Epstein "Knew" Melania Well, Trump's Biographer Alleges Link Between Two
"She's introduced by a model agent, both of whom Trump and Epstein are involved with. She's introduced to Trump that way. Epstein [knew] her well," Michael Wolff said in an interview with The Daily Beast podcast host Joanna Coles. Melania was part of the same modelling and social circles frequented by both Trump and Epstein, he added.
In tapes Wolff claims to have recorded, Epstein allegedly said Trump liked to "f***" his friends' wives and first slept with Melania aboard his private jet, nicknamed the 'Lolita Express.'
"Where does [Melania] fit into the Epstein story? Where does she fit into this, into this whole culture of models of indeterminate age?" Wolff asked. "So this is another complicated dimension in this."
Wolff also pointed to Melania's 1998 introduction to Trump through Paolo Zampolli, founder of ID Models, who had ties to both Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell. Zampolli, who played a key role in helping Melania emigrate to the US, currently serves as Trump's special representative for global partnerships.
Melania Trump has denied Epstein's role in her relationship with Trump. Last week, she shared an excerpt from her bestselling memoir 'Melania', writing that she met Trump at New York City's Kit Kat Club, not through Epstein.
Wolff also described the first lady as someone who prefers to remain out of the spotlight. "She never is by his side," he said.
The White House has strongly denied Wolff's allegations.
Communications Director Steven Cheung responded, "Michael Wolff is a lying sack of sh*t and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain."
Amid growing attention on the Epstein case, the Trump administration has faced renewed scrutiny after a July 6 memo from the Justice Department and FBI said that no "client list" exists.
Last Tuesday, the Department of Justice sought an interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, the former accomplice of Epstein, currently in jail. She was convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking minors on behalf of the disgraced billionaire, who died in custody in 2019.
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First Post
a minute ago
- First Post
'India-US ties go beyond trade deal or ceasefire claims': Govt sources on why India didn't call Trump 'a liar'
Regarding Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's call for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to declare US President Donald Trump a 'liar', sources in the government have said that the India-US relationship goes beyond the disagreement over the ceasefire and trade talks and should not be compromised on these issues. read more Sources in the Union government have stressed that the India-US relationship goes beyond the disagreement over the ceasefire in the India-Pakistan conflict earlier this year and cannot be compromised over the issue. Since May when India and Pakistan clashed for four days before reaching a ceasefire on May 10, US President Donald Trump has claimed that he brokered the ceasefire between the two countries. India, on the other hand, has maintained that Pakistan made a request after four days of battering that India granted. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Speaking in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi of the Congress party said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should publicly declare Trump a 'liar' over his false claims. Notably, while the government has not used the word 'liar', it has repeated multiple times that the ceasefire was a result of India accepting Pakistan's request and no third-party intervention was at play there. 'If Narendra Modi has even 50 per cent of the courage of Indira Gandhi, he should declare in the House that Trump is lying about the ceasefire,' said Rahul. On the intervening night of May 6-7, India launched Operation Sindoor and struck terrorist sites in Pakistan and Pakistan Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (POJK). It was launched in response to the attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam in which terrorists killed 26 people on April 22. After Pakistan responded to Indian strikes with attacks on Indian civilian and military sites, India struck Pakistani military sites, including airbases and air defence units and, after four days of battering, Pakistan reached out to India with a request for a ceasefire on May 10. India granted Pakistan the request. India-US ties go beyond disagreements, say sources Sources in the Union government have said that the India-US relationship goes beyond ongoing differences, such as differences over the ceasefire in the India-Pakistan conflict and ongoing trade talks. Even as the August 1 deadline for a trade deal is just around the corner, India and the United States have not been able to reach any deal. It is believed that the Trump administration's refusal to respect Indian red lines about sensitive sectors of dairy and agriculture and genetically modified (GM) crops is the main barrier in the two sides reaching a deal. