Clintons agree to testify to House inquiry on Epstein
Bill and Hillary Clinton agreed on Monday to testify to a House oversight committee inquiry on Jeffrey Epstein, a spokesman for the former president confirmed in asocial media post.
Angel Ureña, the former president’s deputy chief of staff, responded to a post on X from the Republican-led House oversight committee, threatening to hold both Clintons in contempt, by writing:
They negotiated in good faith. You did not. They told you under oath what they know, but you don’t care. But the former President and former Secretary of State will be there. They look forward to setting a precedent that applies to everyone.
Earlier on Monday, the Republican chair of the oversight committee, James Comer, rejected an offer from the former president to conduct a transcribed interview for the House committee’s investigation into Epstein.
A committee letter to the Clintons’ lawyers indicated the couple had offered for Bill Clinton to conduct a transcribed interview on “matters related to the investigations and prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein” and for Hillary Clinton to submit a sworn declaration.
The Republican-controlled oversight panel had advanced criminal contempt of Congress charges last month, if the Clintons refused to testify.
Key events
Trump again denies spending time on Jeffrey Epstein’s island, but seems to refer to late sex offender by his first name
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Donald Trump repeated his denial that he ever visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private island, but appeared to catch himself referring to the late sex offender he socialized with for most of two decades by his first name.
Asked if he does intend to sue Trevor Noah, the host of the Grammys who joked about Trump and Bill Clinton needing an island to hang out on together now that Epstein’s Little Saint James was out of the picture, the president said: “Yeah, well… he said that I spent time on Jeffrey’s— Jeffrey Epstein’s island. I didn’t.”
“No, he made a statement about me and Jeffrey Epstein’s- I have nothing to do with that. I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein,” he added.
Trump went on to suggest that the files into the federal investigations of Epstein released by his justice department raised “a lot of questions” about his ties to Democrats like Bill Clinton “but nothing on me”.
Trump’s anger at Noah over the indirect suggestion that he had visited Epstein’s island somewhat obscured the fact that there is also no evidence that Clinton spent any time on the island.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that Clinton visited Epstein’s island dozens of times, usually to deflect questions about his own friendship with the notorious pedophile, but there remains no evidence that he was ever there.
A spokesman for Clinton flatly denied the allegation in 2019, after Epstein was charged with federal sex crimes in New York, saying the former president “has never been to Little St. James Island, Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico, or his residence in Florida.”
“President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York,” the former president’s spokesman, Angel Ureña, also said in 2019.
Clinton’s spokesman added that all four trips he took on Epstein’s private plane, to Europe, Asia and Africa, took place in 2002 and 2003, and other people – including staff, supporters of the Clinton Foundation and the former president’s Secret Service detail – “traveled on every leg of every trip.”
Trump’s own chief of staff, Susie Wiles, admitted to Vanity Fair in December that Trump’s wild claim that Clinton had visited Epstein’s island “28 times” was false. “There is no evidence” of any such trips, Wiles acknowledged, or of anything incriminating about Clinton in the files. “The president was wrong about that” she said.
In a 2015 email, Epstein himself told the owner of the New York Daily News, Mortimer Zuckerman, the allegation that Clinton visited his island, made by one victim of Epstein’s abuse, was false and could be used as a way to destroy her credibility.
The victim, Epstein wrote in a typo-laden email, was a “story teller” who “crafted much of it out of whole cloth.. part of her story , is that she was at multiple orgies with clinton and speciifically, the minute details of a dinner had on the island with him… he sat on my left. came by black. heli. flown by ghislaine. clinton was NEVER EVER there, never.”
Epstein encouraged the Daily News owner to have someone “break the story” that this detail in the accuser’s story was false, “making it all apparent that it was fantasy. and delusional.”
On the same day, Epstein also urged a reporter for the New York Times to report that the allegation about Clinton visiting his island was false, again as a way to undermine the accuser’s credibility.
