Trump Just Released a Shady Russian Prisoner

Donald Trump secured the transfer of Marc Fogel, an American detainee in Russia, back to the United States.  A U.S. official confirmed to ABC News Wednesday that the president had made a deal to swap a Russian crypto-criminal to do it—even though Trump has railed against prisoner exchanges in the past.

Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz released a statement saying that Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East and other advisers had “negotiated an exchange that serves as a show of good faith from the Russians and a sign we are moving in the right direction to end the brutal and terrible war in Ukraine.”

But the statement didn’t immediately say what the U.S. gave up in the “exchange.”

Trump has regularly bragged about how he doesn’t need to agree to prisoner swaps to free Americans detained overseas. In August, when Joe Biden secured the release of three American citizens who were wrongfully imprisoned in Russia, Trump demanded to know the details and threw a massive fit about how prisoner swaps were extortion.

“So when are they going to release the details of the prisoner swap with Russia?” Trump wrote on Truth Social in August—the first of his many questions. 

“How many people do we get versus them? Are we also paying them cash? Are they giving us cash (Please withdraw that question, because I’m sure the answer is NO)? Are we releasing murderers, killers, or thugs?”

“Just curious because never make good deals, at anything, but especially hostage swaps. Our ‘negotiators’ are always an embarrassment to us! I got back many hostages, and gave the opposing Country NOTHING—and never any cash. To do so is bad precedent for the future,” Trump wrote.

“That’s the way it should be, or this situation will get worse and worse. They are extorting the United States of America. They’re calling the trade ‘complex’—That’s so nobody can figure out how bad it is,” he added. 

At the time, it seemed like Trump was throwing a tantrum that he couldn’t claim to have rescued the American detainees he’d promised to free on the campaign trail. Now, that seems even more correct, because Trump may have struck the exact kind of deal he railed against six months ago. 

Politico’s senior legal affairs reporter Josh Gerstein wrote on X that it’s possible Trump had arranged to trade Fogel for Alexander Vinnik, a Russian national.  

Vinnik pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering in May, for his involvement in operating BTC-e, a cryptocurrency exchange that allowed cybercriminals to launder and store the proceeds of their crimes, according to the Department of Justice. From 2011 to 2017, BTC-e processed more than $9 billion, and serviced one million users. The Justice Department has alleged that Vinnik himself is personally responsible for more than $120 million in losses. He  had yet to be sentenced. 

By comparison, in 2022, Fogel was sentenced to 14 years in Russian prison for carrying a small amount of marijuana that had been prescribed to him by his doctor in the U.S. 

Gerstein wrote on X that a federal judge “abruptly and hastily” scheduled a status conference for Vinnik’s case Tuesday. The conference was supposedly open to the public, but when Gerstein tried to join remotely, he said he was not able to access the meeting, and it did not appear on the judge’s schedule for the day. 

“I called the Alameda County Jail, where Vinnik has been held, and was told he was ‘picked up yesterday,’” Gerstein wrote in another post on X. 

Vinnik’s lawyer had previously requested that he be released from a protective order, so that he might be included in a prisoner swap. His lawyers did not respond to Gerstein’s request for comment, though a U.S. official revealed Wednesday that Vinnik was the prisoner involved in the exchange. 

Trump called the exchange “very fair, very reasonable,” and said that Russia got “not much” in return. It seems his administration may have been intending to keep up the farce that the trade hadn’t cost them anything: Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed Tuesday that Fogel’s freedom was “not in return for anything,” which is clearly not true. 

This story has been updated.

After American Marc Fogel was released Tuesday after more than three years in a Russian prison, Secretary of State Marco Rubio bragged that his freedom was “not in return for anything.”

“There wasn’t some deal here where we had to release, like, 10 spies. And I think it shows President Trump’s commitment to bringing home Americans,” Rubio told NewsNation Tuesday.

But Russia threw cold water on that assertion Wednesday, saying that Fogel’s release definitely was part of an exchange, with a Russian citizen being freed from a U.S. prison. Even Trump told reporters late Tuesday that Russia got “not much” in return for Fogel.

“We were treated very nicely by Russia,” Trump said. “Actually, I hope that’s the beginning of a relationship where we can end that war and millions of people can stop being killed.”

According to Trump, the deal with Russia was “very fair, very reasonable,” and that “somebody else is being released” Wednesday “that you will know of.”

