Friday, February 20, 2026

The Snapshot

Friday, February 20, 2026.  Chump has questions still to answer regarding The Epstein Files, his new 'Board of Peace' got off to an underwhelming start, and much more. 


Wednesday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee went to Ohio where they took a deposition from billionaire Les Wexner who funded pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.  




Wexner, 88, has said he met Epstein in the mid-1980s and eventually hired him to manage his money. He also has said he cut ties with Epstein in 2007, after Epstein was accused of sexually abusing minors in Florida. Around that time, Wexner wrote in a letter issued by his foundation in 2019, “we discovered that he had misappropriated vast sums of money from me and my family.”

Wexner also has denied any knowledge of an allegation made by Epstein survivor Maria Farmer, who said in a 2020 lawsuit against the Epstein estate that she was assaulted in 1996 by Epstein at an Ohio property “owned and secured” by Wexner and his wife, Abigail Wexner.

“I was naïve, foolish, and gullible to put any trust in Jeffrey Epstein,” Wexner said in a statement submitted to the House Oversight Committee at his deposition Wednesday. “He was a con man. And while I was conned, I have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide. I completely and irrevocably cut ties with Epstein nearly twenty years ago when I learned that he was an abuser, a crook, and a liar. And, let me be crystal clear: I never witnessed nor had any knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activity. I was never a participant nor coconspirator in any of Epstein’s illegal activities.”

Scrutiny of Wexner’s relationship with Epstein has intensified in the months since Congress required that the Justice Department release Epstein-related files. Wexner was called an Epstein co-conspirator in a 2019 FBI document released last week and mentioned as a possible co-conspirator in a previously released FBI email from that same year. A Wexner legal representative has said that Wexner had been informed in 2019 by an assistant U.S. attorney that he was “neither a co-conspirator nor target in any respect.”

As new details have emerged, politicians across the state have been under pressure to rid their campaigns of the money Wexner gave them.


Last night on MS NOW's THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O'DONNELL, US House Rep Robert Garcia spoke about the testimony Wexner offered. 





Lawrence O'Donnell:  What was your assessment of his testimony?

US House Rep Robert Garcia:  I mean, look, Wexner is just not credible and he wasn't credible during his testimony.  I think it is so outrageous.  And I'm not sure if Wexner thinks he can just pull a, that  fast one on the committee and the American people, but to say that he was not friendly -- or not a friend of Epstein's is such a blatant lie.  Let's be really clear, Wexner gave Epstein hundreds and hundreds of of millions of dollars,  of his own fortune, Wexner gave Epstein the co-presidency of the community he founded in Ohio, he provided him the power over his entire estate, he gave him payments to then pay gynecologists for God knows what.  They were friendly.  He went to the island, he went to his properties.  He wrote him birthday notes, they talked on the phone, they saw each other at events.  But they were not friends?  Let's be really clear here, Wexner is the reason that there's an Epstein Island, that there's an Epstein plane, that there was enough fortunes and wealth to abuse and rape and terrorize women and children across this country and around the world.  That is in  a large part because of Wexner's fortune.  And Wexner has the audacity to sit there and tell us that he wasn't friends with Jeffrey Epstein?  It's outrageous, it's unconscionable and I think that the American public should be as furious as we are at seeing what's happening right now in this country.  We are seeing the most powerful  billionaires, the most powerful people try to cover up this enormous, horrific sex trafficking ring -- probably the largest in the modern era.  And the abuse of these women and  these children?  They deserve justice.  And Mr. Wexner is an enormous part of why this harm happened to so many people





Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) cast doubt on the credibility of billionaire Les Wexner, who testified before the House Oversight Committee Wednesday about his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. 

Ansari, a member of the committee, told host Kaitlan Collins on CNN’s “The Source” that she went into the deposition with an “earnest attempt to ask questions and was hoping to get as many substantive answers as possible” from Wexner. 

Epstein was Wexner’s financial manager for roughly two decades, although the businessman denied knowledge of the disgraced financier’s crimes on Wednesday. The founder of Bath and Body Works and former CEO of Victoria’s Secret told the panel that Epstein lived a “double life,” and he regretted knowing the “clever, diabolical … master manipulator.”

The Arizona Democrat said it was “hard to believe him” based on the questions asked and the responses given.


Morgan Trau (OHIO CAPITAL JOURNAL) notes of the hearing:

Their investigation has shown that Wexner funded much of Epstein’s life — including paying him $1 billion.

Epstein lived in his home, used his yachts and planes, U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Arizona, said. But Wexner says he doesn’t remember.