Trump says he supports move to have federal agents in Minneapolis wear body cameras
Donald Trump just told reporters that he supports a decision on Monday by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, to ensure that every federal officer in Minneapolis wears a body camera during the ongoing immigration crackdown in the city.
“Effective immediately we are deploying body cameras to every officer in the field in Minneapolis,” Noem announced, in response to pressure from Democrats in Congress for greater accountability in the wake of two fatal shootings of protesters by federal immigration agents in the city
Noem added that “the body camera program will be expanded nationwide” if Congress agrees to provide funding. Furhter funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and US border patrol, is currently under negotiation between the White House and Democrats.
Although witness video recorded during the shooting of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, revealed that the administration had lied repeatedly about what led officers to fire at least 10 shots at him from close range, Trump insisted on Monday that body cameras “generally tend to be good for law enforcement because people can’t lie about what’s happening.”
Ro Khanna repeats call for court-appointed special master to properly redact Epstein files
Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman, has seconded a call from survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse for all of the documents released by the US justice department to be taken down from the internet and reviewed by a court-appointed special master to ensure proper redactions.
After the survivors documented multiple examples of the names and other identifying information of victims being posted online without redaction, Khanna said in a statement that this is what he and Thomas Massie, a Republican congressman, “had asked the court to appoint a special master. Exactly what we wanted to avoid.”
Survivors of Jeffry Epstein’s abuse ask judges to order justice department to take down files and make proper redactions
A group of survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse have asked federal judges to order the US justice department to take down the entire public archive of files released in recent days and make proper redactions to remove identifying information of the victims.
In a letter to two federal judges in Manhattan requesting an emergency order, lawyers for the victims say that the justice department posted millions of records from the federal investigations into Epstein, the late sex offender “while failing to redact victim names and other personally identifying information in thousands of instances”.
In the letter, the lawyers list nine examples in documents released on Friday:
1. Documents in which Minor Victim 1 had her name revealed 20 times in a single document. After reporting the violation, DOJ redacted her name three additional times-leaving 17 instances still unredacted as of this filing.
2. An email listing 32 minor child victims, with only one name redacted and 31 left visible-despite DOJ’s possession of those names.
3. FBI 302 victim statements with full first and last names unredacted, including for minor victims.
4. Handwritten FBI interview notes with minor victims’ full names unredacted at the top and throughout.
5. Documents containing victims’ names alongside dates of birth, bank information, driver’s license numbers, email addresses, or home addresses.
6. Documents where victims’ names are redacted in some places but not others within the same document.
7. Documents where redactions are pencil-thin, revealing the complete name and email address beneath.
8. Documents where photographs are properly redacted in one instance and appear fully unredacted nearby.
9. Hundreds of documents exposing the names of four women who have been in near-constant communication with DOJ since December requesting protection.
The justice department, attorneys for the victims wrote, “cannot plausibly characterize this as error, negligence, or bureaucratic failure. The task was straightforward: take the list of known victims and redact those names everywhere they appear.”
Instead, they add, the department has “placed the burden on victims to search for and discover their own exposure-after the damage had already occurred.”
The victims ask the judges to order the justice department to: immediately take down “the DOJ website hosting Epstein materials”; perform a “comprehensive name-based search of all hosted documents using the victim list”; carry out “Proper redaction of all references to victims’ first, last, or full names”’; and appoint “an independent Special Master to oversee redaction and republication”.
Trump says that he’s working to get House to pass spending bills
Donald Trump said that he’s “working hard” with House speaker Mike Johnson to pass a five-bill funding package, and stopgap measure to keep the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funded. A reminder that the Senate passed the legislation last week, and the lower chamber is teeing the bills up for a vote this week.
“There can be NO CHANGES at this time,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “We cannot have another long, pointless, and destructive Shutdown that will hurt our Country so badly – One that will not benefit Republicans or Democrats.”
