Latest news with #EpsteinVictims
Sky News
2 days ago
- Politics
- Sky News
Trump latest: US president makes fresh threat over Epstein letter report; Venezuela releases Americans in exchange for migrants deported by US
21:37:31 Venezuela releases jailed Americans in exchange for migrants deported by the US Venezuela has released 10 jailed Americans in exchange for migrants deported by the US to El Salvador. "Ten Americans who were detained in Venezuela are on their way back to freedom," US secretary of state Marco Rubio wrote on X. Venezuela's government has said in a statement that 252 migrants being held in a prison in El Salvador have been sent home in a swap for Americans. "This operation is the result of months of negotiations with a tyrannical regime that had long refused to release one of its most valuable bargaining chips: its hostages," El Salvador's president said. "However, thanks to the tireless efforts of many officials from both the United States and El Salvador, and above all, thanks to Almighty God, it was achieved." 21:25:01 Watch: Lawyer says memes of Epstein undermine victims Speaking on the Trump 100 podcast, Arick Fudali, who represents 11 of Epstein's victims, spoke on what he described as the "memification" of this whole affair. "Frankly, I haven't heard anyone mention the victims other than more respectable media members who have interviewed me about it," he told US correspondent Martha Kelner. "No one seems to remember the victims. "I've been calling what's happened a 'memification' of the Epstein case. "It's very jokey on the internet, with memes and the hashtag that Epstein didn't kill himself became a meme five or so years ago. It's enough. Let the victims rest. "At least acknowledge that they are the ones who have suffered here." Watch below: Fudali being interviewed on Trump 100 20:53:01 In pictures: Trump hails 'massive validation' for crypto industry Donald Trump's signing ceremony has now wrapped up, and the US president won't be taking questions. "The entire crypto community, for years, you were mocked and dismissed and counted out," he said before signing the document. "This signing is a massive validation of your hard work and your pioneering spirit." 20:26:10 Trump signs crypto regulatory legislation Donald Trump has just signed the GENIUS Act into law. "This is a hell of an act... we worked hard," he said, as he thanked those involved in the bill. He added that the legislation takes "a giant step to cement the American dominance of global finance and crypto technology". What is the GENIUS Act? The bill was passed by the US House of Representatives and marks a key moment for the digital asset industry. It creates a regulatory framework for cryptocurrency tokens known as stablecoins. A stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency that is pegged to another asset, in this case the US dollar, making it less volatile than other cryptocurrencies typically are. It can be used in a range of ways, including for payments and for futures trading. The act could make stablecoins become more mainstream by encouraging more competition in the market and bolstering trist, crypto analyst Nic Puckrin told our US partner network NBC. 20:11:31 Trump teases 'big' trade deals soon Donald Trump has been going around the room and thanking those involved in the GENIUS Act before signing the crypto regulatory legislation. "They named it after me," he joked as he took to the podium. But the US president has also teased some "big" trade deals that could be announced soon. "When I send out the paper that you're paying 35% or 40% tariffs, that's a deal," he said. "Then they'll call and see if they can make a little bit different kind of a deal, like opening up their country to trade." 19:48:48 Trump speaking at the White House Donald Trump has just arrived to sign crypto regulatory legislation at the White House. We expect him to take questions after he has signed the document, and we'll bring you live text updates right here. You can also watch along in the stream at the top of this page. 19:17:01 US public broadcasters warn cuts could make Americans less safe Back to another story we told you about earlier in our 7.30 post - the US House has given final approval to Donald Trump's request to claw back around $9bn from public broadcasting and foreign aid. Leaders of US public broadcasters have been critical of the decision. Lisa Murkowski, one of two Republican senators to oppose the cuts, said the stations are essential for delivering "local news, weather updates, and emergency alerts that save human lives". More than 50 years after NPR and PBS first hit the airwaves, the two public broadcasters with hundreds of member stations face millions in budget cuts after Republican senators voted to claw back previously appropriated funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which funds public media like NPR and PBS. The House cleared the measure, sending it