DOJ Watchdog Opens Floodgates With Release of Russia Probe Transcripts

Trump’s Department of Justice’s inspector general has handed Senate Republicans highly sensitive interview transcripts concerning its report on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

In response to mounting pressure from Republican Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the DOJ’s inspector general in March began releasing transcripts regarding the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, Bloomberg Law reported Friday.

The DOJ’s inspector general office warned senators about the “potential for a chilling effect on whistleblowing, and on the cooperation of witnesses,” should the contents of the interviews become public, but has no power to actually prevent the release of sensitive information.

The shocking disclosure comes as the Trump administration and its allies have made clear their interest in uncovering improprieties of the FBI’s original investigation into collusion.

In 2019, the DOJ’s inspector general found that the FBI’s investigation was dysfunctional and marred by serious errors—but was in no way a biased plot against Trump. Now Republicans are hoping to pore over the raw interviews in the hopes of cherry-picking pieces to malign attorneys and agents, possibly in order to get paid from a future “anti-weaponization” slush fund.

This latest move indicates the DOJ watchdog’s startling lack of independence in the face of the Trump administration’s political objectives. It also will likely discourage government employees and whistleblowers—who can be sure that their government is not committed to safeguarding their disclosures—from participating in future investigations.

President Donald Trump spoke at the Faith & Freedom Coalition policy conference in Washington, D.C. on Friday, but seemed hyperfixated on something that has nothing to do with neither faith nor freedom: New York City’s rent freeze.

“Mayor Mamdani—who came to the White House and seems like a nice guy—he said he was going to do this in his campaign. Nobody thought he was serious,” Trump said.

On Thursday, New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board passed a rent freeze, enabling Mayor Zohran Mamdani to make good on one of his key campaign promises. The freeze will go into effect in October, and will impact tenants living in the city’s nearly one million rent-stabilized apartments.

“First time ever, with a ruling, zero rent increases for landlords … despite the fact that energy, supplies, real estate taxes, and just about everything else has gone up,” Trump said. “They’re basically confiscating their property.”

Contrary to what Trump said, rent freezes in NYC have been enacted in the past, most recently for three years under Mayor Bill de Blasio. But he’s right that prices are rising, partially due to his bungled tariffs and the war in Iran.

“What the mayor doesn’t say is that these buildings will soon turn into ghettos and slums, and that everybody will continue leaving New York. And as this spreads throughout the country very much like an uncontrollable form of cancer, the country itself will be taken down,” the president said.

Later in the speech, Trump went on to attack Mamdani’s DSA allies who won the Democratic primary in New York this week. “They will close your churches in this country, big old communists, and they’re trying to. They will kill your people…. This is the greatest threat to our country since its founding, in my opinion, 250 years ago, what’s happening right now. It’s the greatest threat.”

“They’re animals, they’re animals. In many cases, they’re not smart, but in some cases they are.”

It’s obvious that Trump is nervous, but maybe Mamdani’s rent freeze is just hitting a little too close to home for the NYC slumlord. In the 90s, Trump worked with his father to scam tenants in rent-regulated buildings, raising their rents while funneling money to each other, as uncovered by the New York Times in 2018. And in the 1980s, he made life a living hell for his rent-regulated tenants, trying to force them out of their homes so that he could tear down the building and make condos.

Billionaire investor Leon Black received two subpoenas Friday after he refused to answer questions about NDAs he’d allegedly signed with women in Jeffrey Epstein’s orbit.

“I have never abused a woman. I have never been with an underage woman. I have never engaged in sex trafficking,” Black began in the House Oversight Committee during his closed-door testimony. “I have never paid Epstein for access to women. I was never blackmailed by Epstein. I was not involved with, and had no knowledge of, any of Epstein’s heinous conduct.”

The proceedings were derailed when House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer subpoenaed Black after he and his lawyer insisted he could not discuss the terms and contents of certain nondisclosure agreements, according to MSNOW.

Prior to the interview, Comer said he was “pretty confident” that Black had allegedly signed NDAs with survivors of Epstein’s abuse. The chair issued two subpoenas, one compelling Black to appear for a deposition on July 16, and another requiring him to produce the NDAs. Black left the interview after only an hour.

The billionaire former CEO of Apollo Global Management departed from his role in 2021 after an internal review discovered he’d made $158 million in payments to Epstein for financial advice between 2012 and 2017. In 2023, Black was accused of raping a 16-year-old at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse two decades earlier.

Black defended his choice to do business with Epstein after he became a convicted sex offender. “Five years after his conviction, I gave Epstein a second chance, as did many others. I wish I had not,” Black said. (Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008.)

Still, Black insisted he knew nothing of Epstein’s heinous sexual misconduct.

“I knew Jekyll. I didn’t know Hyde,” said Black.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson tried to fearmonger by … just reading the Democratic Socialists of America’s agenda out loud.

At the Faith & Freedom Coalition policy conference Friday, Johnson warned of a “dangerous trend” he’s observed: “Little mini Mamdanis popping up all over the country, running for Congress.”

Earlier this week, DSA-backed candidates saw huge wins in New York City, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s sway seems to be holding strong.

And apparently, nothing is scarier to Republicans than the DSA platform.

“I don’t know if you’ve seen this,” said Johnson.

“This is their platform, this is actually quotes from their platform that they published about a day or two ago.… They put this on paper! They’re saying the quiet things out loud.”

Johnson continued: “Abolish the Electoral College, replace the two-party system with a multi-party ‘democracy,’ expand the House of Representatives, implement proportional representation and ranked-choice voting in all elections,” Johnson said.

He continued, describing how the DSA would establish public ownership of large corporations, abolish ICE, and end sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran.

“End all military and economic aid to Israel, prosecute U.S. and Israeli leaders responsible for the genocide in Gaza,” Johnson continued.

It should be noted that while the DSA does support most of these points in its official platform, there is a debate about others, like ranked-choice voting and the merits of abolishing the Senate. But all in all, Johnson appears to be trying to fearmonger by threatening the American people with a good time.

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the Department of Justice admitted to breaking the law by failing to release the majority of its files on Jeffrey Epstein to the public, giving acting Attorney General Todd Blanche a week to release more information.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan wrote in his opinion that Blanche failed to address allegations from journalist Katie Phang that the Trump administration failed to release the files in full. Phang sued the DOJ in April over a “brazen, shocking, and ongoing violation” of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Congress passed last year.

“The Attorney General does not respond substantively to any of these arguments,” Sullivan said in his ruling. “The Attorney General has conceded that he is in violation of the Act.”

Sullivan issued a preliminary injunction giving Blanche one week to release information redacted from the files, including names, or provide detailed reasons for the redactions. Some of the files in question include the FBI’s notes from interviews with a woman who accused President Trump of assaulting her in the 1980s as a 13-year-old.

The files covered by the injunction also include email exchanges with Epstein concerning an alleged “torture video” and sex acts with minors; the names of co-defendants from a draft indictment; the identities of Epstein’s potential co-conspirators and DOJ employees who sent messages about them; and information in “foreign languages” that the DOJ said it couldn’t translate and redact.

The DOJ has said in the past that its unreleased Epstein files were not verified, and contained “unfounded and false” claims about Trump. But the law passed by Congress leaves few exceptions, and now Blanche, Trump’s former personal attorney, will have to answer for why some of the files remain hidden.

“The government ignored its own law and blew off a judge’s order, all for the sake of protecting the very powerful and the very rich,” said Brendan Ballou, Katie Phang’s attorney, to Politico. “Doing so had consequences, and now the public will finally get transparency around Jeffrey Epstein and his network.”