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The Guardian
28 minutes ago
- The Guardian
US House calls early summer recess amid turmoil over Epstein files
Republicans announced Tuesday that the House of Representatives will call it quits a day early and head home in the face of persistent Democratic efforts to force Republicans into voting on the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. The chamber was scheduled be in session through Thursday ahead of the annual five-week summer recess, but on Tuesday, the Republican majority announced that the last votes of the week would take place the following day. Democrats in turn accused the GOP of leaving town rather than dealing with the outcry over Donald Trump's handling of the investigation into the alleged sex trafficker. 'They are actually ending this week early because they're afraid to cast votes on the Jeffrey Epstein issue,' said Ted Lieu, the vice-chair of the House Democratic caucus. Republicans downplayed the decision to cut short the workweek, while arguing that the White House has already moved to resolve questions about the case. Last week, Trump asked the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to release grand jury testimony, although that is expected to be only a fraction of the case's documents. 'We're going to have committee meetings through Thursday, and there's still a lot of work being done,' said the majority leader, Steve Scalise. 'The heavy work is done in committee and there is a lot of work being done this week before we head out.' He declined to answer a question about whether votes were cut short over the Epstein files. At a press conference, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, insisted that Congress must be careful in calling for the release of documents related to the case, for fear of retraumatizing his victims. 'There's no purpose for Congress to push an administration to do something that they're already doing. And so this is for political games,' he said. 'I'm very resolute on this, we can both call for full transparency and also protect victims, and if you run roughshod, or you do it too quickly, that's not what happens.' Questions surrounding Epstein's 2019 death and his involvement in running a sex-trafficking ring that allegedly procured underage girls for global elites flared up earlier this month after the justice department announced its determination that he committed suicide in a federal prison, and he had no client list that could be released. The disclosure, along with the department's statement that it would release no further information about the case, sparked an uproar among many supporters of the president, who believed he would get to the bottom of a supposed 'deep state' plot to cover up Epstein's ties to global elites. Some of Trump's own officials had promoted such expectations, including Bondi, who in February told Fox News that Epstein's client list was 'sitting on my desk right now to review'. Congressional Democrats have sought to capitalize on the rare split between the president and his supporters, with an eye towards retaking the majority in the House next year. The venue for those efforts has been the rules committee, the normally low-key body that all legislation must pass through before it is considered by the full House. Democrats on the committee last week repeatedly offered amendments to unrelated legislation that were designed to compel the release of the Epstein files, forcing Republicans to vote them down – a politically difficult vote for many in the party, as it could potentially be used to accused them of wanting to keep the files secret. Frustration among the GOP peaked on Monday, when Democrats planned to use a rules committee hearing to offer more Epstein amendments, and the GOP reacted by refusing to vote on any more rules, essentially paralyzing the House floor. Johnson has attempted to stem the controversy by agreeing to allow a vote on a non-binding resolution on the file's release, but that won't happen before the August recess. On Tuesday, a House oversight subcommittee approved a subpoena proposed by Republican congressman Tim Burchett for the testimony of Ghislaine Maxwell, a close associate of Epstein who is serving a 20-year prison sentence related to the sex trafficking case. The justice department is also seeking to speak with her, and it is unclear when she might appear before Congress. Meanwhile, Thomas Massie, a libertarian-leaning Republican who has repeatedly broken with his party, and Democratic congressman Ro Khanna have collaborated on a legislative maneuver that will force a vote on releasing the Epstein files, though that is not expected to take place until after the House returns from its recess, in the first week of September. Joe Morelle, the number-two Democrat on the House appropriations committee, warned that cutting short the workweek costs time that lawmakers could use to consider spending legislation that must be passed by the end of September to prevent a government shutdown. 'We haven't done appropriation bills, and yet we're going to take extra days off simply because we don't want to go through the discomfort of pushing the president to do what he's promised to do, what the attorney general has promised to do, what the FBI director has promised to do, that they're now violating their pledge and their commitment to do,' Morelle said.
