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The Guardian
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Ghislaine Maxwell demands immunity before testifying to Congress
Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker and associate of Jeffrey Epstein, says that she is willing to testify before Congress but only if certain conditions are met, including being granted immunity, according to a new letter sent to the House oversight committee by her lawyer on Tuesday. Last week, the House committee on oversight and government subpoenaed Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence, to testify via deposition next month at a federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida, where she is currently in custody. But in a new letter on Tuesday addressed to James Comer, a Republican who chairs the House committee, Maxwell's lawyer, David Markus, said that Maxwell was willing to testify but that testifying 'from prison and without a grant of immunity' were 'non-starters'. Markus wrote that their initial reaction to the subpoena was that 'Maxwell would invoke her Fifth Amendment rights and decline to testify at this time.' 'As you know, Ms Maxwell is actively pursuing post-conviction relief – both in a pending petition before the United States Supreme Court and in a forthcoming habeas petition,' Markus wrote. 'Any testimony she provides now could compromise her constitutional rights, prejudice her legal claims, and potentially taint a future jury pool.' But, in the following paragraph, he states: 'However, after further reflection, we would like to find a way to cooperate with Congress if a fair and safe path forward can be established,' adding: 'Several conditions would need to be addressed for that to be possible.' The conditions in the letter include a grant of 'formal immunity', that the interview not take place at the correctional facility, that the committee's questions be given to her in advance, and that the deposition not be scheduled until after the 'resolution of her Supreme Court petition and her forthcoming habeas petition'. 'Ms Maxwell cannot risk further criminal exposure in a politically charged environment without formal immunity,' the letter states. In the letter, Maxwell's lawyer said that if the demands were not met, Maxwell 'will have no choice but to invoke her Fifth Amendment rights'. In a statement on Tuesday afternoon, a spokesperson for the oversight committee said that the committee 'will respond to Ms Maxwell's attorney soon, but it will not consider granting congressional immunity for her testimony'. At the end of the letter from Maxwell's lawyer on Tuesday, her lawyer also made a plea for clemency. 'Of course, in the alternative, if Ms Maxwell were to receive clemency, she would be willing – and eager – to testify openly and honestly, in public, before Congress in Washington, DC,' the letter states. 'She welcomes the opportunity to share the truth and to dispel the many misconceptions and misstatements that have plagued this case from the beginning.' Last week, officials from the Department of Justice met with Maxwell over two days, amid growing pressure on the Trump administration to disclose more details about the Epstein case. This comes as earlier this month, the justice department drew bipartisan backlash, including from some Trump supporters, after announcing that it would not be releasing further documents from the Epstein case, despite earlier promises by Trump and the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, to do so.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Ghislaine Maxwell demands immunity before testifying to Congress
Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker and associate of Jeffrey Epstein, says that she is willing to testify before Congress but only if certain conditions are met, including being granted immunity, according to a new letter sent to the House oversight committee by her lawyer on Tuesday. Last week, the House committee on oversight and government subpoenaed Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence, to testify via deposition next month at a federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida, where she is currently in custody. But in a new letter on Tuesday addressed to James Comer, a Republican who chairs the House committee, Maxwell's lawyer, David Markus, said that Maxwell was willing to testify but that testifying 'from prison and without a grant of immunity' were 'non-starters'. Markus wrote that their initial reaction to the subpoena was that 'Maxwell would invoke her Fifth Amendment rights and decline to testify at this time.' 'As you know, Ms Maxwell is actively pursuing post-conviction relief – both in a pending petition before the United States Supreme Court and in a forthcoming habeas petition,' Markus wrote. 'Any testimony she provides now could compromise her constitutional rights, prejudice her legal claims, and potentially taint a future jury pool.' But, in the following paragraph, he states: 'However, after further reflection, we would like to find a way to cooperate with Congress if a fair and safe path forward can be established,' adding: 'Several conditions would need to be addressed for that to be possible.' The conditions in the letter include a grant of 'formal immunity', that the interview not take place at the correctional facility, that the committee's questions be given to her in advance, and that the deposition not be scheduled until after the 'resolution of her Supreme Court petition and her forthcoming habeas petition'. 'Ms Maxwell cannot risk further criminal exposure in a politically charged environment without formal immunity,' the letter states. In the letter, Maxwell's lawyer said that if the demands were not met, Maxwell 'will have no choice but to invoke her Fifth Amendment rights'. In a statement on Tuesday afternoon, a spokesperson for the oversight committee said that the committee 'will respond to Ms Maxwell's attorney soon, but it will not consider granting congressional immunity for her testimony'. At the end of the letter from Maxwell's lawyer on Tuesday, her lawyer also made a plea for clemency. 'Of course, in the alternative, if Ms Maxwell were to receive clemency, she would be willing – and eager – to testify openly and honestly, in public, before Congress in Washington, DC,' the letter states. 'She welcomes the opportunity to share the truth and to dispel the many misconceptions and misstatements that have plagued this case from the beginning.' Last week, officials from the Department of Justice met with Maxwell over two days, amid growing pressure on the Trump administration to disclose more details about the Epstein case. This comes as earlier this month, the justice department drew bipartisan backlash, including from some Trump supporters, after announcing that it would not be releasing further documents from the Epstein case, despite earlier promises by Trump and the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, to do so.
