Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration, but just for the day. Here are the latest developments:
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Donald Trump turned on his former close ally, Marjorie Taylor Greene, denouncing the Maga congresswoman in a social media blast posted as his motorcade brought the president to his Palm Beach club on Friday night.
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Trump refused to rule out a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell, his former associate who was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in 2022, for her role in a scheme to sexually exploit and abuse multiple minor girls with Jeffrey Epstein over the course of a decade.
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Trump directed the justice department to investigate Epstein’s relationship with several prominent Democrats, including former president Bill Clinton, former treasury secretary Larry Summers, and donor and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman.
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After Trump said that the focus of the investigation should be on another Epstein associate, Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn cofounder and Democratic donor, Hoffman wrote: “Trump should release all of the Epstein files: every person and every document in the files.”
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Under pressure to explain why he refuses to release all of the files from the federal investigation into Epstein, Trump suggested that anything that reflects badly on him in those files might have “been put in since the election” that he won last year.
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Documents provided to Congress this week by the estate of Epstein include transcripts of text messages that appear to show the late sex offender was in direct contact with a member of the House during a 2019 congressional hearing with Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former fixer, the Washington Post reports.
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Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, announced that she has assigned Jay Clayton, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, to lead the new Epstein investigation at the behest of the president.
Key events
Republican party boasts that Thanksgiving could be 3% cheaper this year, contradicting Trump’s claim of a 25% drop
In a social media post on Friday, the Republican party thanked Donald Trump for the news that, the overall cost of a Thanksgiving dinner this year could be about 2% to 3% cheaper than last year for shoppers willing to turn to budget brands.
That finding, from an ABC News report that cited research from the Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute which indicates that, despite a 2.7% increase of “food-at-home” prices in 2025 as measured by the Consumer Price Index, the cost of some traditional components of a Thanksgiving meal had actually dropped.
“At the heart of the uptick in the CPI’s food-at-home increase is protein, specifically beef and eggs, which are not on the Thanksgiving menu,” Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute reported. Pumpkin pie prices from national brands are down about 3% this year, the institute noted.
But the key savings for the overall menu were available to those willing to use store-brand items instead of national brand names.
While the Republican party post attributed this potential price drop to what it called an improvement in the overall economy brought about by Trump, the figures cited are far lower than the reduction in prices Trump has claimed all week.
Trump, and official White House accounts on social media have claimed repeatedly that the fact that Walmart is offering a Thanksgiving basket for 2025 that is 25% cheaper than its basket was in 2024 is evidence that costs have dropped dramatically.
“Thanksgiving dinner is 25% cheaper than under Biden,” the White House claimed in an X post last Friday, days after a reporter had publicly explained to Trump that the new Walmart basket is cheaper mainly because it is far smaller, including fewer items and more generic brands.
Reid Hoffman calls for ‘release all of the Epstein files’ after Trump says he should be focus of investigation
In his exchange with reporters on Air Force One on Friday night, when Donald Trump was asked about Marjorie Taylor Greene’s call for the full release of the investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender Trump socialized with for more than a decade, he suggested that the focus of the investigation should be on someone else who associated with Epstein: Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn cofounder and Democratic donor.
“I don’t care about it, released or not,” Trump claimed. “What I think you should do, if you’re going to do it, then you have to go into Epstein’s friends. This Reid Hoffman, who spent a lot of time on the island. I was never at his island,” the president said.
Hoffman, who told the Wall Street Journal in 2023 that he only visited Epstein’s private island once, did so to aid in fundraising for MIT and regretted it, responded to Trump’s claims about him by calling, in a thread on X, for all of the Epstein files to be made public.
Hoffman wrote:
Trump should release all of the Epstein files: every person and every document in the files. I want this complete release because it will bring justice for the victims. I want this complete release because it will show that the calls for baseless investigations of me are nothing more than political persecution and slander. I was never a client of Epstein’s and never had any engagement with him other than fundraising for MIT.
The call for an investigation is an obvious ploy to avoid releasing the files. Simply release all the files, and expose the people who had both deep and ongoing relationships with Epstein.
I will do everything in my power going forward to advocate for the release of the files, to get justice for Epstein’s victims, and to promote the values of truth our great country was founded on.
I refuse to bend the knee to Donald Trump and his slanderous lies.
Trump breaks with Marjorie Taylor Greene, urging primary challenge
Donald Trump turned on his former close ally, Marjorie Taylor Greene, denouncing the Maga congresswoman in a social media blast posted as his motorcade brought the president to his Palm Beach club on Friday night.
“I am withdrawing my support and Endorsement of ‘Congresswoman’ Marjorie Taylor Greene, of the Great State of Georgia,” Trump wrote.
His post did not mention the subjects of their recent disagreements, Greene’s support for legislation that would require the full release of investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein and her criticism of Trump’s focus on foreign affairs over making life more affordable for Americans.
