Bessent Says Oil Prices Will Drop “If Something Happens” in Venezuela

On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that oil prices could go down “if something happens down in Venezuela.”

“I am very confident about job growth and the momentum that we’ve got for next year,” Bessent told Laura Ingraham on Fox News. “Capital expenditure is always followed by job growth. The peace deals—we are seeing a peace dividend from that. And I think there’s a very good chance that if something happens with Russia, Ukraine, if something happens down in Venezuela, that we could really see oil prices go down even more.” 

The remark from a top Trump official appears to suggest that the administration is planning for “something” to happen in Venezuela  Trump has cast the country as a major drug-trafficking hub to justify his strikes of drug boats in the surrounding waters, and seems to have regime change—potentially through military intervention—as its ultimate goal. 

“U.S. military action could trigger a crisis on the same order as happened in Iraq after the U.S. regime change effort there,” Caracas-based International Crisis Group senior analyst Phil Gunson told The New Republic. “If the U.S. does decapitate the government, the multiple armed actors could bring about a degree of anarchy. None of these different groups have any incentive to just lay down their arms. There have been several decades of accumulated resentments on various sides, and it’s not fanciful to imagine that there could be lynchings. There could be bombings or selective assassinations.” 

A federal judge called out federal officers in Chicago for producing unreliable use-of-force reports—noting that at least one had used an AI chatbot to write a report for them.

In a 223-page injunction ruling Thursday, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis cited body-worn camera footage to document the many ways federal agents made unreliable and false statements when describing their several violent clashes with Chicago residents, the Chicago Tribune reported.

“The Court also notes that, in at least one instance, an agent asked ChatGPT to compile a narrative for a report based off of a brief sentence about the encounter and several images,” Ellis wrote in one footnote.

“To the extent that agents use ChatGPT to create their use of force reports, this further undermines their credibility and may explain the inaccuracy of these reports when viewed in light of the BWC footage,” she added.

This is particularly concerning because, as OpenAI’s own website states: “ChatGPT can be helpful—but it’s not always right.”

Ellis also accused Border Protection Commander Gregory Bovino of giving testimony that was specifically “not credible,” either responding to questions with “cute” answers or “outright lying.”

An appeals panel blocked Ellis’s injunction Wednesday, stating that it was “overbroad” in its application to the government, but asserted that her findings could “support entry of a more tailored and appropriate preliminary injunction.”

Ellis’s injunction would have barred federal agents from using tear gas and other riot prevention methods against protesters, “unless such force is objectively necessary to stop an immediate threat.”

It seems that using ChatGPT may be an emerging, and concerning, trend in the armed forces. Last month, a U.S. Army general told reporters that he’d become very fond of “Chat,” even trusting the algorithm to make “key command decisions” in relation to his post.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned his countrymen Friday that they must choose between U.S. support or a quick conclusion to their 11-year war with Russia “without dignity” and “without justice.”

The U.S. unveiled a peace plan earlier this week that spans 28 points, catering to some of Russia’s most outrageous demands, such as requiring Ukraine to swear off NATO membership and to hand over Crimea and the eastern Donbas region. Those two points alone have reversed longstanding U.S. policy with regard to the area.

“Now the pressure on Ukraine is one of the most difficult,” Zelenskiy said in his native language, standing outside his presidential office, in a video statement. “Now is one of the most difficult moments of our history. Now, the pressure on Ukraine is one of the heaviest. Now, Ukraine can face a very difficult choice—either losing dignity or risk losing a major partner.”

“Either 28 difficult points (of the framework), or an extremely harsh winter—the harshest ever—and further risks. Life without freedom, without dignity, without justice,” Zelenskiy said, according to an English translation provided by Reuters.

“We will work calmly with America and all our partners. We will seek constructive solutions with our main partner. I will present arguments, I will persuade, I will offer alternatives, but we will definitely not give the enemy any reason to say that Ukraine does not want peace, that it is disrupting the process and that Ukraine is not ready for diplomacy.”

“I am now addressing all Ukrainians. Our people, citizens, politicians—everyone. We must come together. Pull ourselves together. Stop the spat. Stop the political games,” he said.

Earlier that morning, AFP reported that Zelenskiy had warned Vice President JD Vance over the phone that Washington risked rupturing ties with Ukraine over the lopsided arrangement.

