted it so badly. I wonder if now that he has it, he should think, ‘Be careful what you wish for because in the end you get it.’ And now he has it. And what a job he has now.”

    “His brother has gone rogue, and I don’t think we’ve seen the last of that yet,” Burrell warned. 

    A young Prince Andrew standing in front of a helicopter.

    A young Prince Andrew at Naval Air Station Portsmouth, circa 1983. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

    “What Charles is trying to do at the moment is control the House of Windsor. If he can contain it and keep it all in its separate compartments, I think he’ll win. But he has to manage it very carefully. He can’t let people just ride roughshod over him because he’s king. Charles makes the rules. The family should abide by them.”

    CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

    Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor looking at the camera as he kneels next to an unidentified woman.

    Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was featured in three new photos from the recent Epstein files drop. (Department of Justice)

    Other correspondence between Epstein and someone believed to be Mountbatten-Windsor shows Epstein offering to arrange a date between the man and a 26-year-old Russian woman, The Associated Press reported. 

    The man, who signs off simply as “A,” later suggested that he and Epstein have dinner in London, either at a restaurant or Buckingham Palace.

    An exterior view of Buckingham Palace

    Buckingham Palace has been facing mounting pressure to act out following the allegations involving Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. (Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

    It’s also noted that the former prince’s residence at Royal Lodge has long been a point of contention between the king and his brother.

    A moving truck outside Royal Lodge.

    A storage van leaves the gates of Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park, the former home of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, following his move to the Sandringham estate on Feb. 4, 2026, in Windsor. (Peter Nicholls/Getty Images)

    After Charles became king in 2022, he sought to move his brother into a smaller residence on the Windsor Castle estate, the outlet reported.

    Mountbatten-Windsor refused, citing a lease that runs through 2078. But pressure for Andrew to leave intensified in October as lawmakers and the public questioned the favorable terms of his 30-room Royal Lodge lease, managed by the Crown Estate.

    King Charles in a gold royal carriage.

    King Charles III was crowned in May 2023. (Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images)

    The Crown Estate controls properties throughout the country that are technically owned by the monarchy but are managed for the benefit of British taxpayers. The Sandringham estate in Norfolk, on the other hand, is the king’s personal property.

    STARMER CALLS ON EX-PRINCE ANDREW TO TESTIFY BEFORE CONGRESS AFTER LATEST EPSTEIN RELEASE

    A home on the Sandringham estate.

    Members of the media outside Marsh Farm on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk on Jan. 15, 2026. (Joe Giddens/PA Images via Getty Images)

    “Wood Farm and Marsh Farm are private residences funded privately by the king,” British royals expert Hilary Fordwich told Fox News Digital. “He is thereby honoring the late queen’s wishes. There is no possibility of any rehabilitation for Andrew.”

    King Charles looking away from his worried brother Prince Andrew.

    Royal experts told Fox News Digital that King Charles III reportedly promised his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, to look after his brother, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. (Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)

    “The king is known to be forgiving — viewing it as his Christian duty as head of the Church of England — and bound by duty to protect both his brother and the monarchy by isolating him,” Fordwich said. “By funding Andrew, the king retains control. It’s containment with compassion.”

    But not everyone agrees with the king’s approach, said Fordwich.

    Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor smiling outside a church at Prince William while the prince looks annoyed in a dark suit.

    Prince William (right, pictured here) and his wife Catherine have been “deeply concerned” by the latest revelations linking Andrew to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Kensington Palace said on Feb. 9, 2026. (Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images)

    “Prince William has been strongly behind all the isolation of his uncle,” she said. “He wants total obscurity, full banishment. He isn’t going to protect Andrew. But the king is thinking about risk management, attempting damage control and containment. 

    “If left to his own devices, Andrew might turn to unsavory ways to make money, per his track record, or write a book or consider pay-for-tell-all avenues or sketchy deals, adding to the existing crisis.”

    Ex-Prince Andrew looking away from a crowd outside taking photos.

    Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was originally supposed to leave Royal Lodge, his 30-room mansion, by Easter 2026. (Stephen Pond/Getty Images)

    Royal expert Ian Pelham Turner told Fox News Digital that Andrew could still pose problems for the monarchy if not carefully managed.

    PRINCE WILLIAM BREAKS ROYAL CODE TO DISTANCE HIMSELF FROM ‘DESPICABLE’ UNCLE ANDREW: EXPERT

    A close-up of Prince Andrew with a bruised eye wearing a dark suit.

