Trump says he spoke to FBI boss amid Epstein uproar
Bongino was irate when the DOJ, which he works under as No. 2 at the FBI, concluded in its review of the files that the initial findings that Epstein killed himself in prison were true. A DOJ insider told the Daily Mail on Friday that if Attorney General Pam Bondi keeps her job, Bongino will leave his. But after a weekend to cool off and a conversation with Trump, Bongino appears to be backing off those threats to vacate his post at the FBI.
Asked on Sunday if Bongino remained in his position, Trump said: 'Oh I think so.' 'I spoke to him today,' he added. 'Dan Bongino, very good guy. I've known him a long time. I've done his show many, many times. He sounded terrific, actually.' A White House insider tells the Daily Mail that Vice President JD Vance was part of the conversations over the weekend urging Bongino and FBI Director Kash Patel to stick around despite their disappointment with the handling of Bondi's review of the Epstein investigation.
Trump's conversation with Bongino is part of a continued effort to quell the rising chorus of MAGA voices furious over the DOJ memo last weekend that agreed with initial findings that Epstein killed himself. The unsigned memo leaked to Axios asserted there was no 'client list,' even though Bondi has said the materials were on her desk ready for review and release. She now says that all of the 'files' were child pornography that will 'never see the light of day.' Multiple outlets reported that Bongino got into a heated exchange with Bondi on Wednesday over the issue of the Epstein files.
This led to other reports, including from the Daily Mail, confirming the deputy FBI director was considering stepping down. Many Republican, conservative and pro-Trump voices have joined Democrats who are not pleased with how the DOJ review has gone. 'Where's the press conference? Why drop an unsigned memo on a Sunday night to Axios? Why not stand and take all the Qs?' political commentator and right-leaning journalist Megyn Kelly lamented in a post to X on Sunday.
Far-right media personality Laura Loomer warned Republicans that the lack of revelations in the Epstein case will cost them elections in the future. 'People make their own choices and decisions, but mark my word, the lack of actual results at the DOJ and lack of transparency that translates into incompetence will cost the GOP House and Senate seats.' 'Don't say I didn't warn you,' she added.
And even Billionaire Elon Musk took a side when he unfollowed Bondi on X. Trump is sticking by his AG, calling his base 'selfish' for 'going after' her. 'We're on one Team, MAGA, and I don't like what's happening,' the president lamented on his Truth Social on Saturday. 'We have a perfect Administration… and 'selfish people' are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein.' He then said that the files were written by Democrats, including former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan.
He said it was up to them to release the files. 'They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called 'friends' are playing right into their hands,' Trump wrote in his lengthy social media post. 'No matter how much success we have had… it's never enough for some people.' The president claims that Bondi has more important work to do then spending more months on looking at the Epstein files.
'Let's keep it that way, and not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about,' he concluded. But as much as Trump tries to stop the hate from flowing Bondi's way and the more he tries to downplay the importance of the Epstein files, the more his base leans into demanding that everything he DOJ has be brought to light. Loomer helped lead the demands for Bondi to exit her post last week over the 'failure.' 'Please join me in calling for Blondi to RESIGN!' Loomer posted to X last Monday, using her nickname for the blonde-haired AG.
