Comer Exposed for Plan to Effectively Kill Epstein Investigation

Republicans have found a new way to conduct the Epstein investigation. Democrats insist it’s just another attempt to sweep the whole scandal under the rug.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee flamed House Oversight Chair James Comer in a congressional memo for “running scared,” accusing the Kentucky Republican of changing the Epstein investigation proceedings into informal “roundtables” that lack any rules.

In this format, there’s no opportunity to consider subpoenas, and no recourse for Democrats to force votes on transparency measures, according to the memo shared among Democratic lawmakers last week.

Perhaps worst of all, the roundtables are designed to look and feel like “regular committee hearings,” according to the memo, but don’t require witnesses to speak under oath. That will effectively void the investigation of any value, giving potential witnesses an opportunity to lie before Congress without consequence.

“In a development with little precedent in modern Congressional history, Oversight Republicans have suspended the use of traditional committee hearings in favor of” the roundtables, the memo reads. “Oversight Republicans are avoiding hearings to block bipartisan subpoena motions they are losing. This shift doesn’t just affect Committee procedure—it limits Congress’s ability to uncover the truth and hold powerful actors accountable.

“By holding roundtables, Republicans are denying Members their basic rights as lawmakers,” the memo states. “Oversight requires transparency, rules, and accountability. Republicans are abandoning all three. Instead of holding real hearings, they are choosing forums designed to avoid scrutiny—because they are losing when the facts are on the table.”

The transition to hosting roundtables appears to be an attempt by Republican leadership to curtail the subpoena power of both parties. For months, Republicans and Democrats alike have hijacked committee hearings in order to vote on subpoenas that would require high-profile figures to speak on the Epstein investigation.

Several prominent figures were named as Epstein associates in the millions of recently released case files. They include Bath and Body Works co-founder Les Wexner, American financier and investor Leon Black, disgraced British former prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, and Donald Trump.

Trump is mentioned more than 38,000 times in the Epstein files, and was flagged in more than 5,300 files in the document cache. Those include instances in which Trump was accused—by both victims and witnesses—of abusing children, such as one instance in which he allegedly attempted to force a girl between the ages of 13 and 15 years old to give him oral sex before he punched her in the head for biting his penis.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed to have obliterated Iran’s navy and air force—but it seems that Iran has maintained far more military capabilities than his administration is willing to let on.

Last week, Trump claimed that Iran’s navy was “laying at the bottom of the sea, completely obliterated,” with the exception of a fleet of “fast attack ships” that the U.S. military did not consider a threat. However, multiple U.S. officials told CBS News Wednesday that roughly 60 percent of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s naval arm still existed. In fact, several ships in the Strait of Hormuz were attacked by Iranian gunboats Wednesday.

That’s not all. Roughly two-thirds of the Iranian air force is still believed to be operational, U.S. officials told CBS News. Nearly half of Iran’s stockpile of ballistic missiles and associated launch systems was also still intact at the beginning of the ceasefire in early April, three U.S. officials told the outlet. Two weeks ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared that “Iran no longer has any sort of comprehensive air defense” capability.

The Pentagon’s internal intelligence agency recently told lawmakers that Iran still maintained significant military capability, including thousands of missiles and one-way attack drones, NBC News reported Wednesday.

In a post on X Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed CBS’s reporting as propaganda, before spouting some of the adminstration’s own. “The truth is that under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. military decimated the Iranian regime’s capabilities in just 38 days,” she wrote.

President Trump’s Food and Drug Administration has decided not to approve a skin cancer treatment that could save lives, drawing backlash from doctors.

On Wednesday, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Congress that he had nothing to do with the decision to withhold approval for Replimune’s drug, RP1, which treats melanoma, shifting responsibility to FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary.  

“This decision comes out of FDA, and we trust ​the process there. And I’ve been told by Marty Makary that every panel that looked at that drug unanimously voted against it … because it does not appear to work,” Kennedy said to the Senate Finance Committee. 

