Politics

Note: These were collected by someone else and are what's missing from the Epstein files. They were previously released.

In the files, you can see that there was a witness willing to testify, so I took out "unsubstantiated" in the headline:

• YouTube video of Katie Johnson’s testimony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnib-OORRRod

• Full court docket: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4154484/katie-johnson-v-donald-j-trump/

• PDF of the initial complaint (WARNING very graphic): https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4154484/1/katie-johnson-v-donald-j-trump/

Three memos that describe four interviews conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2019 contain explicit but unsubstantiated claims that Donald Trump sexually abused a woman when she was a minor in the early 1980s with the assistance of Jeffrey Epstein, according to a Guardian review of those documents.

The Department of Justice did not release those records when it uploaded millions of pages of files related to Epstein beginning in December. The existence of the missing documents was first reported by independent journalist Roger Sollenberger and subsequently confirmed by NPR, causing outrage in Washington and sparking an investigation from congressional Democrats.

The Guardian obtained the missing FBI form 302 reports, which memorialize 25 pages of agents’ notes from the four interviews conducted in the summer and fall of 2019. The notes describe how the woman came forward to tell agents she recognized Epstein from a photo sent by a childhood friend. Only the first session, in which she did not name Trump, made it into the public release. The Guardian has chosen not to publish the woman’s name.

A new lawsuit alleges that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is using artificial intelligence to identify bystanders who are recording federal immigration enforcement operations and then adding those people to a secret database.

Two women from Maine filed the lawsuit and claim that federal agents threatened to add them to a database of domestic terrorists because they were legally recording the agents.

In a video included in the lawsuit, a woman behind the camera tells a federal immigration agent that "it's not illegal to record" and questions why he is apparently documenting her information. The agent responds by saying "we have a nice little database. And now you're considered a domestic terrorist, so have fun with that."

The Trump administration is slowly dismantling the federal disaster management system that protects the nation from chemical catastrophes, such as fires and explosions at high-risk facilities.

The US Environmental Protection Agency’s Response Management Program (RMP) requires more than 12,500 high-risk facilities to develop protocols to prevent catastrophes, or limit fallout, and was largely designed to protect workers, first responders, and fence-line communities.

In 2024, the Biden administration finalized a rule 12 years in the making that meaningfully strengthened protections. However, industry in early 2025 asked the incoming Donald Trump EPA to undo it because, chemical companies claim, its provisions are too expensive to implement.

The Trump EPA is now moving to kill most of the 2024 rules after it eliminated a public website that informs communities and first responders which chemicals are in use at facilities. The White House has also targeted the Chemical Safety Board, which reviews accidents and develops actions to avoid a repeat.

The picture was located by “jmail,” a site run by two tech workers who have created a searchable version of Epstein’s Gmail inbox by downloading all of the latest releases.

The DOJ’s explanation for its removal was particularly shameless, given that more than 100 explicit photos of Epstein’s victims were accidentally uploaded to the portal before being removed and redacted.

The photo, which was found in a downloaded cache of Epstein files but was later removed from the DOJ’s dedicated site, appears to show Epstein and Lutnick walking on Little St. James, the Caribbean island where many of Epstein’s crimes took place.

It also shows three other unidentified men, all wearing baggy shorts and T-shirts or button-down shirts, while Epstein is dressed in a white T-shirt and pants.

In a statement to the Daily Beast, a DOJ official said the image was “part of a batch of files that had been flagged for nudity.”

On Thursday, a three-judge panel at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a lower court’s preliminary injunction, which briefly kept the administration from waiving collective bargaining rights for employees at more than 20 agencies.

The appeals court panel had already stayed the lower court’s preliminary injunction last summer, but fully invalidated it in its ruling Thursday.

The Trump administration is free, for now, to continue rescinding collective bargaining agreements with most unions that represent federal employees.

Airport security screeners across the U.S. received a fraction of their usual pay on Friday as the partial government shutdown drags on, increasing the risk that more officers will call in sick to take second jobs, or even quit.

Funding for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security lapsed on February 13 after Congress failed to reach a deal on immigration enforcement reforms demanded by Democrats. That halted funding for the operation of several government agencies, including the Transportation Security Administration.

