DOJ told Trump that his name is among others in the Epstein files: report
Attorney General Pam Bondi informed the president back in May that his name appeared in the documents, senior officials told the Wall Street Journal. His name was one of many high-profile figures in the files, the outlet reported. The files reportedly contain hundreds of names, an official told the paper.
Being mentioned in the records isn't a sign of wrongdoing.
The revelation comes as the president tries to distance himself from the late financier and the fanfare surrounding the case.
Last week, the Journal published a report claiming that Trump gave Epstein a 50th birthday card containing a sexually suggestive drawing and a message suggesting the men shared 'secrets.' The president vehemently denied the claims and even sued the paper and its owners for $10 billion.
Attention around the case has bubbled up since the DOJ released a July 6 memo that the
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
9 minutes ago
- The Independent
‘Revolving door' between ICE and private prison companies is boosting Trump's deportation plans
As the Trump administration bulks up its mass deportation machine, officials have relied on a network of for-profit prison companies that run the overwhelming majority of America's immigration detention centers. One of the officials overseeing those contracts at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the government's Department of Homeland Security, is a former executive from a top private prison firm, GEO Group, which manages 20 detention centers across the country. According to The Washington Post, Trump's border czar Tom Homan approached David Venturella for a role in the administration, despite federal ethics rules that largely prohibit government employees from working on contracts with their former employers. Instead, Venturella was hired by the Department of Homeland Security as a full-time adviser and was granted a waiver from those ethics rules, according to the newspaper. Doing so has kept him out of the public eye and away from potentially contentious Senate confirmation hearings, the newspaper noted. Venturella worked as an assistant director at ICE before he was recruited by GEO Group in 2012. He left the company in 2023 though he stayed on as a paid consultant through January 31, according to company filings reviewed by The Washington Post. This apparent revolving door has also swung in the other direction. Days before the 2024 election, a top official at ICE left his position to take a senior role at GEO. Daniel Bible, who worked for ICE for nearly 15 years, is now a senior vice president at the company. At least six former ICE officials who left government work over the past decade now work in top roles at the company, according to reporting from nonprofit Project on Government Oversight. The group found a 'long tradition of ICE officials departing to work for the agency's top contractor,' part of the so-called 'revolving door' between the federal government and the private sector. The Independent has requested comment from ICE and GEO. In a statement to The Washington Post, a spokesperson for ICE said Venturella has divested his GEO stocks and holdings and 'has no financial ties to the company.' The spokesperson said he 'has no role in reviewing, approving, or recommending contracts,' but declined to comment on why he was given a waiver that authorizes him to work on Geo matters, according to the newspaper. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told the newspaper that Homan adheres to 'the highest ethical standards and he had no knowledge of any potential conflicts' involving Venturella. GEO runs 100 facilities globally, with a capacity of approximately 81,000 beds across those facilities, according to documents obtained by the ACLU. More than 22,000 beds – more than a quarter of GEO's global capacity – are inside ICE detention centers in the United States, including California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington. Nearly 90 percent of all immigration detention systems are operated by private prison contractors. More than 56,000 people are currently in ICE detention — likely a record in modern history. The figures top both the 39,000 people held in the final days of Joe Biden's administration, and the previous recent record of 55,654 in August 2019 during the first Trump administration. Since January, ICE has awarded GEO new and modified contracts expected to increase the agency's bed space to keep up with the administration's anti-immigration agenda, which the president and Congress have boosted by tens of billions of dollars over the next decade. With a directive from the White House to make at least 3,000 daily arrests, ICE received record-breaking funding from Congress — expanding the agency's budget to be larger than most countries' militaries — to hire more officers and expand detention space. That surge in congressional funding could land private contractors lucrative deals to detain more immigrants. Earlier this year, GEO inked a 15-year contract with ICE worth $60 million a year, the company announced. According to the Federal Procurement Data System, the contract is worth a total of $1.2 billion.
