Epstein Gave Bannon Advice on How to Help Trump—and Brett Kavanaugh

Steve Bannon was receiving advice from Jeffrey Epstein as Bannon defended President Trump in media appearances in 2018, text messages released by the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday show.

From August 17 to August 23 of that year, the billionaire child sex offender coached Bannon on his messaging and TV appearances. In the released documents, Epstein’s email address is shown on an Apple iMessage account, while the other correspondent is redacted.

Context clues such as Fox News appearances, Bannon’s firing from the White House in 2017, and Bannon’s work on a documentary reveal that he is the other party in the conversation. It’s not clear whether the released messages are part of a larger conversation between Bannon and Epstein. The Guardian reached out to Bannon multiple times for comment but did not receive a reply.

The pair discussed breaking scandals, such as the Michael Cohen case, as well as Bannon’s TV appearances on MSNBC. At one point, Epstein offered compliments on how Bannon looked on TV, saying, “You looked so clean cut next to him i thought i turned on the figure skating channel by accident.”

Bannon responded with “My ‘come hither’ look,” to which Epstein replied, “Better than the usual ‘come hitler’ look.”

Epstein also helped Bannon come up with talking points to use in media appearances, telling him how to handle critics of Trump tax cuts.

“We can discuss response to tax cut criticism. The 83 percent to rich is misleading by miles . Cash back. Pension funds up,” texted Epstein, adding, “Corporations are not people. Giving corp breaks , is perceived as giving it to someone else. wage inflation cant be the first focus, the additional money in the system. First goes to hiring new people, only afterwards can wages rise.”

Other revealed messages show that Epstein advised Bannon during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing on what questions Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault, should be asked to undermine her credibility. Epstein suggested that Ford could be accused of taking medications that cause memory loss.

While Bannon doesn’t work directly for Trump, the pair still communicate and the president often reaches out to Bannon for advice, as was the case this past February before Trump’s disastrous meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The release of these texts suggests that Bannon had a close relationship with Epstein, just like the president, and raises the question if all three collaborated on political business—or worse.

The Trump administration tried to deport a Native American woman.

Leticia Jacobo, a 24-year-old member of the Arizona Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, was booked into the Polk County Jail in Des Moines, Iowa, in September for allegedly driving on a suspended license. She was supposed to be released on November 11, but was issued a random ICE detainer that day—which forced her to stay in place for 48 hours while Immigration and Customs Enforcement prepared to deport her.

“My sister said, ‘How is she going to get deported if she’s a Native American?’ and ‘We have proof,’” Jacobo’s sister Maria Nunez told the Arizona Mirror. “They said, ‘Well, we don’t know because we’re not immigration and we can’t answer those questions. We’re just holding her for them. So, when they pick her up tonight they’re going to go ahead and deport her to wherever they’re going to take her, but we have no information on that.’”

Jacobo’s family scrambled to prove that she was unjustly detained, posting on Facebook, contacting tribal leaders, and even bringing her birth certificate to the jail. Her Social Security number was also on file. Polk County Sheriff Office Spokesman Lt. Mark Chance eventually admitted that the jail had made a massive mistake and the detainer was meant for someone else.

“It was human error, but I’m sure as soon as the command staff find out about it, they’re going to have some meetings with their supervisors internally and be like, ‘Hey, guys, we gotta keep our thumb on this, this is silly,’” he said.

“Silly” is putting it mildly. Nearly deporting a woman with more right to be in this country than most is a product of the racial profiling inherent in President Trump’s immigration crackdown. ICE has previously stated that “ethnicity can be a factor supporting reasonable suspicion in appropriate circumstances,” and that “officers might reasonably rely on the fact that someone exclusively speaks Spanish to support reasonable suspicion that the person is here illegally.”

Back in January, during Trump’s first week in office, the Navajo Nation announced that ICE had harassed at least 15 Indigenous Americans at their homes and workplaces simply because they looked Latino. That strategy (and the cruel processes it produces) has only persisted since.

Even Donald Trump’s right-hand man thinks that the economy is messed up.

In an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity Thursday, Vice President JD Vance acknowledged the reality for millions of Americans: that life has gotten more “expensive,” and that people are “suffering.”

But the person at fault for the rattled economy was still, according to Vance, former President Joe Biden, whose tenure saw historic gains in the job market.

