The Epstein Class. A group Chump's protecting. His friends. Remember the ones that would be hurt by the release of the Epstein files? He yelled that at Marjorie Taylor Greene, remember? Christopher Lamb (CNN) reports:
Steve Bannon, a former White House adviser to US President Donald Trump, discussed opposition strategies with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein against Pope Francis, with Bannon saying he hoped to “take down” the pontiff, according to newly released files from the US Department of Justice.
Messages sent between the pair in 2019, released in the massive document dump last month, reveal Bannon courted the late financier in his attempts to undermine the former pontiff after leaving the first Trump administration.
Bannon had been highly critical of Francis whom he saw as an opponent to his “sovereigntist” vision, a brand of nationalist populism which swept through Europe in 2018 and 2019. The released documents from the DOJ appear to show that Epstein had been helping Bannon to build his movement.
“Will take down (Pope) Francis,” Bannon wrote to Epstein in June 2019. “The Clintons, Xi, Francis, EU – come on brother.”
Pope Francis was the people's pope so it's only natural that a disgusting creep like Steve Bannon would want to take him "down." The Epstein Class is being made uncomfortable and a few are having to find the exit door. Claire Zillman (FORBES) notes:
On Thursday, Goldman Sachs said general counsel Kathryn Ruemmler will leave the bank in June after the documents showed she stayed in close contact with Epstein until 2019, at one point calling him “Uncle Jeffrey” as she thanked him for high-end gifts. And on Friday, Dubai-based logistics group DP World named a new chair and new CEO, signaling the departure of Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem whose emails with Epstein included references to sexual experiences. Both ousters followed earlier resignations in the U.K. public sector, namely those of former U.S. ambassador Peter Mandelson from the House of Lords and Morgan McSweeney, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s chief of staff who’d advised on Mandelson’s appointment.
And Charisma Madarang (ROLLING STONE) notes another out the door:
Following an exodus of talent who have left the Wasserman Group talent agency after emails between founder Casey Wasserman and Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell were revealed in the Justice Department's latest tranche of documents, pressure for the founder to step down came to a boiling point. On Friday, Wasserman announced that he was selling the company as he had become a "distraction" to the business he founded 24 years ago.
The latest releases also placed a shadow over the previous accounts given by allies of President Trump — from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to Elon Musk — regarding their dealings with Epstein.
There is no suggestion of criminality around either Lutnick or Musk, but the latest batch of emails contradicted Lutnick’s earlier assertions of when he had cut off contact with Epstein and called into question Musk’s previously emphatic insistence that he “refused” to visit the disgraced financier’s Caribbean island.
In one newly released email, the entrepreneur asks Epstein which day or night might feature the wildest party on the island. It’s unclear if Musk actually visited.
Beyond all of that, there is the broader fear and anger raised by the nature of the Epstein story.
Specifically, it stokes the sense of a wealthy and powerful elite hovering above the rest of society, forming a chummy circle of mutual protection, and remaining out of reach of the laws and ethical standards to which everyone else is subject.
At a time when anti-elitist populism is already one of the strongest animating political forces in the United States — and in many other parts of the world — the Epstein story is rocket fuel.
Donald Chump is a pedo protector and he's got a lot of people he's protecting. David McAfee (RAW STORY) notes:
A Donald Trump insider has been revealed to have been in "regular contact" with the late child sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein, including in one email that says "miss u," according to the latest DOJ release.
CBS News reported on the Epstein files release on Saturday in an article called, "Trump insider Tom Barrack kept in regular contact with Jeffrey Epstein for years, files show." Barrack is also an administration ambassador to Turkey.
"President
Trump's longtime confidant Thomas Barrack, now serving as U.S.
ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria, was in regular, close
contact with Jeffrey Epstein for years after Epstein's 2008 conviction
for soliciting a minor, a CBS News analysis of over 100 texts and email
exchanges from the newly released Justice Department documents shows,"
according to CBS.
The outlet further reported, "The correspondence places Barrack, a globe-trotting billionaire, among a circle of wealthy and influential figures who maintained social contact with Epstein even as his criminal history became widely known. Their relationship continued even after Barrack became a prolific fundraiser for Mr. Trump's 2016 campaign, and later, led his inaugural committee and became a frequent presence in the White House."
And Alexander Willis (RAW STORY) reports on a document in the recent release of Epstein files:
According to an FBI document released by the DOJ, the agency received a tip in June of 2021 from an individual whose name has been redacted, but is described as an alleged “victim,” a former member of the Sinaloa Cartel, and a close confidant of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
According
to the document, the individual was formally interviewed by an FBI
agent, and accused Trump of being aware of and having funded “underage
sex parties at the Donald Trump Golf course.”
