Millions of pages of Epstein files have just been released. Todd Blanche, who appears to have taken over the role of speaking for the DoJ from Trump’s girl Pam, said the department was releasing 3 million pages, 2,000 videos and some 180,000 images. It’ll take awhile to go through all that, I suspect.
Blanch also announced that the DoJ has begun a civil rights investigation into the execution of Alex Pretti. This is a standard thing after federal agents have killed someone, I understand, although it wasn’t done for the death of Renee Good. And I’m not hearing that the DoJ is going to share evidence with authorities in Minnesota to do their own investigation, so I’m not too excited that justice will be done. The FBI is hanging on to Alex Pretti’s phone, for example. I’ll be surprised if what Pretti was recording before he was killed is ever seen by the public. Kash will have the phone destroyed first.
Maybe there’s a budget deal, and maybe there isn’t. There were reports that Chuck and Trump had agreed the Senate could separate out DHS funding from the rest of the budget bill. That would allow the rest of the budget to be approved and let the Senate argue over DHS reforms for a while. But Lindsey Graham threw a wrench in the works. “He refused to go along with the plan over a House-backed provision that would repeal a law allowing senators to receive cash payouts if they had phone records seized by former special counsel Jack Smith — the South Carolina Republican included,” it says here.
Don Lemon has been arrested for reporting at a protest that broke out at a church service. A federal magistrate judge had previously rejected a criminal complaint against Lemon. But the DoJ says they got an indictment from a Grand Jury. I am not a big Don Lemon fan, but this is obviously an attempt to send a warning to journalists to be careful what they report.
Quote of the day:
LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT: Kevin Warsh—expected to be Trump's Fed chair pick—is the son-in-law of Trump donor Ronald Lauder (billionaire Estée Lauder heir), who convinced Trump in 2018 of the need to annex Greenland (and then invested heavily there), and who benefits from the Ukraine rare-earth deal?
https://bsky.app/profile/adamkeiper.com/post/3mdmfvagmy22r
Don't forget: The conspiracy theory believers who brought us the pizza gate, space lasers and Venezuelan voting machine nonsense are now in charge of the Legislative branch.
They have Alex Pretti's phone. I wonder if the first thing they downloaded was his list of contacts. Don Lemon was arrested yesterday (?) also. I'm speculating that they have his phone too… and the contact list.
Pure speculation: They want to roll up the vast underground conspiracy network that is trying to undermine federal "law enforcement".
Lemon and another journalist were arrested this morning, Friday morning. I agree with you about contact lists.
Sorry, in the above comment I meant to say "Executive Branch" instead of "Legislative Branch"
Unless there's stuff I don't know, there's little chance that the charges against Don Lemon will go to trial, and even less a chance for a conviction. I wonder what lies were presented to a Grand Jury to get an indictment? I seem to recall problems with a transcript last time around. The kicker will be that Trump signed an executive order that says churches and schools are legitimate targets if ICE thinks illegal aliens are there. But churches can't be disrupted by protesters if they know ICE is doing the church service?
I still say Trump is just moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic in a play for time. He has nothing but contempt for voters' attention span. If no citizens are murdered for a week, he thinks he's off the hook. I have my doubts. When they drag out the whitewash investigation forever, with no non-federal law enforcement agencies involved, nobody will believe the result.
Team Trump is making all kinds of sweet and nice promises about how ICE is not going to interact with "agitators." And they are only arresting criminal illegal aliens. "Trust me." The media should be on the ground validating that – if not, the citizens of Minneapolis are. Has ICE really pulled in their horns? (They reportedly made a similar commitment to Collins about Maine. That may cost her a Senate seat.) I want Liz Warren on the committee negotiating ICE reforms. She knows what she wants from ICE and how to ensure there will be consequences for violations.
The war is not over illegal aliens or the unlimited power of ICE. It's about control of the House and possibly the Senate. Trump knows a hostile coequal branch of government can shine a bright light on stuff he's lying his substantial ass off about. I think Project 2025 has a bnder of plans not released to the public. An essential beachhead is keeping control of Congress for the next two years.
With "everything"from the Epstein Files released, litigation can begin. I think the redactions are a violation of the law wherever they protect people who Epstien didn't have sex with. The victims may have grounds to demand a special master to go over every redaction to see if it was properly applied and re-release the docs that hide the truth. And as a cynical opinion, they didn't release everything. I wish I knew how to prove it.
Quick note: The three branches of the federal government are not coequal.
Nor were they meant to be.
MarketWatch reported a 7 trillion-dollar loss in gold and silver yesterday if you missed the big crashing sounds. I did mention that the gold bugs seemed to have gone wild a few days ago. Markets do correct now and then. This was a big one. Silver dropped quite a bit more than gold by percentage.
The agriculture guys were saying beef prices had been showing high correlations with gold prices. I checked yesterday and beef was still high. I guess no one told the beef what happened to the price of gold. I bought the chicken instead.
A couple of weeks back, countries in Europe were dumping T-bills over Trump's Greenland insanity. A good chunk of that money probably went into gold and silver for short term parking.
My guess is the crash in metals now is due to the money flowing elsewhere now that the Greenland thing has settled(-ish). That and gold bugs cashing in on the high price.
The real question is whether the money went back to T-bills or some other country's version of T-bills. Probably the latter.
Anecdote: the Australian dollar is strong against the US dollar right now, and nothing has changed on the Australian end.
Quote of the day:
"Is this entire Administration just an Epstein Island after party?"
– Rep. Melanie Stansbury
Haha! Hadn't heard that one. Love it!!