It remained unclear as of late Friday morning whether both nations would agree to the White House’s peace plan. It is even less clear whether Russia will honor the arrangement after it is brokered.

Ukraine is already working on a counter-proposal with France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, Reuters reported Friday.

Ukraine and its European partners were excluded from the plan’s drafting process, reported The Guardian. But there is some evidence that the plan may have come directly from the Kremlin: several sentences in the document are passive and clunky in English, but make more sense when translated into Russian. That could be the influence of Kirill Dmitriev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s envoy, who worked on the project alongside Special Envoy Steve Witkoff.

Donald Trump has touted himself for months as a great peacemaker, pushing a narrative that he has—so far—solved eight foreign conflicts. Practically all of his war-solving braggadocio is “demonstrably untrue,” to the extent that several of the examples he often lists were never even at war. But despite repeated efforts, he has not made any headway on the Russia-Ukraine war.

Trump has conceded quite a bit to the Russian dictator, to no avail. This summer, Trump literally rolled out the red carpet for Putin in Alaska, marking Putin’s first return to U.S. soil in more than a decade. After the theatrics were over, the two world leaders still failed to reach a consensus on how to end the bloodshed, with Trump losing his cool while Putin demanded that Ukraine cede even more territory to Russia.

More than 13,300 civilians have been killed and 31,700 injured in Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022, according to a United Nations report from June.

The FBI spied on the private group chat of an immigrants rights group that was monitoring immigration court proceedings in New York City.

The Guardian reports that the bureau gained access to a “courtwatch” Signal group coordinating volunteers to attend proceedings at three immigration courts in the city. A joint report between the FBI and the New York Police Department from August quoted from the group chat and called them “anarchist violent extremist actors.”

That report was distributed to other law enforcement agencies around the country, and the FBI called it a warning about “extremist actors targeting law enforcement officers and federal facilities.” The Guardian got the report after Property of the People, a nonprofit organization dedicated to government transparency, obtained it via public records requests.

Signal chats have end-to-end encryption, so law enforcement could have only accessed the group chat if an agent was part of the chat, had access to a member’s phone, or was sent copies of the conversation. According to the FBI, a “sensitive source with excellent access” provided the information, dodging the requirement for a warrant.

The FBI also claims that the person who created the chat advocated violence against law enforcement, but it has not responded to questions about the identity of the person or given more details on why it called the group “anarchist violent extremist actors.”

Violent detention and arrests in immigration court buildings, sometimes just after rulings, have become the norm in the last year. In one case, an ICE agent tackled a woman to the ground right after her husband was arrested in a New York City immigration court. For some reason, the government considers that legal but has a problem with citizens monitoring what’s going on in and around the courts.

On Thursday, President Trump decided to renege on his 40 percent tariffs on Brazilian goods, ending a problem he created. The agricultural products tariffed—beef, fruit, coffee, cocoa—were getting more and more expensive for Americans everywhere.  

“After considering the information and recommendations these officials have provided to me and the status of negotiations with the Government of Brazil, among other things, I have determined that it is necessary and appropriate to modify the scope of products subject to the additional ad valorem rate of duty imposed under Executive Order 14323,” Trump wrote in an executive order. “Specifically, I have determined that certain agricultural products shall not be subject to the additional ad valorem rate of duty imposed under Executive Order 14323.”

Trump initially levied the tariffs against Brazil on the grounds that it was unfairly prosecuting former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro—who was recently sentenced to 27 years in prison for attempting to stage a coup in 2023, which some compare to the January 6, 2021 insurrection in the U.S. Bolsonaro had his supporters raid Brazil’s presidential palace, the Supreme Court, and Congress, all because he’d lost the election to leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. 

Now, with Bolsonaro in jail and grocery prices in the U.S. skyrocketing, Trump is backtracking. The Brazilian president made it clear early on that he wouldn’t cave to Trump, stating over the summer that “at no point will Brazil negotiate as if it were a small country up against a big country.” It appears he meant it.

“Trump’s decision to remove many tariffs on Brazilian products is a significant political victory for the Lula administration ahead of next year’s presidential elections,” Brazilian professor Oliver Stuenkel wrote on X. “And a vindication of Brazil’s choice to pursue a calm and pragmatic negotiation strategy vis-à-vis Trump.” 