Indianapolis Star
24-07-2025
- Business
- Indianapolis Star
Donald Trump's approval ratings today? Current US polls on Trump in Epstein files, tariffs, more
The Jeffrey Epstein files and President Donald Trump's involvement are atop Americans' minds, according to recent polls on his second term at the White House. Multiple polls share where Trump's general approval rating currently is among U.S. constituents. A July 16 Quinnipac University poll not only asked Americans about Trump and Epstein, but also about concerns over Trump's use of tariffs. Questions also discussed the economy, deportations, the United States Supreme Court and more. Here's what we know about America's thoughts on Trump, the Supreme Court, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem, Tom Homan, Kash Patel and more: Here are the latest approval ratings released on Trump's administration: Most recent Trump approval rating, according to the latest from The Economist (July 24, 2025): Most recent Trump approval rating, according to the latest Civiqs poll (July 20-23, 2025): Most recent Trump approval rating, according to the latest Rasmussen poll (July 23, 2025): Most recent Trump approval rating, according to the latest Navigator Research poll (July 15, 2025): Most recent Trump approval rating, according to the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll (July 1, 2025): Most recent Trump approval rating, according to the latest Quinnipac University poll (July 16, 2025): Most recent Trump approval rating, according to the latest Reuters / Ipsos polls (July 15-16, 2025): Most recent Trump approval rating, according to the latest Gallup polls (June 3-19, 2025): Most recent Trump approval rating, according to the latest Fox News polls (June 13-16, 2025): Most recent Trump approval rating, according to the latest Cygnal poll (June 10, 2025): Based off Civiqs' online daily approval tracking polls, here's a look at President Donald Trump's approval rating in Indiana (July 24, 2025): Here's a look at what the country views as the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files under President Donald Trump, according to the Quinnipac University poll (July 16, 2025): Here's a look at how the country views the impact of tariffs under President Donald Trump, according the Quinnipac University poll (July 16, 2025): Here's a look at how the country views the national economy under President Donald Trump, according the Quinnipac University poll (July 16, 2025): Here's a look at how the country views immigration under President Donald Trump, according the Quinnipac University poll (July 16, 2025): Here's a look at how the country views deportations under President Donald Trump, according to the Quinnipac University poll (July 16, 2025): Here's a look at how the country views the United States Supreme Court in handling its job under President Donald Trump, according to the Quinnipac University poll (July 16, 2025): Here's a look at how the country views the United States Supreme Court's motivations between politics and the law under President Donald Trump, according to the Quinnipac University poll (July 16, 2025): Here's a look at how the country views Democrats in Congress handling their jobs under President Donald Trump, according to the Quinnipac University poll (July 16, 2025): Here's a look at how the country views Republicans in Congress handling their jobs under President Donald Trump, according to the Quinnipac University poll (July 16, 2025): Here's a look at how the country views joining an alternative political party to Republicans and Democrats, according to the Quinnipac University poll (July 16, 2025): Here's a look at how the country views joining an alternative political party to Republicans and Democrats created by Elon Musk, according to the Quinnipac University poll (July 16, 2025): Here's a look at how the country views Tom Homan under President Donald Trump, according to the Quinnipac University poll (July 16, 2025): Here's a look at how the country views Pam Bondi under President Donald Trump, according to the Quinnipac University poll (July 16, 2025): Here's a look at how the country views Pete Hegseth under President Donald Trump, according to the Quinnipac University poll (July 16, 2025): Here's a look at how the country views Kash Patel under President Donald Trump, according to the Quinnipac University poll (July 16, 2025): Here's a look at how the country views Democrats in Congress handling their job under President Donald Trump, according to the Quinnipac University poll (July 16, 2025):
Scroll.in
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
How Bengali Harlem's lost history challenges America's immigration certainties