“We need a good job to pay good wages, we need people to be able to go to the grocery store and be able to actually buy what they need for their family. That takes a little bit of time,” Vance said.

“I know there are a lot of people out there, Sean, who are saying that things are expensive,” Vance continued. “But we have to remember that we inherited this terrible inflation crisis from the Biden administration.”

Vance touted the progress of the president’s economic agenda, arguing that in the last 11 months, Trump had managed “trillions upon trillions” of dollars in new investments to rebuild America’s manufacturing class.

“Of course, I’m mindful that people are suffering because those factories do not get built overnight,” Vance said, again emphasizing that the American public would need to be patient to see the ultimate payoff of Trump’s policies. “These things actually take a little bit of time.”

Vance’s comments were a remarkable departure from the administration’s talking points, which have insisted on the country’s economic success despite myriad cost-of-living indicators suggesting otherwise. Trump has prattled on about “making America affordable again,” but the economic strain has become more severe since he entered office.

Practically everything has become more expensive, in large part because of Trump’s tariff plan: Beef prices are reaching new highs, coffee prices are up by 20 percent (and the price hike is likely here to stay), and the average price of gasoline—at $3.09 per gallon—is slightly higher than this time last year.

Beyond that, homeownership has become a pipe dream for millions, the job market is in historic decline, and the unstable economy has stopped business owners from making large-scale investments.

It took eight months, but it seems that the Trump administration has finally figured out that you can’t really grow bananas in the United States.

After his party suffered sweeping losses in a series of elections earlier this month that hinged on the issue of affordability, and then publicly spiraled when pressed on the rising price of groceries, President Donald Trump is reportedly gearing up to undermine his own key economic policy, three sources told The New York Times Thursday.

The Trump administration was preparing broad exemptions for certain tariffs—including on products from countries that have yet to strike a deal with the U.S. government—stalling a key negotiation lever in Trump’s economic policy that has been sparking financial strain for consumers.

While the decisions about what to exempt have yet to be finalized, the sources told the Times that they expect it will include citrus and beef—a concerning sign for U.S. cattle ranchers, who have already pushed back on the president’s offer to buy beef from Argentina. Trump has claimed that ranchers who felt betrayed just didn’t “understand” his brilliant economic machinations.

But Trump’s sweeping tariffs on U.S. beef suppliers, such as Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, and Uruguay, as well as tariffs on feed and farming equipment, have only driven the consumer price of beef higher and higher, according to NBC News.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent teased Wednesday that the president would make “substantial” tariff exemptions on products such as coffee, bananas, and other fruit—namely products whose domestic production couldn’t possibly be boosted through tariffs on foreign imports.

The Trump administration announced Thursday that it had struck new trade deal frameworks with Argentina, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Guatemala, with senior officials suggesting that could help alleviate rising prices on agricultural products from Latin America, such as coffee and bananas.

The British Broadcasting Corporation has apologized to President Donald Trump for editing his speech on an episode of Panorama, but will not fork over the $1 billion he threatened to sue for.

Earlier this week, the president’s legal team sent a letter to the BBC claiming that the British news outlet attempted to “interfere in the presidential election” by editing one of his January 6, 2021, speeches in a broadcast one day before the 2024 vote.

Panorama edited together two sections of Trump’s 2021 speech, including his line calling on supporters to “fight like hell,” while leaving out a section in which he told them to peacefully protest. Controversy ensued, causing Director General Tim Davie and news CEO Deborah Turness both to resign on Sunday, which Trump celebrated on Truth Social.

He also sent a letter to the BBC threatening a $1 billion defamation lawsuit unless the BBC did a “full and fair” retraction of the Panorama episode and “appropriately compensated” him for harm done. The deadline for the BBC to respond was Friday.

“We accept that our edit unintentionally created the impression that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech, and that this gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action,” the BBC wrote in its Corrections and Clarifications section on Thursday.

While the BBC “sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited,” it still “strongly disagree[s] there is a basis for a defamation claim,” a spokesperson said. The letter to Trump’s team notes that the news agency did not distribute the Panorama episode in the United States, the clip was only edited for the sake of time, and the episode did not cause Trump any harm given that he won the election.

Trump has already made other large media corporations fold financially, getting a $16 million settlement from CBS News over edits to an interview with Kamala Harris prior to the 2024 election, and another $16 million settlement with ABC News after host George Stephanopolous used the phrase “liable for rape” to describe Trump’s E. Jean Carroll case verdict.

