Trump Commerce Secretary Flails Trying to Explain His Huge Epstein Lie

On Thursday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was once again confronted with his elaborate lie regarding his close personal and business relationship with sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein. His answer was pathetic.

“In October, you told the New York Post with colorful narration that the last time you saw Jeffrey Epstein was in 2005 when you took a tour of his house, which happened to be right next door to yours,” Democratic Representative Madeleine Dean said during Lutnick’s hearing before the House Appropriations Committee. “You claimed you and your wife were ‘so grossed out’ by this disgusting person, you swore you would never go back. But when the Epstein files came out, it turned out that was a lie.… You had visited Epstein’s private island in 2012, four years after Epstein pled guilty [to] soliciting a minor for prostitution and was labeled a sex offender. You brought along your wife, your kids, your nannies to the predator’s island.”

Dean also noted that just days after that 2012 island visit, Lutnick and Epstein signed a business deal together as “coinvestors in a digital advertising company,” collaborating on it until 2018.

“Secertary Lutnick, why did you lie to the New York Post about your relationship with Jeffrey Epstein?” Dean asked.

Lutnick began to offer a canned nonanswer, but his microphone was not turned on.

“Please don’t repeat your gracious offer to speak behind closed doors, not under oath, without the ability of this committee to question you,” Dean quipped. “The American people want to know. Why did you lie about your relationship with Epstein?”

Lutnick offered the canned nonanswer again, looking a bit uncomfortable.

“The House Oversight Committee and I have agreed—”

That was quickly shot down by Dean. “Reclaiming my time, I do not accept that answer,” she said. “We’ve heard that one.… Please answer the question. Why did you lie to the Post?”

“I have voluntarily agreed to spend the time and talk about it,” Lutnick replied, as if he was doing Dean some favor by offering to speak off the record about the massive, damning lie he told.

“Let the record reflect you’re dodging the question,” Dean replied. “The cover-up continues.”

Lutnick also refused to answer the other two direct questions Dean asked him about his connection to Epstein—particularly his financial connections, and whether President Trump was “concerned” about the commerce secretary’s chummy relationship with perhaps the most infamous predator of the century. It’s an absolute embarrassment that he is still operating in full capacity as commerce secretary.

The Trump administration is reupping its efforts to denaturalize U.S. citizens it sees as unworthy.

The New York Times reported Thursday that the Department of Justice has named 384 foreign-born Americans from whom it plans to revoke citizenship. The DOJ also told civil litigators to prepare to file suit against the individuals in 39 regional attorneys’ offices.

While 384 people is a small number compared to the more than 818,000 who became American citizens in 2024, the DOJ’s new focus on denaturalizations sets a dangerous precedent that could lead to new citizens having their passports revoked en masse in the future.

Naturalized residents who commit crimes, or who are found to have received citizenship illegally—such as through a fake marriage—can have their status taken away. While it is legal for the government to revoke someone’s citizenship, it is typically rare, happening an average of 11 times per year between 1990 and 2017. Those numbers then went up slightly after Donald Trump took office for the first time, to about 15 times a year.

But this year, the government has looked to denaturalize Americans at a level not seen since the early nineteenth century, as Trump wages war against the melting pot. The Times reports that the Department of Homeland Security was told earlier this year to find more than 200 denaturalization cases a month for the DOJ to prosecute.

The good news for naturalized citizens is that, besides being unable to run for president, they have essentially the same rights and protections as those born in the U.S. The government must prove its case for denaturalization through either a civil or criminal trial, a legal process that the Times calls “challenging and time-consuming.” Each person can also appeal their decision, meaning the government’s efforts will further tax an already overwhelmed court system full of immigration cases.

While the Trump administration has spoken about only denaturalizing those who have committed crimes or fraud, the president’s racist rhetoric and moves such as classifying antifa as a terrorist organization have created some concern that Trump could use denaturalization as a weapon against certain groups of immigrants.

“The government has used this power in the past to target people it views as political opponents,” Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia, told the Times.

Donald Trump’s pick to be secretary of the Navy has said some crazy things.

The Pentagon confirmed that failed congressional candidate and current undersecretary of the Navy Hung Cao would be replacing John Phelan, who was abruptly fired on Wednesday. It’s an appalling move, given that Cao once made a poor joke about the KKK in an interview with Steve Bannon.

