Not your money: 'Powerless' Trump watches as his attempted 'spending freeze' gets frozen!
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Yahoo
2 minutes ago
- Yahoo
CNN Analyst Stunned After Trump Botches 'Easiest Question In Human History'
CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig was blown away after hearing President Donald Trump's answer to a question about whether he would pardon convicted sex trafficker and close Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell. 'It's the easiest question in human history,' Honig told host Michael Smerconish on Saturday, quoting colleague Kevin Liptak as appropriately asking, 'Are you kidding me?' Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence after being convicted of helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls. On Friday, following the news that the Justice Department's No. 2 official had met with Maxwell in federal prison, a reporter asked Trump if he would consider a pardon or commutation for her. 'It's something I haven't thought about,' Trump replied. 'I'm allowed to do it, but it's something I have not thought about.' Honig expressed bewilderment at the answer. 'A pardon for the single worst, or No. 2 after Jeffrey Epstein, worst child sex trafficker in modern history?' he said. 'Absolutely not. N-O.' Ultimately, Honig said it was 'hard to imagine' that Trump would pardon Maxwell, though he noted 'other people who I know who are closer to Donald Trump and who have worked with him in the past say it could well happen.' Trump is facing escalating demands to release the files related to the case against the late Epstein, as the press continues to dig into his past friendship with the disgraced financier. The president left the country on Friday for a golf-heavy trip to Scotland, and was bombarded with questions about Epstein from reporters before takeoff and after touchdown. Related... Trump Claims He 'Never Went' To Epstein's Island, Tells People To Focus On Bill Clinton Instead Joe Rogan On Trump Administration's Handling Of Epstein Files: 'Do You Think We're Babies?' Trump's Calendar Girls Party Had Only 1 Other Guest: Jeffrey Epstein
San Francisco Chronicle
3 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Official fired during Trump's first term appointed president of embattled US Institute of Peace
A senior State Department official who was fired as a speechwriter during President Donald Trump 's first term and has a history of incendiary statements has been appointed to lead the embattled U.S. Institute of Peace. The move to install Darren Beattie as the institute's new acting president is seen as the latest step in the administration's efforts to dismantle the embattled organization, which was founded as an independent, non-profit think tank. It is funded by Congress to promote peace and prevent and end conflicts across the globe. The battle is currently being played out in court. Beattie, who currently serves as the under secretary for public diplomacy at the State Department and will continue on in that role, was fired during Trump's first term after CNN reported that he had spoken at a 2016 conference attended by white nationalists. He defended the speech he delivered as containing nothing objectionable. A former academic who taught at Duke University, Beattie also founded a right-wing website that shared conspiracies about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and has a long history of posting inflammatory statements on social media. 'Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work,' he wrote on October 2024. 'Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.' A State Department official confirmed Beattie's appointment by the USIP board of directors, which currently includes Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. '(W)e look forward to seeing him advance President Trump's America First agenda in this new role,' they said. The USPI has been embroiled in turmoil since Trump moved to dismantle it shortly after taking office as part of his broader effort to shrink the size of the federal government and eliminate independent agencies. Trump issued an executive order in February that targeted the organization and three other agencies for closure. The first attempt by the Department of Government Efficiency, formerly under the command of tech billionaire Elon Musk, to take over its headquarters led to a dramatic standoff. Members of Musk's group returned days later with the FBI and Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police to help them gain entry. The administration fired most of the institute's board, followed by the mass firing of nearly all of its 300 employees in what they called 'the Friday night massacre.' The institute and many of its board members sued the Trump administration in March, seeking to prevent their removal and to prevent DOGE from taking over the institute's operations. DOGE transferred administrative oversight of the organization's headquarters and assets to the General Services Administration that weekend. District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell overturned those actions in May, concluding that Trump was outside his authority in firing the board and its acting president and that, therefore, all subsequent actions were also moot. Her ruling allowed the institute to regain control of its headquarters in a rare victory for the agencies and organizations that have been caught up in the Trump administration's downsizing. The employees were rehired, although many did not return to work because of the complexity of restarting operations. They received termination orders — for the second time, however, — after an appeals court stayed Howell's order. Most recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied the U.S. Institute of Peace's request for a hearing of the full court to lift the stay of a three-judge panel in June. That stay led to the organization turning its headquarters back over to the Trump Administration. In a statement, George Foote, former counsel for the institute, said Beattie's appointment 'flies in the face of the values at the core of USIP's work and America's commitment to working respectfully with international partners' and also called it 'illegal under Judge Howell's May 19 decision.' 'We are committed to defending that decision against the government's appeal. We are confident that we will succeed on the merits of our case, and we look forward to USIP resuming its essential work in Washington, D.C. and in conflict zones around the world,' he said.
