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      Trump celebrates James Comey indictment as ex-FBI director says ‘I’m innocent: let’s have a trial’ – as it happened

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      This brings our live coverage of the second Trump administration to a close for the day. We will return on Friday morning. Here are the latest developments:

      Donald Trump’s long public campaign to get someone to bring criminal charges against James Comey, the former FBI director he fired in 2017, finally succeeded on Thursday, as the White House aide he installed as a prosecutor this week indicted the man Trump holds largely responsible for the Russia investigation.

      Trump celebrated the indictment of “One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to”, in a social media post that could be used as evidence that the prosecution is politically motivated.

      “I’m not afraid, and I hope you’re not either,” Comey said in an Instagram video statement. “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I’m innocent, so let’s have a trial.”

      Maurene Comey, the former FBI director’s daughter, who led the federal prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and was fired this summer without explanation, cited Trump’s hatred of her father in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed this month.

      Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born congresswoman from Minnesota, accused Trump of inventing a story he told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, about having supposedly asked Somalia’s president if he would “take her back.”

      Trump signed a presidential memorandum directing the justice department and the FBI’s joint terrorism taskforce to investigate what he claimed is an organized campaign of political violence and domestic terrorism funded by Democrats.

      The House Democratic campaign arm believes their lawmakers have the advantage in the tense battle over government funding, after last week refusing to back a Republican plan to prevent a shutdown unless their demands on healthcare and other issues are met.