“I know I’ll be attacked by the left, and call me a white supremacist, but I have one ask for them, it’s just than when you give my hood, make sure it’s got the little slits and not the circles so I can see better,” Cao said on Real America’s Voice during his failed 2024 campaign for Senate.

Cao has also claimed in multiple interviews that he was “shot at” and “blown up” while serving in the Navy, and and has “scars,” describing himself as “100% disabled,” but his service record doesn’t show him receiving a Purple Heart, which is given to service members who have been seriously injured by enemy fire, or the Navy’s Combat Action Ribbon. When USA Today asked him about his service record in 2024, he issued an angry statement.

“I want to give you all a window into what it’s like being a combat veteran who had the gall to run for public office against a career politician. Any veteran will read this with the same disgust. Imagine being asked to provide documentation of the dates and times Al Qaeda shot at you. Imagine being asked, if you’re a disabled veteran, why don’t you have a Purple Heart?” Cao posted.

In a 2023 interview with a right-wing pastor, Sean Feucht, Cao claimed that witchcraft was occurring in California.

“There’s a place in Monterey, California, called Lover’s Point,” Cao said. “The original name was ‘Lovers of Christ Point,’ but now it’s become—they took out the ‘Christ,’ it’s Lover’s Point, and it’s really—Monterey’s a very dark place now, a lot of witchcraft, and the Wiccan community has really taken over there,” Cao said. “We can’t let that happen in Virginia.”

In the same interview, Cao joked that “I’m African American because I grew up in Africa too,” referring to when his family lived in Niger when they worked for USAID.

All of this was known during Cao’s confirmation hearings as Navy undersecretary last year, and the Senate still voted to confirm his nomination. Now he’ll be in charge of the military branch in the midst of a war.

Outbound Republican Senator Thom Tillis has warned that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is in “dangerous waters.”

The retiring North Carolina lawmaker promised early Thursday to stand in the way of Blanche’s confirmation if he’s tapped to take over the lead Justice Department role.

Tillis was reacting to comments that Blanche made at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month, in which America’s temporary top cop boasted about how he “cleaned house” and fired federal prosecutors who had worked to pursue cases relating to the 2021 Capitol riot. At the time, Blanche also boasted about the mass Inauguration Day 2025 pardon that Donald Trump issued to his supporters who participated in the bedlam, claiming that “when folks say, ‘You’ve done nothing,’ I say you have a very short memory.”

Tillis has the power to block any nominee before the Senate Judiciary Committee: As long as all Democrats are united against a nominee, Tillis’s vote is enough to tip the scales. And he plans to wield that power against Blanche if it comes down to it. In an interview with Semafor Thursday, Tillis said that “the principle here is that anybody who didn’t back the blue on January 6th is disqualified from consideration for me in the Judiciary Committee.”

He added that Blanche is “not a politician in his current state. But when you start acting like a politician, you get treated like one.”

“The more recent comments are really what drew my attention,” Tillis told Semafor. “So that I have to parse through. The minute you give somebody slack, then you’ve lost the principle, right?”

Blanche joined the Trump camp in 2023, when he was hired as Trump’s defense attorney in his criminal trials. However, Blanche has since risen through the ranks of the second Trump administration, first as Pam Bondi’s number two and then by landing in the vacancy left behind by her firing. 

Bondi was ousted earlier this month for failing to break the parameters of American government in order to unquestionably do Trump’s bidding, specifically with regard to prosecuting Trump’s political enemies and  handling the Epstein files, which remain Trump’s biggest and most indelible scandals to date.

In her wake, it seems that Blanche has learned the lesson. In the few short weeks since he became acting attorney general, Blanche has worked overtime to please the president. He has accelerated investigations into Trumpian conspiracies, fired prosecutors who enforced laws that protected abortion clinics, defended the White House’s intimate involvement in DOJ affairs, and initiated a controversial indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center for aiding local and federal law enforcement investigating political extremism.

“Blanche knows Trump wants action in the cases Trump has publicly targeted,” John Fishwick, a former U.S. attorney in Virginia, told MS NOW. “It is always a challenge to audition for a job for Trump, but Blanche is moving the chessboard at DOJ to try and get results that will satisfy the president.”

Back in February, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles was desperately trying to get Cabinet officials to lock in.

Politico reported Wednesday that amid uproar over Donald Trump’s unpopular tariffs and the havoc wrought by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents across the nation, Wiles told his Cabinet to focus on domestic travel and reaching out to voters ahead of the midterms rather than frivolous foreign ventures.