'How many more times is this woman going to get away with Fing (sic) everything up before she is FIRED?' she added. On his podcast, conservative luminary Tucker Carlson theorized that Bondi is orchestrating a cover-up in order to protect members of the intelligence community who were ensnared in Epstein's conduct. 'The current DOJ under Pam Bondi is covering up crimes, very serious crimes by their own description,' Carlson said. 'Intel services are at the very center of this story, U.S. and Israeli and they're being protected.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NBC News
18 minutes ago
- NBC News
Hong Kong opens criminal probe into AI-generated porn scandal at city's oldest university
HONG KONG — Chinese authorities in Hong Kong have launched a criminal investigation after more than a dozen female students and teachers at the University of Hong Kong accused a male law student of using AI to generate deepfake porn images of them. The probe, announced Tuesday by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data, came after an outcry from students at the university, the city's oldest, who said it hadn't done enough to protect them or punish the accused. "The images were organized into folders named after the victims, totaling 700+ images (including the original photos)," read a widely circulated letter that was posted Saturday on Instagram from an account run by three unnamed victims. The accused, referred to in the letter only as 'a male law student,' took photos of the victims from social media and used AI software to generate pornographic images with their faces, according to the letter. The images were discovered on his laptop reported to the university in February. They were not known to have been widely distributed. In March, the university interviewed some of the victims, and in April informed one of them that the accused student had written a 60-word "apology letter." While NBC News was unable to confirm the authenticity of that letter, and the account did not respond to a request for comment, the university said it was "aware of the social media posts concerning a student allegedly using AI tools to create indecent images." 'The University has already issued him a warning letter and demanded him a formal apology to his affected peers,' the university said Saturday in a statement. Deepfake porn is a type of nonconsensual pornography that involves altering existing images or creating entirely new ones using readily available AI tools to make it appear that a person has participated in sexual acts. Regulations in Hong Kong around the technology are currently sparse. While it criminalizes 'publication or threatened publication of intimate images without consent,' it does not explicitly outlaw their generation. In the U.S., regulations govern dissemination, with President Donald Trump signing legislation in May that bans nonconsensual online publication of AI-generated porn, but federal law does not explicitly prohibit personal possession, and a district judge ruled in February that possessing such images was protected by the First Amendment. After it was rocked by a number of scandals similar to the one playing out in Hong Kong, South Korea passed a law last year that criminalizes not only the possession but also the consumption of such content. Though the University of Hong Kong said that it had undertaken various steps on behalf of the victims, 'including class adjustments,' the victims wrote in the letter that the university's inaction had resulted in them being forced to share the classroom with the suspect 'at least four times, causing unnecessary psychological distress.' Outrage has since grown in the wider student community, which has demanded more stringent action. That prompted a response from the city's top official, Chief Executive John Lee, who said at a news briefing Tuesday that universities have the 'responsibility of developing students' moral character,' adding institutions should 'deal with student misconduct seriously.' 'Any conduct that causes harm to others may constitute a criminal offense and may also infringe individual rights and also privacy,' he said. The university did not respond to a request for comment from NBC News, but it told the South China Morning Post this week that it was conducting a review of the incident and vowed further action if victims demanded more. 'The university is now further reviewing the case and will take further actions when appropriate to ensure a safe and respectful learning environment,' it said.
Reuters
18 minutes ago
- Reuters
India confident of meeting oil needs despite potential sanctions on Russian imports, minister says
July 17 (Reuters) - India is confident of meeting its oil needs from alternative sources if Russian supplies are hit by secondary sanctions, oil minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Thursday. Earlier this week, U.S. President Donald Trump warned that countries purchasing Russian exports could face sanctions if Moscow fails to reach a peace agreement with Ukraine within 50 days.
Reuters
18 minutes ago
- Reuters
Whatever happened to tax simplification?