Johnson has an uphill battle with many Democratic representatives suggesting that they’ll vote against the bills because they don’t trust the administration to negotiate a long term DHS funding bill in good faith.
Here’s a recap of the day so far
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A five-bill funding package, as well as a stopgap measure to keep the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funded is set for a procedural vote today. It will then head to the House floor this week, where it stands to face opposition from Democrats and some Republicans. The legislation passed the Senate last week, after Democratic lawmakers and a some GOP defectors said that Congress needs to negotiate the DHS’s funding and the tactics used in raids. This comes after the widespread backlash throughout the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota, and the fatal shootings of two US citizens.
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Donald Trump has announced that after a call with India’s prime minister Narendra Modi they had agreed to lower tariffs between their countries. In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said that India had agreed to halt purchases of Russian oil, committed to reducing tariffs on US goods to zero, and committed to purchasing over $500bn worth ofAmerican products.
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Also on Truth Social today, Donald Trump reiterated his intention to sue Michael Wolff because he “conspired in order to damage me and/or my Presidency”, and reasserted that he never visited Jeffrey Epstein’s island home. A reminder that Trump said on Saturday evening that he would probably sue Wolff, the author of an unauthorized biography of the president, for “conspiring” with Epstein to damage him politically.
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Immigrant right groups, nonprofits, legal organizations and several citizens have sued the Trump administration over the visa ban on 75 countries, issued in January. In the lawsuit, they accuse secretary of state Marco Rubio and the state department of implementing a “categorical nationality-based ban on legal immigration” for nationals of 75 countries based on “an unsupported and demonstrably false claim that nationals of the covered countries migrate to the United States to improperly rely on cash welfare and are likely to become ‘public charges’”.
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The US Bureau of Labor Statistics said today that the closely watched jobs report for January will be not be released on Friday because of the partial government shutdown. “The release will be rescheduled upon the resumption of government funding,” Emily Liddel, associate commissioner at the BLS, said in a statement.
Robert Tait
Ron Johnson, a GOP senator from Wisconsin, said he did not “have a problem” with ICE officers wearing cameras, one of the key demands made by Democrats who are currently blocking the agency’s financing.
“I don’t have a problem with that personally,” Johnson, the chair of the Senate’s homeland security committee, told CNN’s Dana Bash on the State of the Union program.
Wearing body cameras has been among the conditions attached by Democrats to agreeing to continued funding of the agency, whose operations have come under fierce scrutiny over its patrols in Minneapolis following the fatal shootings of two people, Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
The Senate passed a package of five measures last Friday to fund government departments until next September, as well as a bill to continue homeland security operations for two weeks.
The House of Representatives will consider the legislation this week. Democrats in the House are expected to continue demands for reforms to ICE’s activities after its caucus met on Sunday to plot a strategy.
Many Republicans in both chambers have said that that their demands are non-starters.
Johnson told CNN that agents were “on hair-trigger alert” and claimed some had been shot at and had their cars rammed by protesters. He conceded Bash’s point that wearing body cameras might serve to illuminate such situations.
But he rejected the call for judicial warrants, portraying that as the Democrats’ central demand and a “sneaky way” to derail Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.
“This is immigration law that has always been adjudicated through … administrative judges,” he said. “We’ve got millions of cases backlogged. We’re talking about general criminal law. You’re talking probably hundreds of thousands of cases. We have millions of cases so demanding judicial warrants is their sneaky way of basically neutering our ability to enforce our immigration laws.”
Renee Nicole Good’s brothers to testify before Congress
A note that on Tuesday, there will be a bicameral hearing led by Democrats to hear testimony on the tactics and use of force by federal immigration agents during crackdowns across the country. Senator Richard Blumenthal and congressman Robert Garcia will lead the hearing, and two of the witnesses will be Renee Nicole Good’s brothers, Brent and Luke Granger.