Conservatives are keen to show a difference between how Biden and Trump negotiated for Americans to be released from overseas, with the right trashing American basketball player Brittney Griner’s release from Russia in exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in 2022.

Trump continued to bash the Griner deal as recently as October on the campaign trail, and had an unhinged response to the release of four American citizens, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, from Russian captivity last year. It seems as though Trump wants his administration to reap praise for securing the release of Americans held captive overseas, while putting down Biden for the very same thing.

Employees at the Small Business Administration started getting fired before the ink on President Trump’s most recent executive order was dry.

On Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order formally forcing federal agencies to cooperate with Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency takeover of the federal government. Just hours later, a few hundred SBA employees received emails with formal termination notices. People involved with the SBA told Politico that employees had actually received similar notices on Friday, then were told the notices were a mistake on Monday, before being officially cut on Tuesday.

“They seemingly jerked people around like this for the sake of EO choreography,” a source familiar with the matter said.

Musk stood by the firings on Tuesday, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office while standing behind Trump like the slimy adviser to some medieval lord. “If the bureaucracy is in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have?” Musk said. “It does not match the will of the people, so it’s just something we’ve got to fix.”

But is firing hundreds of federal employees really the “will of the people?”

“Firing huge numbers of federal employees won’t decrease the need for government services,” American Federation of Government Employees president Everett Kelley said in a statement. “It will just make those services harder or impossible to access for everyday Americans, veterans, and seniors who depend on them.”

Donald Trump’s MAGA makeover of the federal government extended to judges on Tuesday, with the commander in chief telling a crowd of reporters in the Oval Office that the judiciary would be the next branch of government to receive a massive reimagining under his stewardship.

“Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth, much more than that, in just a short period of time. We want to weed out the corruption. It seems hard to believe that a judge could say, ‘We don’t want you to do that,’ so, maybe we have to look at the judges,” Trump said. “I think it’s a very serious violation.”

Trump had called press into his office to observe the signing of a new executive order, which effectively greenlights Elon Musk’s work to cull large swaths of the federal workforce through DOGE. But the president’s comments were made in specific reference to attempts that his administration made on Friday to cut funding to biomedical research through the National Institutes of Health. The slashed spending was intended to affect $4 billion in “indirect funding” for research, a category that encompasses administrative overhead, facilities, and operations.

Those efforts were waylaid by a federal judge Monday, who temporarily blocked the spending cuts. A coalition of attorneys general from 22 states across the nation sued to block Trump’s order, arguing that the initiative violated a 79-year-old law intended to dictate how agencies administer regulations.

“Without relief from N.I.H.’s action, these institutions’ cutting-edge work to cure and treat human disease will grind to a halt,” the lawsuit read.

The Association of American Medical Colleges impressed in a statement that losing the indirect funds would “mean less research.”

“Make no mistake,” the AAMC wrote. “Lights in labs nationwide will literally go out. Researchers and staff will lose their jobs.”

But Musk was, apparently, not aware of the impact his cuts would have, by the end of the weekend. In a concerning exchange with Vanity Fair’s Molly Jong-Fast, the world’s richest man appeared totally oblivious to the disastrous results of his recommended cuts.

Several of Trump’s other pet projects, including freezing all funding for government grants and loans and letting Musk root around in Treasury Department data, have also been blocked in the courts.

“If the bureaucracy is in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have? If the people cannot vote and have their elected representatives, in the form of the Senate and the House, then we don’t live in a democracy. We live in a bureaucracy,” said Musk—who was not elected by anyone to systematically dismantle the federal government—following Trump’s remarks.

Democrats apparently aren’t going to use the upcoming spending fight to take a stand against Donald Trump’s attempts to dismantle the federal government. 

During a press conference Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was asked whether the Democrats intended to withhold their support from an upcoming government spending bill that would keep the government open past March 14.

“Look, here’s the bottom line: The Republicans are already shutting down good chunks of the government,” Schumer said. “Democrats don’t want to shut down, but it’s in Republicans hands, it’s up to them.”

Schumer seems to think that any way the cookie crumbles, Trump and the Republicans will chart their own course with government spending—a particularly disturbing attitude for the head of the opposition party.

This seems like a significant reversal from the Democrats. Just two weeks ago, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries promised that Democrats would fight Trump’s agenda in the legislature, in the courts, and even “in the streets.”