The Trump administration is going rogue—and MAGA is not happy about it.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee held a private meeting in July with Jonathan Pollard, an Israeli spy who spent 30 years in prison for selling U.S. secrets to Israel during the Cold War.

The news caught the rest of the administration off guard, including the CIA and the president, according to three U.S. officials that spoke with The New York Times.

The “friendly” off-the-books encounter took place at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, according to Pollard, who spoke with the Times by phone on Wednesday.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday that the White House was not informed of the meeting beforehand but that, regardless, “the president stands by our ambassador.”

It was unclear if the State Department had given the go-ahead for the meeting, and still more confusing as to why Huckabee and his senior adviser David Milstein believed it prudent to meet with one of the most notorious spies from the Cold War.

MAGA conservatives were outraged by the meeting, arguing online that Huckabee should be removed from his post for meeting with a “traitor.”

“Immediately Recall Ambassador Huckabee, He is Out of Control,” posted Grace Chong, the chief financial officer and chief operating officer for Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast.

“There is no universe where it’s appropriate for Mike Huckabee, who is supposed to be OUR AMBASSADOR and serve our country’s interest, is meeting with Jonathan Pollard, who to this day encourages spying on the U.S.,” wrote right-wing influencer Mike Cernovich, calling for an investigation into the meeting.

Pollard was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for passing thousands of classified documents pertaining to U.S. nuclear, military, and technical matters along to Israel. Still, some people viewed him as a hero—including Huckabee and some Israelis—spending years lobbying for his early release, which came in 2015.

When he moved to Israel, Pollard was met with a “hero’s welcome on the tarmac at Ben Gurion Airport” by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to the Times.

“Pollard said he did not regret spying for Israel, claiming the United States had cut Israel out of intelligence sharing. And he castigated [Donald] Trump, calling him a ‘madman who has literally sold us down the drain, for Saudi gold,’” the Times reported.

U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche is reportedly “encouraging” a federal grand jury investigation into Justice Department official Ed Martin and Federal Housing Finance Director Bill Pulte for potential misconduct in pursuing criminal charges against prominent Democrats.

The new investigation, led by the Maryland U.S. attorney’s office, is focused on whether the mortgage fraud charges against California Senator Adam Schiff and possibly New York Attorney General Letitia James were tainted by the methods of Martin and Pulte, who allegedly shared sensitive information with individuals who were not authorized to be part of the investigation.

Two sources told MS Now that Blanche had grown concerned over unforced errors in their cases, and was helping to oversee the investigation into the potential misconduct.

Appearing on MS NOW Thursday night, reporter Carol Leonnig said that Blanche and other top DOJ lawyers had grown “very frustrated” with Martin’s and Pulte’s methods. Blanche was not only well aware of the probe into their conduct, he also was “not in any way interfering with it, and possibly even encouraging” it, Leonnig said.

“In this case, it is a problem, according to our sources, for Todd Blanche, to have cases that aren’t being handled very properly. And as we saw, there were some unforced errors,” Leonnig said. “In another case in the Eastern District of Virginia yesterday. We’re told Blanche is a little bit embarrassed about all of that.”

Christine Bish, a California realtor who helped compile evidence to support allegations of mortgage fraud against Schiff, said she was specifically subpoenaed to discuss her communications with Martin and Pulte.

“They’re investigating each other,” Bish told CNN. “It’s stupid.”

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham believes that the government owes him restitution for accessing his phone records while investigating Donald Trump’s actions on January 6, 2021.

As part of the budget bill passed to fund the government earlier this month, a provision was passed allowing senators who had their phone records accessed by the government without their knowledge to sue the Justice Department. Senators would be able to win $500,000 of taxpayer money per violation. Many members of Congress found this abhorrent, and this week the House voted to repeal the provision. Graham was incensed and blocked the repeal when it came to the Senate.

“I’m going to sue Biden’s DOJ and Jack Smith, I’m going to sue Verizon, it’s going to be a hell of a lot more than $500,000,” Graham said on the Senate floor Friday, referring to the special counsel investigating Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

It’s petty, corrupt, and vindictive for Graham to demand that the government pay him for being one of eight Republican senators whose phone records were subpoenaed by Smith’s team. The bill is specifically written to be retroactive to 2022 to help them out. Even Republicans in the House see the whole thing as corrupt.