Right-wing commentator Megyn Kelly is trying to downplay the latest Jeffrey Epstein emails by questioning if the billionaire child sex offender was really a pedophile. 

On her Sirius XM radio show Wednesday, Kelly highlighted the ages of Epstein’s victims, declaring that there is a “difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old.”

“Yeah, so I don’t know what’s true about him, but we have yet to see anybody come forward and say I was under 10, I was under 14 when I first came within his purview. You can say that’s a distinction without a difference. I think there is a difference,” Kelly said to her guest Batya Ungar-Sargon.  

It’s a roundabout and indirect way of trying to soften the allegations against President Trump by downplaying Epstein’s offenses, and even casting a little doubt. It’s one of many attempts by Trump allies and people on the right to try and protect the president, who has been heavily implicated in this week’s email releases.

Among the many revelations are that Epstein bragged about “giving” his 20-year-old girlfriend to Trump and that he may have spent Thanksgiving with him in 2017, during his first term as president. House Republicans and the White House attempted to claim that one of the victims Epstein said Trump spent a lot of time with, per one email, was Virginia Giuffre, who died earlier this year and claimed she never witnessed Trump commit any wrongdoing. 

In doing so, however, Republicans confirmed that the emails are real, taking away the ability of Trump or any of his allies to deny their substance and forcing them into pathetic defenses like Kelly’s. To her credit, Kelly still expressed contempt for Epstein in the exchange, saying, “Every time we start talking about Epstein, it makes your skin crawl.” Well, so do the many defenses for Trump’s behavior. 

The man President Trump wanted to be attorney general was allegedly paying for sex with a 17-year old girl who was working at a McDonald’s, saving up for braces, and partly living at a homeless shelter.

Last year, a House Ethics Committee report found “substantial evidence” that former representative and former attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz “regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him,” and that he “engaged in sexual activity with a 17-year-old girl” in 2017. The report also mentioned that Gaetz possessed and used cocaine and ecstasy while in office. Last month, newly unsealed court documents further detailed just how dire a situation the girl was living in before she was connected with Gaetz.

As The New York Times reported, the girl was in and out of homeless shelters, where one of her parents lived after a divorce. In an attempt to save up for braces, she joined a sugar dating website, saying she was 18 instead of 17 to join.

The girl met Gaetz’s friend Joel Greenberg through the website in April 2017. He invited her on his boat and paid her $400 without having sex with her. They then had sex seven times for money after that. In July, she went to a party thrown by Republican lobbyist Chris Dorworth and had sex with then-Representative Gaetz twice.

“The vulnerable circumstances most crime victims face are rarely known to the public,” the victim’s lawyer Laura B. Wolf told The New York Times. “Although my client’s circumstances were revealed outside of her control, I hope it helps for the public to see a fuller and more human picture of her than the press has reported on to date.… Power imbalances can be age, but they can also be financial. My client had little economic security, which allowed for financial leverage over her.”

Gaetz has denied everything.

“I never had sex with this person.… This person threatened me with a lawsuit if I didn’t pay her $2.3 million,” he said in a text to the Times. “She never sued me because her story is fiction.”

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain: Donald Trump would rather Americans focus on his glorious new ballroom than ask another question about his connection to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaking with reporters Thursday on the advent of a House vote to release the Epstein files, Trump took a pause to celebrate his $300 million project, claiming that his pricey renovation had become “very popular.”

“And right behind me by the way, in about two years from now, we’ll use a much bigger room because we had to turn away a lot of people,” Trump said during an executive order–signing ceremony, waving at the wall behind him. “And it’ll be right here. This will be the entrance. That’s a knockout panel. It’s called a knockout.”

“It looks pretty nice right now but it’ll look a lot better in a little while, and we’re going to go from this room into a room that seats a few more people, and it’s going to be beautiful,” Trump continued. “But uh, I just noticed I happened to be standing here and I thought I might as well get your shot right now, a nice beautiful shot, at the future entrance to something that’s really become very popular, the ballroom.

“They’ve wanted it for 150 years, and they’re getting it, and they’re getting the best—it’ll be the best anywhere in the world,” he added.

After promising Americans in July that his ballroom proposal would “be near but not touching” the White House East Wing, Trump completely razed the FDR-era extension, plowing forward without prerequisite approval from the National Capital Planning Commission (which was closed due to the government shutdown) and without the express permission of Congress.

