Trump says he has not thought about pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell
Further to my earlier post about Trump referring to the ongoing investigation when asked about possible clemency for Ghislaine Maxwell, NBC News reports that the president also didn’t seem to rule out the possibility of pardoning her.
“I’m allowed to do it, but it’s something I have not thought about,” Trump told reporters outside the White House this morning before leaving for his trip to Scotland.
His comments come as deputy attorney general Todd Blanche is meeting with Maxwell – who is serving a 20-year sentence in prison after being convicted of sex trafficking charges and other crimes after she recruited and groomed teenage girls to be sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein – and her attorney for a second consecutive day in Florida today.
Trump said he wasn’t sure how their conversation has gone, but when asked if Maxwell should be trusted to tell the truth, the president said Blanche is “a professional lawyer” and “he’s been through things like this before”.
Key events
Speaking to CNN on Friday, Republican representative Pete Sessions of Texas said that Ghislaine Maxwell’s testimony with the justice department “holds very little water.”
Sessions said:
“Well, it’s always easy when you’re sitting in jail for 20 years to be unhappy. But she was convicted. She had her time in court. And she had that opportunity… It seems like to me that she acts like she wants to reset the record away from testimony that was given that convicted her in the first place.”
He went on to add:
“It holds very little water to me… I don’t know why they’re meeting with her except to gain her acceptance.”
Nina Lakhani
The furore over Donald Trump’s ties with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein continued on Friday as new revelations about the pair’s relationship threatened to mire the president’s golfing trip to Scotland.
The US president’s name appeared on a contributor list for a book celebrating Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003, according to reporting from the New York Times, lending further weight to reports that Trump participated in the leather-bound collection of messages, drawings and accolades – despite denying that he contributed a signed and sexually suggestive note and drawing, as reported by the Wall Street Journal earlier this month.
Trump’s name is listed among Epstein’s friends and acquaintances who contributed birthday messages for the professionally bound book which reportedly had multiple volumes, the Times reported. The tome opens with a handwritten letter, also reviewed by the Times, from the disgraced financier’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for conspiring to sexually traffic children. Maxwell is due to have a second meeting with US deputy attorney general Todd Blanche in Florida, where she is serving her term in federal prison, on Friday.
Sam Levine
As Republicans in their state move ahead with an effort to gerrymander congressional districts, 15 Texas Democrats are spending the day on Friday meeting with California governor Gavin Newsom and Illinois governor JB Pritzker.
The move comes as Newsom, Pritzker and other Democrats have threatened to redraw US House districts in their states to pick up Democratic seats. Donald Trump wants Texas Republicans to redraw the congressional map to add as many as 5 US House seats.
“Since Governor Abbott is acting like a child, we are going to find adults to go talk to,” representative Gene Wu, chair of the Texas House Democratic Caucus said in a statement. Wu is leading the delegation to Illinois to meet with Pritzker.
“There are dozens of dead kids and people are still missing from the central Texas floods. But Donald Trump is focused on manipulating elections to help himself,” said representative Rafael Anchía, who is leading the delegation to meet with Newsom in California.
The Democratic departures from the state will not delay the Texas special session, since it was in recess on Friday. Democratic lawmakers are reportedly considering fleeing the state enmasse to deny Republicans the quorum they need to pass the maps.
While Democrats have control over drawing the lines in Illinois, Newsom faces significant hurdles to redrawing California’s districts. Redistricting in California is controlled by an independent redistricting commission, not the legislature. Newsom has suggested he could try and put a quick referendum to voters to give the legislature the power to redraw the maps or try and untested legal theory and have the legislature draw the maps anyway.
Trump says he has not thought about pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell
Further to my earlier post about Trump referring to the ongoing investigation when asked about possible clemency for Ghislaine Maxwell, NBC News reports that the president also didn’t seem to rule out the possibility of pardoning her.
“I’m allowed to do it, but it’s something I have not thought about,” Trump told reporters outside the White House this morning before leaving for his trip to Scotland.
His comments come as deputy attorney general Todd Blanche is meeting with Maxwell – who is serving a 20-year sentence in prison after being convicted of sex trafficking charges and other crimes after she recruited and groomed teenage girls to be sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein – and her attorney for a second consecutive day in Florida today.
Trump said he wasn’t sure how their conversation has gone, but when asked if Maxwell should be trusted to tell the truth, the president said Blanche is “a professional lawyer” and “he’s been through things like this before”.
Donald Trump also dismissed Emmanuel Macron’s plan to recognize a Palestinian state at the UN general assembly in September.
“What he says doesn’t matter,” Trump told reporters of the French president. “He’s a very good guy. I like him, but that statement doesn’t carry weight.”
Yesterday Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, responded angrily to Macron’s announcement, calling it a “reckless decision” that was a “slap in the face” to victims of the 7 October Hamas attack.
