Feds Discovered Steve Bannon’s Photo of Trump and Ghislane Maxwell

The government found a photograph of Donald Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell on Steve Bannon’s phone. So, why did they redact it?

Buried in the latest trove of documents released by the Department of Justice Monday, one email appeared to be from a federal investigator who said they’d discovered something while digging through Bannon’s iPhone 7.

“As I was going through the images from that phone, I found an image of Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell on Bannon’s phone,” the email stated, passing it forward “in case it was of any importance” to someone handling “both cases.”

“Thanks very much for flagging—no need to do anything on this one,” the person responds.

Despite the fact that the Epstein Files Transparency Act only required the Trump administration to redact identifiable information of survivors—something that the government failed to do—the photograph of Trump and Maxwell was redacted in its entirety in the DOJ’s release. The sender and recipients’ names have also all been redacted.

So, what is it about this photograph in particular that warranted redaction?

Over the course of his long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, Trump was photographed several times with Maxwell. The two attended parties and fashion events, and even traveled together.

It seems that Trump may be receiving some special treatment. In other photographs released as part of the government’s document dumps, former President Bill Clinton’s face remained visible while the faces of some other individuals were redacted. The DOJ even went so far as to release a statement to get ahead of the “untrue and sensationalist claims” about Trump contained in their own release.

The batch of files released Monday contained multiple disturbing revelations, including one email that suggested Trump flew on Epstein’s jet “many more times than previously has been reported,” and Epstein’s apparent suicide note that mentioned Trump’s love of “young, nubile girls.”

Epstein files leaked on Monday night confirmed what so many people already suspected: President Trump spent much more time with Epstein—and young women—than he’s said he has. 

An email from an assistant U.S. attorney from January 2020 reads, “For your situational awareness, wanted to let you know that the flight records we received yesterday reflect that Donald Trump traveled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than has previously been reported.” 

“He is listed as a passenger on at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996, including at least four flights on which Maxwell was present,” the attorney continued, noting that Trump brought his wife, son Eric, and daughter Tiffany at times.

On one flight, the only three listed passengers were Trump,  Epstein, and a 20-year-old whose name has been redacted, likely a victim of Epstein and Maxwell. 

This email completely undermines Trump’s various stories regarding his friendship with Epstein, from saying that he viewed Epstein as some kind of creep to be kept at arm’s length, to saying he barely knew him. Regardless of how their relationship ended, the president was flying around on a private jet with a sexual predator who abused children—which explains the lengths the administration went to keep these files from coming out even as a notable portion of their voter base recognized it as an issue. 

It will be interesting to hear Trump and his helpers explain this one. Why would Trump fly on the sex trafficker’s plane multiple times? Did he just not know then too? 

“Trump was on Epstein’s plane, with Epstein victims,” one X user wrote. “Yet another reason why he was trying to keep the Epstein files from ever seeing the light of day.”

What do Jeffrey Epstein, Larry Nassar, and Donald Trump all have in common?

Buried in the latest trove of documents released by the Justice Department Monday, a postcard addressed to “L.N.” or Larry Nassar, the former U.S. gymnastics team doctor convicted of sexually abusing scores of women and girls, mentioned Trump by name—and more.

“As you know by now, I have taken the ‘short route’ home,” Epstein wrote, appearing to reference his later death by suicide. “Good luck! We shared one thing… our love and caring for young ladies and the hope they’d reach their full potential. Our president also shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair,” he continued, signing off “J. Epstein.”

The government also released an image of the envelope, which was addressed from Epstein to “inmate” Nassar, and was postmarked August 13, 2019, three days after Epstein died at the Metropolitan Correction Center in New York City. The letter, marked as return to sender, was addressed to Nassar at USP Arizona, where the high-profile pedophile had been held before he was transferred in 2018.

It had previously been reported that Epstein attempted to reach out to Nassar, but that his letter had been returned. The government’s documents suggest that the letter was first discovered weeks later in September 2019, and was submitted for a handwriting analysis in July 2020. It’s not clear what the results of the writing test were.

The latest batch of documents released by the Department of Justice mention Trump’s name hundreds of times. One 2020 email sent by a federal prosecutor asserted that Trump had flown on Epstein’s private jet “many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware).”

The previous batch of documents published Friday were heavily criticized for being incomplete. While the government made sweeping redactions to entire pages of documents, it apparently failed to redact the names of multiple survivors.

Just days after plastering his name onto the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., President Trump will be naming a new class of battleships after himself.

Trump is planning to make the naming announcement of the Navy’s new battleships alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Monday. An anonymous Pentagon official told The New York Times that Trump will call them “Trump-class” battleships.

The ship will be part of Trump’s vision of a new “Golden Fleet.” Each ship is expected to cost at least $5 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.