The Trump administration said in July that the forthcoming 90,000-square-foot event space will be capable of hosting 650 people, a 200-person bump from maximum seatage at the White House East Wing. But real estate experts have since pointed out that the possibilities of that square footage should be much broader, considering the event space will be roughly equivalent to two football fields.

The project’s price tag also inexplicably grew by 50 percent after Trump began demolition. What Trump had originally pitched as a $200 million project was instead referred to in late October as a $300 million development plan. The White House suggested that the project would be funded, in part, by some of the country’s wealthiest families and biggest corporations, including the likes of Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta.

Some major players in the defense industry with massive federal contracts have also forked over significant cash to develop the ballroom, including Lockheed Martin and Palantir, though it’s unclear what they might get out of a venue meant for dancing.

The real estate mogul has reportedly become so fixated on his renovation project that he has literally wandered away from his presidential duties in order to admire the progress.

Meanwhile, conservative lawmakers are turning on Trump. Senior Republicans privately expect dozens of their party members—“possibly 100 or more”—to vote in favor of a bill that would make the federal government’s trove of Epstein files publicly available, reported Politico. A handful have already voiced their intention to back the forthcoming bill, including Representatives Eli Crane, Don Bacon, and Warren Davidson.

It seems that Attorney General Pam Bondi’s kind offer to personally “ratify” interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan’s actions did not impress the federal judge charged with determining whether her appointment was lawful in the first place.

During a hearing Thursday, U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie, who is based in South Carolina, pushed back on the government’s claim that after reviewing the grand jury materials in the case against former FBI Director James Comey, Bondi had agreed to retroactively “ratify” Halligan’s actions, even if Halligan’s initial appointment was deemed invalid.

Currie greeted Bondi’s offer with some skepticism, according to Lawfare’s Roger Parloff. “The implication was: Why do you need that if the original appointment was proper,” Parloff wrote on X.

Currie also pointed out that there was still a missing component of the grand jury transcript, Politico reported. Halligan had previously failed to turn over documents that recorded her own remarks before and after the sole witness’s testimony. Halligan had not provided records of her presentation of the three-count indictment, either.

“It became obvious to me that the attorney general could not have reviewed those portions of the transcript presented by Ms. Halligan,” Currie said, adding that they “did not exist.”

Justice Department attorney Henry Whitaker claimed that Bondi had reviewed the “material facts” of Halligan’s jury presentation, which showed “the grand jury made a decision based on the facts and the law.”

These missing documents could include jury instructions that are crucial to the Comey case. In order to secure the indictment against the ex-FBI director, Halligan needed to clearly explain the criteria for finding a defendant guilty of making a false statement. But there appears to be no record of Halligan, a first-time prosecutor who acted alone in making a presentation to the grand jury, giving these instructions. Should there be an issue with Halligan’s jury instructions, the entire case could be dismissed.

Donald Trump appears to be targeting his next political adversary: Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell.

Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has referred Swalwell to the Department of Justice for a criminal probe, alleging mortgage and tax fraud on his Washington, D.C. home, NBC News reports. It’s the fourth time the administration has tried to use mortgage fraud against Democratic opponents, with New York Attorney General Letita James, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, and Senator Adam Schiff also facing similar allegations.

Pulte wrote in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi Wednesday that Swalwell may have made false or misleading statements in loan applications, claiming that the congressman took out several million dollars in loans and refinancing based on the Washington home being his primary residence. The letter calls for an investigation into insurance fraud, mortgage fraud, and tax fraud allegations, and any other related crimes.

Swalwell, who was involved in both of Trump’s impeachments, didn’t seem surprised by the attack.

“As the most vocal critic of Donald Trump over the last decade and as the only person who still has a surviving lawsuit against him, the only thing I am surprised about is that it took him this long to come after me,” Swalwell said in a statement.

In September, Swalwell said he fully expected to be prosecuted by the Trump administration, based on the fact that he was named on FBI Director Kash Patel’s enemies list in his 2022 book Government Gangsters.

“Adam Schiff is under investigation now, so I’m ready for it. I expect it, but I’m not going to flinch. I’m not hiding under the bed. I’m not going to shrink because that’s the aim. That’s why they do this, is they hope that dissent and oversight goes away,” Swalwell said at the time.