Instead, Trump cast the congresswoman as unhinged for failing to focus on what he called his many successes. He wrote: “all I see “Wacky” Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!”
“I can’t take a ranting Lunatic’s call every day,” the president added. “I understand that wonderful, Conservative people are thinking about primarying Marjorie in her District of Georgia, that they too are fed up with her and her antics and, if the right person runs, they will have my Complete and Unyielding Support.”
The president also hinted that the final straw for him was the fact that she appeared on a daytime talk show whose hosts have often been critical of him. “She has gone Far Left,” Trump claimed, incorrectly, “even doing The View, with their Low IQ Republican hating Anchors.”
The post came shortly after Trump was asked by a reporter on Air Force One to comment on Greene’s latest call, during a CBS News interview on Friday, for the full release of the Epstein files.
Trump suggests that anything incriminating about him in Epstein files was ‘put in’ after 2024 election
Under pressure to explain why he refuses to release all of the files from the federal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender he socialized with from more than a decade, Donald Trump suggested on Friday that anything that reflects badly on him in those files might have “been put in since the election” that he won last year.
Near the end of his exchange with reporters on Air Force One, Trump leaned into the talking point his defenders have been using: if the justice department had uncovered anything bad about him in the course of the Epstein investigation, the Biden administration would have released it in 2024 to damage Trump’s standing with voters.
“I will say this: if they had anything, they would’ve used it before the election. OK?” Trump said.
He then hinted, as he has in the past, that false information about him might have been inserted into the files by his political enemies. “I can’t tell you what they put in since the election, but if they had anything, you don’t think they would have used it before the election?” Trump asked. He then answered his own question: “They would’ve gladly used it before the election.”
The most obvious problem with this theory is that the justice department during Joe Biden’s presidency, run by the attorney general, Merrick Garland, often seemed to go out its way to demonstrate that it was independent and not driven by political considerations.
Julie Brown, the Miami Herald journalist whose investigation led to the arrests of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, explained on Thursday night why Garland did not release the criminal case files last year.
“Maxwell’s criminal case was still OPEN during the Biden administration”, Brown explained on X to someone who accepted Trump’s premise at face value. “She wasn’t convicted until late 2021, and then she appealed her conviction. Generally, it’s not a good idea to open your evidence files when a criminal case is ongoing.”
“We also don’t know whether the FBI was still investigating other possible suspects who helped Epstein or participated in his crimes,” Brown added. “If you are still targeting suspects, you don’t want them to know you are zeroing in on them.”
Trump is asked why Epstein wrote of him: ‘of course he knew about the girls’
Donald Trump was finally asked to respond directly to a 2019 email from Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender he socialized with for over a decade, in which Epstein told the writer Michael Wolff that “of course” Trump “knew about the girls”.
“Mr President, what did Jeffrey Epstein mean in an email when he said you knew about the girls?” a female reporter asked Trump as Air Force One flew the president in the direction of Palm Beach, Florida, where he and Epstein spent time together in the years during which Epstein was abusing young girls.
“I know nothing about that,” Trump replied.
He then suggested, as he has previously, that, if there was any evidence of misconduct on his behalf uncovered by investigators, “they would have announced that a long time ago”.
Trump’s claim seems to be that his political rivals would have used anything incriminating about him in the files if it existed. However, previous presidents have respected the independence of the justice department, and not treated material from federal investigations as fodder for political campaigns.
The president then urged reporters to stop asking questions about his relationship to Epstein and focus instead on Democrats.
“It’s really what did he mean when he spent all the time with Bill Clinton, with the president of Harvard … Larry Summers?” Trump said. “Jeffrey Epstein and I had a very bad relationship for many years.”
“But he also saw strength, because I was president, so he dictated memos to himself. Give me a break,” Trump added, badly mischaracterizing Epstein’s emails about him to other people, including those written before he even entered politics.
“Sir, if there’s nothing incriminating in the files, sir, why not – ” a reporter tried to ask, before Trump cut her off saying, “Quiet! Quiet!”
Trump refuses to rule out pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell
Donald Trump just took questions from reporters for the first time since Monday, and refused to rule out a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell, his former associate who was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in 2022, for her role in a scheme to sexually exploit and abuse multiple minor girls with Jeffrey Epstein over the course of a decade.
Maxwell is reportedly preparing to ask Trump to commute her sentence, and was recently moved to a low-security prison camp after she told the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, that she had never seen Trump do anything inappropriate during their years of friendship.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Friday night, Trump was asked: “Have you ruled out a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell?”
“I haven’t even thought about it,” Trump replied. “I mean, I haven’t thought about it for months. Maybe I haven’t thought about it at all, you’re just asking me a question.”
“Why can’t you rule it out?” the reporter followed up.
“I don’t talk about that. I don’t rule it in or out, I don’t even think about it,” Trump answered.