      We leave you with video of Hillary Clinton saying in a 2016 debate: “It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.” He replied: “Because you’d be in jail.”
      Maurene Comey, the former FBI director’s daughter, who led the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and was fired this summer without explanation, cited Donald Trump’s hatred of her father in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed this month in federal court.The suit explains that Maurene Comey was “abruptly fired” on 16 July 16 from her job as an assistant US attorney in Manhattan despite an “outstanding” performance review just months earlier.The suit, which names the office of the president and the attorney general as defendants, says that they “fired Ms. Comey solely or substantially because her father is former FBI Director James B. Comey, or because of her perceived political affiliation and beliefs, or both.”It goes on to allege that Trump’s hatred of her father, and the antipathy of Trump’s outside adviser Laura Loomer, were major factors in her wrongful termination.According to the suit:
      James Comey served as the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2013 until President Trump fired him in 2017. For the past nine years, President Trump has publicly criticized Mr. Comey for his actions while serving as FBI Director, and because after he was fired, Mr. Comey (i) wrote a memoir critical of President Trump, (ii) continued to publicly criticize President Trump and his Administration, and (iii) in May 2025 posted a message on social media that President Trump and others in the Trump Administration claimed to perceive as threatening.
      Following Mr. Comey’s May 2025 social media post and other critical statements, President Trump’s supporters called for Ms. Comey’s firing. Notable among those supporters is Laura Loomer, a social media influencer who, on information and belief, has political influence in the Trump Administration, including influence over the termination of federal employees. President Trump has publicly stated: “If you’re Loomered you’re in deep trouble. That’s the end of your career in a sense.” On May 18, 2025, Ms. Loomer called for Mr. Comey’s “liberal daughter” and her “Democrat husband” to be “FIRED from the DOJ immediately” “for being a national security risk via their proximity to a criminal [i.e., Mr. Comey] who just committed a felony by threatening to assassinate the President.” Ms. Loomer also declared that, “under [Attorney General Pamela] Blondi [sic], every Deep State Operator is being emboldened,” and she “question[ed] the impartiality of Maurene and Lucas [Maurene’s husband] in their prosecutorial roles, especially in high-profile cases, due to the undeniable bias and influence stemming from James Comey’s public criticism of Trump and the ongoing investigation into his Instagram post.”
      James Comey’s son-in-law resigned as a federal prosecutor minutes after the former FBI director was indicted Thursday.Troy Edwards wrote in an email to Lindsey Halligan, the former White House aide with no prosecutorial experience parachuted into the job as US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia this week that he was resigning “To uphold my oath to the Constitution and the country”.Edwards , who helped prosecute pro-Trump January 6 rioters later pardoned by Trump, was deputy chief of the national security section, which covers the Pentagon and CIA headquarters, and handles some of the highest-profile espionage cases.James Comey, the former FBI director, professed his innocence in a video statement posted on Instagram on Thursday after he was indicted by the former White House aide Donald Trump appointed US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia this week.“My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump,” Comey said. “But we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way. We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either.”“I’m not afraid, and I hope you’re not either. I hope instead you are engaged, you are paying attention and you will vote like your beloved country depends upon it, which it does,” he added.“My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I’m innocent, so let’s have a trial. And keep the faith,” he concluded.Donald Trump’s long public campaign to get someone in his administration to bring criminal charges against James Comey, the former FBI director he fired in 2017, finally succeeded on Thursday, but the president has been so public about his loathing of the indicted man, and his desire to see him jailed, that it might be hard for prosecutors to convince a jury that the case was not brought for political reasons.Comey was fired by Trump in 2017 after he reportedly refused a request to pledge his loyalty to the newly elected president, and then publicly confirmed to Congress that the FBI was conducting a counterintelligence investigation of Russian efforts to get Trump elected president in 2016.Trump’s firing of Comey backfired, however, because it helped convince then deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, to, in his words “oversee the previously confirmed FBI investigation of Russian government efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election and related matters”.Although Mueller’s report, issued in 2019, concluded that his team “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities”, the investigation unearthed