That individual went on to claim that they had “recordings of Trump, Epstein and Maxwell discussing marketing strategies for high profile sex parties,” according to the FBI official who drafted the document, their name also redacted. The individual claimed that in one of the recordings, Trump can be heard stating “he was aware of the underage sex parties.”
Chump is a disgrace. More and more Americans are grasping that. And it's not just his (mis)handling of the Epstein files, it's so much more. Including ICE. The liars of ICE never stop lying. Mitch Smith and Hamed Aleaziz (NEW YORK TIMES) report:
When an immigration agent shot Julio C. Sosa-Celis in the leg last month in Minneapolis, touching off hours of tense protests, the Trump administration rushed to sell a version of events that demonized the wounded man and defended the agent.
About two hours after the gunfire, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman claimed that three people had attacked an agent with a broom and snow shovel. She said the agent “fired a defensive shot to defend his life” as he was “being ambushed.” The next day, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, accused the men of trying to kill the agent.
But the federal government’s account soon shifted. And by Friday, it had fully unraveled.
When assault charges were filed days after the shooting against Mr. Sosa-Celis and one of the other men, Alfredo A. Aljorna, officials changed their narrative, saying it was not three people who attacked the agent, but two. Several other details revealed in court records also differed from the original account.
Then on Thursday, the top federal prosecutor in Minnesota asked a judge to drop the case, saying that “newly discovered evidence in this matter is materially inconsistent with the allegations.” On Friday, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Todd Lyons, said two agents had been placed on leave for providing accounts that appeared to conflict with video footage of what happened. Those agents, he said, could eventually face termination and prosecution.
[. . .]
The collapse of the government’s narrative, which came just as the administration was ending its more than two-month surge of immigration agents to Minnesota, was the latest instance of the Department of Homeland Security providing an account of a shooting that later proved questionable or outright wrong. For many, especially those already skeptical of the Trump administration’s deportation agenda, the repeated emergence of evidence that undermines official accounts has cast doubt on almost anything the government says about immigration enforcement.
In response to this news, Malcolm Ferguson (THE NEW REPUBLIC) notes:
This is absolutely egregious. Two men were accosted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and one took a bullet to the leg. Then the federal government called them murderers and hit them with heavy charges, all for ICE’s own head to admit that his agents appear to have been lying under oath—a crime that this administration doesn’t seem to take very seriously.
This shooting happened one week after Renee Good was killed, and just over a week before Alex Pretti was killed. The Trump administration lied to us about both of those events, as well. Only time will tell just how many more of these ICE shootings were offensive rather than defensive.
In other immigration news, Pranav Baskar and Hamed Aleaziz (NEW YORK TIMES) report:
In a secret deportation arrangement, the Trump administration flew nine people, nearly all of whom had been granted U.S. court protections from being sent back to their home countries, to the African nation of Cameroon in January.
None of them are from Cameroon, according to government documents obtained by The New York Times and lawyers for the deportees, and the United States has not made any public deal with Cameroon to accept deportees who hail from other nations.
Several of the men and women deported — whose cases have not been previously reported — told The Times they did not know they were being sent to Cameroon until they were handcuffed and chained on a Department of Homeland Security flight leaving Alexandria, La., on Jan. 14.
They ignored the court rulings. They broke the law. The US government broke the law. Their disdain for the courts and the law is expressed both in their ignoring of rulings and in their constant lying to the courts. This does not make them reputable to the courts they appear in front of. Katie Herchenroeder (MOTHER JONES) notes:
Hundreds of judges across the nation have ruled over 4,400 times that President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement arm is detaining people unlawfully, according to a new Reuters review of court documents. And that’s just since October.
The Trump administration’s immense increase in detainments rests, in part, on their decision to detain people while their immigration cases are moving through the system—a departure from previous administrations’ interpretation of immigration law. This has led to a steep increase in immigrants petitioning the courts to be released, as Reuters reports, and the thousands of rulings finding that these prolonged detainments were unlawful.
[. . .]
Just last week, a judge appointed by George W. Bush ordered the release of a Venezuelan detainee. “It is appalling that the Government insists that this Court should redefine or completely disregard the current law as it is clearly written,” wrote US District Judge Thomas Johnston of West Virginia.
Meanwhile, Homeland Security is without funding for now. At THE AMERICAN PROSPECT, Robert Kuttner explains how House Republicans refused to compromise with Democrats so the funding has expired and he explains what can happen next.
The following sites updated:
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Talking Again with Jon Gruber19 hours ago
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Idiot of the Week1 day ago
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