Trump Insists He Was Clueless About Ghislaine Maxwell Prison Transfer

Donald Trump claimed he’s been left out of the loop by his own administration regarding its handling of the Epstein case yet again.

Speaking with reporters at the White House Tuesday, the president said that the Justice Department had left him in the dark about the decision to transfer Ghislaine Maxwell to a minimum-security prison after the convicted sex trafficker sat down for interviews with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

“Were you aware of, and did you personally approve the prison transfer for Ghislaine Maxwell that your Justice Department—” asked CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.

“I didn’t know about it at all, no,” Trump answered. “I read about it just like you did.”

Trump further claimed that the transfer is “not an uncommon thing,” but legal analysts strongly disagree. Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig told CNN that the move was “so unusual” because Maxwell did not meet the DOJ’s typical standards for consideration as a “cooperating witness.”

Honig explained that a “cooperator” is a person who has been “thoroughly vetted, deemed to be credible, and somebody who DOJ has brought actual prosecutions based on their testimony.”

“She’s done none of those things,” Honig said. “So she’s already gotten a substantial benefit, yet without doing the things that you would ordinarily require of what I would consider a proper cooperating witness.”

Honig further underscored that it would take a “special exemption” from a higher authority to move a convicted sex offender from a maximum-security facility to a minimum-security “camp.”

“It certainly appears as if she’s being given some benefit for what she told Todd Blanche,” Honig told the network.

Maxwell has directly appealed to the president and the Supreme Court in pursuit of a pardon. A senior Trump administration official told CNN last week that Trump was not considering clemency for the convicted sex trafficker, though Trump emphasized to reporters just days prior that he was “allowed” to give her one.

Trump similarly purported last month to have no idea that his own administration was planning to meet with Maxwell, a woman whom he had met and interacted with several times over the last three decades, as she was his “bud” Jeffrey Epstein’s closest confidant.

Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking in 2022, when she was sentenced to 20 years in prison for her role in the pedophile network, helping Epstein abduct and abuse underage girls over the span of a decade.

Elon Musk appears to be greatly exaggerating the extent of the attack on former DOGE staffer Edward Coristine, a.k.a. “Big Balls,” who was jumped in Washington, D.C., earlier this week. 

The billionaire claimed that Coristine heroically stopped “a gang of about a dozen young men” from assaulting a woman in her car at night.” He said that Coristine ran over to defend the woman and saved her in spite of being “severely beaten to the point of concussion.” Musk ended his retelling by calling for the federal government to take control of D.C. 

Trump used the attack on Big Balls to echo the same inaccurate, made-for-Fox News sentiments, calling for the federal takeover of D.C. and the mass criminalization of mostly working-class Black and Latino children. 

“Crime in Washington, D.C., is totally out of control. Local ‘youths’ and gang members, some only 14, 15, and 16-years-old, are randomly attacking, mugging, maiming, and shooting innocent Citizens.… The Law in D.C. must be changed to prosecute these ‘minors’ as adults, and lock them up for a long time, starting at age 14,” Trump wrote Tuesday on Truth Social. “Washington, D.C., must be safe, clean, and beautiful for all Americans and, importantly, for the World to see. If D.C. doesn’t get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City, and run this City how it should be run, and put criminals on notice that they’re not going to get away with it anymore. Perhaps it should have been done a long time ago, then this incredible young man, and so many others, would not have had to go through the horrors of Violent Crime. If this continues, I am going to exert my powers, and FEDERALIZE this City.”

Neither of these highly dramatized accounts aligns with the Metropolitan Police Department’s report. While Trump and Musk claimed a brutal assault involving a gang of men, the MPD reported an unarmed carjacking, with only two 15-year-old suspects detained, a girl and a boy. 

Fearmongering and hyperbole are common tactics for Trump and other conservatives, especially around events like these. But Washington, D.C.’s unique nonstate status has emboldened the president, as he has hinted at taking over the city countless times before. Everyone deserves to feel safe in the city they live in, but Big Balls getting mugged is not a valid excuse to start rounding up kids and revoking the little autonomy the city has.  

Miss United States doesn’t want to be within 100 yards of Representative Cory Mills.

Lindsey Langston, a Florida Republican state committeewoman and the current titleholder for the Miss United States beauty pageant, has filed a restraining order against the Republican lawmaker, reported DropSite News. The pair dated from November 2021 until February of this year.