    Ex-Prince Andrew stepped back as a senior royal in 2019 following a nuclear televised interview in which he attempted to explain his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. (Mark Richards – WPA Pool / Getty Images)

    “Now that Andrew is out of the royal family, what is stopping him from telling his side of the story?” said Turner. “In my opinion, we have not seen the last of Andrew. He may find a salutary solution to vent his anger at what has happened to disgrace him.”

    Stephanie Nolasco covers entertainment at Foxnews.com.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Retail billionaire Les Wexner says he was ‘duped’ by adviser Jeffrey Epstein: ‘I was naive, foolish, and gullible’ | Fortune

    [ad_1]

    The billionaire behind the retail empire that once blanketed shopping malls with names such as Victoria’s Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch told members of Congress on Wednesday that he was “duped by a world-class con man” — close financial adviser Jeffrey Epstein. Les Wexner also denied knowing about the late sex offender’s crimes or participating in Epstein’s abuse of girls and young women.

    “I was naive, foolish, and gullible to put any trust in Jeffrey Epstein. He was a con man. And while I was conned, I have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide,” the 88-year-old retired founder of L Brands said in a statement submitted to the House Oversight Committee before an interview conducted at his vast central Ohio estate. Democrats had subpoenaed him after the latest Justice Department release of Epstein-related documents revealed new details about Wexner’s relationship with the well-connected financier.

    Wexner described himself to the lawmakers as a philanthropist, community builder and grandfather who always strove “to live my life in an ethical manner in line with my moral compass,” according to the statement. He said he was eager “to set the record straight” about his ties with Epstein. Their relation ended bitterly in 2007, after the Wexners discovered he’d been stealing from them.

    As one of Epstein’s most prominent former friends, Wexner has spent years answering for their decades-long association and he sought to use the proceeding to dispel what he called “outrageous untrue statements and hurtful rumor, innuendo, and speculation” that have shadowed him.

    Rep. Robert Garcia, a California Democrat who sat in on Wednesday’s interview, expressed skepticism in comments to reporters gathered near the proceeding.

    “There is no single person that was more involved in providing Jeffrey Epstein with the financial support to commit his crimes than Les Wexner,” he said.

    In response to allegations by the prominent late Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, who claimed in court documents that Wexner was among men Epstein trafficked her to, Wexner testified to utter devotion to his wife of 33 years, Abigail. He said he’d never once been unfaithful “in any way, shape, or form. Never. Any suggestion to the contrary is absolutely and entirely false.”

    Wexner’s name appears more than 1,000 times in the Epstein files, which does not imply guilt and Wexner has never been charged with any crimes. His spokesperson said the number of mentions is not unexpected given their long-running ties.

    ‘A most loyal friend’

    Epstein first met Leslie Wexner through a business associate around 1986.

    It was an opportune time for Wexner’s finances. The Ohio business owner had grown a single Limited store in Columbus into a suite of 1980s mall staples: The Limited, Limited Express, Lane Bryant and Victoria’s Secret. Bath & Body Works, Abercrombie & Fitch, Lerner, White Barn Candle Co. and Henri Bendel would follow.

    Wexner told lawmakers that it was several years before he turned over management of his vast fortune to Epstein, after the “master manipulator” connived to gain his trust. He gave Epstein power of attorney in 1991, allowing Epstein to make investments and do business deals and to purchase property and help Wexner as he developed New Albany from a small rural city to a thriving upscale Columbus suburb.

    Epstein had “excellent judgment and unusually high standards,” Wexner told Vanity Fair in a 2003 interview, and he was “always a most loyal friend.”

    On Wednesday, the billionaire said he didn’t circulate in Epstein’s social circle, but often heard accounts of his encounters with other wealthy people.

    Epstein “carefully used his acquaintance with important individuals to curate an aura of legitimacy,” Wexner said. He said he visited Epstein’s infamous island only once, stopping for a few hours one morning with his wife and young children while they were cruising on their boat.

    “It is interesting that Mr Wexner has already begun to clarify in his mind that somehow he and Mr. Epstein weren’t even friends,” Garcia told reporters. “We should be very clear that the two were very close, per reporting. They spent a lot of time together.”

    Epstein recalls ‘gang stuff’

    In one of the newly released documents, Epstein sent rough notes to himself about Wexner saying: “never ever, did anything without informing les” and “I would never give him up.” Another document, an apparent draft letter to Wexner, said the two “had ‘gang stuff’ for over 15 years” and were mutually indebted to each other — as Wexner helped make Epstein rich and Epstein helped make Wexner richer.

    Wexner spokesperson Tom Davies said Wexner never received the letter, characterizing it as fitting “a pattern of untrue, outlandish, and delusional statements made by Epstein in desperate attempts to perpetuate his lies and justify his misconduct.”

