Bondi assigns prosecutor to lead investigation into Trump adversaries over Epstein ties
Attorney general Pam Bondi announced today that she has assigned Jay Clayton, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, to lead the investigation into Donald Trump’s political adversaries and their ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
Earlier, Trump called the latest release of emails that renewed focus on the president’s relationship with the late sex-offender a “hoax”, and directed the justice department to launch a probe into former president Bill Clinton, Democratic donor and entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, and former treasury secretary Larry Summers (who served under Clinton). “This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats,” the president wrote on Truth Social earlier.
Bondi described Clayton, who previously served as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first administration, as “one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country”. She added: “As with all matters, the Department will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people.”
Key events
Democrats react to reports that Trump is discussing plans to bomb Venezuela by invoking Wag the Dog
After the Washington Post reported on Friday that Donald Trump was briefed for a second straight day on possible options for military strikes in Venezuela, some Democrats compared the situation to the 1997 film Wag the Dog, suggesting that the president might be ready to go to war as a distraction from his frantic attempts to cover up his long association with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In the film, a fictional president’s spin doctor, played by Robert De Niro brings in a Hollywood producer, played by Dustin Hoffman, to stage a fictional war with Albania to take the public’s mind off a presidential sex scandal.
A year after the film came out, Republicans invoked it to suggest that Bill Clinton had fired dozens of Tomahawk missiles at a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan and a training camp in Afghanistan associated with Osama bin Laden to distract from his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Those 20 August 1998 strikes were launched two weeks after al-Qaida had killed 224 people in bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, but also just three days after Clinton had admitted to an inappropriate relationship with Lewinsky.
A chorus of Republicans quickly accused Clinton of trying to create a foreign crisis to distract attention away from the sex scandal, and the accusation was reflected on the banners and signs of protesters in Washington and Khartoum, including marchers in the Sudanese capital who held up a large, handmade sign with an image of Lewinsky emblazoned with the slogan: “No War for Monika.”
At a Pentagon news conference after the strikes aimed at the then relatively unknown bin Laden, one reporter asked Clinton’s defense secretary, William Cohen, about suggestions that the timing of the attack bore “a striking resemblance to Wag the Dog”.
“The only motivation driving this action today was our absolute obligation to protect the American people from terrorist activities,” Cohen replied. “That is the sole motivation.”
“I don’t think any president, regardless of party, would ever take military action to distract from personal problems,” Dee Dee Myers, Clinton’s former press secretary, told Jay Leno that week in an appearance on the Tonight Show. “Most of the Congress, most of the American people I think, will say: ‘I don’t believe that our president, regardless of how bad things are, would do that.’”
The fact that the fictional enemy in the 1990s film is Albania resonates in some way with contemporary politics, given that Trump recently boasted that he had resolved a war between Albania and Azerbaijan, confusing the Balkan country with Armenia. Days later, the president of Albania was caught on camera demanding an apology from the president of France, “because you didn’t congratulate us on the peace deal that President Trump made between Albania and Azerbaijan”. The president of Azerbajan, standing next to the two men, then broke out laughing.
Marjorie Taylor Greene refuses to relent on criticism of Trump – report
Speaking to NBC News, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Maga congresswoman from Georgia who has been critical of Donald Trump’s focus on foreign policy, and his effort to block the release of the Epstein files, said that she is not swayed by the president’s recent claim that she has “lost her way”.
“I don’t know what happened to Marjorie,” Trump said on Monday after he welcomed Syria’s new president, the former al-Qaida militant Ahmad al-Sharaa, to the Oval Office. “I guess she’s got some kind of an act going,” he added.
Asked about Trump’s criticism of her, Greene told the broadcaster: “I’m America First, America Only. Hardcore.”
She also said that she had not spoken with the president recently. “No, I haven’t talked to him. 100% haven’t changed”, Greene said.
The break in communications between Trump and Greene comes amid reports that his White House has been applying pressure on two other Republican congresswomen, Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace, who, like Greene, signed a petition to force a vote on the release of files from the federal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender Trump socialized with for more than a decade. All three Trump loyalists have publicly refused to withdraw their signatures.
While Trump has angled for a Nobel Peace Prize, when not ordering the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites and suspected Venezuelan drug smugglers, Greene is not impressed.
“No one cares about the foreign countries. No one cares about the never-ending amount of foreign leaders coming to the White House every single week,” Greene told NBC News.
“We didn’t elect the president to go out there and travel the world and end the foreign wars,” Greene said. “We elected the president to stop sending tax dollars and weapons for the foreign wars – to completely not engage anymore. Watching the foreign leaders come to the White House through a revolving door is not helping Americans.”
Trump pulls pick for top IRS lawyer 24 hours after racist podcaster Laura Loomer attacked nominee
Donald Trump announced on Friday that he is “withdrawing the nomination of Donald Korb” to be the Internal Revenue Service’s top lawyer, days before Korb was expected to be confirmed by the Senate.
The president cited no reason for suddenly abandoning Korb in a brief post on his social media platform, but the reversal came just 24 hours after Laura Loomer, a far-right podcaster who holds unusual sway over Trump’s personnel decisions, posted a thread on X attacking Korb for supposedly “supporting Democrats and anti-Trump RINOs” and demanded that his nomination “should immediately be revoked”.