Daily Mail
9 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Terrified parents expose teacher's disturbing acts towards students before 'slaughtering parents in front of their children'
It was the fall semester of 2022 when 'Mr. McGann' began working as a fourth-grade teacher at Donald Elementary in Flower Mound, Texas. In less than a year, he had resigned, following complaints from parents which sparked an internal investigation.
Reuters
9 minutes ago
- Reuters
US Supreme Court poised to assess validity of key voting rights law
WASHINGTON, Aug 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court signaled on Friday that it will assess the legality of a key component of a landmark federal voting rights law, potentially giving its conservative majority a chance to gut a provision enacted 60 years ago that was intended to prevent racial discrimination in voting. The brief order issued by the court raises the stakes in a case already pending before the justices involving a legal challenge to an electoral map passed by Louisiana's Republican-led legislature that raised the number of Black-majority U.S. congressional districts in the state from one to two. The justices said they will consider whether it violates the U.S. Constitution for states to create additional voting districts with populations that are majority Black, Hispanic or another minority as a way to remedy a judicial finding that a state's voting map likely violates the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The case, due to be heard by the justices in their next term that begins in October, sets the stage for a major ruling expected by the end of June 2026 that could affect the composition of electoral districts around the United States. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. The dispute strikes at tensions between the Voting Rights Act, passed by Congress during the U.S. civil rights era to bar racial discrimination in voting, and adhering to the constitutional principle of equal protection, which limits the application of race when the borders of electoral districts are redrawn. Boundaries of legislative districts across the country are reconfigured to reflect population changes every decade in a process called redistricting. The court previously heard arguments in the case in March. But in June, the justices declined to issue a ruling and indicated they would invite the parties to address additional questions. Rick Hasen, an election law expert at UCLA, called the stakes enormous, writing in a blog post that the court seems to be asking whether the section of the Voting Rights Act at issue "violates a colorblind understanding of the Constitution." The action follows a major ruling by the court in 2013 in a case involving Alabama's Shelby County that invalidated another core section of the Voting Rights Act that determined which states and locales with a history of racial discrimination need federal approval for voting rule changes affecting Black people and other minorities. "This Court is more conservative than the Court that in 2013 struck down the other main pillar of the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby County case," Hasen wrote. "This is a big, and dangerous, step toward knocking down the second pillar." The matter is being litigated at the Supreme Court at a time when Republican President Donald Trump is taking steps to eliminate programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion that aim to promote opportunities for minorities, women, LGBT people and others. In the Louisiana case, state officials and civil rights groups appealed a lower court's ruling that found the map laying out the state's six U.S. House of Representatives districts - with two Black-majority districts, up from one previously - violated the constitutional promise of equal protection. A group of 12 Louisiana voters identifying themselves in court papers as "non-African American" sued to block the redrawn map. A lawyer for the plaintiffs did not respond to requests to provide the racial breakdown of the plaintiffs. The state and the rights groups are seeking to preserve the map. Black people comprise nearly a third of Louisiana's population. During the first round of arguments in the case in March, lawyers for Louisiana argued that the map was not drawn impermissibly by the legislature with race as the primary motivation, as the lower court found last year. The map's design, the Republican-governed state argued, also sought to protect Republican incumbents including House Speaker Mike Johnson and No. 2 House Republican Steve Scalise, who both represent districts in the state. Black voters tend to support Democratic candidates. Arguments in the case centered on Louisiana's response to U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick's June 2022 finding that an earlier map likely violated the Voting Rights Act and whether the state relied too heavily on race in devising the remedial map. Dick ruled that a map adopted earlier that year by the legislature that had contained only one Black-majority district unlawfully harmed Black voters. Dick ordered the addition of a second Black-majority district. The Supreme Court in 2023 left Dick's ruling in place, and it previously allowed the map at issue in the current case to be used in the 2024 election. A three-judge panel in a 2-1 ruling in April 2024 found that the map relied too heavily on race in the map's design in violation of the equal protection provision. The Constitution's 14th Amendment contains the equal protection language. Ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the American Civil War, the amendment addressed issues relating to the rights of formerly enslaved Black people.