As immigration enforcement intensifies across the United States, Alaudin Ullah finds himself immersed in a history most Americans have never heard about. The New York-based comedian-turned-actor and playwright has spent over 25 years documenting the forgotten story of his father and thousands of other Bengali Muslim seamen who jumped ship at American ports in the late 19th and early 20th century. Facing exclusion laws similar to today's deportation drives under President Donald Trump, these sailors embedded themselves in New York's Black and Latino communities in Harlem, opened some of America's first South Asian restaurants and rubbed shoulders with participants in radical political movements that would reshape the US. What Ullah discovered challenged everything he thought he knew and formed a new conception of South Asian immigration to the United States: it placed Bengali Muslims from present-day Bangladesh and India's West Bengal as the central protagonists in the narrative. An unknown chapter Ullah knew none of this history when he was growing up in an East Harlem housing project in the 1980s. Like many rebellious second-generation immigrants, he spent years rejecting his Bengali identity and distancing himself from the world of his father Habib Ullah. But in 1998, a decade after his father's death, Ullah began sharing fragmented stories of his father's arrival in New York with the academic and filmmaker Vivek Bald. Bald, whose own family had arrived after the 1965 Immigration Act opened doors for educated South Asian professionals to move to the United States, realised they were uncovering an older and unknown chapter of South Asian immigration. If Habib had arrived in the 1920s, he would have entered America when immigration from most of Asia was banned in the country and when the United States Supreme Court ruled that Asians were 'not free, not white'. Yet thousands of men like Habib found ways around the ban. When his ship docked in Boston, Habib stayed behind and eventually made his way to New York, where he found a job as a dishwasher in upscale hotels like The Commodore (a former name for the Hyatt Grand Central). 'He worked in the kitchens of these hotels alongside Black and Puerto Rican workers,' explained Alaudin Ullah. Habib Ullah's story and the history of other Bengali Muslim men like him is the focus of the documentary In Search of Bengali Harlem, completed in 2022 by Vivek Bald which features Ullah as the narrator. Play Habib Ullah married a woman named Victoria Echevarria, an immigrant from Puerto Rico. After Victoria's untimely death, Habib raised their son, Habib Jr, but sent their daughter to live with her mother's relatives and friends. In the 1960s, Habib returned to his village, Noakhali in present-day Bangladesh, for the first time in 40 years. It was no longer under British colonial rule. Partition had made Noakhali a part of East Pakistan. Habib married a young Bengali woman named Mohima. The two moved to Harlem and had two sons. The younger of the two, Alaudin Ullah was in his early teens when his father died. 'I had known little of him and blamed him for abandoning my half-sister,' said Ullah. 'And I didn't get a lot of answers about our past from my mother.' Mohima was isolated in the public housing complex they lived in, and struggled to raise her sons, said Ullah. Unlike neighbourhoods like Jackson Heights in New York today, where it is possible to live surrounded by people from your home country, Mohima was living in ethnically diverse Harlem where her family was among the only Bengalis in a Black and Puerto Rican neighborhood. In the early 20th century, Harlem became a hub for African American communities arriving from the American South, as well as immigrants from the Black, Hispanic and Asian diasporas. Bengali seafarers such Habib Ullah moved from the Lower East Side, where they initially worked, to Harlem, where undocumented immigrants like him could blend in and stay undetected by authorities. By the 1950s and '60s, many of those families had moved to other parts of New York or even farther away. The stories of these vibrant communities have faded in New York today. Perhaps, that process was accelerated by a 1965 change in US immigration law that drove a new wave of South Asians, particularly highly educated people, to the United States. These immigrations were often perceived as 'model minorities' who overshadowed undocumented working-class immigrants from the subcontinent. Stories like Habib Ullah's were largely unheard of when Bald and Ullah began their research. They dug up newspaper clippings, ship records and cross-checked marriage certificates to discover waves of Bengali immigration going back to the 1880s. By the 1940s, Habib Ullah and Victoria Echevarria ran the Bengal Garden restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, a precursor to the South Asian restaurants that would later dominate New York's Sixth Street. One thread running through the documentary is Ullah's search for a dimly remembered family photograph. It was said to show Ibrahim Choudry, a Bengali immigrant, standing with Malcolm X, the African-American leader who was prominent in the civil rights movement, surrounded by African American and South Asian Muslims. The photograph has acquired near-mythical status – a missing link that could cement the presence of Bengali migrants firmly in Black American history. Ullah is still hoping to find that photograph one day. 