US President Donald Trump speaks to the press before boarding Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC on June 24, 2025 Photo by MANDEL NGAN, AFP via Getty Images

William Kristol at The Bulwark: Don’t Stop Now! You’re Doing Great!

Donald Trump likes to hear himself talk….He became president because of his talent as a demagogue. And what makes a con man and a demagogue successful is the ability to talk persuasively—even if untruthfully.

So talking has served Trump well. He has confidence in his ability to talk his way to money and power—and he has confidence in his ability to talk his way out of a jam. He’s done it often enough.

He now thinks that he can do it again. So he talks about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal virtually every day. That includes yesterday, on Air Force One, when he walked over to talk to the press.

Trump was asked about his comment the day before in which he said he had cut ties with Epstein not, as he had previously maintained, because of a real estate dispute, but because Epstein “stole people who worked for me.”

Reporter: You’re saying Epstein poached two of your staffers?

Trump: . . . Yeah, he took people and because he took people, I said don’t do it anymore—they work for me. Beyond that, he took some others and once he did that, that was the end of him.

So Trump knew that Epstein “took” multiple “people” from Mar-a-Lago.

A reporter asked the logical next question: “Were some of the workers taken from you, were some of them young women?”

Trump began by answering, “Well I don’t want to say.” Perhaps Trump had an instinct he was getting into deeper waters. But he couldn’t resist continuing to talk. “Everyone knows the people who were taken.” So, he went on, “the answer is yes, they were.” And Trump provided a little more detail as he continued talking: “People were taken out of the spa . . .’”

Of course, it’s well known that when Ghislaine Maxwell approached Virginia Giuffre at Mar-a-Lago in 2000, the then 16-year old Giuffre was working at the spa. So a reporter asked: “Was one of the stolen people Virginia Giuffre?”

Trump kept on talking. “I think so. I think that was one of the people. He stole her.”

So: Trump knew that Epstein (and Maxwell) had “taken” or “stolen” Virginia Giuffre and “some others” from Mar-a-Lago. And, of course, Trump knew about Epstein’s proclivities for younger women at the time. Two years after Giuffre was “stolen” from him, he infamously told New York magazine that Epstein liked “beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” Or as he reportedly wrote in his now-famous 50th birthday note to Epstein a year after that, in 2003, “Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?”

Trump knew what Epstein was up to. He was fine with it. He didn’t care.

Read more at The Bulwark link.

Rex Huppke at USA Today: Trump says Epstein ‘stole’ Virginia Giuffre, a heartless and revealing admission | Opinion.

President Donald Trump has a new explanation for why he ended his long friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The story now involves Epstein stealing away Mar-a-Lago spa employees in Palm Beach, Florida, an apparently unforgivable sin.

A young Virginia Giuffre with Prince Andrew. Ghislaine Maxwell is in the background.

On July 29, aboard Air Force One, Trump was asked more about this employee stealing, and he flashed his true colors, instantly making the spiraling Epstein scandal measurably worse. Without a hint of empathy or compassion, the president said Epstein “stole” a teenage Mar-a-Lago spa worker named Virginia Giuffre.

Trump used that word: stole. As if Giuffre, who would become one of the most public of Epstein’s accusers, was a piece of property wrongly poached by the notorious sex trafficker.

She was 17 at the time she was lured away from Mar-a-Lago by Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell. Giuffre would later say she was “passed around like a platter of fruit” to rich, powerful men in Epstein’s circles.

And this is how Trump spoke about her when asked if she was one of the Mar-a-Lago workers drawn away by Epstein: “I think she worked at the spa. I think so. I think that was one of the people. He stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us … none whatsoever.”

“He stole her.” And, of course, she never said anything bad about Trump or his precious resort. That’s how this soulless person speaks about a teenager who wound up in a life of hell, trafficked like a piece of property. Treated, just as Trump describes her, like a thing. A thing that can be stolen.

Virginia Giuffre with her attorneys

A bit more from Huppke:

At no point in the unfolding Epstein scandal has Trump focused on the young victims of these heinous criminals. Trump’s own Justice Department, in a statement, “confirmed that Epstein harmed over one thousand victims” and that each “suffered unique trauma.”

The president has shown no concern for anything other than protecting himself.