    Wexner told the congressional representatives that Epstein “lived a double life,” presenting himself to his wealthy clients as a financial guru with steady girlfriends while “most carefully and fully” hiding his misdeeds with underage girls. “He knew that I never would have tolerated his horrible behavior. Not any of it,” he said.

    Exploiting a sexy brand

    Some accusers said Epstein touted his ties to Wexner and claimed that he could help get them jobs modeling for the Victoria’s Secret catalog.

    One woman, an aspiring actor and model, told the FBI that Epstein said he was best friends with the longtime Victoria’s Secret owner and that she’d have to learn to be comfortable in her underwear and not be a prude, according to recently released grand jury testimony. Another woman said she reported Epstein to police in 1997 after he groped her during what she thought was a modeling interview for the Victoria’s Secret catalog. After Epstein’s 2019 arrest, Wexner’s lawyers told investigators that the businessman had heard a rumor that Epstein might be holding himself out as connected to Victoria’s Secret, prosecutors wrote in a recently disclosed memorandum summarizing the probe. When Wexner asked Epstein about it, Epstein denied doing so, the lawyers said, according to the memo.

    Wexner did not address the specific issue in his statement Wednesday, but repeatedly lamented being deceived by Epstein — “an abuser, a crook, and a liar.” L Brands sold off Victoria’s Secret in 2020, in one of Wexner’s final acts as chair.

    A relationship unravels

    Wexner did not publicly reveal until after Epstein’s arrest on federal sex trafficking charges in July 2019 that he had severed their relationship. In a Wexner Foundation letter that August, he said that happened in 2007. But the Justice Department’s newly released records show the two were in touch after that.

    Wexner e-mailed Epstein on June 26, 2008, after a plea deal was announced that would require him to serve 18 months in a Florida jail on a state charge of soliciting prostitution from a minor in order to avoid federal prosecution. He wound up serving 13 months.

    “Abigail told me the result … all I can say is I feel sorry. You violated your own number 1 rule … always be careful,” Wexner wrote. Epstein replied: “no excuse.”

    Davies said the 2007 date Wexner cited in 2019 applied to firing Epstein as financial adviser, revoking his power of attorney and removing his name from Wexner’s bank accounts.

    Wexner also said in the 2019 letter that Epstein had misappropriated “vast sums” of his and his family’s fortune while overseeing his finances. An investigative memo from the latest document release says that Wexner’s attorneys told investigators in 2008 that Epstein had repaid him $100 million. Wexner said in Wednesday’s statement that Epstein returned “a substantial amount” of the undisclosed total.

    Garcia said that congressional investigators have identified more than $1 billion that was “either transferred, provided in stocks or given directly” by Wexner to Epstein — though Wexner “appears to be unaware” of much of it.

    Continuing fallout for Wexner

    On Wednesday, Wexner testified that he had never seen Epstein with any young girls and acknowledged the “unfathomable” pain he inflicted, even as discoveries in the Epstein files have placed new pressure on him.

    One survivor, Maria Farmer, said a redacted FBI report contained in the document release vindicated her longstanding claim that she filed one of the earliest complaints against Epstein while she was under his employ in 1996 working on an art project at the Wexners’ estate.

    Meanwhile, survivors of a sweeping sexual abuse scandal at the Ohio State University are citing Wexner’s association with Epstein to try to get his name removed from a campus football complex and university nurses also want his name scrubbed from the Wexner Medical Center.

    ___

    AP journalists Michael Sisak in New York and Patrick Aftoora-Orsagos in New Albany contributed to this report.

    [ad_2]

    The Associated Press, Julie Carr Smyth

    Source link

  • Ex-Prince Andrew ignores US Epstein probe requests as experts warn of ‘ghastly’ optics for royal family

    [ad_1]

    NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

    Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been dodging the House Oversight Committee as members of the US committee have been urgently trying to speak with him about his connection to Jeffrey Epstein.

    Oversight Committee member Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the department has sent ex-Prince Andrew letters, wishing to speak to him.

    “We have not. And we absolutely have sent letters. We want to actually talk to Prince Andrew. What’s happening now over in the UK is pretty stunning, and it’s actually a show of what happens when the government listens to the public,” Garcia said. “There are actually things happening to those that have been involved.”

    Former Prince Andrew has allegedly been dodging requests from the US government to comply with their Epstein investigation. (Steve Parsons – WPA Pool/Getty Images)

    Hilary Fordwich, British royals expert, told Fox News Digital that Andrew’s choice to ignore the United States may be an act of “delusion,” wishing away his Epstein connection.