The Columbia County committeewoman reported Mills to local and state law enforcement for “harassment, threatening to release sexual videos, and to harm future boyfriends,” according to DropSite.

After dating for almost three years, Langston and Mills began living together last summer when Langston moved into Mills’s Florida home. But that all came to an abrupt end in February when Langston learned—via national news reports—that Mills not only had a second girlfriend but had also been accused of assaulting her at his D.C. condo. (The second girlfriend, Sarah Raviani, later denied the report.)

But ending the relationship didn’t translate to an end in communication, according to Langston, who told DropSite that Mills continued to harass her for months despite her telling him repeatedly to leave her alone.

“The threats from Cory intensified over time,” she told DropSite. “From emotional manipulation, to physical violence against whoever I date in the future, to threats of having me stripped of the Miss United States crown … something I worked extremely hard for and a dream that was placed in my heart long before I even knew who Cory Mills was.”

Langston shared troves of time-stamped evidence with local and state investigators, as well as DropSite News, to back up her allegations.

On May 19, Donald Trump signed into law the bipartisan “Take It Down Act” to curb revenge porn. That same day, Mills—a self-styled MAGA Republican who had voted in favor of the anti-intimidation legislation—sent another timely message to Langston, threatening to blow up her future yet again by weaponizing sexual images he had of her.

“Let him put his actions behind his mouth,” Mills wrote, referring to someone he believed to be Langston’s new partner. “I can send him a few videos of you as well. Oh, I still have them.”

The Trump administration is on a pro-Confederacy roll, with two monuments brought back in 24 hours.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday that a Confederate memorial would be reinstalled in Arlington Cemetery after the statue’s removal in 2023 by Hegseth’s predecessor, Lloyd Austin, the country’s first Black defense secretary.

“Moses Ezekiel’s beautiful and historic sculpture—often referred to as ‘The Reconciliation Monument’—will be rightfully be returned to Arlington National Cemetery near his burial site,” Hegseth wrote on X.

The statue is likely more often referred to by the name it’s had since its construction in 1914: the Confederate Memorial.

“It never should have been taken down by woke lemmings. Unlike the Left, we don’t believe in erasing American history—we honor it,” Hegseth continued.

The memorial featured a “nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy” and included “highly sanitized depictions of slavery,” according to Arlington Cemetery’s website. The statue also had a Latin inscription that characterizes the South’s secession as a “noble ‘Lost Cause.’”

The Confederate Memorial is the second monument honoring the pro-slavery South that the Trump administration has recently resurrected. The National Park Service announced Monday that it would restore and reinstall the statue of Confederate General Albert Pike that was toppled during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

NPS describes the statue as a tribute to “Pike’s leadership in Freemasonry,” leaving out his Confederate background. The move is part of Trump’s “Executive Order on Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”

It’s yet another instance in which the Trump administration is actively revising the past. Whether scrubbing mentions of queer and transgender Americans from the Stonewall website or quietly removing references to Trump’s impeachments from a Smithsonian exhibit (which the museum now says will be restored “in the coming weeks”), it’s clear that the administration is committed to promoting its version of the nation’s history—“truth” and “sanity” notwithstanding.

The Trump administration is contorting itself in order to not release the Epstein files.

Senior administration officials are expected to meet Wednesday night at the vice president’s residence to discuss their available options for the Epstein files—one of which reportedly includes having deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche go on Joe Rogan’s podcast to discuss the scandal, according to CNN.

The meeting will include Blanche as well as White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Vice President JD Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and FBI Director Kash Patel.

“Sources say that there have also been internal discussions about what exactly Blanche’s next step could be, including holding a press conference or doing a high-profile interview, possibly with someone like Joe Rogan,” reported CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Tuesday night.

Blanche met with Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell for multiple days last month, spurring concern that the White House was considering a pardon for the convicted sex trafficker.

Another option reportedly discussed among the senior officials includes releasing the transcript or audio of Maxwell’s interview with Blanche.

The Trump administration has been in a tailspin over the case files since the beginning of July, when the Justice Department directly contradicted Bondi on the existence of Epstein’s “client list,” eliciting surprise and upset from the deepest pockets of the MAGA leader’s base.