In a diplomatic cable in June, the US – long Israel’s strongest backer – said it opposed any steps that would unilaterally recognise a Palestinian state.
Donald Trump has said Hamas “did not want to make a deal” on a ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza.
Speaking to reporters at the White House earlier, the president’s comments echoed those of his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, who said yesterday the Trump team had pulled its negotiators for consultations following Hamas’s latest proposal.
Meanwhile, Israeli media report that Benjamin Netanyahu has blamed Hamas for the deadlock, claiming in a statement: “Hamas is the obstacle to a hostage release deal. Together with our US allies, we are now considering alternative options to bring our hostages home.”
The Associated Press reported earlier that ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas are expected to resume next week. Hamas official Bassem Naim said today that an Israeli delegation was due to leave for consultations early next week.
Trump cites ongoing investigation when asked about Maxwell clemency
Speaking to reporters outside the White House earlier, Donald Trump didn’t answer when asked about possible clemency for Ghislaine Maxwell, saying it is an ongoing investigation.
His deputy attorney general Todd Blanche said last night that he plans to continue his conversation with Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime accomplice and convicted sex trafficker in federal prison today, having spent several hours interviewing her yesterday.
Maxwell is seeking to have her conviction overturned.
Donald Trump expected to be met with wave of protest as he heads to Scotland
Donald Trump is heading to Scotland this morning to visit his luxury golf resorts at Turnberry in Ayrshire and Menie in Aberdeenshire, and open a third in honor of his Scottish-born mother.
During what will mostly be a five-day holiday, Trump is also expected to meet with UK prime minister Keir Starmer, who will visit the president in Scotland to “refine” the trade framework reached with the US.
As my colleagues reported yesterday, Scottish protest organisers anticipate a wave of resistance to Trump’s visit from Ayrshire to Aberdeenshire this weekend as Scots take to the streets to express “widespread anger” at what they termed the US president’s increasingly extreme policies.
Deputy attorney general to hold second meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell today
Deputy attorney general Todd Blanche said last night that he plans to continue his conversation with Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime accomplice and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell today.
The two spoke for several hours yesterday in federal prison, where Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence, as the administration seeks to probe her for additional information about Epstein’s case.
After the meeting, Blanche said that yesterday that he intended to spend more time interviewing her in federal prison on Friday.
“The Department of Justice will share additional information about what we learned at the appropriate time,” he added.
“We want to thank the deputy attorney general for being so professional with all of us and for taking the time to meet with us,” Maxwell’s lawyer, David Oscar Markus told reporters after Thursday’s interview.
According to Markus, Blanche “spent the full day and asked a lot of questions, and Ms Maxwell answered every single one”.
Maxwell is seeking to have her conviction overturned.
Blanche’s meetings with Maxwell come as the Trump administration tries to contain outrage over its decision to not release files from the federal investigation of the late sex offender, who socialized with Trump for more than a decade.
Analysis: Trump cranks up distraction machine but focus refuses to budge from Epstein
David Smith
Donald Trump displayed the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Sitting in the Oval Office, he was asked by a reporter about the justice department’s hunt for evidence about the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “I don’t really follow that too much,” he said. “It’s sort of a witch-hunt.”
And then the pivot: “The witch-hunt you should be talking about is that they caught President Obama absolutely cold.” Trump was claiming a plot by Barack Obama to rig the 2016 election, accusing his predecessor of “treason”. For good measure he warned: “Whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people.”
Why this and why now? It is not much of a mystery. Trump, who once claimed that he could shoot someone on New York’s Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters, has shot himself in the foot. His support base is in open revolt over his failure to release files relating to the convicted sex offender Epstein and a rumoured list of his elite clients.
The president’s solution is to reach for a very familiar playbook: distract, distract, distract.
It worked for him during his biggest crisis in the 2016 election campaign. On the same day that an Access Hollywood tape emerged in which Trump was recorded making lewd comments about women, his campaign seized on the WikiLeaks release of thousands of emails hacked from the account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. Trump survived and went on to win the election.
Since then, whenever he lands in trouble, his fans have been eager to help him turn the page. But the Epstein saga cuts into Trump’s core political identity as the slayer of the deep state. He is once again throwing out numerous shiny objects but they are losing their shine.
Gwenda Blair, a Trump biographer, observes:
It is the distraction machine that has worked in the past breaking down – trying the old favourites and not getting much traction. What’s happened is like massive whiplash, which happens when you’re in some sort of moving vehicle and it’s going forward, often at a pretty high speed, and you suddenly crash into something and your neck jerks back often with very dire consequences.
Democratic lawmakers seek answers from homeland security head about masked Ice agents
José Olivares
Democratic members of Congress are pressing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to reveal information about immigration officers’ practice of wearing masks and concealing their identities, according to a letter viewed by the Guardian.
The letter marks another step in pushes by US lawmakers to require immigration officials to identify themselves during arrest operations, especially when agents are masked, a practice that has sparked outrage among civil rights groups.