“What they did is wrong,” said Republican Representative Austin Scott about the provision. “This should not be in this piece of legislation, and they can say it’s about good governance all they want to. When they made it retroactive, all of a sudden it was no longer about good governance. There’s actually a list of people that know they will get paid as soon as this thing is signed.”

Embattled Republican Representative Cory Mills was caught with sex workers on an unofficial mission to Afghanistan in 2021, when he was still a congressional candidate. 

Mills was traveling with a group to Afghanistan to save Americans after former President Biden’s withdrawal from the country left the Taliban in power. On their way, the group stopped in Tbilisi, Georgia, where Mills was caught in a hallway with sex workers, leaving the group he traveled with irate, NOTUS reports. The group then decided to part ways with him, and he appeared to go to Afghanistan on his own.

The congressman made no mention of the incident, instead framing himself as a hero and attacking the State Department for attempting to take any credit for the evacuation.

“This is an attempt to save face by the administration for the Americans they left behind. This is a woman with three children from age 15 all the way down to 2 years old,” Mills told Fox News Digital then. “And they did nothing to try to expedite this.… But at the very last minute, you have these ‘senior officials’ at the State Department trying to claim credit for this, like, ‘Oh yeah, look what we’ve done.’”

Whenever Mills is in the news, it tends to be for some kind of scandal. This year, five of his former service members accused him of “stolen valor,” saying he didn’t deserve a Bronze Star as he didn’t actually save their lives overseas and wasn’t even present at the event. 

Mills was also accused of assaulting an ex-girlfriend at his Washington, D.C., apartment, and in February saw his ex-girlfriend file a restraining order against him for  “harassment, threatening to release sexual videos, and to harm future boyfriends.”

And this week, the House Ethics Committee opened an investigation into Mills for “improperly solicited and/or received gifts, including in connection with privately sponsored officially-connected travel,” and allegations that he “received special favors by virtue of his position” and “engaged in misconduct with respect to allegations of sexual misconduct and/or dating violence.”

A report released by Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden on Thursday called for Congress to further investigate JP Morgan Chase over its ties to Jeffrey Epstein, one of the bank’s biggest clients, and his alleged sex-trafficking organization.

Before Epstein was arrested in September 2019, JPMorgan Chase reported only a handful of “suspicious activity reports” documenting roughly $4.3 million worth of transactions from his accounts between 2002 and 2016. After he was arrested, and subsequently died in prison, JPMorgan Chase filed “far more comprehensive” reports documenting an additional 5,000 wire transfers moving $1.3 billion in and out of Epstein’s accounts—a total that was 300 times greater than what was previously disclosed.

The report suggests that JPMorgan Chase executives waited to disclose his suspicious transactions to regulators in order “to continue working with Epstein,” even after he was terminated as a client in 2013 over money-laundering concerns. Citing newly unsealed emails, the report indicated this was done because of Epstein’s influence over billionaire Leon Black.

The report implicates multiple JPMorgan Chase executives, who apparently closely monitored the alleged sex trafficker’s accounts, reporting to CEO Jamie Dimon.

In March 2012, John Duffy, the former CEO of JPMorgan’s U.S. Private Bank, instructed Epstein on how to make large withdrawals from his account without raising alarms at the bank, newly unsealed emails showed. In August 2013, Mary Erdoes, the CEO of the wealth and asset management division of JPMorgan who remained in near constant contact with the alleged sex trafficker, “blessed” efforts to continue doing business with Epstein, according to the report.

Wyden said that the extent of the bank’s underreporting went “beyond a total compliance breakdown.”

“It’s impossible to believe the decisions that led to the coverup of Epstein’s financial transactions regarding his sex trafficking never reached the very top,” he wrote in a series of posts on X. “Given the scale of Epstein’s trafficking operation, it’s clear that many more powerful people were involved. My staff have seen a paper trail with their own eyes. Banks that helped enable him should be investigated. As should anybody involved in Epstein’s trafficking ring.”

Earlier this week, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer subpoenaed JPMorgan Chase for access to some of Epstein’s financial records.