Today on MORNING JOE, David Ignatius spoke with Joe and Mika about how this is not another Venezuela with Iran calling this "a war of endurance."
Last night on MS NOW, Rachel Maddow noted how FBI Director Ka$h Patel had made the US less safe.
Patel "fired a dozen FBI agents and staff last week for their role in the classified documents investigation of Donald Trump, he targeted an elite counter espionage unit that investigates threats from foreign adversaries and specializes in Iran, according to more than a half dozen sources with knowledge of the firings."
And it's not just Ka$h getting things wrong as Rachel notes in the segment below.
One of the reasons for Chump's war on Iran is to distract from The Epstein Files. It's not working.
Rasmussen Poll notes:
Even
after the release of millions of documents related to the late Jeffrey
Epstein, a majority of voters still suspect the Trump administration of
trying to conceal evidence of the president’s association with the
disgraced finance mogul.
The latest Rasmussen
Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 54% of Likely
U.S. Voters believe it’s likely that administration officials are
engaged in a cover-up to hide Donald Trump’s involvement with Epstein –
including 40% who consider a cover-up Very Likely. Forty percent (40%)
say it’s not likely administration officials are engaged in a cover-up,
including 26% who consider it Not At All Likely. Last July, 60% thought
it was likely that the administration was covering up a Trump-Epstein
scandal. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Last
month, the Department of Justice published more than 3 million pages of
documents related to the case of Epstein, who died in custody in 2019
amid sex-trafficking accusations. However, only 43% of voters are
confident that the public now has access to the full truth about the
Epstein case, including just 18% who are Very Confident the full truth
is known. Nearly half (49%) are not confident they have the full truth
about Epstein, including 24% who are Not At All Confident.
People are right to wonder about what hasn't been released when so much remains unreleased and unexplained.
Matthew Rozsa notes:
President
Donald Trump said he was going to expose the deep state and end
America’s regular warmaking, and yet according to a former Republican
congressman, Trump is supporting the deep state and waging
unconstitutional wars.
“If you're a Trump
supporter right now, you're a Trump voter right now, you're Mr. or Mrs.
MAGA right now, man, your head's gotta be swimming, baby,” former Rep.
Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) said in a Substack post on Monday.
“You got to be dizzy, baby, because not only do you know now MAGA, not
only do you know now Trump voter, that Donald Trump is actually on the
side of the deep state — and that's been so tough for you to grasp, and
it has been, because I engage with hundreds of Trump voters every single
day, and Donald Trump keeping doing what he can do to keep the Epstein
files hidden, and man, the disillusionment I've heard from MAGA, the
confusion I've heard from MAGA is off the charts.” PBS' AMANPOUR & COMPANY featured NPR's Stephen Fowler who broke the news of the Justice Dept hiding documents of a witness detailing -- three times -- that Donald Chump assaultedher.
The
state of New Mexico attempted to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s state
residence in 2019. Then the Trump administration got involved.
Epstein’s
Zorro Ranch, located roughly 30 miles south of Santa Fe in the high
desert, was rumored to be a hotbed of illicit activity. Some of the
notorious child sex offender’s victims, including Virginia Giuffre,
claimed they were trafficked at the New Mexico estate, and emails issued
by ranch staffers allege that the bodies of at least two girls were
killed and buried under the building by Epstein’s order, according to
documents made public by the Justice Department via the Epstein files.
Epstein even contemplated turning the estate, which he purchased in
1993, into a headquarters for genetic engineering experiments.
Yet
somehow, the property—dubbed “Playboy Ranch” among locals—has never
properly been investigated, according to New Mexico officials.
A
report by The New York Times, published Monday, revealed that state
officials had every intention to do so—until the first Trump
administration intervened in 2019. The government ordered New Mexico to
turn over its probe to federal prosecutors, but then they closed the
case, according to recently unsealed records obtained by the Times.