plenty of evidence that the Russian effort did take place and, in Mueller’s words, “established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome”.Mueller added that the Trump campaign “expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts”.While Mueller ultimately elected not to charge Trump’s son, Don Jr, with violating campaign finance laws by soliciting derogatory information about Hillary Clinton from the Russian government in a meeting with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign, the investigation made it plain that the Trump campaign had been open to help from Russia.When a publicist for the Russian oligarch who paid Trump to stage his Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013 wrote to tell Don Jr that a Russian prosecutor wanted to offer the Trump campaign “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia, calling it “part of Russia and its government’s support to Mr Trump”, Trump’s son replied, “If it’s what you say, I love it,” and got Trump’s campaign chair Paul Manafort and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to attend the meeting.The indictment of Comey comes as Trump seeks to use the power of the justice department to punish a man he sees as a central figure in the Russia investigation he has continually described as “a witch-hunt” and “a hoax”.One of the ironies of the situation is that Comey, who cast himself as a rigidly non-partisan law enforcement official, played an outsized role in helping Trump to get elected in the first place.It was Comey who, as FBI director in the summer of 2016, decided not to recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server to conduct official business while secretary of state, but took it upon himself to hold a press conference to explain his decision.In that public forum, Comey said that while Clinton and her staff had been “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information” and there was “evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information,” he had concluded, as a former prosecutor himself, that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case”.That news conference offered Trump, who was then running against Clinton, ammunition to describe her use of a personal email server as reckless. Trump embraced that line of attack with glee, particularly after WikiLeaks published emails from Clinton campaign aides that had been stolen by Russian government hackers.Then, days before the November election, Comey suddenly announced that the FBI had reopened its investigation of Clinton’s own emails, after copies of some mail was found on the laptop of the disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner, who was then married to Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin.Although Comey then announced, before election day, that the review of the additional emails had found nothing of substance, Clinton dropped in the polls in the closing days of the campaign, and narrowly lost to Trump.Another irony is that Comey, who has now been indicted by the new US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, is himself a former federal prosecutor in that office, who went on to serve as the US attorney for the southern district of New York, and deputy attorney general under George W Bush before later being appointed FBI director by Barack Obama in 2013.Donald Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, and FBI director, Kash Patel, welcomed the indictment of James Comey, who served as deputy attorney general during the George W Bush administration and was fired as FBI director by Donald Trump in 2017 after he told Congress that the FBI was conducting a counterintelligence investigation of Russian interference in the election of Trump as president in 2016.A justice department press release sent to reporters on Thursday began:
      Today, a federal grand jury has charged former FBI Director James Comey with serious crimes related to the disclosure of sensitive information. The indictment alleges that Comey obstructed a congressional investigation into the disclosure of sensitive information in violation of 18 USC 1505.
      The indictment also alleges that Comey made a false statement in violation of 18 USC 1001. Comey stated that he did not authorize someone at the FBI to be an anonymous source. According to the indictment that statement was false.
      The statement was followed by a quote from Bondi, which was posted on her official X account earlier. “No one is above the law,” the attorney general said. “Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people. We will follow the facts in this case.”“Today, your FBI took another step in its promise of full accountability,” Patel added. “For far too long, previous corrupt leadership and their enablers weaponized federal law enforcement, damaging once proud institutions and severely eroding public trust. Every day, we continue the fight to earn that trust back, and under my leadership, this FBI will confront the problem head-on.