Exxon Abruptly Drops Lawyers Who Were Named in Epstein Files

It seems even giant oil companies have more scruples than the Trump administration and their allies.

Exxon swiftly dropped a couple of their longtime lawyers earlier this month after the attorneys’ names were revealed in the Epstein files, the sprawling investigation into prodigious child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Exxon and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison notified courts in Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine and Washington state that the white-shoe law firm would no longer represent the company in several cases attempting to hold the oil behemoth accountable for climate change, reported Politico’s climate newswire E&E News.

Attorneys with Paul, Weiss will continue to represent Exxon in a case in Massachusetts. No other law firms withdrew their staff from the aforementioned cases.

The legal filings did not provide a specific reason for the firm’s departure, but they came amid growing public scrutiny related to Paul, Weiss’s longtime chairman Brad Karp, who was recently revealed to have had email exchanges with Epstein. One such exchange drew particular ire from the firm’s partners, documenting an instance in which Karp offered his pro bono legal opinion on a plea deal related to Epstein’s solicitation of a minor for prostitution.

Karp spent his entire 40-year career at Paul, Weiss and led the firm as chair for 18 years. As such, he helped build the careers of many of the attorneys at Paul, Weiss. Under his stewardship, the firm became Exxon’s chief legal defense, representing the company in more than a dozen consequential cases. He was stripped of his leadership position at the company last week, citing recent “distractions,” though he will stay on as partner.

Yet Republicans in Congress—and presiding officials in the Trump administration—have so far failed to hold anyone named in the Epstein files accountable. Perhaps most notably of the scot-free bunch is the president himself, who was mentioned more than 38,000 times in the latest batch of Epstein files.

All in all, Donald Trump was flagged in more than 5,300 files in the document cache. But last week, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche claimed that the DOJ reviewed the files last summer and did not find credible evidence against the president warranting further investigation.

Donald Trump’s White House is urging Americans not to be “Panicans” as the president’s approval ratings continue to slip around the world.

In an article published Monday titled “Don’t Be a Panican. We’re Winning—and We’re Not Slowing Down,” the White House begged Americans not to “take the bait” presented by the “Fake News and Radical Left.” Instead, they should embrace the government’s “undeniable” truth.

“America is safer, stronger, richer, and more secure than at any point in decades,” the White House said. Who said propaganda had to be subtle?

What exactly is the “bait” the White House is worried Americans will take? What they’re seeing with their very own eyes. In the last month, the Trump administration has overseen and defended the killing of two American citizens in broad daylight, detained children, and terrorized immigrants and protesters.

If the White House was actually concerned about Trump’s popularity, the president could try to stay away from the easy pitfalls of harassing Olympic athletes and one of the most popular musicians in the world. And there’s also the matter of sharing videos so appallingly racist that one Republican said he was “praying” it wasn’t real. (It was.)

The truth is that the so-called “Panicans” are coming, because panic is spreading. A recent poll found that the majority of Americans believed that Trump’s first year in office was a failure—and that was before any of the stuff in the previous paragraph happened! Things have gotten so bad that even voters without a college degree—one of Trump’s key demographics—are abandoning the president.

Where exactly does the White House hope to redirect your attention? To the Dow Jones Industrial average, which closed at above 50,000 points last week. Meanwhile, Americans are staring down the most dismal jobs market since the pits of the pandemic, and many grocery store items only become more expensive—despite the president’s repeated promises to lower them.

As George Orwell wrote, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” Of course, the “most essential command” of a fascist regime should never include a stupid word the president made up—but really, what could be more Orwellian than that?

After reviewing the Justice Department’s unredacted Epstein files on Monday, Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin is convinced that the Department of Justice is in “cover-up mode.”

Members of Congress were allowed to view the unredacted versions of all DOJ files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein for the first time on Monday. After viewing those files, Raskin questioned the redactions the DOJ made in the publicly released files.

“There is no way before Attorney General Bondi arrives on Wednesday that we’re going to have the opportunity to go through every redaction in order to ask thorough questions,” Raskin told reporters on Monday.

“Do you think that’s the connection, that they held up releasing this so that everybody wouldn’t be as thoroughly prepared for her testimony Wednesday?” a reporter asked, referring to Bondi’s scheduled hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.

“I think that the Department of Justice has been in a cover-up mode for many months, and has been trying to sweep the entire thing under the rug,” Raskin continued. “We need to be having hearings with survivors to hear from them about their experiences so that they can explain what happened, and so that they can begin to set forth a theory of what took place. We need to be investigating the money, we need to be investigating the organizational hierarchy.... There’s no way you run a billion-dollar international child sex trafficking ring with just two people committing crimes: Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. It doesn’t work like that.”