    EX-PRINCE ANDREW LEAVES ROYAL MANSION ‘IN DEAD OF NIGHT’ AFTER COMPROMISING EPSTEIN PHOTOS SURFACE: EXPERT

    “He erroneously must be under the delusion that his silence & evasion will make this go away,” she began. 

    Ex-Prince Andrew looking annoyed in a dark blue suit and yellow tie walking in front of a fence.

    Ex-Prince Andrew has allegedly been dodging questions from the US House Oversight Committee. (Samir Hussein/WireImage/Getty Images)

    “It’s not going to recede, but given how disastrous his NewsNight interview was he’s obviously either afraid of being questioned and or knows it will result in even more revolting revelations. Probably, therefore, any testimony is more likely to be in a written testimony as this stasis can’t continue. Either way he’s in a lose lose situation as his silence is feeding the media frenzy.”

    Fordwich said the optics of Andrew not being compliant is “ghastly” not only for himself, but members of the royal family.

    “The optics & facts of all of this are ghastly either way for him & for the monarchy. Hence all the distance that has been created between him & the rest of the family.”

    — Hilary Fordwich, British royals expert

    “The optics & facts of all of this are ghastly either way for him & for the monarchy. Hence all the distance that has been created between him & the rest of the family. They have been forthright in stating there will be full cooperation with the UK police,” she said.

    PRINCE WILLIAM’S ‘ZERO TOLERANCE’ TESTED AS SARAH FERGUSON EMAILS REVEAL CRUDE COMMENT TO EPSTEIN: EXPERT

    According to Fordwich, Prince William is “exasperated” with his Uncle for not cooperating with the Epstein investigation.

    Prince William

    Expert says Prince William is “exasperated” by Andrew’s lack of cooperation with the US Epstein investigation. (Getty Images)

    “Prince William, whose priority is preservation of the monarchy, is adamant regarding isolating his revolting uncle and won’t shield him from any fallout, remaining per his resent statement ‘focused on the victims’. He is exasperated that his uncle is refusing to cooperate or indeed to even answer US officials who wasn’t a transcribed interview,” she said.

    Fordwich doesn’t believe a citizen of the UK can be compelled to speak to members of the US government, but noted that a former subpoena would be more compelling.

    “Being now a UK private citizen residing outside the US I don’t believe he can easily be compelled, but a formal subpoena could be issued. Such pressure of both legal demands & those from the victims & their respective families are more than likely given the penchant for spectacle by US lawmakers,” she said.

    Andrew, Epstein and Maxwell

    Andrew has ties to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell dating back decades. (Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)

    According to the New York Post, Garcia formally requested testimony from Andrew in 2025.

    Ian Pelham Turner, a Royal expert, believes Andrew is staying silent to keep the public waiting on what he’ll do next.

    “The Royal family will know he knows the family skeletons and if allegedly he is short of money or so angry at what has happened to him he could venture into a kiss and tell book which could bring a new fortune to him globally,” Turner said.

    Robert Garcia stands at podium

    Representative Robert Garcia, a Democrat from California, claimed the House Oversight Committee has sent Andrew several letters. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

    He continued, “Thus, it makes sense not to divulge any salacious material right now. Now, he has seen how successful his nephew Harry’s book Spare created a phenomenon and may choose to walk the same path as in reality what does he have to lose.”

    LIKE WHAT YOU’RE READING? CLICK HERE FOR MORE ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

    Richard Fitzwilliams, a royal expert, told Fox News Digital that Andrew never intended to help US lawmakers in their Epstein case.

    “Andrew always promised to aid US lawmakers but clearly never intended to. The problem is, despite the Prime Minister’s recent urging, he cannot be forced to,” Fitzwilliams said. “It remains the supreme irony that the only person to be guilty and behind bars in this grotesque monument to the evils of the global patriarchy is Ghislaine Maxwell, who was Epstein’s fixer.”

    Ghislaine Maxwell wearing a plaid blazer and walking away from photographers.

    Royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams referred to Ghislaine Maxwell as Epstein’s “fixer.” (Mathieu Polak/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)

    According to Fitzwilliams, Andrew’s best option is to move to the Middle East.

    “I have no idea who is advising Andrew but with the police assessing two cases he should be considering exile in the Middle East. What most people rightly feel is that he should get a visit from the police and the bizarre series of circumstances which the Epstein Files have brought to light should be investigated fully, with the full co-operation of the Palace,” he explained.