“Nowhere was this politicization of law enforcement more blatant than during the Russiagate hoax, a disgraceful chapter in history we continue to investigate and expose. Everyone, especially those in positions of power, will be held to account – no matter their perch. No one is above the law.”Despite the intensity of those accusations from the most senior officials in the justice department, the statement included the following disclaimer, written in italics at the bottom of the page:“An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.”In a sharp departure from the tradition that presidents should not comment on criminal cases, Donald Trump just celebrated the indictment of the former FBI director James Comey, in terms that could make it even easier for Comey’s lawyers to argue that he is the victim of selective prosecution.The indictment came days after Trump forced out a career prosecutor in the eastern district of Virginia who had determined that there was insufficient evidence to charge Comey, and posted a public instruction to Bondi to replace him with a White House aide, Lindsey Halligan, who could be trusted to prosecute Comey and other officials Trump holds a grudge against.“JUSTICE IN AMERICA!” Trump wrote on his social media platform. “One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey, the former Corrupt Head of the FBI. Today he was indicted by a Grand Jury on two felony counts for various illegal and unlawful acts. He has been so bad for our Country, for so long, and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation,” the president added.He then signed off with his political slogan: “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”As the legality of Donald Trump’s tariffs remains in doubt, the president announced three more on Thursday.Writing on his social media platform, Trump said: “I will be imposing, as of October 1st, 2025, a 25% Tariff on all “Heavy (Big!) Trucks” made in other parts of the World. Therefore, our Great Large Truck Company Manufacturers, such as Peterbilt, Kenworth, Freightliner, Mack Trucks, and others, will be protected.”In a separate post, he added: “We will be imposing a 50% Tariff on all Kitchen Cabinets, Bathroom Vanities, and associated products, starting October 1st, 2025. Additionally, we will be charging a 30% Tariff on Upholstered Furniture.”Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born congresswoman from Minnesota, accused Donald Trump of inventing a story he told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, about having supposedly asked Somalia’s president if he would “take her back.”Omar is a naturalized US citizen who was born in Somalia and raised in a refugee camp in Kenya, but Trump has frequently treated her criticism of him as an affront to the United States from someone he still regards as a foreigner.Trump brought up Omar on Thursday in the course of a rambling answer to a question about Jasmine Crockett, a fellow Democratic congresswoman. When Trump was asked by a conservative reporter if Crockett should face “consequences” for saying, “When I see Ice, I see slave patrols,” the president repeated the racist claim he frequently makes about Black leaders who challenge him: “she is a very low IQ person.”He then brought up Omar, whose name he mispronounced, unprompted.“This is a low IQ person, who I can’t I can’t believe is a congressperson, between her and Ilman Omar,” Trump said. “I met the head of Somalia,” he continued, “And I suggested that maybe he’d like to take her back, and he didn’t want her.”As Trump’s vice-president, JD Vance, doubled over in laughter, and other members of his cabinet chuckled, the president said again: “He said, ‘I don’t want her.’”The White House was so proud of this quip that Trump’s special assistant, Margo Martin, posted video of it on an official government social media account.Omar responded by suggesting the president, who said last week he was not sure if Somalia even has a president, had made the whole thing up. “From denying Somalia had a president to making up a story, President Trump is a lying buffoon. No one should take this embarrassing fool seriously,” she wrote on X.Somalia’s president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, was in New York this week to address the United Nations, but he the US official he met with was not the president, but his advisor on African affairs, Massad Boulos, whose son is married to Trump’s daughter Tiffany.James Comey, the former FBI director and one of Donald Trump’s most frequent targets, was indicted on Thursday on one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstruction of justice, according to a person familiar with the matter, in the latest move in the president’s expansive retribution campaign against his political adversaries.“No one is above the law. Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people. We will follow the facts in this case,” Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, tweeted on Thursday.The indictment came shortly after Trump instructed Bondi to “move now” to prosecute Comey and other officials he considers political foes, in an extraordinarily direct social media post trampling on the justice department’s tradition of independence.Lindsey Halligan, the president’s former lawyer who was recently sworn in as the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, asked a grand jury to indict Comey for allegedly lying to Congress in testimony on 30 September 2020 before the five-year statute of limitations expires in the coming days. Comey’s testimony before the Senate judiciary committee was related to his handling of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.Halligan, who has no prosecutorial experience, was elevated to the post after Erik Siebert was forced out of the job for failing to bring indictments against Comey and Letitia James, the New York attorney general. More