Congressman Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the powerful committee on oversight and government reform, along with representative Summer Lee, wrote to DHS secretary Kristi Noem pressing for “memoranda, directives, guidance, communications” regarding immigration officers’ use of masks and unmarked cars for immigration operations.
For every person within the United States, the Fourth Amendment guarantees protection from unreasonable searches and seizures and the Fifth Amendment guarantees a right to due process under the law.
In direct violation of these principles, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has allowed its agents – primarily from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) – to conceal their identities and use unmarked vehicles while conducting immigration enforcement activities.
In recent months, as the Trump administration has escalated immigration enforcement operations, arrests, detention and deportations, the DHS and Ice have been relentlessly criticized for their agents’ use of masks and unmarked cars.
The two Democrats mention a number of examples, from the past few months under the Trump administration, in which immigration officials have hidden their identities while conducting immigration arrests and operations. They also mention a recent example, originally reported by the Intercept, in which two immigration judges in New York concealed the identities of government attorneys pushing to deport people.
This causes a dangerous erosion of public trust, due process, and transparency in law enforcement. These tactics contradict longstanding democratic principles such as the public’s right to accountability from those who enforce the law and pave the way for increased crime, making our communities less safe.
Fed says it is ‘grateful’ for Trump’s encouragement to complete renovation
The Federal Reserve has said that it was “grateful” for Donald Trump’s encouragement to complete its renovation project and that it “looked forward” to seeing the project through to completion.
“We remain committed to continuing to be careful stewards of these resources as we see the project through to completion,” it said in a statement, a day after the president made a rare visit to the US central bank in Washington. “The Federal Reserve was honored to welcome the President yesterday for a visit to our historic headquarters.”
The visit was notably tense as Trump tried and failed to ambush Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, during an on-camera exchange over the cost of the renovation. In the clip below you can watch Powell publicly fact-check the president over the project’s price tag.
The White House has used the rising cost of the project, which the Fed now estimates at $2.5bn, as a cudgel in Trump’s ongoing criticism of Powell. Trump said the two men also spoke privately about interest rates, which the president says should be lowered immediately to boost the economy.
The Fed, which has asserted many times that it takes independent economic decisions, is widely expected to leave its benchmark interest rate in the 4.25%-4.50% range at the conclusion of a two-day policy meeting next week.
Following his tour, Trump called the renovation “luxurious” but said he was not inclined to take the unprecedented step of firing Powell. “Because to do that is a big move and I just don’t think it’s necessary,” Trump said. “And I believe that he’s going do the right thing. I believe that the chairman is going to do the right thing.”
Alice Speri
Columbia University’s deal with the Trump administration after months of negotiations has drawn both condemnation and praise from faculty, students and alumni – a sign that the end of negotiations will hardly restore harmony on a campus profoundly divided since the beginning of Israel’s war in Gaza.
David Pozen, a professor at Columbia Law School, slammed the deal as giving “legal form to an extortion scheme”, he wrote.
“The means being used to push through these reforms are as unprincipled as they are unprecedented. Higher education policy in the United States is now being developed through ad hoc deals, a mode of regulation that is not only inimical to the ideal of the university as a site of critical thinking but also corrosive to the democratic order and to law itself,” Pozen continued.
Not all Columbia affiliates were as critical. The Stand Columbia Society, a group of alumni, students and faculty that have for months championed some of the same reforms demanded by the Trump administration, welcomed the announcement.
“The Stand Columbia Society believes this agreement represents an excellent outcome that restores research funding, facilitates real structural reforms, and preserves core principles of academic freedom and institutional autonomy,” they wrote. “We have been steadfast and consistent on what is the right thing to do, and today, both Columbia’s leaders and the federal government deserve credit for achieving this result.”
The Trump administration’s goal of fining other universities comes after a major deal was struck this week with Columbia University. The deal, according to the Wall Street Journal, is seen as a precedent for what the White House expects in future deals.
From our Wednesday night report:
Under the agreement, Columbia will pay a $200m settlement over three years to the federal government, the university said. It will also pay $21m to settle investigations brought by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
“This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty,” the acting university president, Claire Shipman, said.
The administration pulled the funding because of what it described as the university’s failure to squelch antisemitism on campus during the Israel-Gaza war that began in October 2023.
You can read the full report here:
Trump administration reportedly seeks fines from universities including Harvard
Good morning and welcome to the US politics blog.
We’re starting today with a new report from the Wall Street Journal saying that the Trump administration is seeking fines from other universities after Columbia agreed to pay more than $220m this week.
The White House aims to fine several universities it accuses of failing to stop antisemitism on campus, including from Harvard University, in exchange for access to federal funding, according to the Journal’s reporting.
The Trump administration is in talks with several universities, including Cornell, Duke, Northwestern and Brown – but Harvard is seen as a key target.
Stick with us today as we bring you all the latest lines from Washington and beyond.
