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Trump’s Epstein Story Keeps Changing
Yesterday on Air Force One, returning from his trip to Scotland, President Donald Trump admitted that child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein “stole” accuser Virginia Giuffre from his employment at Mar-a-Lago. “People were taken out of the spa, hired by Epstein,” Trump said. “I told him we don’t want you taking our people, whether it’s spa or not spa. He did it again, I said, Out of here.” When asked if one of the people was Giuffre, Trump replied, “I think so. He stole her.”
Whether Trump is purposefully muddying the waters, engaging in misdirection, panicking, or simply unable to keep his own story straight is unclear. But the admission that Epstein “stole” Giuffre from the golf club spa mires Trump even deeper in apparent evidence that he knew what Epstein was doing, and remained friends with him nonetheless.
On Monday, Trump had said that he fell out with Epstein because “he hired help” and “he stole people that worked for me,” without specifying Giuffre. Earlier on Tuesday he had tried to claim reports of his own assertion that Epstein stole employees from him was “fake news,” before later acknowledging Epstein “stole” Giuffre.
The timeline of Giuffre’s employment at and recruitment from Mar-a-Lago, along with Trump’s continued friendship with Epstein, shows that Trump did not promptly tell Epstein, “out of here.”
Giuffre, who died by suicide in April, accused Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 of conspiring with Epstein to recruit, groom, and abuse teenaged girls, of recruiting her from Mar-a-Lago in 2000. She described being held in servitude as a teen “sex slave” until 2002. Much of Giuffre’s testimony came in a defamation case she filed against Maxwell, which was settled in 2017. A court unsealed records in the case in August 2019, and Epstein committed suicide the next day. Records produced by Mar-a-Lago in the case confirmed Giuffre was a summer worker there in 2000.
In 2002, two years after Epstein “stole” Giuffre, Trump infamously told New York Magazine “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy.” He described him as “a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.” The next year, according to a Wall Street Journal recent report, Trump made Epstein a birthday letter, its text framed by a drawing of a naked woman, which read, in part, “Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.” Trump has sued the newspaper and its owners News Corp and Rupert Murdoch, claiming the story is defamatory, and seeking $10 billion in damages. Trump is now asking the court for an expedited deposition of the 94-year-old media mogul, claiming he would unlikely be available at trial due to his age and health.
All of these developments are certain to keep the Epstein story in the news for the foreseeable future.
The Trump Administration Wants to Burn the Planet, Poison Your Air and Water
Yesterday the Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposed regulation repealing the “Endangerment Finding,” the underpinning of all climate change regulation based on the conclusion that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases imperil human health and the environment. Environmental groups plan to challenge the action in court, as climate scientists consider the move a “kill shot” that would invalidate all government efforts to address climate change.
The kill shot is on top of other administration actions, including the exemption of 15 coal-burning power plants from regulations restricting emissions of mercury and other pollutants, and of chemical plants from regulations of other hazardous chemicals. This was part of a wider wave of exemptions for companies that obtained them merely by emailing the EPA, the New York Times reported yesterday.
And as part of Trump’s “sweeping AI policy recommendations to ‘usher in a new golden age of human flourishing,’” Wired reports, the administration plans to loosen Clean Water Act permitting requirements for tech giants running the energy-hogging data centers for AI.
Pam Bondi Tries to Undermine a Federal Judge, Again, and Gets Her Own
Attorney General Pam Bondi has filed a misconduct complaint against James Boasberg, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who is presiding over a legal challenge to the Trump administration’s disappearing of detainees to the CECOT prison in El Salvador. Bondi claims that Boasberg made unspecified “improper public comments about President Trump and his Administration.” Legal scholar Steve Vladeck calls the complaint “ridiculous,” and, at the end of a lengthy post explaining why, offers some advice to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts about protecting the judiciary.
Meanwhile, Senate Republicans confirmed Emil Bove to the Third Circuit, 50-49, last night, waving away his role in dropping the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, firing January 6 prosecutors, and whistleblower complaints that he told DOJ lawyers to flout the federal court orders.
The Big Beautiful Deception
House Republicans were sent home for summer recess with marching orders from the National Republican Congressional Committee: sell the highly unpopular Medicaid cuts in the “Big Beautiful Bill” as “an overhaul that will strengthen the program” in order to “push back on Democrat fearmongering,” Politico reports. The Republicans’ campaign committee also instructed members to tell constituents that the law, which gives massive tax breaks to billionaires, is “holding elites accountable.”
Taxpayers Are Footing the Bill for Trump’s Profits and Luxuries
Trump spent $10 million of taxpayer money on his recent trip to Scotland, where he met with European leaders about trade and Gaza, but also hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony for his new Trump International Golf Links Aberdeen and played a lot of golf. “The president was accompanied by his sons, Eric and Don Jr., who have taken the helm of their fathers real estate, licensing, and growing cryptocurrency empire while he occupies the White House,” Rolling Stone reports.
Meanwhile the costs of retrofitting two Boeing 747s and the gift plane from the Qatari government to use as Air Force One (and, in the case of the Qatari gift, after he leaves office) have together ballooned to billions of dollars.
Inside a Christian Nationalist Compound in Tennessee
Phil Williams of Nashville’s News Channel 5 digs deep into the Christian nationalist utopia that far right activists are building 90 miles from the city’s downtown. New Founding, LLC boasts investment from tech billionaire Marc Andreesen and connections to Vice President JD Vance, the Claremont Institute, and far-right podcaster Tucker Carlson. The group rejects democracy, wants a “national divorce,” and anticipates a “system collapse” so it can restore “order” with a “Protestant Franco.” Its backers also are members of the Society for American Civic Renewal, the secretive, men-only, Christian nationalist organization that TPM’s Josh Kovensky reported on last year.
The Making of a DOGE Destroyer
Bloomberg Businessweek is out with a comprehensively reported and horrifying profile of DOGE’s Luke Farritor, who was on the ground floor of the destruction of the U.S. Agency for International Development in the early days of Trump’s second term. Career government officials considered Farritor, 23, who dropped out of college to become a Peter Thiel fellow, to be unqualified for his job. DOGE hired him nonetheless, and he “helped assess, slash or dismantle at least nine departments and agencies after USAID— the Offices of Personnel Management and of Management and Budget; the Departments of Education, Energy, Labor, and Health and Human Services; the National Science Foundation; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” the magazine reports.
The Trump Administration Is Destroying Our Health Care System
Public Citizen has published an alarming report, “Trump’s Dangerous Health Cabal Threatens Patients, Providers, and the Programs They Rely On.”
U.S. Support for Israel’s War on Gaza Falls
Just 32% of Americans support Israel’s military campaign against Gaza, Gallup found in a new poll. Among Americans 18-34 years old, that number is just 9%. The poll was conducted before images of Gazans suffering from malnutrition and dying from starvation became more widespread in the media.
In an act of civil disobedience, more than two dozen rabbis were arrested outside of Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s office yesterday as they prayed for food assistance for Gazans.
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