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      Trump says US will impose new tariffs on heavy trucks, drugs and kitchen cabinets

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      Donald Trump on Thursday announced a new round of punishing tariffs, saying the United States will impose a 100% tariffs on imported branded drugs, 25% tariff on imports of all heavy-duty trucks and 50% tariffs on kitchen cabinets.The US president also said he would start charging a 50% tariff on bathroom vanities and a 30% tariff on upholstered furniture next week, with all the new duties to take effect from 1 October.Drug companies warned earlier this year that Americans would suffer the most if Trump decided to impose tariffs on pharmaceuticals.In 2024, the US imported nearly $233bn in pharmaceutical and medicinal products, according to the Census Bureau. The prospect of prices doubling for some medicines could send shock waves to voters as healthcare expenses, as well as the costs of Medicare and Medicaid, potentially increase.Pascal Chan, vice-president for strategic policy and supply chains at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, warned that the tariffs could harm Americans’ health with “immediate price hikes, strained insurance systems, hospital shortages, and the real risk of patients rationing or foregoing essential medicines”.“We are already being crushed by the highest prescription drug costs in the world and this will cause them to skyrocket further,” 314 Action, a US advocacy group that tries to elect scientists to office, said in a statement. “If [Trump] goes through with these tariffs, people across the country will die.”Trump had previously suggested that pharmaceutical tariffs would be phased in over time so that companies had time to build factories and relocate production, making the sudden announcement of a 100% tariff more of a shock. On CNBC in August, Trump said he would start by charging a “small tariff” on pharmaceuticals and raise the rate over a year or more to 150% and even 250%.Trump said on Truth Social that the pharmaceutical tariffs would not apply to companies that are building manufacturing plants in the United States, which he defined as either “breaking ground” or being “under construction”. It was unclear how the tariffs would apply to companies that already have factories in the US.Several major pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca, Roche, Novartis, Eli Lilly, and Johnson & Johnson, had already announced plans to invest in or increase manufacturing of their drugs in the US in an attempt to prepare for potential tariffs. Trump’s White House has touted these changes as a win.Markets dropped following the news, as concerns about the impact of Trump’s tariffs mounted. All three main indexes on Wall Street were down, having already fallen every day since Monday.Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sydney, Seoul, Wellington, Taipei and Manila retreated on Friday, with some pharmaceutical companies in Japan and South Korea leading the way.While Trump did not provide a legal justification for the tariffs, he appeared to stretch the bounds of his role as commander-in-chief by stating on Truth Social that the taxes on imported kitchen cabinets and sofas were needed “for National Security and other reasons”.He said the new heavy-duty truck tariffs were to protect manufacturers from “unfair outside competition” and said the move would benefit companies such as Paccar-owned Peterbilt and Kenworth and Daimler Truck-owned Freightliner.“We need our Truckers to be financially healthy and strong, for many reasons, but above all else, for National Security purposes!” Trump added.The new tariffs are another dose of uncertainty for the US economy with a solid stock market but a weakening outlook for jobs and elevated inflation. These new taxes on imports could pass through to consumers in the form of higher prices and dampen hiring, a process that economic data suggests is already underway.“We have begun to see goods prices showing through into higher inflation,” Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, warned in a recent news conference, adding that higher costs for goods account for “most” or potentially “all” of the increase in inflation levels this year.Trump has pressured Powell to resign, arguing that the Fed should cut its benchmark interest rates more aggressively because inflation is no longer a concern.The US Chamber of Commerce urged the department not to impose new tariffs, noting the top five import sources are Mexico, Canada, Japan, Germany, and Finland “all of which are allies or close partners of the United States posing no threat to U.S. national security”.Trump has launched numerous national security inquiries into potential new tariffs on a wide variety of products. He said the new tariffs on kitchen, bathroom and some furniture were because of huge levels of imports which were hurting local manufacturers.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The reason for this is the large scale ‘FLOODING’ of these products into the United States by other outside Countries,” Trump said.Mexico is the largest exporter of medium- and heavy-duty trucks to the United States. A study released in January said imports of those larger vehicles from Mexico have tripled since 2019.Higher tariffs on commercial vehicles could put pressure on transportation costs just as Trump has vowed to reduce inflation, especially on consumer goods such as groceries.Tariffs could also affect Chrysler-parent Stellantis which produces heavy-duty Ram trucks and commercial vans in Mexico. Sweden’s Volvo Group is building a $700m heavy-truck factory in Monterrey, Mexico, due to start operations in 2026.Mexico is home to 14 manufacturers and assemblers of buses, trucks, and tractor trucks, and two manufacturers of engines, according to the US International Trade Administration.The country is also the leading global exporter of tractor trucks, 95% of which are destined for the United States.Mexico opposed new tariffs, telling the commerce department in May that all Mexican trucks exported to the United States have on average 50% US content, including diesel engines.Last year, the United States imported almost $128bn in heavy vehicle parts from Mexico, accounting for approximately 28% of total US imports, Mexico said.The Japanese Automobile Manufacturers Association also opposed new tariffs, saying Japanese companies have cut exports to the United States as they have boosted US production of medium- and heavy-duty trucks.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      ‘Like Amazon Prime but with human beings’: inside Trump’s deportation machine – podcast