to Donald Trump for his signature. Republicans have framed the spending cuts bill as part of an effort to target purported "waste, fraud and abuse" in government-funded programmes. But media advocates argue that the cuts would have devastating effects on the American media landscape and an especially harmful impact on rural Americans, who may rely more heavily on local NPR and PBS stations for local news. "I think unfortunately this is cutting off their constituents' noses to spite NPR's face," NPR CEO Katherine Maher said Wednesday on CNN. "It doesn't help anyone to take this funding away." PBS president and CEO Paula Kerger said in a statement after the vote that the cuts would "significantly" affect PBS stations, saying they "will be especially devastating to smaller stations and those serving large rural areas". "Many of our stations, which provide access to free unique local programming and emergency alerts, will now be forced to make hard decisions in the weeks and months ahead," she said. 18:52:01 In pictures: Protests against Trump in Brazil Over in Brazil, protesters have taken to the streets of Sao Paulo to demonstrate against Donald Trump's decision to investigate digital trade and electronic payment services in the country. Earlier this week, US trade representative Jamieson Greer said he launched an investigation into Brazil's "unfair" trading practices. The announcement came a week after Trump threatened a 50% tariff on imports from Latin America's largest economy. 18:25:01 Trump and Epstein 'were the closest of friends', biographer says Donald Trump's biographer has claimed the US president and Jeffrey Epstein were the "closest of friends" from 1989 to 2004. "It would not have been unusual for them to be close friends," Michael Wolff told our presenter Kamali Melbourne. "They probably saw themselves as old fashioned bachelors, Trump was sometimes married and sometimes not married, when he was married it didn't seem to matter." Wolff, who claims he was the last person to receive a message from Epstein, said that the pair's friendship came to an end in 2004 when Epstein bid on a piece of real estate in Palm Beach. "He thought he was the top bidder at $36m and he took his friend Trump with him to look at the house and to advise him on how to move the swimming pool," he said. "His friend Trump went around his back and bid $40m." When asked how Trump has dealt with the allegations, Wolff said the US president has managed through "denial and obfuscation". "The people most calling for transparency are his own people," Wolff said. "The Epstein story has become a central conspiracy of the MAGA far-right and they went into this second term of the presidency thinking they would uncover the truth here, not thinking part of the truth was Trump's relationship to Epstein." Watch the full interview in the video below. Analysis: 'Extraordinary' Epstein story fails to go away for Trump The "extraordinary" story between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein "fails to go away", our US correspondent Mark Stone said. "Remember that the Trump administration, when they were campaigning before the election, they had said they would release the Epstein files," Stone explained. But Stone said the files are "a bit of a misnomer" and described them as being "not one file, it's a testimony". "When he became president, suddenly there was nothing to release," he added. "So the conspiracy theories compounded." Stone said the US president is "very angry" about the story in the Wall Street Journal (see 14.38 post). "It's understood that he knew the Wall Street Journal was going to publish this story several days ago, and over the past few days he has been warning the Wall Street Journal not to do it and that he would sue," Stone added. "Now he seems prepared to do that." Watch Stone's full analysis in the video below.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
What we know and don't know about Jeffrey Epstein, according to key victims' attorney
Brad Edwards knows that what you are about to read may be difficult for some to accept. A victims' rights lawyer from Florida, Edwards has been in pursuit of the truth about financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's life and crimes for nearly two decades. He would be the first to say that Epstein caused incalculable damage and trauma to hundreds of women and girls. MORE: Trump blasts 'stupid' and 'foolish' Republicans amid calls to reveal more Epstein files In fact, long before Epstein became known worldwide for his crimes, Edwards presciently told a federal judge, "Because of [Epstein's] deviant appetite for young girls, combined with his extraordinary wealth and power, he may just be the most dangerous sexual predator in U.S. history." That was 17 years ago. Back then, hardly anyone listened. In the years since, Edwards and his co-counsel -- on behalf of Epstein's victims -- have sued Epstein, his estate, the federal