    Doug Eldridge, founder of Achilles PR, told Fox News Digital that Congress may choose to hold him in contempt, but without formal criminal charges, Andrew may be able to “run out the clock.” 

    Prince Andrew looking perplexed in a dark suit and matching tie.

    Prince Andrew was photographed attending the funeral of the Duchess of Kent at Westminster Cathedral on Sept. 16, 2025 in London.  (Chris Jackson)

    “In the court of public opinion, Andrew self-incriminated a long time ago. It remains to be seen if those allegations and assumptions ever matriculate to formal charges in an American court of law,” Aldridge said.

    Eldridge used Andrew’s infamous BBC interview, and the fallout afterward, as an example of what he may be considering when it comes to speaking out on his latest Epstein connections.

    “At this point, his only public statements should be under Congressional subpoena or threats of extradition by federal courts in the United States. Even then, he’ll likely back-channel a diplomatic deferral,” Eldridge said.

    Prince Andrew Virginia Roberts

    Photo from 2001 shows Prince Andrew with his arm around the waist of 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre. (U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals)

    In 2019, Andrew stepped back as a senior royal following a disastrous BBC interview in which he tried to address his ties to the late convicted sex offender. Over a decade ago, Virginia Giuffre accused Ghislaine Maxwell of trafficking her to Andrew. Guiffre died by suicide in April 2025.

    King Charles stripped Andrew of his remaining royal titles and honors in late 2025 amid renewed scrutiny over his Epstein connection.

    CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT NEWSLETTER

    Former Prince Andrew with King Charles in London.

    King Charles stripped Andrew’s of his remaining titles in 2025. (Max Mumby)

    On Jan. 30, the Department of Justice released more than 3 million pages of records related to Epstein, including personal emails. The former Duke and Duchess of York appeared in the newly released email exchanges and photos. Three images reportedly showed Andrew on all fours above an unidentified woman on the ground.

    Inclusion in the files does not necessarily imply wrongdoing. 

    A spokesperson for Buckingham Palace previously told Fox News Digital they don’t answer for Andrew as he’s no longer a working royal. Fox News Digital reached out to Oversight Committee Ranking Member Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) for further comment.

    CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

    Janelle Ash is an entertainment writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to janelle.ash@fox.com. 

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Epstein files did not ‘expose’ Ellen DeGeneres as a cannibal

    [ad_1]

    After the Justice Department released millions of pages of documents linked to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, social media users touted supposed revelations in the files and accused famous people of depraved acts.

    Former television host Ellen DeGeneres was one target.

    “The Epstein files expose Ellen DeGeneres as Hollywood’s ‘most prolific cannibal.’ She ate children’s flesh,” a Feb. 14 X post read. It had gained 12.5 million views as of late afternoon Feb. 16.

    It was the latest in a string of baseless claims trying to connect DeGeneres to crimes involving children. PolitiFact found no files in the Justice Department’s Epstein Library that show evidence DeGeneres took part in Epstein’s criminal activities or engaged in cannibalism. The library comes with caveats; text in some documents is not searchable.

    We traced this claim to The People’s Voice, a frequent source of misinformation. On Feb. 11, the People’s Voice released a video and an article that cited an “inside source.” The video contained a supposed audio clip from a “whistleblower” who spoke about DeGeneres having a separate kitchen without cameras. The “whistleblower” also mentioned babies in refrigeration units.

    Four analysts told PolitiFact the audio was likely generated with artificial intelligence. V.S. Subrahmanian, a Northwestern University computer science professor, and Marco Postiglione, a postdoctoral researcher who works with Subrahmanian, analyzed the audio clip using 83 deepfake detection algorithms, 63 of which found that the audio clip is more likely to be fake than real. 

    Other signs also showed the audio is likely AI-generated, including a lack of verbal stumbles — which are typical in usual conversation — and “emotional breaks typical of genuine testimony,” Subrahmanian and Postiglione found.

    The analysts also found the speech sounded like “written prose” and not like it was delivered spontaneously. For example, the voice described DeGeneres watching people eat her dumplings “not hungrily, not nervously, but with that sociopathic calm.”

    Hafiz Malik, University of Michigan – Dearborn electrical and computer engineering professor, also analyzed the clip and said it was AI-generated. He pointed to the flatness of the speaker’s voice, and a stationary noise throughout the audio. “If you’re talking to somebody, noise does change, so you don’t see a fixed kind of pattern in noise in general,” he said.

    The article from The People’s Voice cited no information from the Epstein files pointing to correspondences from, to or about DeGeneres.