Their termination on Wednesday, confirmed by the BBC's media partner CBS News, was announced shortly after FBI director Kash Patel told Reuters that federal agents subpoenaed his phone records when he was a private citizen during the documents probe.

Susie Wiles, now White House chief of staff, also had her phone records subpoenaed when she was a private citizen as part of the investigation.

Patel did not offer any evidence of wrongdoing by the FBI staffers who were fired.

After Trump left the White House in 2021, Special Counsel Jack Smith led two federal investigations into now-President Trump. One case was focused on whether Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election results. The other involved classified documents Trump brought back to his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida and his efforts to obstruct the US Department of Justice from later retrieving them

Bucher worked for Bell at two firms Bell had cofounded: Runa Capital and Acronis. In 2022, Bell was one of a handful of Russian expats living in the US who were tracked by the US government for allegedly attempting to export US tech developments to Russia. The government did not find evidence of a security breach, but it did bar Acronis from sensitive government contracts last year. (Bell recently told the Washington Post that he never worked for Epstein, and that he advised others against doing business with him; he has also disavowed his Russian connections.)

According to reporting by the Washington Post, early fundraising materials for Day One Ventures show Bucher boasting of her connections to Russian billionaires Alexander Mamut and Vladimir Yevtushenkov, though she later denied writing the fundraising materials and has said she never took money from Russian oligarchs. She has said she left the pro-Putin youth movement Nashi in 2010, and she recently posted on X that was branded a traitor by Russian state media in 2017. “I gave up my Russian passport years ago, can’t return without risking my freedom, and have publicly opposed the Putin regime,” she wrote. Yet sleuths on X have found evidence that those statements may not be true. Reporting by Russian-British investigative journalist Maria Pevchikh shows Bucher speaking at a pro-Putin event in 2019, years after she claimed to have disavowed him. According to records obtained by Pevchikh, she still holds a valid Russian passport, though she told the Washington Post in 2022, “I deeply regret ever joining Nashi and supporting Putin and his government.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmus.org/post/20432276

California Attorney General Rob Bonta last night filed a request for a preliminary injunction in California’s existing case against Amazon for price fixing. Attorney General Bonta’s 2022 lawsuit alleged that the company stifled competition and caused increased prices across California through its anticompetitive policies in order to avoid competing on price with other retailers. New evidence paints a clearer and more shocking picture. The motion for a preliminary injunction comes after a robust discovery process where California uncovered evidence of countless interactions in which Amazon, vendors, and Amazon’s competitors agree to increase and fix the prices of products on other retail websites to bolster Amazon’s profits. Time and again, across years and product categories, Amazon has reached out to its vendors and instructed them to increase retail prices on competitors’ websites, threatening dire consequences if vendors do not comply. Vendors, bullied by Amazon’s overwhelming bargaining leverage and fearing punishment, comply — agreeing to raise prices on competitors’ websites (often with the awareness and cooperation of the competing retailer), or to remove products from competing websites altogether. Amazon’s goal is to insulate itself from price competition by preventing lower retail prices in the market at the expense of American consumers who are already struggling with a crisis of affordability.

The Los Angeles Board of Education, before holding a closed-door emergency meeting Thursday to discuss the employment of school superintendent Alberto Carvalho, whose L.A. home and district office were raided by the FBI on Wednesday, heard from angry parents who blamed the board for inaction and causing a national “embarrassment.”

The Los Angeles district inked a $6 million contract with AllHere shortly before it collapsed. Carvalho heavily promoted the artificial-intelligence chatbot named Ed, which was to help develop individualized learning plans for students, the L.A. Times reported.

The Miami-Dade Public School System also selected AllHere for a $1.8 million three-year deal months after Carvalho left for L.A. in February 2022. A Miami-Dade school district spokesperson said nothing came from the contract.

Controversy has engulfed Wyoming’s state legislature after a conservative activist was photographed handing checks to Republican lawmakers on the state house floor, in an incident that has highlighted intra-conservative divisions and the role of money in the Cowboy state’s politics.