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Trump on Tuesday said that India will likely face 20-25 per cent tariff starting August 1, which will be much higher than the 15 per cent tariff that he has imposed on the European Union (EU) and Japan that he has struck deals with. Sources said that the United States has so far stood with India in disputes with China, such as during the Doklam standoff of 2017, and such an important relationship cannot be compromised on one or two differences. Moreover, sources stressed that the prime minister has publicly declared that no leader asked India to stop the war. Similarly, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said that Modi and Trump never had the discussion about stopping the war. Sources further said that the Congress party has been in power before and it should know how governments function, suggesting that the party should realise the kind of words that the government would use to assert disagreement with the United States. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
Indian Express
a minute ago
- Indian Express
With AI plan, Trump keeps chipping away at a foundational environmental law
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A spokeswoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality said the administration is 'focused on driving meaningful NEPA reform to reduce the delays in federal permitting, unleashing the ability for America to strengthen its AI and manufacturing leadership. 'Trump's administration has been weakening the law for months.'It's par for the course for this administration. The attitude is to clear the way for projects that harm communities and the environment,' said Erin Doran, senior staff attorney at environmental nonprofit Food & Water Watch. Here's what to know about this key environmental law, and Trump's effort to weaken it: NEPA is a foundational environmental law in the United States, 'essentially our Magna Carta for the environment,' said Wendy Park, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, another environmental group, referring to the 13th century English legal text that formed the basis for constitutions worldwide. Signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1970, NEPA requires federal agencies proposing actions such as building roads, bridges or energy projects to study how their project will affect the environment. Private companies are also frequently subject to NEPA standards when they apply for a permit from a federal agency. In recent years, the law has become increasingly important in requiring consideration of a project's possible contributions to climate change. 'That's a really important function because otherwise we're just operating with blinders just to get the project done, without considering whether there are alternative solutions that might accomplish the same objective, but in a more environmentally friendly way,' Park said. But business groups say NEPA routinely blocks important projects that often take five years or more to complete.'Our broken permitting system has long been a national embarrassment,' said Marty Durbin, president of the U.S. Chamber's Global Energy Institute. He called NEPA 'a blunt and haphazard tool' that too often is used to block investment and economic development. The White House proposal comes as Congress is working on a permitting reform plan that would overhaul NEPA, addressing long-standing concerns from both parties that development projects — including some for clean energy — take too long to be approved. NEPA's strength — and usefulness — can depend on how it's interpreted by different a Republican, sought to weaken NEPA in his first term by limiting when environmental reviews are required and limiting the time for evaluation and public comment. Former Democratic President Joe Biden restored more rigorous reviews. In his second term, Trump has again targeted the law. An executive order that touched on environmental statutes has many agencies scrapping the requirement for a draft environmental impact statement. And the CEQ in May withdrew Biden-era guidance that federal agencies should consider the effects of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions when conducting NEPA reviews. Separately, the U.S. Supreme Court in May narrowed the scope of environmental reviews required for major infrastructure projects. In a ruling involving a Utah railway expansion project aimed at quadrupling oil production, the court said NEPA wasn't designed 'for judges to hamstring new infrastructure and construction projects.' 'It's been a rough eight months for NEPA,' said Dinah Bear, a former general counsel at the Council on Environmental Quality under both Democratic and Republican presidents. John Ruple, a research professor of law at the University of Utah, said sidelining NEPA could actually slow things down. Federal agencies still have to comply with other environmental laws, like the Endangered Species Act or Clean Air Act. NEPA has an often overlooked benefit of forcing coordination with those other laws, he said. Some examples of cases where NEPA has played a roleA botanist by training, Mary O'Brien was working with a small organization in Oregon in the 1980s to propose alternative techniques to successfully replant Douglas fir trees that had been clear-cut on federal lands. Aerially sprayed herbicides aimed at helping the conifers grow have not only been linked to health problems in humans but were also killing another species of tree, red alders, that were beneficial to the fir saplings, O'Brien said. The U.S. Forest Service had maintained that the herbicides' impact on humans and red alders wasn't a problem. But under NEPA, a court required the agency to redo their analysis and they ultimately had to write a new environmental impact statement. 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Time of India