government and several financial institutions, recovering hundreds of millions of dollars for more than 200 survivors of Epstein's sex abuse and trafficking. He knows the victims' stories as well as anyone and, in the course of all the litigation, he has reviewed an expansive amount of non-public documents and evidence related to the late Epstein, who died by suicide in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking of minors. Now, as the Trump administration finds itself in the midst of a firestorm over its decision not to release any additional investigative files on Epstein -- after promising to produce a so-called "client list" of people connected to Epstein who may have participated in illegal acts -- Edwards has decided it's important to share what he's learned about Epstein, much of which contradicts what many have come to believe about the case. "Jeffrey Epstein was the pimp and the john. He was his own No. 1 client," Edwards told ABC News. "Nearly all of the exploitation and abuse of all of the women was intended to benefit only Jeffrey Epstein and Jeffrey Epstein's sexual desires." Edwards describes the enigmatic Epstein as living, essentially, two separate lives: one in which he was sexually abusing women and girls "on a daily basis," and another in which he associated with politicians, royalty, and titans of business, academia, and science. "For the most part, those two worlds did not overlap. And where they overlapped, in the instances they overlapped, it seems to be a very small percentage," Edwards said. "There were occasions where a select few of these men engaged in sexual acts with a select few of the girls that Jeffrey Epstein was exploiting or abusing -- primarily girls who were over the age of 18." "That conduct was coercive, it was exploitative, and it was bad. But it's a small fraction of the men he was associated with," Edwards said. "And he was abusing hundreds of women, if not a thousand. And it's a very small fraction of those women that he was sending to men. That conduct was secondary to his abusive conduct. [Epstein] abused all of these women." Edwards said he is bound by attorney-client privilege and cannot ethically reveal the names of any of Epstein's alleged associates without permission from his clients. But he said he has seen no indication that Epstein kept a list of those men, or that he made it a practice to use those instances to blackmail or extort the men, even though those men may have been legitimately concerned that Epstein had compromising information that he could use against them. MORE: What Trump has said about Jeffrey Epstein over the years, including on 2024 campaign trail "It's difficult to even discern, when he would send a woman to one of his friends, whether that was even a motivation. What he was not is a person on the top of a sex trafficking operation that was sending women to powerful people around the world so that he could make money. It was not a business," Edwards said. "And I think the few examples that we have, the known examples, have led to this belief that he must have been doing that with all of the women that he was abusing. That must have just been his gig. But that wasn't what he was doing on a daily basis. He's a sexual abuser and predator himself." If Epstein kept a list of those men, Edwards said he's not seen it. "Did Jeffrey write the names of these people down? I've never seen that. I only know of certain of these individuals because of representing clients," Edwards said. "I've never seen a list of people that Jeffrey Epstein kept that would say, 'Here's a list of men that I've sent women to,' or a mix-and-match where it's like, 'I sent this woman to this man.'" "That's just not something that he was keeping," Edwards said. "And it would be highly, highly unlikely that Jeffrey Epstein would keep a list of the people that he sent these women to. I'd imagine he would just remember it. It isn't that many women, and it isn't that many men." Over the last few months, as the controversy surrounding the on-again, off-again plan to disclose Epstein-related documents has dominated the news cycle, Edwards said he has heard from dozens of survivors concerned about the circus-like atmosphere that is forcing them to relive traumatic experiences and threatens to expose their identities, even if inadvertently. Any public release of information, Edwards said, should redact identifying information about Epstein's victims. "They would benefit from the story eventually dying off. But the story is not going to die off as long as there's this lack of transparency that is allowing for conspiracy theories to continue to fester and get out of hand," Edwards said. "So the best thing would be: Protect the victims' names, release everything else, so that the world can see what is real, versus what is total fiction, and then everybody can move on." But the recent decision by the Trump administration to rule out further