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      Near the 13th hole of a golf course in Alexandria, rural Louisiana, the Guardian US’s southern bureau chief, Oliver Laughland, could see ‘a telling image of where America is at the moment’. On one side, golfers teeing off on a scorching hot day; on the other, in the distance and through a fence, ‘lines of people shackled at the feet and hands, loaded on to planes’.They were people being held at the Alexandria staging facility, a detention and removal centre that has become central to Donald Trump’s deportation regime.The centre’s role was revealed by a Guardian investigation of leaked data, detailing tens of thousands of flights transporting immigrants across the US, carried out for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (Ice).Laughland and the immigration reporter Maanvi Singh talk about what the investigation tells us about the inner workings of the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies – and concerns about the denial of due process and the ‘disappearance’ of people from lawyers and their families.Is the chaos and the cruelty by accident, asks Helen Pidd, or is it by design? More

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      Lisa Cook urges supreme court to reject Trump’s bid to fire her from Fed board

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      Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook urged the US supreme court on Thursday to reject Donald Trump’s attempt to fire her, telling the justices the Republican president’s unprecedented move would destroy the central bank’s independence and disrupt financial markets.Lawyers for Cook filed a written response opposing the justice department’s 18 September emergency request to lift a federal judge’s order that blocked Trump from immediately removing Cook, an appointee of Democratic former president Joe Biden, while her legal challenge continues.Granting Trump’s request, her lawyers told the supreme court, “would dramatically alter the status quo, ignore centuries of history and transform the Federal Reserve into a body subservient to the president’s will”.Washington-based US district judge Jia Cobb ruled on 9 September that Trump’s claims that Cook committed mortgage fraud before taking office – allegations that Cook denies – likely were not sufficient grounds for removal under the 1913 law that created the Fed.The US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit in a 2-1 ruling on 15 September denied the administration’s request to put Cobb’s order on hold, ruling that Cook likely was denied due process in violation of the US constitution’s fifth amendment.In Thursday’s filing, Cook’s lawyers said the Fed’s “unique history of independence” has helped make the US economy the strongest in the world. Siding with Trump, they wrote, “would signal to the financial markets that the Federal Reserve no longer enjoys its traditional independence, risking chaos and disruption”.Cook, the first Black woman to serve as a Fed governor, sued Trump in August after the president announced he would remove her. Cook has said the claims made by Trump against her did not give him the legal authority to remove her and were a pretext to fire her for her monetary policy stance.Earlier on Thursday, a group of 18 former US Federal Reserve officials, Treasury secretaries and other top economic officials who served under presidents from both parties urged the supreme court in a brief to reject Trump’s petition to allow his attempt to fire Cook.The group included the past three Fed chairs – Janet Yellen, Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan – as well as former Treasury secretaries Henry Paulson, Lawrence Summers, Jacob Lew, Timothy Geithner and Robert Rubin. They argued that letting the president remove Cook while her legal challenge to Trump’s action is ongoing would threaten the central bank’s independence and erode public confidence in it.In its filing to the court last week, the justice department wrote: “This application involves yet another case of improper judicial interference with the President’s removal authority – here, interference with the President’s authority to remove members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors for cause.”Congress included provisions in the law that created the Fed to shield the central bank from political interference. Under that law, Fed governors may be removed by a president only “for cause”, though the law does not define the term nor establish procedures for removal. No president has ever removed a Fed governor, and the law has never been tested in court.Trump has pursued a broad vision of presidential power since returning to office in January.The Cook legal battle has ramifications for the Fed’s ability to set interest rates without regard to the wishes of politicians, widely seen as critical to any central bank’s ability to function independently to carry out tasks such as keeping inflation under control.Trump this year has demanded that the Fed cut rates aggressively, berating Fed chair Jerome Powell for his stewardship over monetary policy as the central bank focused on fighting inflation. Trump has called Powell a “numbskull”, “incompetent” and a “stubborn moron.“Trump on 25 August said he was removing Cook from the Fed’s board of governors, citing the allegations that, before joining the central bank in 2022, she falsified records to obtain favorable terms on a mortgage. In blocking Cook’s removal, the judge found that the 1913 law only allows a Fed governor to be removed for misconduct while in office. The mortgage fraud claims against Cook relate to actions prior to her Senate confirmation in 2022. More

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      US authorities remove Trump-Epstein statue from National Mall

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      An impromptu statue of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein holding hands was unceremoniously removed from the National Mall in Washington just a day after a group of anonymous artists erected it there.The piece showed the president and the late convicted sex offender, who were friends in the past, looking joyful together, with wide grins and feet kicked back.A plaque stated that it was built in honor of friendship month. “We celebrate the long-lasting bond between President Donald J Trump and his ‘closest friend’ Jeffrey Epstein,” the accompanying text stated.The Secret Handshake, the group that created the art, had obtained a permit that allowed it to keep the statue displayed in the capital until 8pm on Sunday.But the National Park Service, the federal agency that oversees the area, removed the statue because “it was not compliant with the permit issued”, Elizabeth Peace, a spokesperson for Department of the Interior, said to CNN.Trump, who usually is adept at shaking free of any scandal, has not been able to temper the widespread curiosity and also anger from some on the right over the administration not disclosing the so-called Epstein files – all the material the authorities have on the business dealings, crimes and investigations into same regarding the New York financier, who killed himself in jail while awaiting federal trial in 2019 on sex-trafficking offenses. His accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, is serving a long prison sentence.A Secret Handshake artist who identified himself as Patrick but would not provide his full name to the Guardian said in a telephone interview that the group built the Trump-Epstein statue to “honor the one and only true friend Donald Trump seems to have in his life”.In 2002, Trump told New York magazine that Epstein was a “terrific guy” and “a lot of fun to be with” but has repeatedly said in recent times that the two fell out long ago. The White House has called Epstein “a creep”.Epstein had also told the journalist Michael Wolff that he was Trump’s “closest friend for 10 years”.Trump recently said he was “not a fan” of Epstein and that he stopped talking to him because Epstein “stole people that worked for me”.Patrick said he was confused by the authorities’ decision to remove the statue.“The Trump administration has mostly been all about rebuilding statues that have already been torn down, of Confederate generals and other racist tropes and figures from the past” he said. “I would argue that Trump is a racist figure from the past, so why would you tear that down?”In a statement to the New York Times, the White House said: “Democrats, the media and the organization that’s wasting their money on this statue knew about Epstein and his victims for years and did nothing to help them while President Trump was calling for transparency, and is now delivering on it with thousands of pages of documents.” More

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      From South Park v Trump to AI slopaganda: deepfakes are now part of the news cycle, for better and for worse | Anna Broinowski