Last month, Good was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in Minneapolis. Her death sparked further protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota. Two weeks after Good’s death, another US citizen, Alex Pretti, was killed by federal officers.
Donald Trump repeats intention to sue Michael Wolff and again denies ever visiting Epstein’s island
Over on Truth Social, Donald Trump has reiterated his intention to sue Michael Wolff because he “conspired in order to damage me and/or my Presidency”, and reasserted that he never visited Jeffrey Epstein’s island home.
Trump also claimed that he “wasn’t friendly” with Epstein. In fact, he and Epstein were close friends for some 15 years until they had a falling out around 2004.
Not only wasn’t I friendly with Jeffrey Epstein but, based upon information that has just been released by the Department of Justice, Epstein and a SLEAZEBAG lying “author” named Michael Wolff, conspired in order to damage me and/or my Presidency. So much for the Radical Left’s hope against hope, some of whom I’ll be suing. Additionally, unlike so many people that like to “talk” trash, I never went to the infested Epstein island but, almost all of these Crooked Democrats, and their Donors, did.
A reminder that Trump said on Saturday evening that he would probably sue Wolff, the author of an unauthorized biography of the president, for “conspiring” with Epstein to damage him politically. He told reporters aboard Air Force One:
So we’ll probably sue Wolff on it. And maybe the Epstein estate I guess, I don’t know, but we’re certainly gonna sue him … because he [Epstein] was conspiring with Wolff to do harm to me politically. That’s not a friend.
Wolff featured prominently in the tranche of Epstein files released by the DOJ back in November, which appeared to show him acting as an unofficial adviser and publicist for Epstein.
To recap briefly, in one email, Wolff suggested that Epstein could be the “bullet” to end Trump’s 2016 campaign. In another, he advised Epstein in 2015 to let Trump “hang himself” regarding his denials of visiting Epstein’s house or flying on his plane. He suggested that Epstein use Trump’s potential lies about their relationship as “valuable PR and political currency” depending on the outcome of the 2016 election. “You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt,” Wolff wrote to Epstein.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics said today that the closely watched jobs report for January will be not be released on Friday because of the partial government shutdown.
“The release will be rescheduled upon the resumption of government funding,” Emily Liddel, associate commissioner at the BLS, said in a statement.
Trump says US and India have reached trade deal and will lower tariffs immediately
Donald Trump has announced that after a call with India’s prime minister Narendra Modi they had agreed to lower tariffs between their countries.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said that India had agreed to halt purchases of Russian oil, committed to reducing tariffs on US goods to zero, and committed to purchasing over $500bn worth ofAmerican products, covering energy, technology, and agriculture. In return, Trump announced a reduction of “reciprocal” tariffs on Indian goods from 25% to 18% “effective immediately”.
Truth added that India had agreed “to buy much more [oil] from the United States and, potentially, Venezuela”.
Modi confirmed the tariff reduction in a post on X, where he also praised Trump’s “efforts for peace”.
Trade talks between the US and India stalled last year owing to several factors, including New Delhi’s continued reliance on Russian oil, which proved a major sticking point amid Trump’s efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Top homeland security Democrat urges lawmakers to vote against remaining funding bills
In a letter to Democratic House members, the ranking member of the homeland security committee, Bennie Thompson, has urged his colleagues to vote against the package of bills that would keep much of the government funded, and a stopgap measure to keep the Department of Homeland Security operating for two weeks while negotiations continue.
“Democrats must act now to demand real changes that protect our communities before Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) receive another dollar in funding,” Thompson writes in a letter, co-signed by his Democratic colleagues on the House homeland security committee.
Thompson notes that Democrats should not pass the short-term relief to allow for negotiations. Noting that they should ensure several provisions, like the use of judicial warrants to carry out arrests and ensuring immigration officers are identifiable, are already included.
Immigrant rights groups sue Trump administration over visa ban on 75 countries
Immigrant right groups, nonprofits, legal organizations and several citizens have sued the Trump administration over the visa ban on 75 countries, issued in January.
