Justice Department Tries to Redact Trump’s Face in Epstein Files

The Department of Justice made a lame attempt to cover up Donald Trump’s face in a photo in the latest trove of Jeffery Epstein files.

The photo appears to be of Trump making a speech at an event. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon sent it in a text message to Epstein in 2019. In it, a small portion of Trump’s head, including his ear, are still visible next to a black box covering the rest of his face.

Why attempt to cover up this photo? On its own, it doesn’t incriminate Trump in any of Epstein’s crimes, and previous file releases have already established that Bannon and Epstein had a long correspondence. It seems as though it was an attempt to conceal Trump, although he is still identifiable underneath the black box. The rest of the files contain multiple references to Trump, his Mar-a-Lago estate, and his family members. They also contain interviews with Epstein’s victims, some of whom refer to the president.

The government has only released half of its total Epstein records, despite being required by law to release all unclassified files by six weeks ago. Trump continues to deny a close relationship with the convicted sex trafficker, despite mountains of evidence that one existed. It seems that the DOJ and Attorney General Pam Bondi are assisting the president in trying to minimize the obvious.

A whistleblower’s lawyer accused Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard of burying their client’s complaint about her, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

In a letter sent to Gabbard’s office in November, attorney Andrew Bakaj accused the director of preventing a complaint detailing her wrongdoing from reaching lawmakers. The complaint, which was originally filed with the intelligence community’s inspector general in May, is so highly classified that Bakaj himself has not been able to review it.

Typically, an employee is able to share a complaint alleging wrongdoing directly with lawmakers, as long as the director of national intelligence instructs them on how to securely transmit it. But months after the complaint was originally filed, it reportedly remains locked away in a safe, a person familiar with the matter told the Journal.

“From my experience, it is confounding for [Gabbard’s office] to take weeks—let alone eight months—to transmit a disclosure to Congress,” said Bakaj in a statement.

In addition to accusing Gabbard of wrongdoing, the complaint reportedly implicates “an office within a different federal agency” and raises potential claims of executive privilege, officials told the Journal. One official warned that disclosure of the complaint could cause “grave damage to national security.”

The intelligence community’s inspector general determined that the specific allegations against Gabbard weren’t credible, but it could not make a determination about the other claims, according to a representative for the federal watchdog. Bakaj said he was never informed that any determination was reached.

Last week, Gabbard was spotted lurking around a federal raid at the Fulton County, Georgia, election office. Having been completely sidelined from the typical responsibilities of the director of national intelligence, Gabbard has apparently spent months leading an investigation into President Donald Trump’s baseless claims about the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Donald Trump threatened to sue comedian Trevor Noah for daring to mention his long-standing connection with child sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Practically everyone at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards jabbed and sneered at the president and his administration, but the South African celebrity was the man who really got his goat, inspiring Trump to post a legal threat to Truth Social.

“The Grammy Awards are the WORST, virtually unwatchable!” Trump wrote at 1:01 a.m. Monday.

“CBS is lucky not to have this garbage litter their airwaves any longer,” he said, referring to the music institution’s 2024 contract to move its award ceremony to ABC for the next decade, ending a 53-year run at CBS.

“The host, Trevor Noah, whoever he may be, is almost as bad as Jimmy Kimmel at the Low Ratings Academy Awards,” Trump continued. “Noah said, INCORRECTLY about me, that Donald Trump and Bill Clinton spent time on Epstein Island. WRONG!!!

“I can’t speak for Bill, but I have never been to Epstein Island, nor anywhere close, and until tonight’s false and defamatory statement, have never been accused of being there, not even by the Fake News Media.

“Noah, a total loser, better get his facts straight, and get them straight fast,” he said. “It looks like I’ll be sending my lawyers to sue this poor, pathetic, talentless, dope of an M.C., and suing him for plenty$. Ask Little George Slopadopolus, and others, how that all worked out. Also ask CBS! Get ready Noah, I’m going to have some fun with you!”

Hours earlier, while setting up the nominees for the “Song of the Year” category, Noah quipped that the highly coveted prize was nearly as desired by artists as Greenland is by Trump—for a very particular reason.