Raskin also claimed that the unredacted files contradict Trump’s infamous story of heroically kicking Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago resort.

“Epstein’s lawyers synopsized and quoted Trump as saying that Jeffrey Epstein was not a member of his club at Mar-a-Lago. But he was a guest at Mar-a-Lago, and he had never been asked to leave. And that was redacted for some indeterminate, inscrutable reason,” Raskin said. “I know it seems to be at odds with some things that President Trump has been saying recently about how he had kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club, or asked him to leave.”

That contradictory tidbit may have been redacted for the same reasons the Justice Department delayed releasing the files for this long—no one was ever supposed to know in the first place.

Republicans are turning on CBS News chief Bari Weiss for daring to allow her broadcasting network to report on the reality of ICE arrests, as documented by the Department of Homeland Security.

CBS revealed Monday that less than 14 percent of some 400,000 people arrested by the deportation agency in 2025 had previously been convicted or even charged for violent criminal offenses, citing a leaked DHS memo.

Since the campaign trail, Donald Trump has pledged that he would utilize ICE to target the “worst of the worst” and oust violent criminals from the country. But federal agents have resorted to arresting practically anybody—including U.S. citizens and children—in order to satisfy Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller’s quota of 3,000 or more arrests per day. They have also shot and killed U.S. citizens, and struck terror and fury into the souls of American communities, sparking nationwide protests and local economic blackouts.

None of that, however, has held water with conservatives, who have seemingly redirected the criticism warranted by America’s immigration agencies toward the newly reimagined MAGA-friendly news outlet, refusing to believe statistics published by Trump’s own administration.

“Wrong. About 70 percent of illegal aliens deported have pending criminal charges OR prior convictions,” posted Senator Markwayne Mullin on X Monday, failing to cite a source. “Plus, drug trafficking, child pornography distribution, burglary, DUI, and human smuggling are categorized as ‘non-violent crimes.’ But when Obama does it, it’s okay. Right?”

The official X account for ICE also chimed in, claiming that “non-violent” offenders also deserved to be deported. ICE cited other charges related to drug trafficking, distribution of child pornography, burglary, fraud, DUI, embezzlement, solicitation of a minor, human smuggling, and more.

“Labeling these offenses as ‘non-violent’ does not mean they aren’t threats to public safety,” the account wrote.

The official White House “rapid response” account provided its own comment, simply scolding CBS for reporting “fake news.”

“They’re CRIMINALS and they’re NOT welcome here,” Trump’s team posted.

Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats in Congress have come to another impasse over DHS funding, which is set to expire February 13. The two parties have been unable to reach a bipartisan consensus on whether to reform the violent agency.

Democrats have agreed to pass the package so long as Republicans concede to 10 demands on how to reel in ICE agents, such as requiring them to identify themselves, take off their masks, and obtain judicial warrants before forcing their way onto private property.

GOP congressional leadership, however, does not seem willing to change the status quo at all, decrying the seemingly bare-minimum stipulations as “impossible” and “totally unrealistic.”

Donald Trump’s Justice Department is trying to help former Trump adviser Steve Bannon erase his conviction for defying a congressional subpoena.

The DOJ filed a motion in federal court Monday to throw out Bannon’s 2021 indictment for contempt of Congress after he refused to appear before the House’s January 6 committee to answer for his involvement in the Capitol insurrection. Bannon had initially tried to fight the indictment by claiming executive privilege through his work for Trump, but he would ultimately serve four months in federal prison.

Bannon was trying to appeal through the courts to get his indictment dismissed, even petitioning the Supreme Court. The DOJ had postponed responding to Bannon’s petition, but now seems to be trying to avoid the high court’s involvement. The motion was made by District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro herself, with no career prosecutors or lower-level attorneys apparently assigned to Bannon.

If the dismissal is granted, it would be yet another way Trump has attempted to whitewash the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. He successfully stalled the federal election interference case against him until he was reelected president in November 2024, when it was dismissed. Trump then pardoned everyone charged in the riots, even those who committed violent acts.

Bannon served his sentence while Joe Biden was president, but Trump can now reward his old friend, who was also proven to have had a close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein in the government’s latest release of files related to the convicted sex offender.

An elections expert warned Vox Monday that the “nightmare scenario” for the upcoming midterms is one step closer to being realized in the wake of Donald Trump’s raid on a Georgia election office.

The recent raid at the Fulton County election office demonstrated that the Trump administration is capable of gaining judicial support for its efforts to confiscate ballots. The FBI was able to obtain a search warrant even though the allegations on which the investigation hinges have been repeatedly disproven in court. 

If the Trump administration is able to seize ballots, then come November, the government could confiscate ballots from precincts where mail-in ballots are determining close races before the results are actually tallied—and bring American democracy crashing down.   