'What we do know is that Malcolm X and other contemporaries like Felipe Luciano from the Young Lords [a radical 1960s group led by Puerto Rican youth] would often eat at South Asian restaurants run by my father and his contemporaries,' said Ullah. These Bengali-owned establishments served some of the only halal food available in the city, drawing African American converts to Islam. Choudry and his contemporaries, including Ullah's father Habib Ullah, maintained an interest in subcontinental nationalism, forming social-cum-political clubs such as the Pakistan League of America. The League's membership – predominantly former seamen, along with their African American and Puerto Rican wives and children – embodied a very different model of community building from the other South Asian immigrant organisations that were to follow. In recent decades, New York's South Asian community has been transformed by newer waves of immigration settling in several parts of the city. It is easier for married couples to immigrate together, reducing the need to find partners in the US. 'Today's South Asian community has the luxury of numbers that my father's generation didn't have,' Ullah noted. 'But with that has come a kind of insularity. I think we've lost something important about what it means to be part of broader justice movements.'
Miami Herald
20-07-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
We're pro-choice Floridians — and we trust David Jolly to defend our rights
We are Floridians who are actively committed to securing reproductive rights in Florida, and we are enthusiastically supporting David Jolly for governor. He strongly believes: 'Reproductive health care decisions should be made between women and their doctors, not politicians.' He wants to bring back the protections of Roe v. Wade, as do the over 57% of Florida voters who voted for Amendment 4 last November. David Jolly told us: 'I voted for Amendment 4. As governor, I would work to enact Amendment 4 into law. I support Roe. I am pro-choice. And as your governor I would veto any legislation that would restrict reproductive healthcare in the state of Florida.' Roe is the United States Supreme Court case that originally established the right to an abortion and was overruled by a 2023 Supreme Court decision. Jolly was not always a supporter of abortion rights. When he was in Congress many years ago, he did support anti-abortion positions. But since then, he has changed his mind. After all, he was raised in a culture that deplored abortion. However, when faced with the tangible and tragic harms resulting from restrictive abortion policies, his view changed. Informed by empathy, ethical considerations and his views on the appropriate role of government, he is now solidly pro-choice. What? A politician who changes his mind to do the right thing? Is that not what we all want? Well, it certainly is what we want. Jolly's positions track exactly the language of Amendment 4: 'No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient's health, as determined by the patient's healthcare provider.' That language is the same codification of Roe v. Wade that Jolly supports. We find it admirable that Jolly is someone who was willing to change his mind after being confronted with the realities of the anti-abortion movement and its devastating impact on those who need abortions but cannot get them. None of us would be supporting him today unless he had realized his past stance on reproductive choice was wrong. Jolly pledges that he will govern according to his values, which are based on 'love, kindness, respect and dignity.' He says that there are three basic principles that govern his decisions: ▪ Florida's economy should work for everyone in the state. ▪ Florida's laws and policies should apply equally to all. ▪ The personal freedoms of all Floridians must be protected. Those values and principles point only to support for reproductive rights. We trust David Jolly on reproductive rights. But this is not a one-issue race. We also support his positions on other issues that he and we consider critical to Florida: addressing the affordability of housing, property insurance and health care, strengthening and improving public education and allowing our public universities to thrive without government interference. If we cannot accept that politicians can change their minds when they realize they were wrong, we are in for governance that none of us want. Jolly is a person who will live and govern by the same values and principles we all support. That's why dedicated pro-choice women leaders across Miami-Dade like Maribel Balbin, Cindy Lerner and Jennifer Stearns Buttrick are joining reproductive freedom champions throughout our state like Mona Reis, Susan Windmiller, former member of Congress Gwen Graham and former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Barbara Pariente in saying: We trust David Jolly on reproductive rights. Ellen Freidin is a lawyer and sponsor of Florida's Constitutional Equal Protection Clause and leader of the Fair Districts Florida movement. Jane Moscowitz is a former federal prosecutor. Donna Shalala is a former member of Congress and former president of the University of Miami. Barbara Zdravecky is the retired CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida.
