Trump DOJ to Investigate Itself Over Epstein Files Release

The Department of Justice has announced that it will investigate itself for failing to disclose documents containing allegations against President Donald Trump as part of the files on Jeffrey Epstein.

In a statement on X Wednesday afternoon, the Department of Justice announced that it would look into reports that documents produced for Ghislaine Maxwell’s team in discovery for her criminal case “appear to be missing”—referring to three interviews the FBI conducted between July and October 2019 with a woman who accused Trump of sexually assaulting her as a child.

“As with all documents that have been flagged by the public, the Department is currently reviewing files within that category of the production,” the agency said. “Should any document be found to have been improperly tagged in the review process and is responsive to the Act, the Department will of course publish it, consistent with the law.”

The DOJ has already published one of the FBI interviews conducted with that victim, which was also included in discovery for Maxwell’s case—but it only included allegations against Epstein, not Trump.

The woman’s allegations against the president still appeared in a 21-page slideshow included in files. “[REDACTED] stated Epstein introduced her to Trump who subsequently forced her head down to his exposed penis which she subsequently bit,” the FBI said in its interview summary. “In response, Trump punched her in the head and kicked her out.” This allegedly occurred in the mid-1980s when she was “approximately 13-15 years old.”

The details of the woman’s story appeared to match details from a victim lawsuit from December 2019. In a publicly available interview, “Jane Doe 4” claimed that she was “brutally and forcibly battered, assaulted, and raped” by prominent men she met through Epstein, one of whom forcibly slapped Jane Doe 4 in the face after she was forced to perform oral sex on him. This same man forcibly raped her.

The DOJ previously dismissed accusations that it was hiding certain documents as “salaciously insane,” claiming to have restored any documents that were previously removed. Now the agency is putting itself in charge of determining its own wrongdoing—I’m sure that’ll go well.

While they’re at it, maybe they can figure out what happened to this now-disappeared photograph of Epstein that appears to show Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick smiling in the background?

Lauren Boebert successfully pissed everybody off during Hillary Clinton’s closed-door deposition Thursday.

Clinton appeared before the House Oversight Committee to share what she knew about Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking empire (Clinton insisted she knew nothing). But Boebert couldn’t resist snapping an unauthorized pic of the former secretary of state, despite the fact that it was in clear violation of the rules. Ironically, the Colorado Republican’s own party member—House Oversight Chairman James Comer—was the one to demand the deposition remain private earlier this month, contrary to Clinton’s requests.

To make matters worse, Boebert shared the image with far-right podcaster Benny Johnson, who promptly posted it to X, temporarily derailing the proceeding.

What Boebert and Johnson believed they would achieve with the rogue stunt is unclear. But the publicity grab was wildly successful at sparking universal outrage—it angered Democrats, Republicans, and their own MAGA followers in the process, the latter of whom questioned whether the duo was trying to disrupt the process.

“Way to go. Now they are stopping the proceedings,” responded one self-identified MAGA account to Johnson’s post.

“What a fucking dumbass move … why are you purposely torpedoing this hearing for CLICKS!?!? USE YOUR DAMN BRAIN!!! The both of you are chasing wisdom, but it’s always faster than the two of you ...” fumed Trump supporter “Lady Liberty.”

“This is insane,” Johnson posted in his defense. “The deposition is being filmed. Hillary wanted it to be done LIVE on TV. The entire deposition will be released soon. Rep. Boebert gave me permission to post photo with credit. Hillary is trying to get out of answering questions about Epstein because of a pic!?!”

But X users were quick to point out the incongruity.

“You guys are so fucking dumb,” wrote the corporate account for Gay Guy Candle Company, adding a clown emoji. “‘She wanted it to be done live on television’ and ‘she’s trying to get out of it’ in the same post.”

“You posted a pic knowing doing so was in violation of the rules associated with a closed door deposition and then try to spin it as if it was orchestrated by Hillary? You’re a complete idiot,” commented another X account.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement discovered that GEO Group, the country’s largest private prison company, had falsified the death records of an inmate—but that didn’t stop the federal agency from throwing even more money at them, according to The Intercept. 

On December 6, 2023, Frankline Okpu, a 37-year-old man from Cameroon, died in solitary confinement at the GEO Group’s Moshannon Valley ICE Processing Center in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, after staff members failed to carry out orders from his physician—and then lied about it.

Okpu was placed in solitary confinement after an altercation with a guard, during which he allegedly ingested a synthetic form of cannabis mixed with a tranquilizer. After refusing treatment at the emergency department and the infirmary, Okpu was placed in solitary, and his medical provider ordered that staff members check on him every 15 minutes to ensure his safety.