“It is almost inconceivable to be missing the amounts of money that are missing, and somehow Mr. Wexner has no idea,” U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, said.

In his letter, Wexner claimed to be duped by his former confidant.

“I was naïve, foolish, and gullible to put any trust in Jeffrey Epstein,” Wexner wrote. “He was a con man. And while I was conned, I have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide. I completely and irrevocably cut ties with Epstein nearly twenty years ago when I learned that he was an abuser, a crook, and a liar.”

One survivor, however, said that she was assaulted at Wexner’s home, U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Massachusettes, said.

“I want the American people, but more specifically, I want the survivors and anyone who is struggling right now to know that we see you, we feel you, and we are fighting for you,” Crockett said. “We will not stop.”


There are also questions about Donald Chump as a result of The Epstein Files.  Philip Wang (TIME MAGAZINE) notes:

Rep. Maxwell Frost told TIME that multiple witness statements in the files refute Trump’s claim that he expelled the convicted sex offender from the Palm Beach club in 2007. Frost said he plans to disclose further details in a speech on the House floor in the coming weeks, where members of Congress are shielded from defamation lawsuits under the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause.

“I read many documents that completely refute what Donald Trump has said in terms of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein,” Frost said, adding that there was a “specific document” in the files containing multiple witness accounts that contradict the President’s version of events.

Trump said in 2025 that he banned Epstein after learning the financier had recruited young female spa workers away from Mar-a-Lago. But The New York Times previously reported that Trump told associates he removed Epstein for a different reason—that Epstein had behaved inappropriately toward the teenage daughter of a club member.

Frost also said he reviewed material he believes undermines statements made by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick about his relationship with Epstein.

“This is obviously the administration engaged in some sort of cover up, because we said we don't want any redactions unless it's victim names,” he said during a phone interview from Orlando, Florida. “That's it, victim names—not to protect friends of Donald Trump, not to protect billionaires and elites in this country, the names of victims.”



The Department of Justice spoke four separate times to a woman who credibly accused Donald Trump of having sex with a minor he met through Jeffrey Epstein—but most accusations against the president appear to have been removed from the government’s documents on the alleged sex trafficker.
A 21-page slideshow buried in the massive trove of Epstein-related documents included allegations that sometime between 1983 and 1985, Trump forced a woman to give him oral sex when she was in her early teens. When the woman bit down on Trump’s exposed penis, he allegedly punched her in the head and kicked her out. That same woman told the DOJ that Epstein had introduced her to Trump in 1984.

Yet last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi insisted that there was “no evidence” that Trump had committed any crime—adding to the growing pile of denials from Trump officials that constitute a sweeping cover-up of the president’s alleged wrongdoing.

Department of Justice records indicate that the FBI spoke to this woman not once, but at least four separate times, according to independent journalist Roger Sollenberger. Now, those records appear to have been removed from public viewing—despite the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which requires all documents relating to the alleged sex trafficker to be made public.


 

 



Fully understanding that Trump’s Department of Justice is completely in thrall to the President and will not be authorising any investigation of his conduct, top Democrats are urging the American media to look into unproven allegations contained within the Epstein files.
Referring to a series of tips provided by the public – many of them second-hand and some without any contact information for investigators to pursue – Congressman Ted Lieu of California suggested this month that the job must fall to the Fourth Estate to do some digging.

“Donald Trump is in the Epstein files thousands and thousands of times”, he told reporters on Capitol Hill. He described allegations in the files as “highly disturbing” and added: “So I encourage the press to go look at these allegations.”

In a House Judiciary Committee hearing last week, Lieu cited an unclassified FBI document containing claims from an anonymous man who alleged that, while working as a driver in 1995, he overheard Trump phoning someone called “Jeffrey” and discussed “abusing some girl”. The document said the man later met a young girl, who alleged she was raped by Trump and Epstein. The man claimed that authorities later found the girl dead with her head “blown off”.





Donald Chump has put together 'The Board of Peace.'  It's a vanity project in search of attention for the preening ego of all time.  Yesterday, 'The Board of Peace' met for the first time.

 


 


Before it started, protesters greeted Chump.  J.D. Wolf (MEIDASTOUCH NEWS) reports:

President Donald Trump was confronted by protesters Thursday morning as his motorcade arrived at the recently renamed “Donald J Trump Institute for Peace“ building where he is convening the inaugural meeting of his newly formed “Board of Peace.”
According to the White House press pool, demonstrators gathered across the street as the motorcade pulled up shortly before 9 a.m., holding large signs and yelling, “Donald Trump go to hell,” reflecting deep skepticism about the president’s intentions.