This is disputed by many oncologists, who pointed out in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week that an initial panel approved the drug before being overruled by the head of biologics, Dr. Vinay Prasad. They also disputed Kennedy’s claim at a House hearing last week that Replimune did a “one arm trial, and all the people who were tested also received a chemotherapy drug, so we don’t know what the effect was.” 

In reality, none of the patients in the trial received chemotherapy; instead they received a different form of immunotherapy, the oncologists noted. A longtime melanoma researcher who worked on the trial, Dr. Anna Pavlick, told the Journal, “Honestly, there was no doubt in our minds whatsoever when we completed this study and we saw the results, that this was going to be approved as a wonderful alternative for our patients because they have no options.

“I have patients who have been treated with this drug that are still alive today who would otherwise be dead,” Pavlick added. 

Dr. Eric Whitman of the Atlantic Health System Cancer Care backed up Pavlick’s statement. 

“When you talk to the melanoma experts, people who treat lots and lots of melanoma patients like myself, it’s obvious that this is beneficial to patients and it’s saving lives or it has potential to save lives,” Whitman said. “The community of patients and doctors don’t understand the reasoning” for the FDA’s rejection. 

Under Kennedy’s leadership, HHS has made several questionable decisions to hurt public health, including blocking a Centers for Disease Control study showing that the Covid-19 vaccine significantly reduced emergency room visits and hospitalizations this past winter. RP1 shows significant potential in combating a fatal cancer, and its rejection fits into a shocking pattern of decisions from the Trump administration that seem to encourage the spread of cancer.  

National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Richard Hudson wouldn’t back up President Donald Trump’s gerrymandering scheme Wednesday after it backfired and gave Democrats a boost.

Virginians voted Tuesday to redraw their state’s congressional district map, potentially netting Democrats an additional three to four seats in the November midterm elections. The success of the measure could potentially see Democrats seize an edge over Republicans’ own gerrymandering efforts in red states, and MAGA is already flipping its lid.

Asked the morning after whether he felt the mid-decade redistricting effort was worth it, Hudson replied: “Not for me to decide that, wasn’t my decision,” Punchbowl News reported.

Hudson doesn’t seem interested in taking credit for his party’s political gamble. The North Carolina lawmaker appeared hopeful that Virginia’s Supreme Court will weigh in on a case against the new measure, in which the NRCC is a plaintiff.

“This close margin reinforces that Virginia is a purple state that shouldn’t be represented by a severe partisan gerrymander,” Hudson said in a separate statement. “That’s exactly why the courts, who have already ruled twice to block this egregious power grab, should uphold Virginia law.”

So far, five red states—Missouri, North Carolina, Texas, Ohio, and Utah—have moved to redraw their congressional maps at the president’s behest in order to hand a potential nine additional seats to the Republican Party.

President Trump is once again alleging voter fraud—this time, after his gerrymandering defeat in Virginia.

“A RIGGED ELECTION TOOK PLACE LAST NIGHT IN THE GREAT COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA! All day long Republicans were winning, the Spirit was unbelievable, until the very end when, of course, there was a massive ‘Mail In Ballot Drop!’” Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday afternoon. “Where have I heard that before — And the Democrats eked out another Crooked Victory! Six to five goes to ten to one, and yet the Presidential Election in November was very close to a 50-50 split.”

The president also made time to deride the way the referendum question was written.

“In addition to everything else, the language on the Referendum was purposefully unintelligible and deceptive,” he continued. “As everyone knows, I am an extraordinarily brilliant person, and even I had no idea what the hell they were talking about in the Referendum, and neither do they! Let’s see if the Courts will fix this travesty of ‘Justice.’”

Virginians voted 51–49 on Tuesday to redraw their state’s congressional map. The approved ballot measure could give Democrats as many as four additional seats in the House of Representatives. Like Trump wrote, that could mean that Democrats have a real chance of taking 10 of Virginia’s 11 House seats come November.

But there is no proof of voter fraud. And this entire effort was kickstarted last year when Trump himself started asking red states to gerrymander to help him overcome what looks like an incoming midterm defeat. The president claimed that Texas Republicans were “entitled to five more seats.” They obliged, and soon, Republicans in Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio all capitulated. Now Virginia, like California, has responded. And Trump has a problem.