Surveillance footage reviewed by ICE showed that of the 219 visual inspections GEO staff members were required to perform, 94 inspections, or 42 percent, were not done properly. In 33 inspections, staff members did not look through the window into Okpu’s cell to actually observe him. In 38 inspections, the staff checked on him outside of the required 15-minute timeframe. Twenty-three of the recorded inspections never occurred at all.

When reviewing GEO Group’s death report for Okpu, ICE found that there were several inconsistencies between medical staff’s documentation and surveillance footage from that morning, The Intercept reported.  

On the morning of Okpu’s death, he was scheduled to attend a dentist appointment, but when the resident adviser went to retrieve him, he did not respond. The adviser then relayed to the dental assistant that Okpu had refused treatment, and the dental assistant filled out a refusal form. ICE determined that GEO had “failed to comply” with the requirement to obtain a signed refusal form after attempting to counsel the patient to accept treatment. 

ICE also found that medical staff at the facility failed to conduct a face-to-face encounter just an hour before Okpu was discovered unresponsive—despite claiming to have done so. Medical staff also falsely documented that they’d ensured he’d eaten both breakfast and lunch. ICE did not check to see if he’d had breakfast, and Okpu was found unresponsive when lunch was served at 11:15 a.m. After nurses attempted CPR, he was declared dead at 12:02 p.m. 

Just three months after the death report was reviewed, ICE tossed GEO Group another $4 million, according to The Intercept. In 2023, 43 percent of Geo Group’s top-line revenue, more than $2.4 billion, came from contracts with ICE. Now GEO Group operates 19 facilities for ICE, accounting for $2.6 billion in total revenue in 2025.

All of this was before the Trump administration ramped up detention numbers and cut off detainees’ health care. One can imagine the potential for abuse and neglect has only increased since Okpu’s death. 

Trump administration officials met with racist, Islamophobic, far-right U.K. activist Tommy Robinson—and gave him a tour of the State Department. 

One of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s senior advisers publicly boasted about meeting with Robinson on Wednesday. 

“Honored to have free speech warrior @TRobinsonNewEra at Department of State today,” Joe Rittenhouse wrote on X, including a picture of the two of them. “The World and the West is a better place when we fight for freedom of speech and no one has been on the front lines more than Tommy. Good to see you my friend!”

Robinson also bragged last week about meeting Kari Lake, the Trump-appointed head of Voice of America.

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, co-founded the anti-Muslim “English Defence League” and founded the British National Party. He was previously imprisoned for contempt of court after his racist libel of a 15-year-old Syrian boy on his massive social media platform.  

“The Trump administration hosting Tommy Robinson must be a wake-up call,” British Member of Parliament Calum Miller wrote on X. “The government needs to include the US in their inquiry into foreign interference in UK politics. We cannot stand by while the likes of Trump and Musk meddle in our democracy.”

“Yaxley-Lennon is being touted around Washington as a ‘free speech warrior.’ We need to engage this administration on the difference between that and incitement to violence and racial hatred,” British Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Emily Thornberry said. “There should be no place in any democracy for the latter.”

Hillary Clinton was supposed to testify behind closed doors Thursday to the House Oversight Committee as part of its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. Representative Lauren Boebert and conservative influencer Benny Johnson briefly blew that up.

At noon Thursday, Johnson posted a photo from the hearing on X showing Clinton seated at a table with a quizzical expression on her face. He captioned it with a siren emoji followed by “BREAKING: The first image of Hillary Clinton testifying under oath about Jeffery Epstein to the Republican Oversight Committee.

“This is the first time Hillary has had to answer real questions about Epstein. Clinton does not look happy,” the post said, and credited the photo to Boebert.

That photo was followed by another with a full view of the hearing showing most of the participants, and with Boebert’s name tag visible in the front of the image.

After Clinton and her advisers learned of the posts, the hearing was paused, as Boebert’s photos were unauthorized. The deposition has since resumed, but Clinton asked that press be allowed into the room after the leaked photos, a request that was denied.

Clinton had pushed for public hearings for herself and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, but was turned down earlier this month by Republican Representative James Comer, the committee chair, who said that open hearings are “more for entertainment than substance,” accusing the Clintons of “trying to play the victim card.”

President Trump wasn’t a big fan of the Clintons testifying before Congress. A former president and first lady (and senator and secretary of state) testifying before lawmakers means that it wouldn’t be a big deal if Trump himself gets called to testify about Epstein, a subject Trump is trying desperately to ignore. Trump’s Republican allies may have pushed for the Clintons to answer their questions, but their efforts could put him in a bind.

This story has been updated.

A group of MAGA activists are working with the White House to convince President Trump to declare a national emergency over allegations of Chinese election interference—a move they say would allow him to ban mail-in ballots and voting machines.