But rather than release the Epstein files and provide the transparency so demanded by his supporters, Donald Trump decided to go in a different direction and accrue a new list of Epstein’s clients from Maxwell. Maxwell, in turn, directly appealed to the president and the Supreme Court in pursuit of a pardon.

A senior Trump administration official told CNN Thursday that Trump was not considering clemency for the convicted sex trafficker, though Trump underscored to reporters just days prior that he was “allowed” to give her one.

Meanwhile, Americans are increasingly disturbed by Trump’s handling of the entire fiasco. A poll published by Emerson College Polling in July found that just 16 percent of Americans approved of the way Trump was managing the Epstein scandal, while more than half of polled Americans—51 percent—disapproved.

Some defenders of Texas Republicans’ plan to rejigger the state’s congressional districts at the behest of President Trump might be inclined to suggest there’s some fair rationale for the move.

Not state Representative Mitch Little, a Texas Republican who explained brazenly to CNN Tuesday that it’s a Machiavellian partisan maneuver.

CNN’s Brianna Keilar asked her guest why the Texas GOP is attempting to redistrict now when it just did so four years earlier after the last U.S. census.

Little put it plainly: “Because we can. We have the votes. It’s legal for us to do so. It’s legal for us to draw the lines based on political performance. We have three Hispanic-predominated districts in south Texas that we believe that we can carve out for Republican leadership in the United States Congress,” he said—which, he claimed, will “be a good thing for Texas.”

“Because you can,” Keilar repeated. “Why should you, though?”

Little replied: “Because it’s good for our party, it’s good for our state, and we need to ensure that Donald Trump’s agenda continues to be enacted throughout his second term,” Little said. (Note that “our party” apparently came to mind quicker here than “our state.”)

Little and his fellow Republicans, he continued, see this gerrymander “as the difference between Democrats trying to impeach President Trump again during the second half of his final term as president of the United States or accomplishing the agenda that all the voters in Texas, by a significant majority, sent him to accomplish.”

“So you’re doing this for President Trump?” Keilar pressed.

“We’re doing this for Texas,” Little insisted. “President Trump doesn’t call me. I don’t think he has my phone number. But what I would submit to you is: This is the best thing for Texas and its representation in the United States Congress.”

Donald Trump had an interesting morning on Tuesday. At 8 a.m., he took to the airwaves, where he spun a web of lies to justify firing the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ commissioner for a report indicating a fragile labor market.

He then spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as Trump’s deadline for Russia to take steps toward peace in Ukraine approaches. (The president’s promise to end the Russia-Ukraine war within 24 hours of taking office has been broken by nearly 200 days.)

Then Trump took a stroll on the roof of the White House, to the bafflement of reporters below.

Asked what he was doing, Trump said, “Just taking a little walk. It’s good for your health.” Asked what he’s building “up there,” he made a vague gesture that clarified little, possibly in the shape of a dome, and said, “Something beautiful.”

Trump was joined by James McCrery, the architect for the president’s plan to add a $200 million ballroom to the White House, suggesting the possibility of more plans to introduce the president’s “dictator chic” design taste to the People’s House—which has traditionally been modest by design, symbolizing “civic republicanism,” notes scholar Andy Craig.

USA Today suggested Trump’s Tuesday trip to the roof could “be a first for a president.” But this isn’t true. President Carter, for instance, recounts taking visitors up to the White House roof to stargaze and enjoy full privacy in his book A Full Life.

Carter wrote a meditative poem about one such experience, in which he observed geese flying through the dimming sky over Washington. It begins:

I recall one winter night
going to the White House roof
to study the Orion nebulae,
but we could barely see the stars,
their images so paled by city lights.

Unlike Carter, Trump was sure to make himself the center of attention during his visit. His reflections on his experience up there were also less elevated than Carter’s. After disappearing from view for a few minutes Tuesday morning, the president returned, joked that he was building “nuclear missiles,” dodged a question about Gaza, and headed back inside.

The White House has apparently decided that some of the administration’s DOGE-directed firings were a mistake.

The National Weather Service has received permission to hire hundreds of employees, CNN reported Tuesday. That includes 450 meteorologists, hydrologists, and radar technicians to replace the ones that were let go from the agency at the behest of former DOGE chief Elon Musk.

The order also includes 126 openings for “front-line mission critical” personnel that had been previously approved, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration official who spoke with CNN.