Eric Malinowski (INDEPENDENT) notes that Chump made himself the focus of the meeting:

In his remarks, Trump repeated his claim that he had ended eight wars but acknowledged that ending the Russo–Ukrainian war continues to elude him.

He also complained about not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Speaking about European countries who are interested in joining the Board of Peace, Trump noted that Norway had agreed to host a future Board event and expressed disappointment that the country did not award him the prize.

When not lamenting all the things he has never accomplished, Chump just made weird remarks.  Gabe Whisnant (NEWSWEEK) notes:

President Donald Trump veered off script during Thursday’s Board of Peace remarks, and while welcoming Paraguayan President Santiago Peña, Trump offered an aside about Peña’s youth and appearance.

“It’s always nice to be young and handsome. It doesn’t mean we have to like you. I don’t like young, handsome men. Women — I like. Men, I don’t have any interest,” Trump says as chuckles can be heard among those gathered for the multi-national event in Washington D.C.

Santiago Pena turns 48 later this year.  That's not young.  And young people don't fall asleep at public meetings which, for the record, Chump did again in 'The Board of Peace' meeting.  See Marcia's "Chump's continued decline as he sleeps through another public meeting" for more on that. 

Sophia Cai and Eli Stokols (POLITICO) add, "President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he intends to name his son-in-law Jared Kushner as a special peace envoy, unveiling the decision at his 'Board of Peace' event, attended by more than a dozen world leaders."  This while Chump pretends the point is to help Gaza.  

For those who've forgotten, in March of 2024, Patrick Wintour (GUARDIAN) reported on how Jared saw Palestine:

Jared Kushner has praised the “very valuable” potential of Gaza’s “waterfront property” and suggested Israel should remove civilians while it “cleans up” the strip.

The former property dealer, married to Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka, made the comments in an interview at Harvard University on 15 February. The interview was posted on the YouTube channel of the Middle East Initiative, a program of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, earlier this month.

Kushner was a senior foreign policy adviser under Trump’s presidency and was tasked with preparing a peace plan for the Middle East. Critics of the plan, which involved Israel striking normalisation deals with Gulf states, said it bypassed questions about the future for Palestinians.


President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner this week unveiled plans for a “New Gaza” filled with gleaming high-rise towers and tourist-packed beaches — an optimistic vision that stands in stark contrast to the reality of a territory in ruins after two years of war.
[. . .]
On the ground in Gaza, meanwhile, Kushner’s plan felt like another world. Israeli forces continue to occupy around half of the Palestinian enclave.

More than 71,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, and hundreds of thousands of the enclave’s 2 million people have been driven from their homes and live in tents, where they are exposed to disease, storms and flooding.

It's what Jared's been pitching for years.  In 2018, Khalil E. Jahshan, Michael C. Hudson, Yousef Munayyer, Tamara Kharroub and Joe Macaron (DC's Arab Center) noted the many problems with Jared's 'concepts.'  Let's note Jahshan:

In his interview, Jared Kushner claims that he has done “a lot of listening,” having spent his precious time “focusing on the people and trying to determine what they actually want.” Apparently, Kushner does not know many Palestinians, or he failed to take good notes.

Most Palestinians I know are very determined, industrious, and hard-working. They would welcome “the new opportunities and better paying jobs” that Kushner is dangling before their eyes. However, Palestinians are well-educated and politically savvy enough to know that their problem is not purely economic—that first and foremost, it is political in nature. Of course, they want normalcy in their daily life and a thriving economy, but they realize, clearly better than Jared Kushner and Trump’s advisor, Jason Greenblatt, that meaningful change only comes with action on fundamental concerns: ending the Israeli military occupation of Palestine and attaining national self-determination, with the realization of the Palestinians’ inalienable and universally recognized political rights, including the right of return to millions of Palestinian refugees.

Kushner accuses Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of having harbored the same talking points for the past 25 years. In fact, Trump’s envoy must acknowledge these long-held aspirations of the Palestinian people if Washington is truly interested in listening to them, or in moving forward on peace. Go back to the drawing board Mr. Kushner; your biased ideas are neither an “ultimate” nor a coherent “plan”!

