Evening Edition: The Importance Of Maintaining The Southern Border Wall
FOX's Ryan Schmelz speaks with South Dakota Congressman Dusty Johnson (R), author of the FASTER Bill, who says a secure southern border was promised to Americans and he shares his thoughts on 'the Epstein files'.
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NBC News
an hour ago
- NBC News
Ghislaine Maxwell's meetings with Justice Department shrouded in secrecy
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche completed nine hours of meetings over two days with Ghislaine Maxwell on Friday but made no public statements about what she said or the next steps in the Justice Department's much-criticized Jeffrey Epstein investigation. Former prosecutors said it was highly unusual — and potentially unprecedented — for a the department's No. 2 official to personally interview a witness. Secrecy in a criminal investigation is normal, but the prosecutors involved in the case would typically be included in questioning. 'I've never heard of a deputy attorney general doing anything like this before,' said a former senior Justice Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Victims of Epstein and Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 of recruiting and grooming multiple teenage girls to be sexually abused by the late financier, questioned the lack of transparency as well. Jack Scarola, a lawyer representing roughly 20 Epstein victims, said he asked to attend the Maxwell interviews but was not included. Berit Berger, a former federal prosecutor in New York, said the interviews by Blanche, who worked as Trump's former defense lawyer, may be performative. 'It may be just a way of being able to say, 'Look, we dotted every I and crossed every T,'' she said. 'There's value to being able to say that we've tried to speak to everyone we possibly could, including the co-defendant.' Attorney General Pam Bondi, Blanche and President Donald Trump himself have struggled to quell the uproar since the DOJ and FBI announced on July 6 that an exhaustive Epstein case review had not uncovered evidence that justified investigating other individuals. FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino — who haveboth spread conspiracy theories about the Epstein case — backed those findings and a DOJ decision to release no other Epstein case documents. Catherine Christian, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney and an NBC News legal analyst, said the Maxwell interviews could also be an effort to protect Trump, who now faces one of the largest political crises of his second term in the furor over the Epstein investigation. Trump, like dozens of other wealthy Americans, socialized with Epstein. He is among hundreds of individuals whose names appear in 100,000 pages of Epstein case documents reviewed by the DOJ and the FBI. 'It's hard to believe this is anything but performative,' Christian said. 'Or Todd Blanche, just wanting to have her on the record saying, 'Yes, President Trump had nothing to do with any of this. He was not a client.'' What was Maxwell asked? Maxwell's lawyer, David Oscar Markus, is a top Florida criminal defense lawyer and a friend of Blanche's. Blanche appeared on Markus' podcast in 2024, where the host praised Blanche's legal skills. After Friday's meeting with Blanche and Maxwell, Markus told reporters that the deputy attorney general 'did an amazing job' and asked Maxwell thorough questions. 'She was asked maybe about 100 different people,' said Markus, who did not disclose which individuals Maxwell was questioned about. 'She answered questions about everybody, and she didn't hold anything back,' he said. 'They asked about every single, every possible thing you could imagine, everything.' A senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said that Maxwell was granted limited immunity by the Justice Department to answer questions about the Epstein case. Granting limited immunity is common in criminal cases and allows defendants to provide information without fear that it will be used against them in court. The immunity is 'limited' because it only applies if the defendant is telling the truth. If it is determined that a defendant lied during the interviews, then the agreement becomes void. Prosecutors can take into consideration a defendant's cooperation and recommend a plea deal or a reduced sentence. This is not expected in Maxwell's case, as she has already been convicted and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. Maxwell's lawyer, Markus, has argued that Maxwell's trial was unfair and an appeal of her conviction is pending before the Supreme Court. Potential pardon or commutation Trump, like all presidents, has the power to pardon or commute the sentence of anyone convicted of a federal crime. Asked about Epstein's case on Friday morning, Trump said the focus should be on other people who socialized with Epstein, such as former President Bill Clinton and Larry Summers, the former treasury secretary and Harvard University president. 'You should focus on Clinton,' the president told reporters. 'You should focus on the president of Harvard, the former president of Harvard. You should focus on some of the hedge fund guys.' 'I'll give you a list. These guys lived with Jeffrey Epstein. I sure as hell didn't,' Trump said. Asked if he was considering granting Maxwell a pardon or commuting her sentence, Trump said, 'It's something I haven't thought about.' 'I'm allowed to do it,' he added. Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor in New York, said she believes the recent firing of Maurene Comey, a lead prosecutor in the Maxwell case and the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, was an effort to give Trump appointees full control of the Maxwell case, limit transparency and silence dissent. 'That does not seem coincidental. It seems like they wanted Maurene not to be present in the Department of Justice,' Rocah said. 'To be able to say, 'What the heck, you can't go talk to my client or my defendant.'' Rocah, a Democrat who served as Westchester County district attorney from 2020 to 2024, criticized Blanche's meetings with Maxwell, saying his apparent failure to include a prosecutor with deep knowledge of her crimes was unfair to Epstein's victims. 'The head of that entire institution that is supposed to be about protecting victims is talking to her, giving her a platform to say God knows what, without much way to verify it or not,' Rocah said. 'The real people who could test her truth-telling are the people who worked on the case, not Todd.'