Loomer, a racist conspiracy theorist whose closeness to Trump alarmed some of his allies in the run-up to the 2024 election, immediately took credit, telling her 1.8 million followers on X (a website she was banned from before it was bought by Elon Musk) that Korb was “Loomered”.
As the author and double Pulitzer winner James Risen wrote in an assessment of Loomer’s informal role earlier this year, after she met with Trump in the Oval Office and handed him a list of people on the staff of the national security council that she believed were not loyal enough to Trump, leading to six of them being fired:
Loomer’s power in the Trump administration is ill-defined. Her many critics say she has just been taking credit for moves that Trump was already planning. But Trump himself has said he takes her seriously, so it may be more accurate to describe her as Trump’s de facto national security adviser.
My colleague, Lucy Campbell, notes that today’s decision to investigate several of the president’s political adversaries represents an apparent departure from a July memo issued by the justice department and the FBI, which stated officials had found nothing in the Epstein files that warranted the opening of further inquiries.
Investigators “did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties”, the memo said.
Here’s a recap of the day so far
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Donald Trump directed the justice department to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with several prominent Democrats, including former president Bill Clinton, former treasury secretary Larry Summers, and donor and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman. The president’s move, to focus on his rivals’ affiliations and relationships with Epstein, is seemingly his latest effort to distance himself from the renewed focus on his own relationship with the disgraced financier following the latest tranche of documents released by the House oversight committee. Trump went on to claim, baselessly, that the release of emails where Epstein said that the president “spent hours” at the late sex-offenders house, and that he “knew about the girls” was just “another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats”.
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In response, attorney general Pam Bondi announced today that she has assigned Jay Clayton, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, to lead the investigation at the behest of the president. Bondi described Clayton, who previously served as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first administration, as “one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country”.
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Donald Trump has agreed to slash US tariffs on Switzerland to 15% as part of a new trade pact, lowering duties that strained economic ties and hit Swiss exporters. The two countries have signed a “non-binding memorandum of understanding”, the Swiss government announced, following bilateral talks in Washington and intense lobbying by Swiss firms. In return, Switzerland will reduce tariffs “on a range of US products”, the statement said. “In addition to all industrial products, fish and seafood, this includes agricultural products from the US that Switzerland considers non-sensitive.”
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The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued a rare condemnation of president Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and advocated for “meaningful immigration reform”. In a special message, the first of its kind in 12 years, the bishops said that “we are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools.” In response, White House border czar, Tom Homan, hit back. “The Catholic church is wrong, I’m sorry. I’m a lifelong Catholic,” he said. “I think they need to spend time fixing the Catholic church in my opinion.”
Bondi assigns prosecutor to lead investigation into Trump adversaries over Epstein ties
Attorney general Pam Bondi announced today that she has assigned Jay Clayton, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, to lead the investigation into Donald Trump’s political adversaries and their ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
Earlier, Trump called the latest release of emails that renewed focus on the president’s relationship with the late sex-offender a “hoax”, and directed the justice department to launch a probe into former president Bill Clinton, Democratic donor and entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, and former treasury secretary Larry Summers (who served under Clinton). “This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats,” the president wrote on Truth Social earlier.
Bondi described Clayton, who previously served as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first administration, as “one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country”. She added: “As with all matters, the Department will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people.”
Oversight investigation has Trump ‘panicked’ and ‘desperate’ says top committee Democrat
Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee, has responded to Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the ongoing Epstein investigation – which included the release of three emails this week where Epstein said that the president “knew about the girls” and “spent hours” at his home – is a “hoax” and “Russia scam”.
“Our Oversight investigation has Donald Trump panicked and desperate,” Garcia said. “He is trying to deflect from serious new questions we have about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.”
He added:
The President has not explained why he won’t release the files to the American people. Or why sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell was moved to a cushy low-security prison after her interview with Trump’s former personal lawyer.
NIH employee says she was put on leave for criticizing Trump administration during the shutdown
Jenna Norton, a program director at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), said that she was put on non-disciplinary administrative leave for “speaking up in my personal capacity” about the “harms that I have been witnessing” inside the agency. In a video posted to TikTok on Thursday, Norton said that being put on leave was “designed to scare and silence me. It was designed to scare and silence my colleagues, and it was designed to scare and silence everyone.”
According to Stat News, Norton was also one of the organizers of the “Bethesda Declaration” letter signed by hundreds of NIH staffers, calling on director Jay Bhattacharya to listen to their concerns about the direction of the agency.
Given that the president has no public events or meetings scheduled today, a White House official tells the press pool that Donald Trump “held calls with Thailand and Cambodia in an effort to mediate the most recent conflict” and “engaged with Malaysia as well to help end the violence”.
North Carolina sheriff confirms that Charlotte immigration operation is set to take place
Federal immigration agents will conduct their next major operation in Charlotte, according to the county’s sheriff.
In a statement on Thursday, Garry McFadden confirmed that his office was “contacted by two separate federal officials confirming that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel will be arriving in the Charlotte area as early as this Saturday or the beginning of next week”.
The sheriff added: “At this time, specific details regarding the federal operation have not been disclosed and the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) has not been requested to assist with or participate in any enforcement actions.”
In an interview with NPR this week, McFadden said “we cannot control what is going to go on. We just have to better understand it and be prepared to respond and react.”