Reuters
28 minutes ago
- Reuters
Trump accuses Obama of treason in escalating attacks over 2016 Russia probe
WASHINGTON, July 22 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump accused former President Barack Obama of "treason" on Tuesday, accusing him, without providing evidence, of leading an effort to falsely tie him to Russia and undermine his 2016 presidential campaign. A spokesperson for Obama denounced Trump's claims, saying "these bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction." While Trump has frequently attacked Obama by name, the Republican president has not, since returning to office in January, gone this far in pointing the finger at his Democratic predecessor with allegations of criminal action. During remarks in the Oval Office, Trump leaped on comments from his intelligence chief, Tulsi Gabbard, on Friday in which she threatened to refer Obama administration officials to the Justice Department for prosecution over an intelligence assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election. She declassified documents and said the information she was releasing showed a 'treasonous conspiracy' in 2016 by top Obama administration officials to undermine Trump, claims that Democrats called false and politically motivated. "It's there, he's guilty. This was treason," Trump said on Tuesday, though he offered no proof of his claims. "They tried to steal the election, they tried to obfuscate the election. They did things that nobody's ever imagined, even in other countries." An assessment by the U.S. intelligence community published in January 2017 concluded that Russia, using social media disinformation, hacking and Russian bot farms, sought to damage Democrat Hillary Clinton's campaign and bolster Trump. The assessment determined that the actual impact was likely limited and showed no evidence that Moscow's efforts actually changed voting outcomes. A 2020 bipartisan report by the Senate intelligence committee had found that Russia used Republican political operative Paul Manafort, the WikiLeaks website and others to try to influence the 2016 election to help Trump's campaign. "Nothing in the document issued last week (by Gabbard) undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes," Obama spokesperson Patrick Rodenbush said in a statement. Trump, who has a history of promoting false conspiracy theories, has frequently denounced the assessments as a 'hoax.' In recent days, Trump reposted on his Truth Social account a fake video showing Obama being arrested in handcuffs in the Oval Office. Trump has been seeking to divert attention to other issues after coming under pressure from his conservative base to release more information about Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Backers of conspiracy theories about Epstein have urged Trump, who socialized with the disgraced financier during the 1990s and early 2000s, to release investigative files related to the case. Trump, asked in the Oval Office about Epstein, quickly pivoted into an attack on Obama and Clinton. "The witch hunt that you should be talking about is they caught President Obama absolutely cold," Trump said. Trump suggested action would be taken against Obama and his former officials, calling the Russia investigation a treasonous act and the former president guilty of "trying to lead a coup." "It's time to start, after what they did to me, and whether it's right or wrong, it's time to go after people. Obama has been caught directly," he said. Democratic Representative Jim Himes responded on X: "This is a lie. And if he's confused, the President should ask @SecRubio, who helped lead the bipartisan Senate investigation that unanimously concluded that there was no evidence of politicization in the intelligence community's behavior around the 2016 election." Former Republican Senator Marco Rubio is now Trump's secretary of state. Since returning to office, Trump has castigated his political opponents whom he claims weaponized the federal government against him and his allies for the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters and his handling of classified materials after he left office in 2021. Obama has long been a target of Trump. In 2011 he accused then-President Obama of not being born in the United States, prompting Obama to release a copy of his birth certificate. In recent months, Trump has rarely held back in his rhetorical broadsides against his two Democratic predecessors in a way all but unprecedented in modern times. He launched an investigation after accusing former President Joe Biden and his staff, without evidence, of a "conspiracy" to use an autopen, an automated device that replicates a person's signature, to sign sensitive documents on the president's behalf. Biden has rejected the claim as false and 'ridiculous.' Gabbard's charge that Obama conspired to subvert Trump's 2016 election by manufacturing intelligence on Russia's interference is contradicted by several reports including documents that Gabbard released last week. The documents show that Gabbard conflated two separate U.S. intelligence findings in alleging that Obama and his national security aides changed an assessment that Russia probably was not trying to influence the election through cyber means. One finding was that Russia was not trying to hack U.S. election infrastructure to change vote counts and the second was that Moscow probably was using cyber means to influence the U.S. political environment through information and propaganda operations, including by stealing and leaking data from Democratic Party servers. The January 2017 U.S. intelligence assessment ordered by Obama built on that second finding: that Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized influence operations to sway the 2016 vote to Trump.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