And we'll note Kharroub:

Kushner’s statements signal the extent to which the Trump Administration is out of touch with reality as well as the flawed premises on which it has based its new peace plan. What is remarkable is how Kushner’s deeply uninformed statements are unapologetically condescending toward the Palestinians. “Don’t allow your grandfathers’ conflict to determine your children’s future,” Kushner appealed to the Palestinian public, without any regard for or understanding of the daily struggles of Palestinians who continue to live under repressive Israeli military occupation. He flippantly dismissed Palestinian rights and international law as Abbas’s “talking points which have not changed in the last 25 years.” Additionally, Kushner’s only concrete reference to the “deal” is an economic development plan for Gaza, to be underwritten financially by Arab Gulf states (this is while the United States cuts funds to UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority). Reducing the conflict to a mere economic issue and placing sole responsibility for its non-resolution on President Abbas and not Israel, is a clear echo of Israeli right-wing falsehoods and an attempt to preemptively blame the Palestinian leadership for the eventual failure of the deal. Although the Palestinians are the weakest players in this game, no deal can be achieved without their unequivocal participation. A lasting peace cannot be imposed by the Trump Administration or Arab states without justice as its primary premise.

It's a blue print for ethnic cleansing.  It ignores the realities for Palestinians and, in fact, Jared wants to move them over to a desert. There's no factoring in the ongoing genocide.  If anything, it just 'helps' Jared's plan to clear the region of Palestinians.  


Let's wind down with this from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office:

Senators warn moving critical programs to agencies with no education policy experience could delay funding, increase administrative burden, raise program costs

Text of Letter (PDF)

Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.); Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions; Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Vice Chair of the Senate Committee on Appropriations; and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies pushed the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) to open an investigation into the Department of Education’s (ED) transfer of grant programs to agencies with no expertise in education policy, such as the Department of Labor (DOL)—a key step in the Trump administration’s efforts to illegally dismantle and eventually abolish ED.

“We are deeply concerned that the administration’s decisions to [transfer] grant programs in this manner delayed crucial funding that millions of students and schools rely on, created administrative inefficiencies, increased the cost of program administration, and compromised the quality of technical assistance provided to states and grantees,” wrote the senators.

In May 2025, the Trump administration formalized an interagency agreement (IAA) through which it moved the day-to-day management of career and technical education and adult education grant programs, including Perkins V and AEFLA, from ED to DOL. Perkins V grants annually provide over $1.4 billion in funding for career and technical education programs for about 11 million students around the country. AEFLA provides over $700 million in annual funding for adult education opportunities, most often for people without a high school degree or who are English language learners. In 2024, AEFLA served about 1.3 million adult students.

“[T]hese programs are a critical pathway to the middle class and can play a key role in reducing poverty and enabling employment,” wrote the lawmakers.

ED is reportedly paying DOL around $1 million to cover the cost of administering these programs during FY25 and FY26. Public reporting suggests that the transfer of these programs has been deeply flawed, leading to weeks-long delays in grant disbursements and harming students and schools.

“[T]he reports raise questions about whether the transfer has actually reduced alleged ‘duplication of effort,’ or just created inefficiency,” said the senators.

In November 2025, ED announced six additional IAAs, pointing to the May IAA as a template for their work to dismantle the Department. These IAAs transferred significant responsibilities for grant administration for dozens of programs for early childhood, elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education out of ED.

The lawmakers asked GAO to investigate these IAAs — and any future IAAs — and the agreements’ impacts on program costs, timely access to funding, access to services, and quality of technical assistance for grantees.

Senator Warren has led the fight to make our higher education system more affordable, cancel student loan debt, and hold student loan servicers accountable for incompetence and malfeasance. She launched the Save Our Schools campaign in a coordinated effort to fight back against President Trump’s attempts to abolish the Department of Education.