And he kept up that energy the following week, pledging that his party would use the upcoming spending fight to try and put a stop to Trump’s illegal funding freeze.

“I have made clear to House Republican leadership that any effort to steal taxpayer money from the American people, end Medicaid as we know it or defund programs important to everyday Americans, as contemplated by the illegal White House Office of Management and Budget order, must be choked off in the upcoming government funding bill, if not sooner,” Jeffries wrote Monday in a letter to his colleagues. 

Other Democrats appeared to get on board with this idea. “I never support a shutdown, but I can see where it could happen in this situation. It’s an extreme situation,” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, according to The Hill.  

But by the end of the week, Jeffries appeared to have backed off his threat to play hardball with Republicans.*

“I’m trying to figure out what leverage we actually have. What leverage do we have?” Jeffries said Friday. “They control the House, the Senate, and the presidency. It’s their government! What leverage do we have?”

“We are going to try to find bipartisan common ground on any issue. We will work with anyone in this town to get things done for the American people,” Jeffries continued. “We have repeatedly made that clear. But Republicans have decided to go it alone.”

Now, Schumer’s not even pledging that Democrats will oppose Republicans’ plans—rather they will be complicit, so as not to cause the shutdown they have long worked to avert, and consequently forfeiting their only shot at leverage over Trump.

* This story originally misstated the day Jeffries made his comments about leverage.

Trump signed an executive order Tuesday to strong-arm federal agencies into bowing down to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

The executive order, first reported by Semafor and Reuters, has specific instructions for agency leaders to cooperate with DOGE’s culling of the federal workforce and limit future hiring. The order will allow agencies to only rehire one worker for every four people who leave the workforce. This is all a part of DOGE’s “workplace optimization initiative,” which is code for overhauling the bureaucratic apparatus in MAGA’s image.  

The order is a signal that Trump is backing all the anti-woke chaos that Musk and his DOGE minions have inflicted thus far. Musk even stood next to Trump as he signed the order in the Oval Office, saying that “it’s important that the public’s elected representatives decide what happens rather than a large unelected bureaucracy,” according to Reuters’s Nandita Bose. Musk is an unelected official. 

Federal agencies, their employees, and the courts have been fairly resistant to DOGE’s takeover up to this point, filing multiple lawsuits and refusing to take buyouts. But this executive order clearly shows that Trump does not respect the basic power of the judiciary and will do everything he can to carry out his agenda faster than a court can rule against it—including signing executive orders like this one.

Donald Trump doesn’t want the public to know who visits the White House. 

A White House official told the Washington Examiner Tuesday that visitor logs will not be released during Trump’s second term, mirroring his policy during his first term. After the 2020 election, President Biden resumed the practice, which began during Barack Obama’s presidency. 

It’s telling that early on, Trump is refusing a basic transparency measure. The Obama administration made over six million visitor records public through open.gov, a bright spot in an otherwise secretive administration. Today, the website doesn’t work anymore, a testament to the Trump administration’s opacity. 

Through his first weeks in office, Trump has restricted the communications teams of several government agencies from disseminating information, including those concerning public health such as the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services. 

While a federal judge ordered the federal government to restore government health websites and data sets on Tuesday, much of what the Trump administration decides to make public may not be argued about in a courtroom. The White House has exempted Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from needing to respond to public records requests and most court intervention until at least 2034, for example.

It flies in the face of what Musk promised in November when he was campaigning for Trump. He claimed in an X post back then that “there should be no need for FOIA requests,” referring to the Freedom of Information Act. 

“All government data should be default public for maximum transparency,” Musk added. But both he and Trump seem inclined to be hiding what they’re doing, suggesting that the Trump administration is engaging in some highly unpopular, if not illegal, behavior. 

Insiders are blowing the whistle on Kash Patel, claiming that Donald Trump’s appointee to run the FBI lied to Congress during his confirmation hearings and is already directing a “purge” of the bureau while he’s still a private citizen.

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin reacted Tuesday to the reports, asking the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate the “highly credible” claims that Patel had issued “directives” to White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, and several members of the “newly established” FBI director’s advisory team.

“I have received highly credible information from multiple sources that Kash Patel has been personally directing the ongoing purge of career civil servants at the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Durbin wrote in a letter to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

“Although Mr. Patel is President Trump’s nominee to be FBI Director, he is still a private citizen with no role in government,” the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee continued. “This alleged misconduct is beyond the pale and must be investigated immediately.”