As The New Republic’s Matt Ford wrote earlier this week—as bleak as the Gulf of America, the Trump Kennedy Center, the War Department, and others sound, Trump won’t be president forever. If he can change them just that easily, there’s no reason the next Democratic administration should hesitate to change them back.

CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss told 60 Minutes producers she was killing their story on the CECOT megaprison in El Salvador, where Trump deported more than 250 Venezuelan immigrants,  because it did “not present the administration’s argument.”

“What we have is Karoline Leavitt’s soundbite claiming they are evildoers in America (rapists, murderers, etc.). But isn’t there much more to ask in light of the torture that we are revealing?” Weiss wrote in a Sunday memo. “Tom Homan and Stephen Miller don’t tend to be shy. I realize we’ve emailed the DHS spox, but we need to push much harder to get these principals on the record.”

Weiss’s decision to kill the story because it didn’t have enough perspective from DHS officials—who had already declined to speak with 60 Minutes—was met with uproar when it was leaked on Monday. But she doubled down. 

“We need to be able to get the principals on the record and on camera,” she said on a Monday staffing call, insinuating that the testimonies of CECOT inmates were insufficient.

Killing a story about a brutal megaprison because the folks that are sending people to the brutal megaprison aren’t featured prominently enough has not been favorably received. 

“The Trump administration sent dozens [of] young men with no criminal record to be tortured and abused in a foreign prison,” podcaster Jon Favreau wrote. “@bariweiss can keep reporting, delaying, or kill the story altogether, but the basic facts have been well-documented in multiple court cases, including by Trump’s own DOJ and Trump-appointed judges.” 

“Bari Weiss’s main criticism is that 60 Minutes doesn’t advance the story,” writer Randye Hoder chimed. “But her solution is to ask Stephen Miller to regurgitate the same talking points this admin has given from the get-go, which we’ve heard a gazillion times)!”

The Trump administration has yet to comment. View the trailer for the scrapped segment here.

Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse are claiming that the Trump administration broke the law by failing to redact some of their names and withholding other documents.

In a joint statement Monday, multiple survivors slammed the government’s recent document dump for failing to redact “numerous victim identities” while also making “abnormal and extreme redactions with no explanation.”

“We are told there are that there are still hundreds of thousands of documents still unreleased. These are clear-cut violations of an unambiguous law.”

The statement follows a survivor’s formal legal notice to Justice Department attorneys on Saturday, claiming that the government had failed to redact their name after previously withholding their file.

“The DOJ asserts that my own file requires prolonged review to determine whether redactions are appropriate—yet it had no difficulty publicly releasing my identity in mass disclosure,” the survivor wrote.

The survivor noted that the Epstein Files Transparency Act included protecting the victims’ identities as a “central statutory safeguard.” At the same time, the DOJ has already been criticized for redacting many names from the files, including Trump’s, a move totally devoid of transparency.

The survivor added that if the government’s decision to include their name unredacted had been an effort to intimidate them, it had failed. “This unlawful disclosure does not silence me. It does not frighten me. If anything, it has made me more resolved than ever to resolve in full, lawful release of the Epstein files,” the survivor wrote.

Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie, who sponsored the Epstein files Transparency Act, have begun threatening to fine Attorney General Pam Bondi for every day she fails to release the full Epstein files, after failing to meet Friday’s deadline.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller threw a tantrum for the stupidest reason imaginable.

A federal jury Sunday refused to convict Bobby Nunez, a 33-year-old tow truck driver in Los Angeles charged with stealing government property after he moved an SUV belonging to ICE that was blocking a driveway.*

Federal prosecutors alleged that Nunez had interfered with ICE’s violent arrest of Tatiana Mafla-Martinez, a 23-year-old Colombian woman suspected of being in the country illegally, who was later released. They claimed he had pressed the door of Mafla-Martinez’s car against one of the officers, before towing their car.

Lawyers for Nunez argued that federal agents were blocking the building’s driveway, and noted that Nunez had only moved the vehicle one block away. The SUV was reportedly returned to agents within 13 minutes. Nunez faced up to 10 years in prison.

Miller fumed over the ruling in a post on X Sunday. “Another example of blatant jury nullification in a blue city. The justice system depends on a jury of peers with a shared system of interests and values. Mass migration tribalizes the entire legal system,” he wrote.

Of course, there was no evidence to suggest that the ruling was so-called “jury nullification.” It is the latest in a string of weak cases brought forth by the Trump administration against protesters and civilians tied to immigration arrests.

* This story has been updated to reflect Nunez’s acquittal.

President Trump’s new special envoy to Greenland, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, wants to help make Greenland “part of the U.S.”