The political storm started on 9 February, when Karlee Provenza, a Democratic lawmaker, took a photo showing Rebecca Bextel, a conservative activist and committeewoman for the Teton county Republican party, handing a check to Darin McCann, a Republican representative, on the legislative floor. Marlene Brady, another Republican representative, stands in the photo’s background, a similar piece of paper pinched between her fingers.

“You have a person from the richest county in the country coming down to Cheyenne to hand out checks on the house floor,” Provenza said. “I have never seen something so egregious.”

“You have compelled me to testify, fully aware that I have no knowledge that would assist your investigation, in order to distract attention from President Trump’s actions and to cover them up despite legitimate calls for answers,” she said, according to remarks she shared during the closed-door testimony.

“If the majority was serious, it would not waste time on fishing expeditions. There is too much that needs to be done. What is being held back? Who is being protected? And why the cover-up?”

The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled against a private prison company facing a lawsuit alleging immigration detainees were forced to work and paid only $1 a day in Colorado.

The unanimous ruling is a procedural defeat for the GEO Group, but it's not a final decision. The company is fighting a lawsuit from 2014 alleging detainees in Aurora had to perform unpaid janitorial work and other jobs for little pay to supplement meager meals.

GEO defended its practices and argued that the case should be tossed out because it's immune from lawsuits as a government contractor.

After a judge disagreed, the company asked the Supreme Court to allow it to quickly appeal the ruling. But the justices refused.

Uline is privately held but is estimated to generate $8bn in revenues per year, and employs about 9,000 people.

“Billionaires fund the crackdown, then exploit the very people targeted by it –because they think money shields them from consequences,” Zamarripa wrote on a post of Facebook. “Wisconsin needs transparency, a real investigation, and accountability that applies to everyone.”

Uline declined to comment on Zamarripa’s remarks. The company has previously declined to comment on detailed questions about the shuttle program, which sources with knowledge of the matter said was abruptly halted in late 2024, when the Guardian first reported on the practice.

“Now we learn that workers in Pleasant Prairie say Mexican employees were pushed into dangerous, exhausting conditions and punished for speaking up – all while fueling Uline’s enormous wealth,” Zamarripa wrote.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation argued the president hadn't followed proper procedure in tearing down the East Wing of the White House and soliciting private donations to fund the $300-million ballroom. In his opinion Leon wrote that he wasn't making a determination on the merits because of the way the suit had been framed. He concluded, saying that if the group were to amend its complaint "the Court will expeditiously consider it and, if viable, address the merits of the novel and weighty issues presented."

The group responded with disappointment, but said they would continue pushing to halt construction.

"While we are disappointed that the Court did not issue the preliminary injunction, we were pleased that Judge Leon ruled that the National Trust has standing to bring this lawsuit, as we have asserted from the start," Carol Quillen, president and CEO of the National Trust, said in a statement. "We are also pleased that he encouraged us to amend our complaint—specifically, to assert that the President has acted beyond his statutory authority—and we plan to do so promptly."

cross-posted from: https://pawb.social/post/40206312

A bombshell report revealed Monday that under the first Trump administration, the FBI appeared to have issued a “stand down” order to New York Police Department investigators regarding their criminal probe into Jeffrey Epstein, an order that came just five days after the disgraced financier’s arrest in 2019.

The existence of the supposed directive was revealed by law professor and legal scholar Ryan Goodman, who found it buried within the Justice Department's recent release of around 3.5 million files on Epstein.

“The directive applied to NYPD’s Special Victims Unit – the group specially trained and equipped to handle sex crimes and child abuse cases,” Goodman wrote in a report published Monday in Just Security, a non-partisan law and policy journal.

The Trump administration is authorizing American companies to resell Venezuelan oil to Cuba’s private sector at a time the administration is blocking oil supplies from Venezuela to the Cuban government.

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control published new guidance on Wednesday, telling U.S. companies that it would view favorably applications for licenses seeking authorization for the resale of Venezuelan-origin oil for use in Cuba.

“This favorable licensing policy is directed towards transactions that support the Cuban people, including the Cuban private sector (e.g., exports for commercial and humanitarian use in Cuba),” the office said.