Florida attorney and former Trump boarding school classmate Peter Ticktin told The Washington Post he has had “certain coordination” with the White House regarding the 17-page executive order draft that his group wants Trump to sign.

Ticktin’s draft hinges on the debunked claim that China successfully interfered in the 2020 election on behalf of former President Joe Biden. Trump to this day still believes that this election was somehow stolen from him, and now the Chinese government seems to be the next scapegoat.

“Under the Constitution, it’s the legislatures and states that really control how a state conducts its elections, and the president doesn’t have any power to do that,” Ticktin told the Post. “But here we have a situation where the president is aware that there are foreign interests that are interfering in our election processes.... That causes a national emergency where the president has to be able to deal with it.”

“The stage is largely being set by the revelations coming out of foreign powers being involved in influencing the 2020 election,” said Jerome Corsi, a progenitor of the birtherism claims Trump has made against former President Barack Obama. “If there was a provable foreign intrusion, that would be a national security emergency and the order could be issued under his powers as commander in chief.”

While Trump has already signed an executive order requiring proof of citizenship on voter registration forms and revoking funding from states that accept mail-in ballots, a presidential election emergency has never been challenged in the Supreme Court.

The vice president made a surprising claim on Fox News Wednesday while discussing his new role leading the administration’s so-called “war on fraud.”

“I think it’s unfortunate that nobody has ever tried to take a systematic look at how much fraud there is in the federal government,” JD Vance said.

Sorry, what?

There are some of us old enough to remember Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which purported to investigate claims of fraud, waste, and abuse in the federal government. The agency managed to slash thousands of federal jobs without meaningfully reducing spending—while making it easier for fraudsters to take advantage of Americans. Musk, who was appointed as head of DOGE after donating a whopping $288 million to Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, used his position to boost his many businesses, win big off of Trump’s tariffs, and dismantle the agencies that regulate his companies.

Vance said that there was no way to know a “top-line number” on how much fraud there was, because no one had ever bothered to investigate, but still baselessly claimed that “billions and billions of dollars” in Medicaid funding were being used on undocumented immigrants.

Vance’s so-called “war on fraud” is a thinly veiled excuse to go after Trump’s political opponents and punish blue states—all while the president has already enriched himself to the tune of $1.4 billion at the taxpayer’s expense.

More than a dozen schemes have popped up in Minnesota’s safety net programs in recent years, many of them involving members of the state’s Somali population. It’s worth noting that the government had already investigated federal fraud in Minnesota. During the Biden administration, more than 90 Minnesotans were charged, at least 60 of whom were ultimately convicted. Both red and blue states have participated in benefits abuse, but not everyone has had sweeping federal cuts inflicted on them.

Senior Justice Department prosecutor Colin McDonald told the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday that the recent crackdown on alleged fraud in Minnesota would serve a blueprint for a new DOJ office focused on protecting taxpayer dollars from scams.

Speaking to Fox News later that day, Vance claimed that the entire administration would be enlisted in the war on fraud, and would employ “a whole host of tools that we have that have never been used.”

Fed up with the Trump administration repeatedly violating court orders in immigration cases, a federal judge said Thursday that he is prepared to make officials in the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security testify under oath.

U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi ordered the immediate release of Diana Elizabeth Cartagena Hueso, a 29-year-old immigrant from El Salvador with no criminal record. In his ruling, Quraishi pointed to several cases in his federal district in New Jersey where the government has “largely frustrated” court efforts to protect the rights of immigrant detainees. Quraishi said that earlier this month, “the U.S. Attorney’s Office conceded to violating 72 orders issued in immigration habeas cases in this district alone.”

“That number by itself is objectively appalling, but at least one judge has indicated that it was underreported,” Quaraishi wrote in his ruling. “The Government’s continued actions after being called to task can now only be deemed intentional. The undersigned will not stand idly by and allow this intentional misconduct to go on. It ends today.”

Quaraishi went even further, warning the U.S. Attorney’s Office and DHS that if any other unauthorized detentions and arrests of immigrants came before him, he would order officials to show cause and schedule hearings where they would have to testify under oath.

Such a move would be a big step, as it has rarely been done during the current Trump administration. In the few times it has happened, the government has cried “uncle” and released the immigrant in question, as was the case with Juan Tobay Robles in Minnesota last month. If more judges attempt this approach, it could compel the Trump administration to follow court orders or it would have to explain its cruel and arbitrary mass deportation procedures to federal judges. Maybe then, administration goons like Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem would actually follow the law.

The Texas Senate race is making Republicans nervous.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is challenging incumbent Senator John Cornyn in the Republican primary, and the race is so close that an expensive runoff election is possible. A runoff could draw resources away from other close elections around the country and aid Democratic efforts to flip the seat.