    Searching “Ellen DeGeneres” in the Justice Department’s Epstein Library showed some news and feature story clippings mentioning her. We found no news reports detailing any connection between DeGeneres and Epstein.

    New York Magazine’s Intelligencer compiled a list of prominent people who have been linked to Epstein, using information from Epstein’s black book, flight logs and Justice Department files. DeGeneres is not on the list. 

    The claim that the Epstein files prove DeGeneres was a cannibal is baseless. We rate that Pants on Fire!

    PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • The Jeffrey Epstein Files Are Peter Mandelson’s Final Disgrace

    [ad_1]

    It’s not clear when Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein started, but in 2003 he contributed to a book of tributes compiled for the financier’s fiftieth birthday, describing him as “my best pal.” (This was the same book to which Donald Trump appears to have contributed his infamous note and sketch of a naked woman.) In the files, bank documents suggest that in 2003 and 2004 Epstein sent seventy-five thousand dollars, in three payments, to accounts thought to be connected to Mandelson and his longtime partner, Reinaldo Avila da Silva, whom he married in 2023. (After the documents were released, Lord Mandelson said that he has no record or recollection of receiving the payments and didn’t know whether the documents were authentic.)

    In 2004, Mandelson went to Brussels as Britain’s commissioner for trade in the European Union. Many observers believed that his days as a major political figure were done, but in October, 2008, as the financial crisis was raging, Gordon Brown, who had succeeded Blair as Labour leader and Prime Minister the previous year, brought Mandelson back from Europe, granted him a life peerage in the House of Lords, and appointed him as business minister. Since Brown and Mandelson had clashed in the past, this appointment came as a surprise. Brown said that “serious people are needed for serious times”: commentators suggested that he valued Mandelson’s political savvy and experience in dealing with foreign governments. The following year, Brown further promoted Mandelson, expanding his department and giving him the honorary title of First Secretary of State.

    At the time, bank bailouts, accompanied by emergency measures from central banks, eventually restored calm to the financial markets, but that didn’t curb the public anger at the bankers, who were rightly perceived to be in a no-lose position. When times were good, they made pots of money. When a crisis arose, taxpayers stepped in to save them. On December 9, 2009, Alistair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced a fifty-per-cent, one-off tax on bankers’ bonuses. Politically, this was a popular move, but in London’s financial district—where many big banks, including some based in the U.S., are situated—it sparked outrage and pushback. In a book about the great financial crisis and its aftermath, Darling recalled how a number of bankers called him up and complained about the bonus tax. The callers included Jamie Dimon, the C.E.O. of JPMorgan Chase. “He was very, very angry,” Darling wrote. “He said that his bank bought a lot of UK debt and he wondered if that was now such a good idea. I pointed out that they bought our debt because it was a good business deal for them. He went on to say they were thinking of building a new office in London but they had to reconsider that now.”

    Reading Mandelson’s e-mails, it appears that Epstein, too, was a part of the pressure campaign. He had a long-standing relationship with JPMorgan Chase, which handled many of his financial dealings, and particularly with Jes Staley, who, as the chief executive of the J.P. Morgan investment bank, oversaw the London office. A few days after the announcement of the new tax, Epstein wrote to Mandelson, “any real chance of making the tax only on the cash portion of the bankers’ bonus.” Mandelson replied, “Trying hard to amend as I explained to Jes last night. Treasury digging in but I am on case.” Two days later, evidently referring to Dimon and Darling, Epstein wrote, “should jamie call darling one more time?” Mandelson replied, “yes and mildly threaten.” Later the same day, Mandelson wrote to Epstein again and appeared to indicate that he, himself, had spoken to Darling and got nowhere. “Crazy response from Chancellor. He appears unmovable.”

    Darling and the U.K. Treasury resisted the pressure that was brought to bear against them and went ahead with an unmodified version of the bonus tax. Surprise, surprise, JPMorgan Chase and other big banks survived this outrageous assault upon their prerogatives. But as Faisal Islam, the economics editor of BBC News, wrote, the possibility that this backlash “may have been orchestrated partly via Epstein, with Mandelson emailing advice . . . is staggering.” A spokesperson for JPMorgan Chase declined to comment. In the past, Dimon has said that he never met Epstein and didn’t know of him before his arrest in 2019. In 2023, JPMorgan Chase sued Staley, who left the bank in 2013, claiming that he had failed to disclose information about his relationship with Epstein. The case was later settled.

    [ad_2]

    John Cassidy

    Source link

  • Jeffrey Epstein’s Quarter Zip and the Rise of a Fringe Fashion Obsession

    [ad_1]

    I was swiping through Instagram Stories last week when I was served an eBay ad for a very familiar sweatshirt.