19 minutes ago
- Time of India
Trump wields trade threat to play peacemaker in China's backyard
Live Events Differing Visions President Donald Trump 's tariff threats against Thailand and Cambodia pushed them toward ending their deadly border clash this week, showing again his willingness to use a trade war cudgel to stop armed conflict and upstaging China in its own shaking hands at a briefing following their ceasefire agreement Monday — ending five days of fighting that killed at least 42 people — both Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Manet and Thailand's Acting Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai thanked Trump in their US president had wielded his top bargaining tool only days before, using access to the US market to end the fighting and to help his aspirations to be recognized as a China also sent a representative to the talks, it kept a much lower profile than the US and made no similar threat of economic harm — in line with its approach to generally avoid intervening in conflict beyond seeking to facilitate discussions. And that allowed Trump to claim credit for stopping the bloodshed.'Trump will see this as a win. He wants to be seen as a peacemaker,' said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a professor of political science at Chulalongkorn University. 'And the fact that China also took part is good, because involving both the US and China — the top two superpowers in the world — gives it balance, legitimacy, and material support.'The ceasefire reached Monday — in a conflict that traces its roots back more than a century — was the culmination of events that started only on Saturday, when Trump called both leaders and then posted on social media that US negotiators 'do not want to make any Deal, with either Country, if they are fighting.'The stakes were high for both countries, facing 36% tariffs as soon as Aug. 1, while neighboring exporters Indonesia and Philippines had been granted rates of 19% and Vietnam stands at 20%.Trump said Monday the trade talks would restart with both countries. 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Earlier this month, Trump threatened a 50% tariff on Brazil as he called on local authorities to drop charges against former President Jair Bolsonaro over an alleged coup principle of non-interference in other countries' affairs means it's long kept out of foreign entanglements. That's allowed Beijing to distinguish itself from Washington in the Global South, where it has pursued ties primarily by offering loans and development and refraining from calls for political change.'China hopes to mediate via regional organizations,' said Tang Xiaoyang, chair of the international relations department at Tsinghua University, referring to Asean. 'It's not like a country outside the region must use power to directly intervene — that's what Trump is doing. That doesn't align with China's usual diplomacy approach.'Foreign Minister Wang Yi used the conflict to address grievances that go back more than a century to British and French imperialism, saying last week that 'the root cause of this problem is the legacy of Western colonizers in the past, and now we need to face it calmly and handle it properly.'The tensions between Thailand and Cambodia trace back to maps based on the Franco-Siamese treaties of the early 1900s that laid out the boundaries between Thailand and Cambodia, which was then part of French Indochina. Sovereignty remains a point of contention over a handful of areas and ancient temples along the Asia has long sought to balance its economic and security relationships with China and the US, while still maintaining a sense of regional autonomy through has made deeper inroads in recent years with Cambodia, which has the most at risk economically from the Xi's flagship Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese companies have helped finance and build much of Cambodia's manufacturing and infrastructure — including new airports in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, and the country's first expressway linking the capital to the port city of Sihanoukville. During Xi's visit to the country in April, they agreed to move forward with the $1.2 billion Funan Techo Canal, linking Cambodia's manufacturing belt with the Gulf of created a further opening for Chinese soft power when he decided to decimate the US Agency for International Development . Two projects in Cambodia that were canceled in February, focusing on child literacy and nutrition, were quickly replaced by Beijing with almost identical both Thailand and Cambodia, China is their top trading partner, comprising more than 20% of each of their total trade. The US comes in second, with about 13% for Thailand and 19% for both Bangkok and Phnom Penh run trade deficits with the US, selling almost $44 billion and $12 billion more, respectively, than they buy. That's the type of trade relationship Trump wants to reverse, regardless of either countries' need for American exports.