Republican donors have poured over $60 million into the state to defeat Paxton, who is also running against Representative Wesley Hunt. But Paxton is still the front-runner in the race despite the fact that he didn’t even air any TV ads until the middle of February, with the election on March 3. If none of the candidates get more than 50 percent of the vote, a runoff would take place 10 weeks later.

Paxton has been hammered by attack ads airing his many scandals since he was first elected attorney general in 2014. In 2015, he was indicted by a grand jury on securities fraud and faced civil action from the Securities and Exchange Commission over it. Paxton also faced a whistleblower lawsuit in 2020 from seven aides in his office accusing him of abuse of office, bribery, and other crimes. He escaped trial in both cases, though he was ordered to pay a hefty settlement to his aides.

The Texas House still impeached him in 2023, only for the state Senate to acquit him of any wrongdoing. Last year, his wife, state Senator Angela Paxton, filed for divorce on “biblical grounds,” referring to her husband’s extramarital affair. Many Republicans feel that all of this would be easy fodder for the Democratic challenger, whether that’s Representative Jasmine Crockett or state Representative James Talarico.

“Honestly, if you look at the polling in a general election setting, I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that the seat [flips], depending on who the Democrats nominate,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told Politico. Paxton, meanwhile, enjoys strong support from the MAGA right over his efforts to fight the results of the 2020 election and sue Pfizer over the Covid-19 vaccine, among other conservative credentials.

Internal polling from the National Republican Senatorial Committee has Paxton losing to Talarico by three points and Cornyn defeating Paxton by the same margin. If Crockett is the Democratic nominee, she would lose to Cornyn by seven points and Paxton by one, according to the poll.

Neither fear nor polling has helped Cornyn’s standing, and President Trump hasn’t offered his help, either, saying earlier this month of the Republican candidates that “I’m friendly with all of them. I like all of them, all three.” One thing is for certain: The Republican primary is going to be close, and the winner will have a tall order: Democrats are turning out in their own Senate primary in record numbers.

Just one day after Republicans invited Nick Shirley to join them at the State of the Union address, the right-wing YouTuber endorsed a copycat of his work warning against a “Jewish invasion.”

“EXPOSE IT ALL,” Shirley wrote on X, sharing a post from fellow right-wing content creator Tyler Oliveira announcing his recent 73-minute “documentary on New Jersey’s Jewish Invasion.”

Oliveira’s portfolio includes clips titled “I Deported ILLEGAL Immigrants with ICE!” and dozens of videos dehumanizing Black people. In 2024, he published and amplified unverified (and since debunked) claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were causing “constant car crashes” and were capturing and eating local pets.

But somehow, blatantly targeting the Jewish community was a step too far for Oliveira’s far-right audience.

“The replies to this tweet show the double standards and hypocrisy of half of the ‘republican influencer’ space,” Oliveira wrote, defending his work against droves of online critics. “Does welfare abuse/fraud only suck when it’s a Somali? Ask your local ‘MAGA Republican influencer’ where he draws the line.”

Oliveira was also banned from Patreon over the video, though it wasn’t the first time he released a controversial piece about Jewish communities. In January, the 26-year-old posted a video to YouTube titled “Inside the New York Town Invaded by Welfare-Addicted Jews …”

But in a testament to the genre’s political affiliations, known white supremacist Nick Fuentes defended Oliveira’s latest doc, claiming that “when it comes to African Somali Muslims, everything is tolerated.… When another guy does the exact same thing to the Jews, ‘This is another holocaust.’”

Shirley clearly feels similarly.

Shirley gained national notoriety last year after he published a video that inspired the conservative caucus to politically scapegoat Somali immigrants. Vice President JD Vance circulated the video, positing that Shirley had “done far more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 @pulitzercenter prizes.”

In his widely circulated “investigation,” Shirley door-knocked a slew of Somali-run day care centers in Minnesota, arguing that sites that did not respond or allow him—an unannounced, unknown white man—entrance into a center filled with children had fraudulently accepted federal funding.

It would later emerge that elements of Shirley’s report were incorrect or inadequately reported: At least two of the centers featured in his video had been closed for several years, according to Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth and Families. The government had already investigated federal fraud in Minnesota—during the Biden administration, more than 90 Minnesotans were charged, with at least 60 cases resulting in convictions.

Nonetheless, the report resulted in the suspension of $185 million intended for Minnesota from the Department of Health and Human Services.

It also stirred a national services controversy, in which predominantly blue states were accused of abusing federal funds for programs focused on childcare and local poverty. In truth, states of all stripes across the nation have participated in benefits abuse, but not everyone suffered the federal cuts. Instead, Donald Trump axed $10 billion from five Democratic states, including Minnesota.