    Of all the accoutrements of the life and crimes of Jeffrey Epstein, a 2005 image showing him wearing a navy monogrammed quarter zip and a slight, characteristic smirk has acquired an endless digital footprint and a discomfiting resonance. With the Epstein story approaching the 10-year mark as a global preoccupation, this nth phase of the intrigue, largely prompted by fallout from the Department of Justice’s July proclamation that there were no further criminal charges in the works, has spawned a potent cottage industry. One can now purchase an Epstein quarter zip, as it’s invariably described, from an array of Etsy entrepreneurs, the white nationalist streamer Nick Fuentes’s web store ($69.99), or epsteinquarterzip.com ($49.00), which promotes its wares to its 129,000 Instagram followers with AI-generated images of Donald Trump and Bill Clinton sporting the titular apparel.

    “Iconic merch” is how leading right-leaning gaming streamer Asmongold recently described it. When Fuentes wore his riff on the sweatshirt, with “USA” replacing “JEE”—the American flag on the sleeve is true to the original—for a third week running, one of the X accounts that faithfully tracks his commentary said the choice represented “pure aura.” The quarter zip, in this conception of Epstein’s much-scrutinized persona, amounts to a signifier of ease and insouciance—the late financier wore rumpled sweatshirts around the global elite presumably because he could. In April 2019, a few months before his arrest on federal sex trafficking charges, Epstein arrived at the artist Andres Serrano’s Greenwich Village home to have his portrait taken. “He acted the way he always acted,” Serrano told me in 2022. “Like a guy who didn’t have a care in the world.”

    If there is any stylistic throughline in the immense tranche of emails released in the latest round of Epstein documents, it is that Epstein was similarly unbothered in his personal communications. He wrote to executives and public officials with little concern for spelling or syntax, and capitalization seemed anathema to him. The Epstein files, long held up in the public imagination as a kind of Rosetta stone for the sins of the wealthy and connected, included documents showing how the FBI had found little evidence to conclude that Epstein was running a sex trafficking ring for other powerful men; they also fed the bottomless appetite for glimpses into Epstein’s eccentricities and the corruption of the ruling class. Even if few of the wildest conspiracies found material support, his cultural imprint grew only larger.

    The quarter zip took on a life of its own in September, when Restricted, a Miami luxury reseller that primarily stocks Chrome Hearts and accepts cryptocurrency as payment, claimed to be selling the genuine article. “Straight from Mar A Lago,” the shop wrote on Instagram. “This piece is very controversial and iconic.” A rumor spread that it was purchased by Ian Connor, the stylist affiliated with the artist formerly known as Kanye West and A$AP Rocky in the 2010s, and whose career was soon overshadowed by a series of sexual assault allegations that he has denied. (Connor had commented on the post with a moneybag emoji and indicated that he wanted to discuss the matter over direct message.) The shop’s owner told the Miami New Times that, after fielding more than 5,000 inquiries, he sold it to a different, unnamed client whom he described as famous. He was certain that the sweatshirt, which he purchased for $5,000 from another client and sold for $11,000, was authentic. (The client who sold him the sweater, he added, was from the Palm Beach area where Epstein had a home, and “also showed me, like, some mail he had, and medicine prescription bottles.”)

    [ad_2]

    Dan Adler

    Source link

  • The Recently Released Epstein Files Reveal What Trump Knew

    [ad_1]

    Would you say that the release of these documents is purposeful, or chaotic on purpose, or chaotic because of a chaotic Administration?

    I think it’s both [purposeful and chaotic]. I actually think part of it was done on purpose because it’s sort of what this Administration does: distract, try to take people’s minds off of things, confuse. So, I think part of it is purposeful. But from what I’ve read so far I also think that it also has to be a reflection of the fact that the Justice Department has never really organized themselves well enough to figure out how to go about this investigation. It is so massive. And I think that it was just something that they just never got a handle on to begin with.

    How many documents are there?

    They’re saying six million, because they released three million and they say that there are two to three million documents left. Remember, though, part of this is a lot of repetition—some of these documents, you see multiple times. But the other interesting thing is: We haven’t seen any of Epstein’s e-mails from around the time that he was buddies with Trump. Not that Trump used e-mail, but that was when Trump was in his orbit, so to speak. So we’re not getting any view of what was going on during that time period, which would’ve been, like, the early two-thousands.

    Well, let’s start with what we know about the relationship between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. What is Trump saying it was, and what’s the reality? What are we learning?