  • On February 19, 2026, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) pushed Education Secretary Linda McMahon on concerns that the U.S. Department of Education is apparently obstructing Congressional efforts to hold federal student loan servicers accountable for underperformance.
  • On February 2, 2026, Senator Warren released a new report revealing the findings of their investigation into how private student loan lenders will reap the benefits from cuts to federal student loan access enacted in Republicans’ Big, Beautiful Bill (OBBBA). The report is the first Congressional analysis of the impacts of the OBBBA’s student loan restrictions on the private lending market.
  • On January 22, 2026, Senators Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) led their Senate colleagues in demanding answers from Trump Education Secretary Linda McMahon about the Trump Administration’s proposal to eliminate affordable student loan repayment options for millions of Americans.
  • On December 8, 2025, Senator Warren led her colleagues in writing to the federal student loan servicers to ensure they are providing borrowers with the customer service they deserve in the wake of the Trump administration’s student loan policy whiplash. The senators sent letters to MOHELA, Nelnet, EdFinancial, Maximus, and CRI.
  • On December 1, 2025, Senator Warren published an op-ed in USA Today calling for Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to resign following the recent news that President Trump and Secretary McMahon plan to further dismantle the Department of Education (ED).
  • On November 24, 2025, Senator Warren pushed for an expanded investigation into the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle ED and whether its recent decision to transfer many of ED’s responsibilities to four other agencies violates federal law.
  • On November 17, 2025, Senator Warren led over 40 of her colleagues in a letter urging Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent to immediately end any plans to sell or transfer the federal student loan portfolio to the private market.
  • On November 10, 2025, Senator Warren led her colleagues in a letter urging the Trump administration to use the IRS’s existing legal authorities to stop the looming “tax bomb” facing borrowers who obtain income-driven repayment (IDR) discharges of their student loan debt.
  • On October 15, 2025, Senator Warren and Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) led 70 members of Congress in a letter calling on the Trump administration to address the ongoing and unprecedented wave of student loan delinquencies and defaults, which threatens the financial stability of millions of people and could have disastrous effects on the American economy.
  • On September 19, 2025, following a push by Senator Warren and nine other senators, the Acting Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education agreed to open an investigation into DOGE’s infiltration of internal systems, including the scope of its access to sensitive student loan borrower information and its impact on borrowers’ rights and privacy.
  • On August 26, 2025, Senator Warren led colleagues in sending a follow-up letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon condemning the Department of Education for deliberately hiding the “Submit a Complaint” button on the Office of Federal Student Aid’s website, firing employees responsible for providing customer service to borrowers and families and misleading Congress about the scope of these firings.
  • On August 7, 2025, Senator Warren publicly released Secretary of Education Linda McMahon’s response to the senator’s 60+ questions and pressed for additional information. Senator Warren announced that she would refer certain matters where the Department has proved uncooperative to the Government Accountability Office and the Education Department’s Inspector General.
  • On August 4, 2025, Senator Warren led eight Senators in pressing major private student loan lenders on their plans to serve the incoming surge of borrowers who will be pushed to the industry because of Republicans’ recently passed “Big, Beautiful Bill.”
  • On July 17, 2025, Senator Warren released a new 23-page report, “Education At Risk: Frontline Impacts of Trump’s War on Students,” highlighting warnings from 11 major national education and civil rights organizations on the impact of the Trump Administration’s dismantling of the Department of Education (ED), slashing support to millions of American students, primary and secondary school teachers, administrators, parents, and student loan borrowers.
  • On July 15, 2025, Senators Warren and Sanders, along with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, sent a letter to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, urging her to reverse the interest hike on student loan borrowers in the SAVE forbearance.
  • On July 14, 2025, Senator Warren joined a letter to the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, and Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, demanding that the Department of Education stop blocking nearly $7 billion in funds for K-12 schools, including for afterschool programs.
  • On July 3, 2025, Senator Warren led her colleagues in submitting an amicus brief for NAACP v. US, arguing to the United States District Court District of Maryland that President Trump’s attempts to dismantle the Department of Education violate separation of powers and lack constitutional authority.
  • On June 10, 2025, Senator Warren met with Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and delivered over 1,000 letters to McMahon that the senator had received from people in all 50 states who were worried about the Secretary’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education.
  • On June 9, 2025, Senator Warren led her colleagues in pushing the Acting Inspector General of the Department of Education to open an investigation into new information obtained by her office, revealing that DOGE may have gained access to two FSA internal systems, in addition to sensitive borrower data.
  • On May 20, 2025, Senator Warren and 27 other senators pushed for full funding for the Office of Federal Student Aid.
  • On May 14, 2025, Senator Warren led a Senate forum entitled “Stealing the American Dream: How Trump and Republicans Are Raising Education Costs for Families,” highlighting the consequences of Secretary Linda McMahon’s reckless dismantling of the Department of Education and President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” for working- and middle-class students and borrowers.
  • On May 13, 2025, Senator Warren agreed to meet with Education Secretary Linda McMahon and promised to bring questions and stories from Americans across the country to highlight how the Trump administration’s attacks on education are hurting American families.
  • On May 6, 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren highlighted the consequences of President Trump and Secretary Linda McMahon’s reckless dismantling of the Department of Education for American families in a Senate forum.
  • On April 24, 2025, Senator Warren launched a new investigation into the harms of President Trump’s attacks on the Department of Education, seeking information on the impact of the Trump administration’s actions from the members of twelve leading organizations representing schools, parents, teachers, students, borrowers, and researchers.
  • On April 10, 2025, following a request led by Senator Warren, the Department of Education’s Acting Inspector General agreed to open an investigation into the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the Department of Education.
  • On April 2, 2025, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Mazie Hirono, along with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, sent a letter to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon regarding the Department of Government Efficiency’s proposed plan to replace the Department of Education’s federal student aid call centers with generative artificial intelligence chatbots.

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