Grasp
that. Chump covered for Epstein then. Just like he covers for Epstein
now. Howard Lutnick is in The Epstein Files and has repeatedly lied to
the American people. A photo of him at Epstein Island popped up and
then the Justice Dept disappeared it. Friday,
Janna Brancolini (DAILY BEAST) reported:
Pam
Bondi’s Department of Justice has offered a questionable explanation
for the removal of a photo of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick from its
public library of files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey
Epstein.
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.”
“The
batch of thousands of images was pulled for review and is being
uploaded with necessary redactions on a rolling basis,” the official
said. “No files are being deleted.”
All of the men in the photo are fully clothed.
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.
Howard
Lutnick has so far defied Beltway predictions of his ouster as commerce
secretary, but his appearance in the Jeffrey Epstein files has put him
in his toughest spot yet.
During an awkward
appearance before a Senate panel recently, the billionaire former chief
executive officer of Cantor Fitzgerald LP sought to explain a 2012 trip
to the disgraced financier’s private island. The visit with the
notorious sex offender came years after his conviction for procurement
of minors for prostitution — and during a period in which Lutnick had
claimed he had no contact with Epstein.
Lutnick
repeatedly insisted he “barely had anything to do” with Epstein and
stressed that his wife, four children and nannies were with him for the
island visit.
He may not be done with his
explanations. House Oversight Chairman James Comer told reporters
Thursday it was possible Lutnick would be called to testify in the
chamber’s Epstein probe. Comer added that there was a “possibility that
his name will arise in some questioning today,” as he prepared to depose
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Bill
Clinton.
Pam
Bondi, Attorney General and all around fool, played dumb last month
when asked by the House Judiciary Committee, about the prison transfer
of Ghislaine Maxwell. That's not going over well.
Arthur Delaney (HUFFINGTON POST) reports:
The
Justice Department has to explain why Jeffrey Epstein’s sole convicted
co-conspirator won a transfer to a cushy federal prison camp last year,
Democrats told U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in a letter on Monday.
The
Epstein Files Transparency Act specifically requires the government to
release all documents related to Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a
20-year prison sentence for her role in Epstein’s *** abuse schemes. The
text of the statute doesn’t distinguish between documents from her
criminal case and anything more recent.
That
means the Justice Department is legally required to put out any
documents “related to her transfer to a minimum-security prison camp
where she has been granted numerous unusual special privileges,” Reps.
Deborah Ross (D-N.C.), Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.)
said in a letter to Bondi.
The Bureau of
Prisons, which is part of the Justice Department, transferred Maxwell
from a low-security facility in Florida to a minimum security prison
camp in Texas. The transfer happened days after Deputy U.S. Attorney
Todd Blanche conducted an unusual interview with Maxwell last year in
which she said she never witnessed President Donald Trump behave
improperly when she, he and Epstein were all partying together in the
late 1990s and early 2000s.
People
are right not to trust Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche and Donald Chump. All
have been caught lying too often on this topic. And the release of the
files has not taken place as it was supposed to. There are files that
have still not been released. Those include the files regarding the
woman accusing Donald Chump of assault when she was a teenager. They
have been highly selective in what they've released.
Rep.
Thomas Massie issued a pointed reminder on Sunday that war won’t
distract him from his push to force the Department of Justice to release
all documents linked to Jeffrey Epstein.
“PSA:
Bombing a country on the other side of the globe won’t make the Epstein
files go away, any more than the Dow going above 50,000 will,” the
Kentucky libertarian wrote on X.
Massie is one of
several Trump critics who have accused the president of staging foreign
policy crises and other White House controversies to deflect scrutiny
from his historic relationship with Epstein, particularly as new Justice
Department documents related to the late sex trafficker’s crimes are
released.
In January, critics also alleged that
the administration’s capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro
served as a temporary reprieve from bipartisan pressure surrounding
Trump’s ties to Epstein, who once described himself as Trump’s “closest
friend.”
It's not going away. He
doesn't have Bill Barr to help him hide it this go round. He's got Pam
Bondi and she's an idiot. In fact, she created the problem for him.