Right before making his comment about Giuffre, Trump created a new reason why he broke off his lengthy friendship with Epstein, saying it was all about employee poaching. This is how he described it: “People that worked in the spa – I have a great spa, one of the best spas in the world at Mar-a-Lago – and people were taken out of the spa, hired by him, in other words, gone. And other people would come and complain, ‘This guy is taking people from the spa.’ ”

In talking about a convicted sex offender recruiting teenagers who would go on to be raped and abused, Trump is hailing the greatness of his resort’s spa. He is hanging his dislike of Epstein on the inconvenience it caused his company.

Of course Trump cares only about himself–that’s nothing new. Right now he and his thugs are working toward getting Epstein’s sidekick Ghislaine Maxwell out of jail so she can accuse Trump’s enemies of colluding with Epstein and claim that Trump had no role in her and Epstein’s horrific abuse of young girls.

Liz Dye at Public Notice: The conspiracy to free the world’s most notorious sex trafficker.

Ghislaine Maxwell has one card to play, and she’s playing it well. The convicted sex trafficker knows that there is just one way out of a cell in Tallahassee, and she is dancing hard for that golden key.

Maxwell needs a presidential pardon if she wants to see the outside of a prison before she’s 75, and so she’s hawking her wares all over DC, promising the White House and Congress that what she’s got will blow their minds.

Of course, this is the same person whose “willingness to brazenly lie under oath about her conduct, including some of the conduct charged in the Indictment, strongly suggest[s] her true motive has been and remains to avoid being held accountable for her crimes” — at least according to the Justice Department. So, YMMV….

Multiple women testified that they were groomed and exploited by Maxwell for Epstein’s gratification. And in 2022, a jury convicted her of sex trafficking a minor, transporting a minor across state lines for criminal sexual activity, and three conspiracy charges related to grooming and transporting minors. Maxwell has never shown an iota of remorse, and has consistently denied her role in the exploitation scheme.

All of which makes it exceptionally inappropriate, not to mention cruel, for the Justice Department to be cozying up to her and potentially rewarding her conduct.

Trump sent his former defense attorney to see what he could get from Maxwell.

On July 22, Deputy Attorney Todd Blanche tweeted that he was heading into the lion’s den: “Justice demands courage. For the first time, the Department of Justice is reaching out to Ghislaine Maxwell to ask: what do you know?”

It is not normal for prosecutors to keep the public updated on criminal investigations via social media. But Blanche’s boss, Attorney General Pam Bondi, congratulated herself on the righteousness of their cause.

Former Trump defense Attorney and current Assistant Attorney General Todd Blanche

“If Ghislane Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say,” she tweeted magnanimously. She did not explain why she and Blanche weren’t directing their inquiries to the victims themselves.

But posting through it was only the beginning of the wild impropriety.

Blanche reportedly spent nine hours huddled up with Maxwell and her lawyer David Oscar Markus and no one else. In normal circumstances, an experienced prosecutor would conduct a high-stakes interview in the presence of a law enforcement agent to act as a witness. If the interviewee later changes her story, someone needs to be able to testify about what was actually said during the proffer session — and that someone cannot be the lawyer.

Moreover, Blanche has minimal ability to assess Maxwell’s credibility in the context of the interview — something that’s critical when the subject is a prolific liar who was already indicted for perjury. The Maxwell and Epstein case files run to hundreds of thousands of pages, including hundreds of witness interviews. It’s not something he could familiarize himself with on the flight from Dulles to Tallahassee!

Read the rest of Dye’s post at Public Notice.

More evidence of Trump’s selfishness and total lack of empathy from Janna Brancolini at The Daily Beast: White House Officials Fear Epstein Fallout Will Slash Trump’s Crowd Sizes.

White House officials are worried about losing support from Trump’s MAGA base outraged about his handling of Jeffrey Epstein’s case—with an insider saying that the president’s all-important crowd sizes could be affected.

Americans give President Donald Trump low marks on his handling of the controversy, which has dominated headlines for weeks after the Department of Justice and FBI announced earlier this month that the evidence showed conclusively that the disgraced financier died by suicide and did not keep a “client list.”