This mandate came after certain Trump officials had racked up tons of airline miles—Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, for example, had an “aggressive international travel agenda” in 2025 that saw her visit Vietnam, Japan, India, Peru, Brazil, and the U.K.

Rollins’s team defended her jet-setting to Politico, arguing she successfully negotiated multiple trade deals while abroad. But some people agree with Wiles.

“It’s like, why is Brooke going to the U.K.?” one source familiar with the discussions told Politico.

Did anyone listen to Wiles? Kind of—the chief of staff now reportedly approves all Cabinet-level international travel herself. “All trips are run through Cabinet Affairs,” one source told Politico. “The international ones are on a case-by-case basis, but they definitely want you to focus on domestic travel.”

But Trump’s decision-makers have not exactly shifted their focus to domestic issues. A week after Wiles told the Cabinet to get serious, Trump and company started a war with Iran. With gas prices spiking, service members getting killed, and vague reasons being given as to why we’re at war in the first place, Wiles’s fears have been justified: Trump and the GOP’s approval ratings have plummeted.

Republicans holding onto power come November would take something miraculous at this point. With Democrats fighting back through redistricting, and the GOP losing basically every special election since the turn of the year, the House appears likely to turn blue. Oddsmakers give the Senate about a 50-50 chance of going the Dems’ way, as well.

The biggest worry at this point for Democrats is that America has a president who throws a temper tantrum whenever he loses, and will try everything he can to stay in power.

Donald Trump and the media have what could be most nicely put as a contentious relationship, as the president frequently fumes over journalists who dare to report on his many scandals.

Ironically, Trump’s attacks on the press perhaps don’t get as much coverage as you’d expect. Amid all his other controversies, you’d be forgiven for forgetting that Trump told a female reporter “quiet, piggy,” and that the FBI raided a journalist’s home—all this year.

But that may change soon. The Daily Beast reported Wednesday that Trump plans to give a cranky speech at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, in which he “is expected to target publications that he has accused of writing negatively about his administration and his war with Iran, in particular.”

The Beast’s sources also allege Trump will exit the dinner after his monologue and skip the presentation of press awards—unsurprising, given how difficult it is for the president to see people other than him be praised.

This means Trump will also miss the entertainment, which this year will be “mentalist” Oz Pearlman. Normally, a comedian attends to crack jokes about the media and the commander-in-chief, which has led to some legendary performances over the years.

The press award winners have already been announced, and many are indeed being honored for work the president won’t be pinning to his refrigerator anytime soon.

Among them is The Wall Street Journal, which is being presented with the Katherine Graham Award for Courage and Accountability for their scoop on the creepy birthday card Trump allegedly wrote for convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein in 2003.

Trump has never actually attended the Correspondents’ Dinner while in office, unlike the vast majority of other presidents. He last attended in 2011, when Barack Obama was in his first term. Obama threw a jab Trump’s way while on stage regarding his belief that Obama’s birth certificate was faked, which has been blamed for the sensitive Trump not showing up since.

A pathway to freedom is slowly opening up for Ghislaine Maxwell, thanks to the work of several House Republicans.

Conservatives on the House Oversight Committee are reportedly “split” over whether Donald Trump should pardon Jeffrey Epstein’s girlfriend and longtime accomplice.

Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer told Politico Wednesday that “a lot of people” in his caucus believed it was a worthwhile exchange for her testimony against Epstein.

“My committee’s split on that,” Comer said, before noting that he is personally against the deal, observing that the optics “look bad.”

“Honestly, other than Epstein, the worst person in this whole investigation is Maxwell,” Comer added.

Comer’s Democratic counterpart, ranking member Robert Garcia, told the publication that his liberal peers on the committee are adamantly and unanimously opposed to such an arrangement.

“That would be a huge step backwards, and, quite frankly, so disrespectful to the survivors,” Garcia said. “She is a known abuser. She is a known liar.”

“If the DOJ or Oversight Republicans are out there trying to negotiate some sort of pardon, that is … not only a huge slap in the face to this investigation, to anyone, to the American public,” Garcia continued. “It’s a part of a massive cover-up.”

Maxwell was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in jail for playing an active role in Epstein’s crimes. Her attorneys have pressed the White House for a pardon for several months now, though the White House has not indicated it will grant one.