In 2020, when Maxwell was arrested, Trump was asked whether he expected her to “turn in powerful men” during a White House briefing.
“I don’t know, I really haven’t been following it too much. I just wish her well,” the president said. “I’ve met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach and I guess they lived in Palm Beach. But I wish her well.”
In one of the emails from Epstein released this week, sent to the writer Michael Wolff in 2019, the late sex offender said, of Trump, “of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop”.
As he struggled to explain his long friendship with Epstein, Trump said earlier this year that he had asked Epstein to stop recruiting young women from the Mar-a-Lago spa, including Virginia Giuffre, who was hired away from Trump’s club by Maxwell. The newly released email from Epstein suggests that it was Maxwell, not Epstein, that Trump asked to stop using his club as a place to recruit girls.
The United States carried out a lethal strike on Monday against a vessel in the Caribbean Sea that US officials say was operated by a “designated terrorist organization”, according to a post on X by the US Southern Command.
According to the post, four men aboard the vessel were killed.
“Intelligence confirmed that the vessel was involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics,” reads the post.
The strike comes a day after defense secretary Pete Hegseth announced a new operation called “Southern Spear” to target “narco-terrorists” in the western hemisphere. It’s the latest escalation in the military buildup between the US and Venezuela.
Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, has announced what he called a “massive deployment” of land, sea, air, river and missile forces, as well as civilian militia, to counter the US naval presence off his country’s coast.
The Trump administration appealed today a ruling from a federal judge in Oregon that barred it from deploying the national guard in Portland.
The appeal comes after district court judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, ruled a week ago that there was no evidence of widespread violence to justify federal intervention. She found that protests near Portland’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility were “predominately peaceful, with only isolated and sporadic instances of relatively low-level violence”.
The administration criticized the decision and said the troops were needed to protect federal personnel and property in a city that Trump has described as “war ravaged”.
“The district court’s ruling made it clear that this administration must be accountable to the truth and to the rule of law,” Oregon attorney general Dan Rayfield said in response to the administration’s appeal in an email to the Associated Press. “We will keep defending Oregon values and standing up for our state’s authority to make decisions grounded in evidence and common sense.”
Trump refuses to answer reporter questions on Epstein or Venezuela as he leaves the White House
According to the White House pool reporter, Donald Trump again refused to answer any questions from the media when he emerged from the Oval Office on Friday evening and left for a weekend in Florida.
Trump did not respond to shouted questions about possible US military strikes on Venezuela, the Jeffrey Epstein scandal or other topics.
In an unusual move, the former TV gameshow host has not taken any questions from reporters since emails from Epstein about him were released on Tuesday morning.
Documents show Jeffrey Epstein texted with House member during 2019 testimony from Michael Cohen – report
Documents provided to Congress this week by the estate of Jeffrey Epstein include transcripts of text messages that appear to show the late sex offender was in direct contact with a member of the House during a 2019 congressional hearing with Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former fixer, the Washington Post reports.
Although the identity of the person Epstein was texting with as the February 2019 hearing unfolded is not revealed in the transcripts, an analysis by the Post suggests that it was Stacey Plaskett, a Democrat who represents the US Virgin Islands as its nonvoting delegate in the House of Representatives.
By matching time-stamps on the text messages with video of the hearing, the news outlet identified Plaskett as the lawmaker Epstein was messaging with during the hearing.
At 10.41am on the day of the hearing, for instance, Epstein texted to the person: “Are you chewing”. One minute before, a live television feed of the hearing had cut to Plaskett, as she appeared to be chewing.
“Not any more,” the person replied to Epstein. “Chewing interior of my mouth. Bad habit from middle school.”
Later, Epstein appeared to offer advice about questions Cohen could be asked. “Hes opened the door to questions re who are the other henchmen at trump org,” Epstein texted at 12.25pm.
“Cohen brought up RONA – keeper of the secrets,” misspelling the first name of Trump’s former executive assistant Rhona Graff.
“RONA??” the person responded at 2.25pm. “Quick I’m up next is that an acronym.”
Three minutes later, when Plaskett began her questioning of Cohen, she asked who “Mr Weisenberg” and “Miss Rona” was and if there were “other people that we should be meeting with?”
“So Allen Weisselberg is the chief financial officer in The Trump Organization,” Cohen replied.
Plaskett jumped in to say: “You’ve got to quickly give us as many names as you can so we can get to them. Is Miss Rona, what is Miss Rona’s position?”
“Rhona Graff is the — Mr. Trump’s executive assistant.”
Asked by Plaskett if she would be able to corroborate Cohen’s testimony, he said yes. “Her office is directly next to his, and she’s involved in a lot that went on.”
Plaskett, who was the first nonvoting delegate to the House to serve as an impeachment manager, during Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate in 2021, declined to comment when reached by the Post. Her chief of staff told the paper she was “not in a position to confirm or not” whether the congresswoman was texting with Epstein during the hearing.