‘Politically motivated' Alina Habba being pushed out by NJ judges who take rare step to appoint own candidate for top prosecutor
New Jersey's federal trial judges have voted to block Donald Trump's personal attorney Alina Habba from serving as the state's top prosecutor — and named their own nominee to replace her. Habba's 120-day interim appointment as acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey is coming to an end following Trump's nomination in March. She has yet to have any confirmation hearings in the Senate, and the state's two Democratic senators have effectively denied her from having one. In a rare move, the state's district court judges named Habba's first assistant Desiree Leigh Grace as her successor, according to Tuesday's standing order, which was signed by the district's chief judge Renee Marie Bumb. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche accused the judges of 'trying to force' her out of the job. 'Their rush reveals what this was always about: a left-wing agenda, not the rule of law,' said Blanche, another of Trump's former defense attorneys. 'When judges act like activists, they undermine confidence in our justice system. Alina is President Trump's choice to lead — and no partisan bench can override that.' Habba defended Trump last year during his blockbuster fraud trial and defamation lawsuits brought by E. Jean Carroll, all of which Trump lost. She then briefly served as 'counselor to the president' before Trump named her as U.S. attorney in her home state. She was sworn into office on March 28, which means there are just days left on her 120-day interim term. Blanche said her term expires at midnight Friday. The judges' order takes effect Tuesday, or after Habba leaves office, whichever is later. Trump nominated her for a full term on July 1, but the state's Democratic Senators Cory Booker and Andy Kim derailed any chance of a confirmation hearing by issuing a withering statement kneecapping her credibility. Nominees typically need approval from home state senators, and Habba would also likely face hurdles securing votes from skeptical Republicans. In a joint statement following her nomination, the senators said she 'does not meet the standard to serve' and accused her of pursuing 'frivolous and politically motivated' prosecutions within her limited time in office. In her first two months in office, Habba brought controversial charges against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Rep. LaMonica McIver, both Democrats, following a scrum with federal agents at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in the state. The mayor was charged with trespassing, but Habba announced on May 19 that she was dropping the case 'for the sake of moving forward.' A judge later reprimanded Habba for her 'embarrassing retraction.' Baraka's 'hasty arrest', followed by Habba's dismissal of the charges two weeks later, 'suggests a worrying misstep by your office,' Magistrate Judge Andre Espinosa said during a hearing that month. The mayor later sued Habba for malicious prosecution. McIver, meanwhile, has been accused of assaulting law enforcement, which she has strenuously denied. Criminal charges against a sitting member of Congress appeared to escalate threats from the Trump administration under an emboldened Department of Justice to target his political enemies. Trump, whose administration wields unprecedented influence over the Justice Department, could still act to preserve his pick. The president has the power to appoint Habba as a 'special attorney to the attorney general,' a move that could keep her on the job for another two years without any typical review or Senate vote on her qualifications. Federal judges had similarly tried to stop John Sarcone from continuing on as U.S. attorney in upstate New York when Trump named him as a 'special attorney to the attorney general' to keep him in place. The president also could fire Grace and install another pick, which would likely ignite yet another legal firestorm as Democratic officials and lawyers intensify their scrutiny into Trump's increasingly deferential Justice Department. Trump has already appointed several of his former defense attorneys in top roles at the agency serving under Attorney General Pam Bondi, another Trump loyalist. John Sauer, who successfully argued for Trump's 'immunity' from criminal prosecution at the Supreme Court, was appointed U.S. solicitor general, the nation's top attorney. Todd Blanche, who represented Trump in his hush-money trial and federal criminal indictments, is serving as deputy attorney general under Bondi. Trump's other criminal defense attorney Emil Bove, who worked alongside Blanche on the hush-money case, is currently a principal associate deputy attorney general. The president has nominated Bove to serve a life term as an appeals court judge for a district that spans New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Last week, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee referred his nomination to the full Senate for a vote. All Democrats on the committee walked out in protest.