    Trump has said that he really wasn’t as good of friends with him, that he had a falling out with him, that they had some events together—he was at Mar-a-Lago at some events, but he’s downplayed that, I think it’s fair to say. From what we have seen, they were much closer—certainly much closer than I thought they were when I did this story originally. I think we’re getting new information that shows that maybe they were closer, but we don’t find any evidence thus far that he was involved in any of Epstein’s crimes.

    Can you be a little bit more specific about the relationship, what it consisted of?

    Well, I think that they were sort of competitors, in a way. They were both very wealthy, connected men, and I think they competed. We know that there was this real-estate deal in the early two-thousands in Palm Beach, and then Trump jumped on it, and it ended up in a bidding war, and Trump won. And then he sold the property—it was this massive mansion—for oodles and oodles of money. Of course, Epstein was really mad about that. So I think Trump wanted to show off his wealth to Epstein, and Epstein wanted to show off his wealth.

    That’s a situation of rich guys, whose is bigger, et cetera.

    Yes.

    What about their social relationship? And they seem to bond—to put this delicately—over the question of women.

    Yes. They definitely did. Trump did an interview saying that [Epstein] likes women and he really likes them young. And so that was the same way they competed over money. They were also, I think, to some degree, competing over their prowess with women.

    How did Trump feel about him liking them young? Was he repulsed? Was he jealous? What was his attitude toward that?

    He would say he was repulsed, I think, but I think the culture at the time—it probably wasn’t as frowned upon. Not that being with an underage girl is ever something that you shouldn’t frown upon. But it was a different time, and I think that when an underage girl showed up or was in their midst it wasn’t a case where they kicked her out. They were probably just amused by it, and Epstein more so.

    What specifically have you been able to look at that surprises you, in all the documents that have come your way? What have you found out?

    That this is a lot bigger, and it spans the globe more so than I ever thought before. And I say this because even from my early reporting I had spoken to investigators who looked into Epstein who said that he had recruiters, for example, and scouts in other countries to get him women. We are now seeing from some of these e-mails that he had not just a couple scouts. I mean, he had scouts, it seems like, in almost every country.

    What does that mean? He had people looking out for teen-age girls to bring to the United States?

    Yes. And he hired lawyers, by the way, who did their visas to get them over here. Or work permits. I mean, he used his modelling agency as a way to get them over here, but it was clear that they were not just here to do modelling. In my original reporting, I reported that there was a bookkeeper for that modelling agency who did a deposition, and she said that that was not what this was about—that there were these so-called parties and events that were held that they would send models to, essentially, to have sex.

    You’re publishing a story that has implications for the President of the United States where the Epstein case is concerned. What does it say?

    We have found a document in these files that is an interview that the police chief of Palm Beach gave to the F.B.I. And in that interview the police chief, Michael Reiter, told the F.B.I. that back when Epstein’s case had first come to the attention of the police, and Epstein was first reported as a suspect in doing this—

    What’s the year?

    Around 2006. Around that time period, Trump called the police chief and he said to the police chief, “Thank God you’re doing something about him, because . . .” And I’m just quoting off the top of my head. I don’t have the document in front of me, but he said, “Thank God—everybody knew this.” He also knew about [Ghislaine] Maxwell’s role [as Epstein’s associate], calling her “evil.” We have this F.B.I. report of this interview that the chief gave to the F.B.I. where he is recalling this conversation that he had with Trump many, many years ago about Epstein. So it does raise some questions about how much Trump knew—whether he knew the extent of Epstein’s crimes.

    So, in 2006, Donald Trump has what kind of communication with the police chief?

    He called the police chief on the phone.

    And there’s paper on that?

    There is. There’s an F.B.I. report. It’s an interview that the police chief gave to the F.B.I.

    [ad_2]

    David Remnick

    Source link

  • Logistics Giant DP World Replaces Chairman Named In Jeffrey Epstein documents – KXL

    [ad_1]

    (UMA SANGHVI/The Palm Beach Post Via AP, File)

    CAIRO (AP) — Dubai has replaced the longtime head of DP World after emails linked him to Jeffrey Epstein. Dubai’s Media Office said Tueday that Essa Kazim is taking over as chairman. It also named Yuvraj Narayan as group CEO. Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem previously held both roles.

    DP World runs Dubai’s Jebel Ali port and operates terminals worldwide. The change follows moves by finance groups in Canada and the UK, who paused future ventures with DP World. Newly released Justice Department documents show years of friendly messages between bin Sulayem and Epstein.

    The emails do not tie bin Sulayem to Epstein’s crimes.

    More about:

    [ad_2]

    Noah Friedman

    Source link