The agency’s recent shortcomings have come under scrutiny in the aftermath of the Texas floods, which killed at least 120 people, including 35 children.*

Cuts to the department had severed contracts for more than 550 people, dropping the weather service’s staffing levels to below 4,000 total employees and sparking fears that the country could find itself terribly ill prepared amid peak hurricane season. It’s possible that some of the new hires could be former employees brought back to the agency.

NWS employees have been cautiously receptive to the news, which was first announced at an all-hands meeting on Monday, according to CNN. Exhausted staffers who had been tasked with working additional hours with added responsibilities due to the abrupt layoffs are reportedly irate at the realization that their peers’ job loss was pointless.

“How much time/money is it going to cost to train a bunch of new people when we had already-trained people in place?” an unidentified NOAA official told CNN.

It’s not the only recent rescission of Musk’s efforts atop the federal government. The Office of Personnel Management released a memo to employees Tuesday announcing the end of Musk’s extremely controversial email initiative requiring federal employees to document their weekly accomplishments to the department.

Musk and Trump were practically inseparable until the pair fell out over Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which included funds to undo some of DOGE’s work. The world’s richest man—and Trump’s biggest financier—accused the tax plan of being “pork-filled” while promising to torpedo Republicans’ midterm success by funding their opponents’ campaigns. (He failed to sway any Republican votes.)

In the aftermath of the bill, Trump and the tech billionaire unloaded on one another on each of their respective social media platforms, accusing each other of being unlikable, untrustworthy, and even unreal.

* This post originally mischaracterized the NWS response to the Texas flooding.

Donald Trump said that undocumented workers are “naturally” better at farm labor than other people, in an interview on CNBC Tuesday.

“These people—you can’t replace them very easily. You know, people that live in the inner city are not doing that work,” Trump said. “These people do it naturally, naturally.”

Trump appeared to acknowledge in the interview that his ruthless mass deportation campaign is hurting farms, which rely on undocumented immigrants as an easily exploitable labor force. He said that he’s planning to release new immigration rules and regulations, claiming, “We’re taking care of our farmers. We can’t let our farmers not have anybody.”

But what about taking care of the workers? No need, as far as Trump is concerned. They’re “naturally” predisposed to backbreaking labor.

“I said … to a farmer the other day, ‘What happens if they get a bad back?’ He said, ‘They don’t get a bad back, sir, because if they get a bad back they die.’ I said, ‘That’s interesting isn’t it?’” Trump continued.

“These are, in many ways, very special people.”

It is true that undocumented workers often take unwanted, difficult jobs—but that is not due to being “special” but to a lack of options and a vulnerability to exploitation. Trump’s comments traffic in the exact type of centuries-old racist myths that, by advancing the idea that certain races are made to labor and others are made to rule, promote white supremacy.

This time last year, Donald Trump was swearing through his teeth that he wasn’t affiliated with Project 2025. But little more than half a year into his second administration, the initiative is reportedly already 47 percent complete.

The Project 2025 Tracker, which labels itself as a “comprehensive, community-driven initiative” to follow the implementation of the 900-page far-right manifesto, has counted the progression of 115 “complete” proposals out of the project’s 317 total. Some federal agencies—such as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and USAID—have already been entirely reworked according to Project 2025’s goals. Project 2025 had six goals for USAID.

The White House, for which Project 2025 had 13 listed objectives, is currently 92 percent complete, according to the tracker.

Another 64 proposals are currently “in progress,” according to the tracker, including initiatives at the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Department, the Energy Department, and the Department of Commerce. They include policies that would require federally funded schools to administer military entrance tests to all students, adding citizenship questions to the census, rescinding elements of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, phasing out federal funding for low-income children in schools, classifying K-12 studies relating to “gender ideology” as sexual offenses, allowing companies to skirt overtime pay, and abolishing the Federal Reserve, among dozens of others.

Trump faced enormous blowback from conservatives last summer after he was accused of being tied in with the Heritage Foundation, the christo-nationalist group that drafted the manifesto. But he managed to change the opinion of American voters by lying repeatedly.

“I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in July 2024. “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying, and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

Since Inauguration Day, Trump has packed his administration with Project 2025 appointees, including its architect, Russell Vought, whom Trump tapped to run the Office of Management and Budget.