“Thank you @realDonaldTrump! It’s an honor to serve you in this volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the U.S.,” Landry wrote on X after Trump’s Truth Social announcement late Sunday evening. “This in no way affects my position as Governor of Louisiana!”

This is the most recent development in Trump’s monthslong campaign to essentially colonize Greenland. His primary excuse for this has been “international security,” although it’s more likely he wants to take advantage of Greenland’s value as a geopolitical asset as well as its mineral and oil resources.

“That whole area is becoming very important, for a lot of reasons. The routes are very direct to Asia, to Russia, and you have ships all over the place. We have to have protection,” he said back in March, before attacking Denmark, a NATO ally that control Greenland as an autonomous territory.

“This appointment is outrageous,” political science professor Michael McFaul wrote on X. “Imagine if Mexico appointed a special envoy to make Louisiana a part of Mexico? Our ally Denmark deserves more respect than this.”

Denmark’s leadership has reiterated that they have no plans to give up Greenland. On Monday, Denmark summoned the U.S. ambassador to explain the move.

“We insist that everyone including the U.S. − must show respect for the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark,” Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said.

Bari Weiss’s excuse for killing a 60 Minutes story about the Trump administration’s deportations proves just how poorly suited she is to be editor-in-chief of CBS News. 

In a call with CBS staff Monday morning, Weiss offered a flimsy explanation for her decision to hold a segment reporting on the experiences of inmates held at CECOT, the notorious prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration previously deported Venezuelan immigrants the government claimed were gang members.  

Weiss initially claimed the segment was “not ready” because the Trump administration hadn’t deigned to comment, according to internal CBS sources. 

But her statement to staff was different: “We need to be able to get the principals on the record and on camera,” she said on the call, apparently believing that the testimony of inmates at CECOT wasn’t enough for a story. 

“Our viewers come first. Not the listing schedule or anything else. That’s my north star and I hope it’s yours, too,” she added, according to CNN’s Brian Stelter. 

Her decision makes clear that she cares more about staying on the Trump administration’s good side than actual journalism. 

Ben Goggin, deputy tech editor at NBC News pointed out that Weiss had made a rookie mistake. “Of course, most journalists know that oftentimes people who are the subject of negative reporting don’t want to speak on camera or on the record,” he wrote on Bluesky. 

In a leaked email Sunday evening, CBS News correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, who’d worked on the story, explained to her colleagues that she’d reached out to the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, and the White House, but heard nothing back. She argued that the government’s unwillingness to comment shouldn’t have killed the story.

“If the standard for airing a story becomes ‘the government must agree to be interviewed,’ then the government effectively gains control over the 60 Minutes broadcast,” she wrote. “We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer of the state.”

We bet you didn’t have this on your 2025 bingo card: Vice President JD Vance just quoted rapper Nicki Minaj defending white people.

Following Minaj’s appearance at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest this weekend, Vance took to X Monday to tout that he’d finally found an actually famous person willing to be publicly associated with MAGA’s hate-fueled brand of conservative politics.

“Nicki Minaj said something at Amfest that was really profound. I’m paraphrasing, but she said, ‘just because I want little black girls to think they’re beautiful doesn’t mean I need to put down little girls with blonde hair and blue eyes,’” Vance wrote in a post on X Monday. “We all got wrapped up over the last few years in zero sum thinking. This was because the people who think they rule the world pit us against one another.”

Minaj’s actual comment was about Black women not replicating the discrimination they’d experienced for their appearances. “We were not being represented and not being admired for our beauty. If we felt like that as Black women, why would we want to do that to other women? Why would we now need to make other people downplay their beauty, so that we can feel—no that’s not how it works. I don’t need someone with blonde hair and blue eyes to downplay their beauty because I know my beauty,” she said.

It’s no surprise that this particular message stuck with Vance. The vice president has repeatedly commented, with no sense of irony whatsoever, on how he doesn’t want to feel sorry for being white anymore.

To be clear, in the United States white households have more than three times the wealth of Black or Hispanic households, and white men have always enjoyed a majority control over the country’s politics. It is the weakest among them—like Vance—who view the empowerment of people who have been systemically disadvantaged as a threat.

Vance readily complains about feeling put down by the attitudes of “people who think they rule the world,” while making racist jokes from his perch as the second most powerful man in the country.

Unfortunately for MAGA, Minaj is far from the perfect spokesperson. While speaking on stage at AmericaFest, the rapper gushed over the vice president, referring to Vance as an “assassin.” This wouldn’t have been notable except that she was speaking to Erika Kirk at the time, whose husband was actually assassinated earlier this year. Yikes.

But other high-profile celebrities haven’t been willing to play ball. Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo, and SZA have all slammed the White House for using their music in order to dress-up their ghoulish policies for a younger audience.