But a July interview between Maxwell and the DOJ still proved incredibly fruitful for the convict, sparking concerns that she had been offered a quid pro quo in exchange for a revised “Epstein list.” At the time, the Trump administration was floundering for an opportunity to redirect public fury over the files.

Shortly after she spoke with now-acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Maxwell—one of the worst sex criminals of the century—received an extremely cushy transfer, shipping her from a Florida prison to a low-security prison camp in Texas, where she has been granted many privileges not typically afforded to inmates.

Her time behind bars has since included meal service in her cell, unlimited toilet paper, time to play with a puppy being trained as a service dog, private workout sessions, unrestricted phone access, and access to private visitations in a chaplain’s office outside standard visiting hours. Her requests to be separated from other inmates have also been granted, with tables and cellmates reportedly being relocated at her whim.

Earlier this month, one of Maxwell’s former prison mates—Real Housewives of Salt Lake City alum Jen Shah—attested to the sex trafficker’s preferential treatment, sharing with People that at times she would have to personally clean up or rearrange gym equipment for Maxwell.

Shah told the magazine that while she opted to keep her distance from the sex trafficker, she did have several conversations with her that illustrated Maxwell’s complete lack of remorse. Shah recalled that Maxwell “was just in complete disregard for” the victims of her and Epstein’s crimes, and that “there’s no remorse there.”

“She outrightly said it,” Shah said.

The U.S. government may have detained two Iranian women based on false information from well-known Islamophobe and bigot Laura Loomer.

ICE arrested green card holders Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter, Sarina Hosseiny, at their home outside of Los Angeles earlier this month, alleging that they were relatives of the deceased Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani. The arrest came less than a month after Loomer called for the deportation of a woman she claimed was Soleimani’s niece.

But a new report from Drop Site, which reviewed birth records, identification papers, a family will, and other personal documents of the two women, reveals there isn’t a single connection between the women and Soleimani, who was killed by a drone strike ordered by President Trump in 2020.

These documents corroborate comments from Qassem Soleimani’s youngest daughter, Zeinab Soleimani, who told Iranian media after the women’s arrest that the State Department’s allegations were “false” and that “the individuals arrested in the United States have no connection whatsoever to our family.” Another daughter, Narjes Soleimani, said in a separate statement, “To this day, no member of the Soleimani family, nor any relative of General Soleimani, has resided in the United States.”

The mother-daughter duo appear to have gotten Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s attention thanks to Loomer. In March, Loomer wrote that she was in touch with Rubio, claiming Soleimani’s niece was “making threats against the Trump administration, posting content sympathetic to the Iranian regime and Ayatollah, celebrating missiles being launched by Iran into Israel and other Middle Eastern countries, and posting other jihadi content while she lives in extreme luxury in Los Angeles.”

After ICE detained the pair, the State Department issued a statement claiming to have revoked the green cards of “the niece and grand niece of deceased Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Major General Qasem Soleimani” and accusing them of “living lavishly in the United States.”

But the accusations of the two living a lavish lifestyle are unfounded, according to Hosseiny’s friends, who say that the mother and daughter were behind on mortgage payments and are now relying on friends to help with legal costs over their ICE detention.

Hosseiny told Drop Site that her mother was not a pro-regime operative, having been active in protest movements in Iran in the 1990s and 2000s, even spending a week in prison.

“She’s kind of a passionate person overall, and she thought that she was going to come here and be able to talk freely when she’s been threatened and imprisoned in Iran for speaking about politics, and now she’s again in prison for speaking out about politics,” Hosseiny told Drop Site.

She said the pair left Iran under duress after she took part in a dance competition in Turkey at age 12, which was aired on a satellite channel illegal in Iran. She said she was expelled from two schools over it, and conservative family members with connections to the Iranian government beat and threatened her mother. At 14, she came to the U.S. on a student visa with her mother and the pair applied for and received asylum.

Both of them have been in the South Texas ICE Processing Center for over three weeks, and Hamideh hasn’t received regular treatment for her autoimmune hemolytic anemia, a blood disorder that requires regular transfusions. In one instance, Hosseiny told her friend Shawna Ruhland that her mother passed out and was left unconscious on the floor of the facility for 10 minutes. Ruhland has set up a donation page for the pair.

A State Department spokesperson said the government stood by its findings.

“While we do not comment on matters of classified intelligence, we remain certain of the Secretary’s determination,” Assistant Secretary Dylan Johnson told the news site. “If ‘Drop Site News’ is aware of anti-American green card holders with ties to terrorists presently in the United States, we would gladly investigate those individuals for possible termination of legal status and deportation.”