She wanted some easy press so she said she had the files on her desk.
Told that to FOX "NEWS." And Chump called her out on it. Because she
hadn't looked at the files and didn't know what was in them. But Chump
did. And all these months later, her incompetence has kept it in the
news.
Bondi, Wiles reportedly met with Netflix CEO mere hours before Netflix dropped out of bidding war
“If Paramount Skydance’s deal
with Warner Bros. goes through, one family will become a dominant force
in American entertainment…Federal antitrust law is designed to prevent
mergers that would create massive conglomerates like this, which are bad
for our economy and for Americans.”
Text of Letter (PDF)
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren
(D-Mass.), Representative Sam Liccardo (D-Calif.), and Senator Richard
Blumenthal (D-Conn.) pressed Attorney General Pam Bondi and White House
Chief of Staff Susie Wiles on their role in Netflix abandoning its bid
to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery (Warner Bros.), and whether political
influence with the Trump administration helped Paramount Skydance
(Paramount) win instead. Bondi and Wiles reportedly met with Netflix CEO
Ted Sarandos hours before the company dropped its bid, and President
Trump reportedly favored Paramount to buy Warner Bros.
“Your conversations with Mr. Sarandos…rais[e] suspicions that the
Trump administration’s DOJ is making merger review decisions based on
politicized favoritism rather than the law or the facts,” wrote the lawmakers.
On February 26th, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos reportedly met with Bondi,
Wiles, and Department of Justice (DOJ) antitrust officials in an
attempt to dissuade the administration from blocking the Netflix-Warner
Bros. merger on antitrust grounds. Hours later, Netflix bowed out of the
Warner Bros. bidding war, leaving Paramount as the apparent winner of
the contest to purchase the company.
From the beginning, President Trump reportedly favored Paramount’s
bid to take over Warner Bros. As a result of its merger with media giant
Skydance in 2025, Paramount is owned by Trump ally David Ellison.
Ellison’s allies have reportedly suggested Paramount “is the only buyer
who would pass muster with Trump administration regulators,” and made
“Trump’s implicit support for the deal … their number one talking point”
in negotiations. Just last week, Ellison attended the State of the
Union address as a guest of Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
“[Your reported meetings with Mr. Sarandos] look even more disturbing
because the meetings occurred just days after the politicized ouster of
Antitrust Division Chief Gail Slater and amidst increasing lobbyist
influence over DOJ’s antitrust work,” wrote the lawmakers.
Public reporting indicates DOJ leadership has been meeting with
lobbyists and influence-peddlers for companies involved in merger
discussions, and has repeatedly overridden antitrust concerns in order
to approve massive deals. One such lobbying firm is Ballard Partners,
hired by both Netflix and Paramount. Federal law requires executive
branch officials to recuse themselves from matters of former employers
they worked for in the past year, but Bondi and Wiles, who both worked
for Ballard Partners, “appear to be heavily involved in politicized
discussions about the merger.”
David Ellison is the son of billionaire Trump ally Larry Ellison, who
recently acquired a stake in TikTok. If Paramount successfully merges
with Warner Bros., the Ellison family will own Warner Bros., Paramount+,
HBO, CBS News, CNN, TNT, TBS, Food Network, Discovery Channel, Animal
Planet, HGTV, among other media properties, and have partial ownership
of TikTok’s U.S. business. Paramount is expected to derive $6 billion in
“synergies” from the deal, which could come largely from firing workers
and cutting content.
“Federal antitrust law is designed to prevent mergers that would
create massive conglomerates like this, which are bad for our economy
and for Americans,” wrote the lawmakers.
“The American people deserve to know what Mr. Sarandos was seeking in
your meetings, what you said to him, and how your discussions may have
contributed to Netflix backing out of the bidding war,” the lawmakers concluded.
The lawmakers asked Bondi and Wiles to provide details about their
conversations regarding the Warner Bros. merger, including any
communications with Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos and Paramount CEO David
Ellison, by March 16, 2026.
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