disclosures would seem to impact categories of material known to be in the possession of federal authorities, including Epstein's financial records, details of his international travel, logs of boat trips to his U.S. Virgin Islands estate, and inventories of what was found in searches of his mansions in New York and elsewhere. And it raises questions whether those records, if made public, could finally lead to a better understanding of how a college dropout from Coney Island managed to accumulate astounding wealth and proximity to power -- a transformation that has long defied ready explanation. "It's very strange to me that somebody who rarely leaves his house is somehow able to get meetings with people. And they will travel from literally all over the world to meet with him on his time, at his place, under his circumstances. Which only just leaves more questions than answers," Edwards said. "And the fact that they're not releasing anything is, I think, just kind of fanning the flames of the conspiracy theory that everybody that he was meeting with had something to do with illegal sex. And I know that's not true." "We are all for transparency," said Edwards. "I think the world needs to know who Epstein was, what he was doing, how he made his money, who he was meeting with, and how he might have operated in other areas of business and politics. And all of that could be done through the release of documents and knowledge that is currently within the Justice Department, with what they have. But now there's this about-face where they were going to release everything and now all of a sudden they're releasing nothing. I think there is a middle ground there that the public deserves." Edwards notes that the government's files could also shed light on those who assisted or enabled Epstein to abuse so many women, and could finally answer speculation that Epstein was an intelligence asset of the U.S. or a foreign nation. "[The government] should know whether or not he was an intelligence asset, whether he's ever done work with the government, whether he's ever had a deal with the government before," Edwards said. "I would assume that that is also within the Epstein files. I don't know that information. I would like to know." MORE: Trump says Bondi should release 'whatever she thinks is credible' on Epstein But for Edwards, the primary concern should be for the survivors of Epstein's abuse -- and he worries that the victims are an afterthought in the ongoing Washington power struggle. "I think some [victims] believe that the government protected him, and there's this outrage because they believe that [Epstein] was always more important than they were, and that's why this was allowed to go on for so long. So if there was evidence that his political or other connections assisted, I think that they would want to know it," Edwards said. "But more so, they just want this to die off. And they see it's not dying off because of the way that it's being handled right now. In fact, somehow there's more attention to it today than there was when he was abusing them." For the well-being of the survivors, Edwards is hopeful there will soon be a resolution that will allow the victims to move on. "I just wish everybody would step back and remember real people were hurt here, and let's try to do what's in their best interest, as opposed to politicizing this whole thing and making it the right versus the left," he said. "All of that is hurting the people who are already hurt."
News.com.au
08-07-2025
- Politics
- News.com.au
Huge update in case against Prince Andrew as it's revealed he won't be charged in relation to Epstein's crimes
Prince Andrew is in the clear as the FBI has revealed no one else will be charged in its probe into Jeffrey Epstein's crimes. The crime fighting agency hadn't ruled out charging the Duke of York in January but a new memo from the agency and the Department of Justice obtained by Axios has now done that. The latest disclosure from the FBI has confirmed Epstein died by suicide and comes as the DoJ released the last footage of the financier alive. They believe no one else was involved in the financier's death and said there was no evidence of any 'client list' used to blackmail powerful figures. Investigators found 'no credible evidence … that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals' and no 'evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties'. The financier was in prison as he waited for a major trial over sex-trafficking charges after decades of sick activity with minors. Following his death, conspiracies spread online and whether Epstein's death was a suicide became an open question. Andrew had feared to ever return to the US given the possibility he could be arrested. 'He has been abroad once since the scandal erupted,' the source told The Sun. 