Durbin’s letter pointed to notes from a January 29 meeting that stated “KP wants movement at FBI, reciprocal actions for DOJ,” reported The Hill.

But such evidence would suggest that Patel perjured himself during his Senate confirmation hearing on January 30, when the Trump nominee denied knowing of any “plans or discussions” to “punish” personnel that had been involved in Trump’s criminal investigations.

“Are you aware of any plans or discussions to punish in any way, including termination, FBI agents or personnel associated with Trump investigations?” Senator Cory Booker asked at the time.

Patel, in turn, replied that he was “not aware.”

“All FBI employees will be protected against political retribution,” Patel said at the time.

Completely gutting the nation’s systems is apparently the MO of Trump’s second term. Last month, Trump’s team ransacked FBI leadership, firing the top five career positions at the bureau, according to The Hill. The administration also conducted a mass firing of more than a dozen career prosecutors who had worked directly with former special counsel Jack Smith as he developed two cases against Trump: one into Trump’s alleged retention of classified documents after he left the White House in 2021, and another into Trump’s involvement in the January 6 riots.

The matter boiled down to “trust” for the incoming administration, which claimed that the prosecutors had weaponized the government against the MAGA leader and had no place in a second Trump term.

Donald Trump’s illegal funding freeze just won’t stop.

A senior official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency ordered employees to place financial holds on a range of the agency’s grant programs, in defiance of a federal judge’s restraining order against the Trump administration’s sweeping funding freeze, NBC News reported Tuesday.

In an email sent Monday, Stacey Street, FEMA’s director of the Office of Grant Administration, ordered her subordinates to “put financial holds on all of your awards—all open awards, all years (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024).”

NBC obtained screenshots of the email from one of the recipients.

“There’s a lot of people who are running scared and trying to appease [the new administration],” said the recipient, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.

“This is a violation of the court order.”

Earlier Monday, U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell had said that the Trump administration had continued to block federal grants, ignoring the judge’s previous directive restraining the disastrous executive order that would have stripped funding from an array of essential government services.

Trump reaffirmed his intention to get rid of the “slow and totally ineffective” FEMA, in an angry post on Truth Social Tuesday. The Department of Homeland Security announced the dismissal of four FEMA employees Tuesday, after Elon Musk claimed that DOGE had discovered nearly $60 million in funds going to house undocumented immigrants in New York City just last week.

Donald Trump is once again threatening to destroy the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The president took aim at the agency, which provides essential disaster aid, in a post on Truth Social Tuesday.

“FEMA spent tens of millions of dollars in Democrat areas, disobeying orders, but left the people of North Carolina high and dry. It is now under review and investigation,” Trump wrote. “THE BIDEN RUN FEMA HAS BEEN A DISASTER. FEMA SHOULD BE TERMINATED! IT HAS BEEN SLOW AND TOTALLY INEFFECTIVE. INDIVIDUAL STATES SHOULD HANDLE STORMS, ETC., AS THEY COME. BIG SAVINGS, FAR MORE EFFICIENT!!!”

Trump’s tantrum comes one day after Elon Musk claimed that the Department of Government Efficiency had “discovered” that FEMA had provided nearly $60 million to house undocumented immigrants in New York City last week.

“Sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order,” Musk fumed on X. “That money is meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high end hotels for illegals! A clawback demand will be made today to recoup those funds.”

The Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday that the four “deep state activist” FEMA officials who made the payments had been fired.

Trump has floated the idea of scrapping FEMA multiple times. Most recently, he weighed shutting down the agency while residents of Los Angeles County coped with ongoing wildfires.

“I like, frankly, the concept when North Carolina gets hit, the governor takes care of it. When Florida gets hit, the governor takes care of it. Meaning the state takes care of it,” Trump told reporters last month. (Florida receives the most funding from FEMA of any state.)

Trump said that assistance for states affected by natural disasters would be run directly through his administration, ensuring that he can use it as political leverage to reform the policies of Democratic-led states and cities.

The president previously said that he planned to sign an executive order reforming—or even abolishing—the agency. It’s unclear if this is still his plan, and his social media posting is simply setting the stage for what’s to come.

Now we know just how serious Trump is about acting outside of his authority as president to gut federal agencies: Since he made this initial statement, Trump’s administration has illegally taken the ax to USAID.