NEW YORK, July 17 (Reuters) - Once upon a time, the idea of simplifying the federal tax code enjoyed widespread bipartisan political support. Times have changed in this regard, and not for the better. That's bad news, and not just because of the headaches it causes taxpayers each April. Conservatives and liberals in the U.S. argue about many aspects of the tax code, but reducing complexity usually is not one of them. According to the Brookings Institution, 'The notion that taxes should be simpler is one of the very few propositions in tax policy that generates universal agreement.' The center-left think tank lists several benefits of simpler taxes, including reducing the expense, time, and mental anguish involved in complying with the U.S. tax system. To help quantify that, the Tax Foundation estimates that U.S. taxpayers in 2024 will spend more than 7.9 billion hours filing their taxes at an estimated annual cost of $413 billion, based on average hourly compensation, using projections by the Internal Revenue Service and Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. For context, total U.S. consumer expenditures on medicine, including prescription drugs, were roughly $450 billion in 2023, according to the National Health Expenditure Accounts of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. All those hours and dollars represent significant deadweight loss, or reduced economic efficiency resulting from a suboptimal use of resources, a drag on America's potential growth. Former Republican President Ronald Reagan made tax simplification the central focus of his second presidential term's domestic policy agenda. At the time, discussions of tax reform were influenced by the concept of a flat tax, i.e., a single rate that would replace the existing system involving several income-based brackets. The legislation that eventually emerged from Reagan's efforts, the Tax Reform Act of 1986, did not go that far, but it did reduce the number of brackets. The law, which was passed with the vital support of Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, also eliminated several itemized deductions while increasing the standard deduction. Based on economic theory, this should have reduced deadweight loss, as taxpayers who elect the standard deduction spend much less time filing their returns, or, in the case of those hiring professionals, much less money, compared to those who itemize. Another positive effect of this tax reform was curtailing the use of abusive tax shelters that steered capital away from its most productive uses within the economy. The law reduced the abusive tax shelters' appeal by limiting several deductions, credits, and exclusions. Tax simplification remained part of the political discussion in the following decades. Flat tax proposals were put forth by presidential contenders Jerry Brown, a Democrat, in 1992, and Steve Forbes, a Republican, in 1996. In fact, simplification was a prominent part of the agenda as recently as 2017, when Congress enacted, and President Donald Trump signed, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The Tax Foundation reports that this legislation's near doubling of the standard deduction caused the percentage of tax returns claiming itemized deductions to plummet from 30.6% in 2017 to 11.4% in 2018. This brings us to the recently enacted One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The legislation's ungainly name should be a signal that it was not designed with simplification in mind. Consider, for example, the new law's elimination of tax on tips and overtime. A worker deriving income from either of those sources will now pay less tax than someone earning the equivalent amount solely in the form of salary. In effect, OBBBA has created new tax brackets. To be fair, OBBBA did further increase the standard deduction. It also made permanent the termination of most miscellaneous itemized deductions and established a new limit on all itemized deductions. At the same time, however, the legislation created many new wrinkles in the tax code. For instance, it granted one particular exemption to fishers from villages in western Alaska. The act also increased the previous $10,000 deduction for certain Alaskan whaling captains to $50,000. Those features, likely included in the bill to win the support of Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, were by no means OBBBA's only special-interest provisions. Farmers, who notoriously enjoy overrepresentation in Congress thanks to the Constitution's allocation of two senators to both the most populous and least populous states, won the unique right to pay capital gains taxes on the sale of farmland on an installment plan. That's not all. Interest on loans secured by agricultural real estate will now be partly excluded from taxation. OBBBA also increased the existing rebate on rum produced in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. If tax simplification can reduce economic inefficiency and potentially garner bipartisan support, then why is it no longer a prominent objective of tax reform? This may partly be because certain tax preferences aimed at achieving social objectives – such as those associated with Social Security – enjoy voter support across a broad ideological spectrum. The rise of economic populism on both sides of the aisle has also likely made anything as extreme as a flat tax a nonstarter. However, tax complexity could be reduced substantially without something as dramatic as eliminating progressive taxation or doing away with the most popular exemptions. For starters, this could include consolidating related tax incentives and eliminating sunset provisions, or expiration dates, for some OBBBA innovations. While we cannot know when or if politicians will resume the fight for tax simplification, what we can assume with some certainty is that groups from all political persuasions will keep pushing for special preferences, making the economy less efficient along the way. (The views expressed here are those of Marty Fridson, the publisher of Income Securities Advisor., opens new tab He is a past governor of the CFA Institute, consultant to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and Special Assistant to the Director for Deferred Compensation, Office of Management and the Budget, The City of New York). Enjoying this column? Check out Reuters Open Interest (ROI),, opens new tab your essential new source for global financial commentary. ROI delivers thought-provoking, data-driven analysis of everything from swap rates to soybeans. Markets are moving faster than ever. ROI,, opens new tab can help you keep up. Follow ROI on LinkedIn,, opens new tab and X., opens new tab