'He has always been very nervous about going abroad and felt he'd always be looking over his shoulder as he could be subject to civil action or at worst, being arrested 'Hopefully with this out of the way it means he can at least leave the country.' They added: 'What's he supposed to do with the rest of his life? He hasn't been convicted of any crime and can't sit around doing nothing at Royal Lodge forever.' Andrew, 64, paid millions to Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre in an out-of-court settlement three years ago, while denying sexual assault accusations. He stayed at Epstein's New York home, and was accused of taking part in an 'underage orgy' on Epstein's Caribbean island. In 2020, the FBI asked the Home Office for help to quiz Andrew but that investigation was paused last year. New CCTV from inside the prison Epstein was detained in shows a grey-haired Jeffrey handcuffed in an orange jump suit being led to his cell by a guard at about 7.49pm. The pair move down a small flight of stairs on the left of the frame and walk to the right across the common area as they head to the cell. CCTV footage doesn't show Epstein's cell door but it would capture anyone walking to it, the DoJ said. Other than the guard leaving, no one walks across the common area towards Epstein's cell or away from it. At approximately 10.39pm, a guard appeared to walk in the direction of Epstein's cell and then reappeared within view of the camera at 10.41pm. This is believed to be the last time anyone entered the area of Epstein's cell before the next morning. Guards can be seen walking around the common area at around 6.30am on the 10th as they deliver breakfast. At approximately 6.33am, more guards enter the common area and walk towards the area of Epstein's cell - presumably after he was found dead in his cell. The disgraced financier was found dead in jail on August 10th, 2019, but speculation has been rife that others were involved. FBI deputy director Dan Bongino pledged to release the footage after it had been a Donald Trump campaign promise. Bongino wants to end all debate by releasing proof that no one entered or left the cell before the suicide. Andrew faced recently being dragged back into public focus after he was named in High Court papers when a former Barclays boss tried to overturn a regulator's ban. High Court files revealed Andy emailed Epstein in February 2011 saying 'we'll play some more soon'. But in his disastrous BBC Newsnight interview, Andrew said he ceased contact with Epstein in December 2010 after they were pictured in New York. Andrew was infamously pictured with his arm around her at Ghislaine Maxwell's home in London in 2001.
Times
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Times
Jeffrey Epstein victim's diary ‘contradicts' FBI blackmail claims
The Jeffrey Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre claimed in her diary that the sex offender taped her being 'abused by other men' to use for blackmail, seemingly contradicting a memorandum by the FBI and the justice department. The memo, published on Monday, stated that there was 'no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions'. Giuffre, who died by suicide at her home in Perth, Australia, in April, had left behind a diary of her final months, which her family shared with The Times to tell the 'full story' of her life. • What really happened to Virginia Giuffre? 'I used to be watched by Epstein's hidden cameras, which I have seen myself,' she wrote in one undated entry. 'The FBI have the archive footage showing me being abused by other men, used as blackmail.' Virginia Giuffre's diary entry on the tapes President Trump's justice department and the FBI, which had promised 'complete transparency' on the Epstein case, concluded on Monday that they found no evidence that the convicted sex offender and disgraced financier blackmailed powerful figures, kept a 'client list' or was murdered. Giuffre became Epstein's most prominent accuser, winning multiple lawsuits against him and his estate for sexual abuse and trafficking. Questions have been asked about what was recovered from FBI raids on Epstein's various homes after his arrest in 2019. Giuffre took her own life in April EMILY MICHOT/MIAMI HERALD/TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE/GETTY IMAGES Large black binders holding labelled CDs, as well as hard drives, were discovered in several rooms in his eight-storey Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan, including in a so-called massage room. Federal prosecutors said CDs found in a safe featured sexual photographs of women and under-age girls. • Maga backlash over 'botched' Jeffrey Epstein investigation Investigators were reported to have found multiple hidden cameras in Epstein's properties, including in his Manhattan townhouse and his private island, Little Saint James, in the US Virgin Islands. At least one other victim, the Briton Sarah Ransome, has claimed that Epstein secretly filmed sexual encounters between victims and high-profile figures to use for blackmail.
