White House’s AI-Edited Arrest Photo Comes Back to Bite Them in Court

The White House’s horrible, AI-doctored photograph of a Minnesota protester was used as evidence Monday that Donald Trump’s administration is acting in “nakedly obvious bad faith.”

In a four-page filing, attorney Jordan Kushner argued that the court should modify conditions for the release of his client, Nekima Levy-Armstrong, a civil rights attorney arrested at an anti-ICE protest that disrupted a church service in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Kushner claimed that events that occurred after Levy-Armstrong’s arrest had “informed the Court of the government’s bad faith,” and had already influenced the court in declining to place restrictions on her co-defendants, who were released on January 30.

Among the list of incidents, Kushner included the White House’s X post featuring “an altered photo of Ms. Levy-Armstrong being arrested to make it falsely appear that she was crying and making her face darker.”

Kushner noted that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had posted the original photograph of his client being escorted in handcuffs by law enforcement. More recently, Attorney General Pam Bondi had posted names and mugshots of 16 other protesters, he added.

In considering all the reasons to lighten the release restrictions placed on Levy Armstrong, Kushner asked the court to consider “the government’s nakedly obvious bad faith.”

A Brazilian influencer who openly backed President Trump’s hard-line immigration policies was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Saturday.

Junior Pena, whose Instagram account boasts almost half a million followers, was detained in New Jersey after missing a court hearing related to his own immigration status, a friend told the Brazilian Times.

Pena immigrated to the United States in 2009, according to The Guardian. He openly identifies as an immigrant on social media, and frequently shares stories of others who have come to the U.S. in search of a better life.

But he has also been outspoken in his support for Donald Trump, explicitly defending the president during his immigration clampdown.

After reports that Brazilians were among the many immigrants being detained and deported in Trump’s first week in office, Pena urged his followers to stay calm.

“Don’t panic, thinking they’re deporting everyone,” he said in Portuguese. “There’s a news report showing ICE arresting [people], which even includes Brazilians, but they’re all criminals. All criminals. Don’t believe just any influencer.”

Pena’s friends have now launched a fundraising campaign to cover the influencer’s legal fees and court expenses. The campaign hopes to raise $50,000.

Donald Trump was mentioned more than 38,000 times in the latest batch of Epstein files, according to a New York Times review of the Justice Department’s Friday public release of some three million pages from the sprawling investigation into child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The references include documents pertaining to Trump, his wife Melania, and their residence in Florida, Mar-a-Lago.

The president’s name appears in an FBI tip sheet several times in abuse allegations, including one in which an unknown source accuses Trump of forcing one of Epstein’s victims, presumed to be 13 or 14 years old, to perform oral sex on him, “approximately 35 years ago” in New Jersey.

Other mentions are bizarre, such as a censored image that is very clearly of the president, sparking concerns about how far the DOJ actually went to conceal Trump’s connection to Epstein. The photograph came up in an exchange between Epstein and Trump’s first term chief strategist, Steve Bannon, though the widely circulated image was not incriminating in and of itself.

Meanwhile, the agency neglected to redact nude images of young women in the files, some of whom may have been teenagers at the time.

All in all, Trump was flagged in more than 5,300 files in the document cache, according to the Times.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told CNN’s State of the Union Sunday that the DOJ reviewed the files last summer but did not find credible evidence against the president warranting further investigation.

“There’s a lot of correspondence, there’s a lot of emails, there’s a lot of photographs—there’s a lot of horrible photographs that appear to be taken by Mr. Epstein or people around him, but that doesn’t allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody,” Blanche said, noting that the public now has the opportunity to “see if we got it wrong.”

The Trump administration revealed on Friday that it would only release half of the Epstein files, blatantly violating the recently passed law that required the documents’ full release some six weeks ago and sparking concerns about a governmental cover-up.

Donald Trump’s botched takeover of the Kennedy Center is drawing criticism from America’s most prominent political family.

After a board of Trump loyalists voted to add Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center in December, the president announced on Sunday that the prestigious theater will shut down for two years for “Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding.”

The building will close on July 4 “in honor of the 250th Anniversary of our Country,” Trump wrote.

That means that while the Kennedy Center served as America’s cultural center for over 50 years, the Trump–Kennedy Center will last a grand total of seven months before closing.

Many have speculated that the planned temporary closure is an attempt by Trump to save face after his decision to rename the building led to a sharp decline in ticket sales and multiple artists canceling shows.

After Trump’s announcement, Joe Kennedy III, a great-nephew of John F. Kennedy, wrote on social media: “While this trespass on the People’s will is painful, President Kennedy would remind us that it is not buildings that define the greatness of a nation. It is the actions of its people and its leaders. So, do not be distracted from what this Administration is actually trying to erase: our connection, our community, and our commitment to the rights of all.”

Maria Shriver, the daughter of JFK’s sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, mocked Trump in her own post, writing: “I’ve determined that due to this change in schedule, it’s best for me to close this center down and rebuild a new center that will bear my name, which will surely get everybody to stop talking about the fact that everybody’s canceling… right?”

JFK’s grandson Jack Schlossberg similarly ripped into Trump. “Trump can take the Kennedy Center for himself,” Schlossberg wrote. “He can change the name, shut the doors, and demolish the building. He can try to kill JFK. But JFK is kept alive by us now rising up to remove Donald Trump, bring him to justice, and restore the freedoms generations fought for.”

Unsurprisingly, one Kennedy has taken a different stance: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s secretary of health and human services.

RFK Jr. said he had “bigger fish to fry” when asked about Trump renaming the building in December. He has not commented on the president’s announcement that the building will be shut down for two years.

In its latest release of files relating to Jeffrey Epstein, the Department of Justice included several unredacted nude photos of young women, some of whom may have been underage when the photos were taken.

The government is required by law to redact sensitive information and images in the Epstein files before releasing them, especially regarding anything that could identify victims. When The New York Times reviewed the latest files, however, they found 40 nude photographs of at least seven different people, with their faces visible.

The women in the photos could have been minors, as the Times could not confirm their identities or ages. Some appeared to have been taken at Epstein’s private island, Little Saint James in the U.S. Virgin Islands, while others simply showed bedrooms and other private spaces. The publication initially notified the DOJ on Saturday of the images, flagging more of them on Sunday.

The images flagged by the Times have since been removed or redacted. A DOJ spokesperson said that the department was “working around the clock to address any victim concerns, additional redactions of personally identifiable information, as well as any files that require further redactions under the act, to include images of a sexual nature.”

“Once proper redactions have been made, any responsive documents will repopulate online,” the spokesperson said.

The Trump administration remembered to redact a picture of Donald Trump that appeared in a text message conversation between Epstein and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. But somehow, it neglected a particularly sensitive set of photos and directly violated the law that mandated the release of the Epstein files, half of which still have yet to be made public.

One of Epstein’s abuse victims, Annie Farmer, called the news of the unredacted images “extremely disturbing.”

“It’s hard to imagine a more egregious way of not protecting victims than having full nude images of them available for the world to download,” Farmer told the Times on Sunday.