Derek Clinger, senior counsel at Wisconsin University Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative, warned Vox that the raid was a test run for legitimizing this tactic.

“The nightmare scenario used to be that Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act and have the military seize ballots and machines from a swing state on election night,” Clinger told Vox. “But Fulton County suggests a much more plausible scenario: one where the seizure of ballots is conducted with the appearance of a legal process. I think that approach is both more likely to happen and also harder to challenge in real time.”

Trump already laid the groundwork for seizing ballots last spring by issuing an executive order asserting that states cannot count mail-in ballots after Election Day and that the government needed to decertify and recertify all voting machines. While these two elements of that order were challenged in courts, and many states still allow votes postmarked before Election Day to be counted, the Trump administration has created a rationale for discounting the results of state elections because, by the White House’s standard, many would be illegal.

Another possibility that feels more real than ever is the likelihood that Trump will use federal immigration forces to chill voter turnout by deploying the president’s extrajudicial hit squads in specific cities.

Justin Levitt, a former DOJ official and professor at Loyola Law School, told Vox: “I think it is, tragically, an unfortunate possibility that ICE paramilitary forces will be misused in an attempt to deter people from participating in elections.”

President Trump and his supporters have been attacking American Olympians for expressing even the slightest criticism of the Trump administration while competing at the Winter Olympics in Milan.

“It brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now I think,” freestyle skier Hunter Hess said at a Friday press conference. “It’s a little hard; there’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of, and I think a lot of people aren’t. I think for me it’s more I’m representing my friends and family back home … all the things I believe are good about the U.S.

“If it aligns with my moral values, I feel like I’m representing it,” Hess continued. “Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.”

His teammate Chris Lillis was even more specific.

“I feel heartbroken about what’s happened in the United States. I’m pretty sure you’re referencing ICE and some of the protests,” Lillis said. “I think that, as a country, we need to focus on respecting everybody’s rights and making sure that we’re treating our citizens as well as anybody, with love and respect.… I hope that when people look at athletes [competing] in the Olympics, they realize that that’s the America that we’re trying to represent.”

These comments were very triggering for the MAGAverse.

“U.S. Olympic Skier, Hunter Hess, a real Loser, says he doesn’t represent his Country in the current Winter Olympics. If that’s the case, he shouldn’t have tried out for the Team, and it’s too bad he’s on it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday evening. “Very hard to root for someone like this. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

“Wow pls shut the fuck up. From all true Americans,” boxer and right-wing content creator Jake Paul said. “If you don’t want to represent this country go live somewhere else.”

“Chris Lillis and Hunter Hess have now had their 15 minutes of grandstanding fame,” a smaller account wrote. “It is now my wish that they do horribly in their events and disappear.”

Figure skater Amber Glenn also received MAGA backlash for saying that the LGBTQ community had had a “hard time” under the Trump administration—even after winning a gold medal.

“I hope I can use my platform and my voice throughout these games to try to encourage people to stay strong.… I know that a lot of people say you’re just an athlete, stick to your job, shut up about politics. But politics affect us all. It is something that I will not just be quiet about.”

“The little woke skater didn’t perform her best. Guess she should have focused on practicing and not being a wokie,” one right-wing account wrote incorrectly. “Karma got her.”

Then there was Alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin, who quoted former South African President Nelson Mandela at a press conference: “Peace is not just the absence of conflict; peace is the creation of an environment where we can all flourish, regardless of race, color, creed, religion, gender, class, caste, or any other social markers of difference.”

“Criticize policies at home. Debate. Vote. Protest if you want,” one detractor commented. “But if you step onto the Olympic stage under the American flag, show some basic respect for the country that gave you that opportunity.”

None of these people would have any issue if Olympians were getting onstage and fawning over Trump. But they’re doing the opposite, and now MAGA is trying to pretend that the most political sporting event in history should somehow be devoid of politics.

Members of Congress are calling on Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to resign after the government’s latest release of Jeffrey Epstein files show that the pair had a close relationship, contradicting Lutnick’s earlier denials.

Lutnick, who lived next door to Epstein in New York, claimed last year on the conservative Pod Force One podcast that after he met the convicted sex offender in 2005, he swore off future interactions with Epstein. But revelations late last month show that Lutnick’s financial services firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, was making deals with Epstein long after that, with Lutnick traveling to Epstein’s private Caribbean island and continuing to correspond with the billionaire via email.

Republican Representative Thomas Massie and several Democrats over the weekend called for Lutnick to step down, with the Kentucky congressmen telling CNN’s Inside Politics on Sunday that Lutnick “should just resign.”