Loomer, who has a long history of attacking Islam and Muslims in addition to minorities generally, was also unrepentant, insisting that the two women are related to Soleimani but that they deserved to be deported regardless of whether they are.

“I want all Islamic immigrants deported,” she said. “I don’t support any of their asylum claims.”

Warner Bros. shareholders on Thursday approved the company’s $81 billion sale to Paramount, in a massive merger that will seriously alter the media landscape and give Trump-backed billionaire David Ellison even more control over multiple large outlets.

The deal will give Ellison’s Paramount Skydance—the parent company of CBS News, Paramount Pictures, BET, MTV, Nickelodeon, and more—ownership of HBO and HBO Max, Warner Bros.’ movie and TV studios, DC, CNN, TBS, TNT, HGTV and Discovery+.

David Ellison is the son of Larry Ellison, a Trump supporter, staunch Zionist, and billionaire founder of Oracle, which holds a significant stake in TikTok’s U.S. operations. The father-son duo have been outspoken about their desire to regulate media narratives via TikTok, CBS, and now, CNN.

The merger has been supported by both the Trump administration and the pro-Israel right for the duration of negotiations.

In November, President Trump and Larry Ellison met to discuss which CNN hosts to fire if Ellison acquired the media company in the merger. And just last month, after CNN reported the Trump administration underestimated how the war on Iran would impact the Strait of Hormuz, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth proclaimed, “the sooner David Ellison takes over, the better.”

Media literacy and awareness will become all the more crucial as the deal becomes official, and the Ellison influence spreads from TikTok and CBS to HBO, CNN, and even HGTV.

“A handful of Trump-aligned billionaires are trying to seize control of what you watch and charge you whatever price they want,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said of the merger in February. “With the cloud of corruption looming over Trump’s Department of Justice, it’ll be up to the American people to speak up and state attorneys general to enforce the law.”

This story has been updated.

The Trump family is not ashamed to bilk taxpayers in order to line their pockets.

Eric Trump appeared on Fox Business Thursday morning, openly celebrating a $24 million defense contract his company won—through business with his father’s administration.

The 42-year-old financier appeared on Mornings with Maria to promote Foundation Industries, a technology company building futuristic warfare tools such as a humanoid robot that the company has claimed could replace soldiers on the frontline. Trump, Foundation’s chief strategic adviser and a major financier, appeared alongside company CEO Sankaet Pathak.

“We better be winning this race in the United States of America,” the younger Trump told Fox, referring to the international robotics industry. “We’re the greatest economy in the world.”

“When you go up and you interact with these robots, and they fist bump you, they high five you, follow your commands,” he continued. “You bring in A.I. autonomy, it’s going to change industry, it’s going to change military application, it’s going to change hospitality. The uses are unlimited, and I think it’s a very beautiful thing.”

Trump did not get into the details on how his company secured the multimillion government contract. Time magazine reported in March that Foundation had won research contracts from the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force that totalled $24 million, and had also obtained an SBIR Phase 3 award, which recognized Foundation as an approved supplier for military procurement.

Practically no one in the Republican Party or the president’s entourage has spoken up in opposition to the contract, despite the obvious conflict of interest.

Yet it’s far from the first time that the Trump family has attempted to use their power and political prestige to milk money from the public. Donald Trump’s long list of election year hustles included launching a remarkably ugly sneaker and a limited edition, $60 God Bless the USA Bible co-promoted by “God Bless the USA” singer Lee Greenwood that was ultimately forced on Oklahoma public schools by its MAGA superintendent.

The populist leader also took the parent company of his social media platform Truth Social public and stamped his name on a new cryptocurrency platform, headed by his sons Eric and Don Jr., that even the president’s allies criticized as a “huge mistake.”

The grift has continued into his presidency. The president’s defunct campaign emailed an offer to his supporters last month, claiming that they could buy into a “National Security Briefing Membership” that would deliver “unfiltered updates” on the Iran war to their inboxes. And Trump’s memecoin advertised an opportunity for investors to actually meet him in person at Mar-a-Lago on April 25, offering a face-to-face connection with the president for individuals willing and able to spend millions of dollars on his cryptocurrency.

Eric and his wife Lara are also scheduled to accompany Trump on an official state trip to China next month, although a Trump Organization spokesperson said Eric would be there in a “personal capacity,” not a professional one.