The Hill
2 hours ago
- The Hill
Amidst terrible tragedy in Texas, debates over misinformation cloud the truth
As search and rescue teams in Texas continue to search for those lost in extreme flash floods and communities try to piece together lives, claims quickly spread about what happened and who was to blame. Many on the left blamed the Trump administration 's cuts to the National Weather Service. On the right, keyboard warriors accused cloud seeding technologies of causing the devastating floods. Others in the community spread news of the miraculous survival of some of those caught in the flood. These claims and accusations have been called misinformation, commonly understood as 'false' or 'misleading' information. The floods in Texas have inundated news cycles with a broader discussion of what misinformation is, how it works, and the impacts it can have. It is not surprising that Americans are worried about misinformation. Recent polling by the Cato Institute shows that Americans believe misinformation is the greatest threat to their freedom. This finding is true for Republicans and Democrats, though they likely consider misinformation to be a threat for different reasons. Other polls have reported that 80 percent of Americans view misinformation as a major problem. And according to a 2023 Pew poll, 55 percent of Americans believe the U.S. government should take action to restrict false information, even if it limits freedom of information. Research on misinformation, though, shows that it is not as serious a threat as it is made out to be, and we must be careful that in our efforts to address it, we don't make matters worse. Misinformation is an incredibly subjective issue to which people respond to in complex ways. In fact, misinformation is most often adopted and spread by those who are already predisposed to believe it, as we can see clearly in the recent events in Texas. The cycle is familiar: Politically motivated actors spread false or misleading information that was too good to check because it reinforced their beliefs. Similarly, locals hoping for some good news shared and believed information that they desperately wanted to be true, but sadly, it was not. And as often happens during significant disasters, false or misleading information spreads because of the rapidly evolving nature of the tragedy — we often simply don't know what the truth is yet. So, while misinformation can be harmful, it is often more of a symptom than a disease. Research shows that misinformation itself often does not change the beliefs and actions of those who encounter it; rather, it tends to reinforce existing beliefs or behaviors. In that sense, misinformation does not have the powerful impact of which the media and political world commonly speak. Unfortunately, despite this evidence minimizing its impact and power, the clouds of misinformation loom large over our society today. Americans have been told for years now that we are in the midst of an 'infodemic' of powerful misinformation that infects our minds like a virus. For example, last year, the World Economic Forum's risk report labeled AI-powered misinformation and disinformation as the greatest threat facing the world in the next couple of years. The number of academic research, books, journalism and fact-checking resources has surged over the past decade. Rather than panicking about misinformation and opening the door to government censorship, the threat of misinformation must be addressed from the ground up rather than the top down. For tech companies, this means rebuilding user trust and helping users be better consumers of information. Tools like community notes — as being adopted or tested in some form by X, Meta, TikTok, YouTube and other platforms — are likely to be helpful in getting users to trust the fact-checks they are seeing. And efforts to 'pre-bunk' misinformation through better media literacy will help by empowering users. When the government begins funding counter-misinformation research, things tend to go awry. This may sound counterintuitive, but we often disagree about what misinformation is and tend to favor our political biases, as seen in the news around the Texas floods. So when the government doles out money to research misinformation, it is inevitably funding those biases, which over time contributes to polarization and a lack of trust in our institutions. Similarly, the U.S. government should limit what it deems 'foreign disinformation' to include only the most clear-cut and harmful cases. When not handled carefully, such efforts can and have turned into government attacks on Americans' speech and political views — see the intelligence experts getting the Hunter Biden laptop story wrong — further polarizing and degrading Americans' trust in their leaders. The flood waters are receding in Texas, but the storm of misinformation still rages within our society. Instead of doubling down on misplaced panic over misinformation, we must instead trust and help Americans discover the truth. More speech, more discussions — not less speech and more government control — are the way we sort through information and find a brighter tomorrow.