“Howard Lutnick clearly went to the island, if we believe what’s in these files; he was in business with Jeffrey Epstein, and this was many years after Jeffrey Epstein was convicted,” Massie said. “He’s got a lot to answer for, but really, he should make life easier on the president, frankly, and just resign.”

Democratic Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove posted Sunday afternoon, “In between gaslighting Americans about the economy & sucking up to Trump, Lutnick took up TV air time to lie about his relationship with Epstein. He visited Epstein’s island in 2012 yet claimed he cut ties with Epstein years earlier. What else is he hiding? He must resign.”

Representative Robert Garcia later said, “It’s now clear that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been lying about his relationship with Epstein. He said he had no interactions with Epstein after 2005, yet we now know they were in business together. Lutnick must resign or be fired. And he must answer our questions.”

Representative Ted Lieu called out Lutnick for having gone “on national TV and lied to the American people.”

“You were despicable then for planning a visit to Epstein island, and you are despicable now for brazenly lying. You should resign,” Lieu posted Sunday.

“He has no business being our Commerce Secretary. He should resign,” Senator Adam Schiff also posted Sunday, calling out Lutnick for lying about his business ties with Epstein.

On Monday, Representative Melanie Stansbury called for Lutnick to appear before the House Oversight Committee and said, “I personally believe that Mr. Lutnick needs to step down immediately.”

The U.S. health secretary’s motivation for ending childhood obesity apparently rests on military recruitment.

Speaking at a Heritage Foundation event Monday morning, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that America’s fat kids need to lose weight so they can go to war, lest we “lose” the country.

“Seventy-seven percent of our children can no longer qualify for military service and most of that is diet-related,” Kennedy said. “We need to change what we’re feeding these children or we’re going to lose our country.”

The Pentagon’s 2020 Qualified Military Available Study found that just 77 percent of young Americans would qualify for service without a medical waiver due to reasons such as obesity, drug use, and mental or physical health disorders. The report noted, however, that just 11 percent of America’s youth would be disqualified from service for obesity. Kennedy appears to have his numbers backward.

But the U.S. does have a severe obesity problem. Federal administrations dating back to the 1970s have attempted to address it, though seemingly to no avail, as rates are higher than ever. Roughly two in five Americans are obese, according to data from the National Institutes of Health. Meanwhile, one in five children are affected by obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For all the political noise Republicans made when former first lady Michelle Obama decided to tackle childhood obesity rates, Kennedy’s efforts are totally cool with conservatives—even, or perhaps especially, if his end goal is to use children’s bodies for America’s militaristic aims.

Back in September, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made clear that his version of the U.S. military would have no room for “fat troops.” Speaking before hundreds of America’s top military commanders at a mandatory in-person meeting in Quantico, Hegseth unveiled his efforts to de-wokify the country’s armed forces, including resetting military combat requirements to the “highest male standard only” and updating the branches’ height and weight requirements. He not-so-subtly admitted he wanted to force women out of service, as well as Black men by way of a ban on military beard waivers.

But it’s not clear if Kennedy’s MAHA agenda—which was generated by AI—will work. Last month, the health secretary unveiled the outcome of his department’s monthslong project to reimagine the food pyramid. The result: an upside-down triangle, in which butter, steak, and cheese play a leading role.

Furthermore, a fraction of Americans volunteer for military service, raising questions about whether obesity rates actually have an effect on recruitment efforts. Less than one half of one percent of the general public is active duty, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Only roughly 6 percent of the population has ever served in the military, representing some 18 million veterans.

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice blocked prosecutors in Minnesota from investigating Renee Good’s killing, several people told The New York Times.

Before he resigned from his role last month, former acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson emailed colleagues at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which reviews police shootings, indicating they would team up with the FBI to launch a civil rights investigation into Good’s death. But as soon as FBI agents received a signed search warrant to examine the blood splatter and bullet holes in Good’s vehicle, they received orders to stop their investigation, according to several who spoke anonymously with the Times.

The orders came from senior DOJ officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel, who were apparently concerned the investigation could undermine the administration’s claims that Good was a violent insurrectionist who had attempted to mow down a federal agent, according to the Times.

The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension previously claimed that the FBI had outright refused to cooperate with its investigation into Good’s killing, forcing it to withdraw its efforts entirely. In late January, Department of Homeland Security officers also blocked BCA access to the scene of Alex Pretti’s brutal killing.

In the days following Good’s death, DOJ officials suggested that prosecutors launch a criminal investigation into whether Good had assaulted Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed her. DOJ officials also suggested that prosecutors investigate Good’s widow, Becca, who had been present at the incident and whom Trump smeared as a “professional agitator.” Rather than engage in their frivolous investigations, Thompson and three other senior prosecutors resigned.

Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News at the time that the prosecutors had resigned because they “suddenly decided they didn’t want to support the men and women at ICE.”