“Song of the Year—that is a Grammy that every artist wants almost as much as Trump wants Greenland, which makes sense because Epstein’s island is gone, he needs a new one to hang out with Bill Clinton,” Noah told the crowd.

Trump has long relied on the legal system and lawsuits in order to settle his problems, using the incredible financial heft of his real estate empire or other investments to smother his opposition.

Donald Trump and his allies stayed connected to Jeffrey Epstein well after they claimed they had stopped communicating.

The president has long asserted that his close friendship with the child sex trafficker ended after the duo had a falling out over real estate in Palm Beach, ultimately nixing contact altogether after 2006, when a grand jury indicted Epstein on state charges related to prostitution. That same year, Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago (though Epstein publicly denied the finale of his membership at the time).

But documents published Friday amid the Justice Department’s larger rollout of another tranche of the Epstein files indicate that Trump’s narrative is far from the entire story.

An email out of the trove, issued by Epstein to an individual named William Riley, revealed that the sex trafficker was planning to call Trump as late as 2011.

“Before I call Trump, with regard vrginina ,, are there any other alternatives,” Epstein wrote on April 18, 2011.

It is not clear who Riley is, though a decorated Iraq War veteran known as William Sascha Riley was identified in November as another one of Epstein’s victims by Substack writer Lisa Noelle Voldeng. Riley claimed his adoptive father, William “Bill” Kyle Riley, worked as a pilot for Epstein and trafficked him to the global predator.

As it turns out, Trump’s friends had similarly malleable principles. In an interview with the New York Post podcast in October, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick recalled an instance in 2005 when Epstein—who was at the time his Upper East Side neighbor—invited him to tour his infamous East 71st Street townhouse.

“I say to him, ‘Massage table in the middle of your house? How often do you have a massage?’” Lutnick told the Post. “And he says, ‘Every day.’ And then he gets, like weirdly close to me, and he says, ‘And the right kind of massage.’”

“In the six to eight steps it takes to get from his house to my house, my wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again,” he added.

But seven years after that visit, Lutnick was reaching out to Epstein to coordinate a family trip to the financier’s “pedophile island.”

“Hi Jeff, we are landing in St. Thomas early Saturday afternoon and planning to head over to St. Bart’s/Anguilla on Monday at some point. Where are you located (what is exact location for my captain)? Does Sunday evening for dinner sound good?” Lutnick wrote to Epstein in 2012, according to an email made public by the DOJ Friday.

Lutnick then mentioned he was traveling alongside another couple, and that both couples had four children each, before listing out the specific ages of all the children who would be traveling to the island with them.

Five years later, Epstein was donating to a charity of Lutnick’s choice, according to a 2017 email between Epstein and Lutnick’s associate.

Donald Trump’s nominee to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, appeared in the government’s Friday release of additional Jeffrey Epstein tiles.

Warsh’s name appears to be on an emailed list of guests to “St. Barth’s Christmas 2010,” among others such as Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and disgraced director Brett Ratner. Warsh also appears on a list of people attending a dinner hosted by British aristocrat William Astor.

The news comes the same day that Trump picked Warsh for the Fed, an unexpectedly conventional pick considering how desperate Trump is to sharply lower interest rates. Warsh has a history of being cautious on inflation, but has signaled a willingness for lower rates in the past few months.

Warsh has always been involved in monetary policy, having been appointed to the Fed in 2006. But his inclusion in the Epstein files is actually not surprising, considering that his wife is billionaire heiress Jane Lauder, granddaughter of Estée Lauder and daughter of Republican donor Ronald Lauder. That puts him in the same wealthy circles that Epstein himself operated in.

Still, it’s unfortunate that this would happen on the same day that he was picked for the Fed. Before Friday’s release, Warsh’s biggest controversy was his connection to Ronald Lauder, who reportedly inspired Trump’s interest in Greenland during his first term in office. Lauder has purchased commercial interests on the island.

Now Warsh may have to answer questions about how well he knows Epstein and what he was doing on St. Barts during Christmas 2010. Questions will also be raised as to whether Trump chose him because he, Epstein, and Warsh know each other from being in the same circles.