Boston Globe
2 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Competing conspiracy theories consume Trump's Washington
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The harmonic convergence of competing conspiracies has overshadowed critical policy issues facing America's leaders at the moment, whether it's new tariffs that could dramatically reshape the global economy or the collapse of cease-fire talks meant to end the war in the Gaza Strip. The Epstein matter so spooked Speaker Mike Johnson that he abruptly recessed the House for the summer rather than confront it. The allegations lodged against Obama so outraged the former president that he emerged from political hibernation to express his indignation at even having to address them. Advertisement The whispers and questions -- 'this nonsense,' as Trump put it -- followed the president all the way to Scotland, where he landed Friday for a visit to his golf club. Advertisement 'You're making a very big thing over something that's not a big thing,' he complained to reporters, suggesting, in his latest bid at conspiracy deflection, that instead of him, the news media should be looking at Epstein's other boldface friends like former president Clinton. 'Don't talk about Trump,' he said. Conspiracy theories have a long place in American history. Many Americans still believe that the moon landings were faked, that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an inside job, or that the government is hiding proof of extraterrestrial visitors in Roswell, New Mexico. Sixty-five percent of Americans told Gallup pollsters in 2023 that they think there was a conspiracy behind the assassination of President Kennedy. Some conspiracy theories do turn out to be true, of course, or have some basis. But presidents generally have not been the ones spreading dubious stories. To the contrary, they traditionally have viewed their role as dispelling doubts and reinforcing faith in institutions. President Lyndon B. Johnson created the Warren Commission to investigate his predecessor's murder specifically to keep rumors and guesswork from proliferating. (Spoiler alert: It didn't.) Trump, by contrast, relishes conspiracy theories, particularly those that benefit him or smear his enemies without any evident care for whether they are true or not. 'There have been other conspiratorial political movements in the country's past,' said Geoff Dancy, a University of Toronto professor who teaches about conspiracy theories. 'But they have never occupied the upper echelons of power until the last decade.' Advertisement During the 2016 Republican primaries, Trump tied the father of one of his rivals, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, to the Kennedy killing, citing a photograph with Lee Harvey Oswald. During Trump's hush money trial in New York last year, his onetime compatriot David Pecker of The National Enquirer acknowledged under oath that the whole thing was made up to damage Cruz and elect Trump. Unrepentant, Trump stuck to his false assertions about Obama's birthplace for years, only grudgingly admitting late in the 2016 campaign that his predecessor was in fact born in the United States. 'The president's repeated discussion of multiple conspiracy theories, most recently about the 2016 election, has no parallel in American politics,' said Meena Bose, director of the Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency at Hofstra University. Conspiracy theories are not the exclusive preserve of Trump and the political right. Around the time of last month's anniversary of the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pa., some on the left once again advanced the notion that the whole shooting episode had been staged to make the Republican candidate into a political martyr. Some Democrats have now dived into the Epstein fever swamp head-first, suddenly exercised by a closed case that had hardly been on the party's priority list just weeks ago as they pile on Trump and maximize his political troubles. After Roy Black, who was Epstein's defense lawyer, happened to die at age 80 this past week at the height of the furor over the case, some on the left saw suspicious timing. Advertisement Trump, however, has stirred the plot pot more than any other major political figure. In the six months since retaking office, he has remained remarkably cavalier about suggesting nefarious schemes even as he heads the government supposedly orchestrating some of them. He suggested the nation's gold reserves at Fort Knox might be missing, resurrecting a decades-old fringe supposition, even though he would presumably be in position to know whether that was actually true, what with being president and all. 'If the gold isn't there, we're going to be very upset,' he told reporters. It fell to Scott Bessent, the decidedly nonconspiratorial Treasury secretary, to burst the bubble and reassure Americans that, no, the nation's reserves had not been stolen. 'All the gold is present and accounted for,' he told an interviewer. Trump has played to long-standing suspicions by ordering the release of hundreds of thousands of pages of documents related to the assassinations of Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., an act of transparency for historians and researchers that may shed important light on those episodes. But Trump has gone beyond simple theory floating to make his own alternate reality official government policy. Some applicants for jobs in the second Trump administration were asked whether Trump won the 2020 election that he actually lost; those who gave the wrong answer were not helping their job prospects, forcing those rooted in facts to decide whether to swallow the fabrication to gain employment. The past week or so has seen a fusillade of Trumpian conspiracy theories, seemingly meant to focus attention away from the Epstein case. Tulsi Gabbard, the president's politically appointed intelligence chief, trotted out inflammatory allegations that Obama orchestrated a 'yearslong coup and treasonous conspiracy' by skewing the 2016 election interference investigation -- despite the conclusions of a Republican-led Senate report signed by none other than Marco Rubio, now Trump's secretary of state. She also claimed that Hillary Clinton was 'on a daily regimen of heavy tranquilizers' during the 2016 campaign. Advertisement Relying on this, Trump accused Obama of 'treason,' suggesting he should be locked up and going so far as to post a fake video showing his predecessor being handcuffed in the Oval Office and put behind bars. The idea of a president posting such an image of another president would once have been seen as a shocking breach of etiquette and corruption of the justice system, but in the Trump era it has become simply business as usual. For all that, the conspiracy theorist in chief has not been able to shake the Epstein case, which reflects the rise of the QAnon movement that believes America is run by a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles. Most of the files, the ones that his attorney general told him include his name, remain unreleased, bringing together an unlikely alliance of MAGA conservatives and liberal Democrats. It was well known that Trump was friends with Epstein, although they later fell out. So it's not clear what his name being in the files might actually mean. But Trump is not one to back down. Asked last week about whether he had been told his name was in the files, Trump again pointed the finger of conspiracy elsewhere. 'These files were made up by Comey,' he told reporters, referring to James Comey, the FBI director he had fired more than two years before Epstein died in prison in 2019. 'They were made up by Obama,' he went on. 'They were made up by the Biden administration.' Advertisement The theories are endless. This article originally appeared in