The administration’s failure to produce new revelations in the case has infuriated many of the MAGA faithful, who have long believed Epstein was murdered in his cell while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking to protect his powerful associates.

A poll released this week by The Washington Post found just 43 percent of MAGA Republicans approved of how the administration has handled the issue, compared to 17 percent who disapproved and 39 percent who hadn’t formed an opinion.

White House officials are now worried that even a relatively smaller number of defectors could hurt Trump’s efforts to sell his equally unpopular budget bill to the public, The Washington Post reported. The president could begin holding rallies as soon as next month to tout the legislation, the newspaper reported.

Democrats are hoping to get their hands on the Epstein files from the DOJ.

Jordain Carney at Politico: Senate Democrats try to force DOJ’s hand on Epstein files.

Senate Democrats are using an obscure federal law in an attempt to force President Donald Trump’s Justice Department to hand over information related to Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump and Jeffrey Epstein at Mar-a-Lago in their friendly days

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democrats on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi requesting that DOJ turn over the “full and complete Epstein files.”

Democrats are invoking a rarely used provision that requires an executive branch agency to hand over requested information when it’s requested by at least five members of the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Schumer, top committee Democrat Gary Peters of Michigan and other panel Democrats are expected to hold a news conference Wednesday to discuss the letter and their latest effort to force the administration to release the files related to the late convicted sexual predator. The New York Times first reported the letter to Bondi.

Senate Democrats have been seeking to increase public pressure on the administration to try to release the files or hand over information to Congress. Schumer recently called for Trump officials to provide a closed-door briefing to senators on the Epstein files. This week he called for the FBI to conduct a counterintelligence threat assessment related to the files.

One more on the Epstein story from Dan Ruetenik at CBS News: CBS News investigation of Jeffrey Epstein jail video reveals new discrepancies.

In the weeks after Jeffrey Epstein died at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan, in August 2019, then-Attorney General William Barr said his “personal review” of surveillance footage clearly showed that no one entered the area where Epstein was housed, leading him to agree with the conclusion of the medical examiner that Epstein had died by suicide.

It’s a claim that’s been repeated by other top federal officials, including FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, who said on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” in May, “There’s video clear as day — he’s the only person in there and the only person coming out.”

But a CBS News analysis of the video the FBI made public earlier this month reveals that the recording doesn’t provide a clear view of the entrance to Epstein’s cell block — one of several contradictions between officials’ descriptions of the video and the video itself.

CBS News also digitally reconstructed the Special Housing Unit, or SHU, where Epstein was held, using diagrams and descriptions from the 2023 report on Epstein released by the Justice Department inspector general. The CBS News review found the video does little to provide evidence to support claims that were later made by federal officials. Additionally, CBS News has identified multiple inconsistencies between that report and the video that raise serious questions about the accuracy of witness statements and the thoroughness of the government’s investigation.

The review doesn’t refute the conclusion that Epstein died by suicide. But it raises questions about the strength and credibility of the government’s investigation, which appears to have drawn conclusions from the video that are not readily observable.

Read the whole article. It’s quite interesting.

Other News

Jennifer Bendery at HuffPost: Senate Confirms Emil Bove, Trump’s ‘Enforcer,’ To A Lifetime Federal Judgeship.

Bove was confirmed, 50-49. Every Democrat opposed him, along with two Republicans: Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine).

Emil Bove

Bove, 44, will now serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, which has jurisdiction over cases in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and the Virgin Islands.

Given his age, he will potentially sit on this court for decades.

Bove is easily President Donald Trump’s most alarming court pick in his second term. He was previously Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney and, until now, has been Trump’s so-called “enforcer” at the Justice Department, where he’s spent months carrying out an apparent campaign of retribution against Trump’s perceived political enemies.

As a senior DOJ official, Bove ordered the firings of federal prosecutors who worked on criminal cases stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. He ordered career prosecutors to dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams in a clear quid pro quo deal. He also called for the firings of senior FBI officials who were involved in the Jan. 6 probes.

Bove has faced damning allegations from former senior DOJ attorney Erez Reuveni, who claimed in a whistleblower disclosure that Bove had told DOJ attorneys to ignore court orders, mislead judges and tell them “fuck you” if they ruled against the department in a case involving the removal of hundreds of immigrants to a prison in El Salvador.