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston proposed a contract with a new provider of license plate-reading cameras on Tuesday, saying it will come with added precautions as the city ends its controversial arrangement with Flock Safety.

After facing months of public criticism over the city’s relationship with Flock, the mayor’s office is proposing a new contract with Axon, which already provides other technology for the Denver Police Department.

Over the past year, hundreds of Denverites had criticized Johnston for repeatedly extending the city’s contract with Flock despite reports that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had used Flock’s database to aid in President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation campaign.

The company has also faced scrutiny of its nationwide camera system, which many critics say is essentially a mass-surveillance network ripe for abuse.

A familiar pattern developed during the federal government’s massive deportation operation in Minnesota: Despite showing documents proving active immigration cases, pending visas, or even US citizenship, residents were arrested and detained for days or weeks.

But many who were later set free are now encountering a new challenge: ICE isn’t giving back their immigration documents.

Again and again, according to 10 immigration lawyers interviewed for this story, immigrants in Minnesota have been released from detention centers without the work permits, Social Security cards, licenses, and other documents that prove their status.

Some files have not been made public despite a law mandating their release. These include what appears to be more than 50 pages of FBI interviews, and notes from conversations with a woman who accused Trump of sexual abuse decades ago when she was a minor.

NPR reviewed multiple sets of unique serial numbers appearing before and after the pages in question, stamped onto documents in the Epstein files database, FBI case records, emails and discovery document logs in the latest tranche of documents published at the end of January. NPR's investigation found dozens of pages that appear to be catalogued by the Justice Department but not shared publicly.

The Justice Department declined to answer NPR's questions on the record about these specific files, what's in them, and why they are not published. After publication, the Justice Department reached out to NPR, taking issue with how its responses to questions were framed. Justice Department spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre reiterated DOJ's stance that any documents not published are because they are privileged, duplicates or relate to an ongoing federal investigation.

A number of unions and pro-tax groups claim many of those names are fraudulent and are asking the state attorney general to investigate. Names on the "con" list include leaders of unions that heavily support the tax, or even Democratic state Sen. Victoria Hunt, who is one of the co-sponsors.

“Somebody had signed in without my permission, on my behalf,” Hunt said in a press conference Monday morning.

A number of the names signed in are also duplicates, the campaign for the tax alleged in a letter addressed to Attorney General Nick Brown and Washington state House Clerk Bernard Dean.

Summers has been on leave from the school since November, and will not be returning to the university before his final day, according to the New York Times.

The economist and former Treasury Secretary under the Clinton administration has also resigned from his role as co-director of the Mossava-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, according to a Harvard spokesperson.

Jason Newton, the spokesperson, confirmed to the Times that Summers' resignation comes “in connection with the ongoing review by the University of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein that were recently released by the government.”

The news of Summers' resignation was first reported in The Harvard Crimson, the school's newspaper.

Federal prosecutors in Washington have dropped their case against six Democratic lawmakers who released a video urging military servicemembers to refuse illegal orders.

The decision - confirmed by the BBC's media partner CBS News - follows US Attorney Jeanine Pirro's office failing to secure a grand jury indictment against the six military and intelligence veterans.

The justice department could still pursue the case in a different district, but there were no signs on Tuesday that it intended to do so. Pirro's office had no comment.

In a letter to the attorney general, Pam Bondi, Raskin sought a briefing on the role of Trump-connected lobbyists in Slater’s removal, after she tried to block a $14bn merger between Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Juniper Networks, a cloud-computing and software company.

“With the departure of AAG Slater, it appears there are no longer any principled antitrust experts left to guard the antitrust division from this cascade of corruption,” the letter said. “The leadership vacuum is occurring just as the antitrust division is handling historic cases.”

Slater was pushed out after her relationship with Bondi and JD Vance – once her most powerful ally until he grew weary of her invoking his name at the justice department– steadily deteriorated off the back of the Hewlett Packard Enterprise case, the Guardian has previously reported.

Among other things, Slater had told Bondi that the US intelligence community never raised national security concerns about stopping the deal. But her claim was contradicted by John Ratcliffe, the CIA director who questioned why he had not been consulted.