In the lawsuit, they accuse secretary of state Marco Rubio and the state department of implementing a “categorical nationality-based ban on legal immigration” for nationals of 75 countries based on “an unsupported and demonstrably false claim that nationals of the covered countries migrate to the United States to improperly rely on cash welfare and are likely to become ‘public charges’”.
Filed in a federal court in Manhattan, the plaintiffs cite examples of people from the list of countries – the overwhelming majority of which are non-European with significant nonwhite populations – who are unable to continue pursuing legal pathways to stay in the US because of the ban. In some cases, they are living with family members who have valid status in the US.
Democratic lawmaker slams Trump’s proposal to close Kennedy center for two years
Democratic congresswoman Joyce Beatty has slammed the Donald Trump’s announcement that the John F Kennedy Center, DC’s foremost performing arts venue, will cease events for two years while it undergoes renovations.
Beatty, a representative from Ohio, said that the president had “acted with total disregard for Congress”, since the center receives a portion of its funding through appropriations. “Congress should have been consulted on any decision to shut down its operations or undertake major renovations, especially for a two-year period,” she said in a statement.
“Countless employees, artists, and others have existing contracts and agreements with the Center. What happens to them? Has Trump or his handpicked Board given any consideration to their livelihoods or futures? This is precisely why congressional oversight is essential,” she added.
After Trump returned to office last year he jettisoned the existing board, installed himself as chairman, and ensured that his handpicked board of trustees voted to rename the venue as the “Trump-Kennedy Center”. However, any official legal change to the name would require congressional approval.
In response to the president’s takeover, several artists and production companies have decided to cut ties with the Kennedy Center in protest.
New CBS News contributor mentioned more than 1,700 times in latest Epstein files drop
A new CBS News contributor, Peter Attia, is mentioned more than 1,700 times in the latest release of Epstein files from the justice department. Just days ago, the Guardian reported that Attia – who hosts a popular podcast about longevity –had joined the ranks at CBS under embattled editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.
Throughout the email exchanges released by the DoJ, Attia corresponded with Epstein on dozens of occasions after the late sex-offender pleaded guilty to state charges of solicitation of prostitution, and registers as a sexual offended.
“I get JE withdrawal when I don’t see him,” Attia writes in an email to Epstein’s assistant on 21 January 2016.
In CBS News’ press release, announcing Attia’s hiring, they note that he is “the founder of Outlive”, a new app that translates longevity science into personalized daily practice” as well as Early Medical, “a medical practice that applies the principles of Medicine 3.0 to patients, aiming to simultaneously lengthen their lifespan and increase their healthspan”.
In a 2023 interview with the Guardian, Attia outlined many of his theories around the science of longevity.
A rightwing Brazilian influencer who claimed Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown only targeted “crooks” has been arrested by ICE agents in New Jersey.
Júnior Pena, whose full name is Eustáquio da Silva Pena Júnior, declared his support for the US president in a recent video message to his hundreds of thousands of social media followers.
“I [support] Donald Trump – I like the guy,” announced the South American TikToker and Instagrammer whose account purports to show “the reality of the United States” from a migrant’s perspective.
In a previous video, Pena reportedly urged Brazilians to stay calm and not “despair” after reports that ICE agents were rounding up migrants, including Brazilians. “But they’re all crooks. The lot of them,” he falsely claimed of the migrants being seized.
On Saturday, Pena was himself reportedly detained and sent to the Delaney Hall detention facility in Newark, New Jersey. One friend told the local newspaper the Brazilian Times that Pena had been taken into custody after missing a court hearing. The detainee’s lawyer, Andrew Lattarulo, was reportedly trying to resolve the situation and prevent him being transferred to another state.
The Brazilian influencer has reportedly lived in the US since 2009 and hails from Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais, a state long known as a major source of migrants to the US and Europe.