New York Post
3 minutes ago
- New York Post
Ghislaine Maxwell still mulling whether to testify before Oversight Committee, her attorney says
Ghislaine Maxwell is still weighing whether she will testify before Congress even though the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed her to do so. Earlier this week, the powerful Oversight panel subpoenaed Maxwell for a deposition on Aug. 11 due to the 'immense public interest and scrutiny' surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein case. 'Congress has asked her to testify, we have to make a decision about whether she will do that or not,' her attorney David Oscar Markus told reporters Friday. 'We haven't gotten back to them on whether we'll do that.' The statement signals Maxwell is still mulling whether to plead the Fifth Amendment or other privileges to fend off the subpoena. Should she take the Fifth, the Oversight panel could offer her some type of immunity in a bid to get her to talk. 4 Ghislaine Maxwell could plead her Fifth Amendment rights to avoid testifying before the House Oversight Committee. 4 Attorney David Oscar Markus has argued that Ghislaine Maxwell was unfairly convicted. AP On Thursday and Friday, Maxwell spoke with US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, President Trump's former defense attorney, about the Epstein case. The unusual meeting between Maxwell and Blanche for a type of interview that is typically left for lower-level Justice Department officials comes amid a public firestorm over the infamous pedophile, who committed suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019. Maxwell, a British socialite, was found guilty in 2021 of child sex trafficking and engaging in a scheme to exploit minors with Epstein and sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in prison. Markus, who previously did a podcast episode with Blanche before the latter became the US deputy attorney general, said he was proud of his client's performance when asked if the interview altered the calculus of whether she would comply with the Oversight Committee's subpoena. 'I think Ghislaine did a wonderful job. She literally answered every question. She didn't say that 'I'm not going to talk about this person,' ' Markus said. 'She was asked maybe about 100 different people. She answered questions about everybody, and she didn't hold anything back.' 4 Ghislaine Maxwell is serving out a 20-year prison sentence. REUTERS Markus also claimed 'there have been no asks and no promises' made to get her to agree to the interview with Blanche, including the possibility of a pardon from Trump. Earlier Friday, Trump said he hasn't yet contemplated a pardon, but noted, 'I'm allowed to do it.' Maxwell is currently serving out her sentence, something that her legal team has been appealing all the way up to the Supreme Court. Former Epstein attorney Alan Dershowitz has publicly claimed Maxwell 'knows everything' about the convicted child sex offender's crimes. The Trump administration and Republicans have come under intense pressure from the MAGA base to give the public more answers about Epstein. The push for information comes after a July 6 memo from the DOJ and FBI memo said there was insufficient evidence to suggest Epstein even had an 'incriminating client list.' Democrats have sought to exploit the Epstein scandal and put Republicans on the spot with attempts to force a vote to publicly divulge the documents on the notorious sex predator. 4 House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer has pursued testimony from Ghislaine Maxwell. Getty Images Those efforts resulted in the floor of the House of Representatives effectively becoming frozen due to GOP leadership's efforts to scuttle a Democratic effort to force a vote on Epstein. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and his deputies have been keen to stick with Trump on the Epstein controversy. As a result, Republican leadership decided to send the lower chamber home for the August recess a day early. 'We want full transparency,' Johnson (R-La.) told CBS News' 'The Takeout with Major Garrett' Wednesday. 'We want everybody who is involved in any way with the Epstein evils — let's call it what it was — to be brought to justice as quickly as possible.' 'We want the full weight of the law on their heads.' Meanwhile, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) have cooked up a discharge petition, which will allow them to get a vote without GOP leadership's blessing, on a bill to force the release of the Epstein files. That discharge petition is poised to ripen when the House reconvenes in September from the August recess. Trump has expressed support for additional public disclosures in what he has dubbed the 'Epstein hoax' and backed a push by US Attorney General Pam Bondi to pursue court approval for releasing grand jury testimony.