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      Salman Rushdie believes AI will not be a threat to authors until ChatGPT can write “a funny book”. His faith in human over synthetic creativity may hold some truth in the literary space. But on our screens – from film, art and satire to the algorithmically turbo-charged, factually opaque, monetised churn of the 24/7 news cycle – AI is already making us laugh.Deepfakes – synthetic audio and video of people doing and saying things they never said or did – are the chief comedic disruptors in a suite of increasingly persuasive AI tools shaping the post-truth reality envisioned by the Microsoft engineer Eric Horvitz, where fact and fiction are indistinguishable. In eight short years, deepfakes have risen from cultural outlier to mainstream meme, embodying the futurist Roy Amara’s Law: we overestimate the effects of new technology in the short run but underestimate its long-term impacts.And with some experts predicting 90% of online content could be AI-generated by 2027, the extent to which synthetic replicas will change how we trust and interact with on-screen depictions of real people is now an urgent question for creators, policymakers and viewers.When deepfakes emerged in 2017 as incel-produced nonconsensual porn, the alarm they generated was justified. But as soon as deepfakes started being used a political tool, concerns snowballed into panic. Philosophers labelled them an “epistemic threat” to evidentiary systems; corporations mounted costly (and unsuccessful) detection programs; and pundits warned of an “info-apocalypse”, in which a convincing deepfake of a world leader could start world war three. Less dramatic but equally chilling was the prediction that the mere awareness of deepfakes would collapse civic trust altogether. In 2018 Jordan Peele made a prophetic deepfake of Obama urging viewers to rely on credible news sources, lest we become a “fucked up dystopia”.Cut to 2025, and satirical deepfakes are part of the news cycle. Shortly after attending Pope Francis’ funeral, the US president, Donald Trump, posted a viral deepfake of himself in papal regalia. In response to Doge cuts to public services, a deepfake of Trump fellating Elon Musk’s foot appeared on a DC government lobby screen. After Trump’s declaration he would transform Gaza into a Middle Eastern “Riviera”, a satirical deepfake appeared on Instagram showing Trump sipping cocktails with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in an AI-slop fantasy of Gaza as a beachside resort, full of gold Trump statues and happy Palestinian children. And just last month, South Park’s deepfake of Trump with a micro-penis elicited an official rebuke from the White House.Deepfakes have been disrupting democratic processes since 2018, when Indian nationalists circulated a deepfake porn video of the journalist Rana Ayyub, in an attempt to silence her. But the elevation of deepfake satire as a weapon in mainstream politics is a more recent trend. During the 2024 US election campaign, Trump posted absurdist deepfakes of Kamala Harris addressing a communist rally and admitting she was a DEI hire. A surreal Republican attack ad showed a deepfake Joe Biden winning the presidency and its AI-imagined consequences: war with Taiwan, bank closures and US cities destroyed by crime. Echoing warnings that the rise of deepfakes could be used to discredit authentic recordings, Trump falsely accused Harris of deepfaking her crowd sizes.And AI “slopaganda” is coming for Trump too. Viral platforms Make AI Great Again and Global Presidents are generating billions of views for videos featuring a panoply of strongmen – from Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Kim Jong-un – emasculating Trump in slapstick pranks. (That Chinese leader Xi Jinping is largely absent from these clips has prompted speculation about their origins and goals.)In stark contrast to this perniciously populist deepfakery, progressive artists and activists are using AI counterfeits to provoke, astonish and speak truth to power. Stephanie Lepp’s Deepfake Reckonings imagines a “morally courageous” US justice Brett Kavanaugh; and Kendrick Lamar’s The Heart music video deepfakes him as OJ Simpson and Kobe Bryant, to destabilise assumptions about black identity. Compil des Bleues inserts the faces of France’s soccer stars on to the bodies of its female World Cup team, to highlight the women’s equal athleticism; while the Lincoln Project’s posthumous deepfake of Trump’s father, Fred, labels his son “a fuck up”, “trash” and “a disgrace”; declaring “I’ve been dead for 30 years and I’m still ashamed of you.”Professional film-makers are also manipulating deepfakes to play with the truth. Black Mirror’s Joan is Awful depicts a matryoshka-like dystopia where characters are deepfakes of deepfakes; Sassy Justice by the South Park creators portrays Trump as a corruption-slaying TV journalist; and the Polish biopic Putin delivers an unflinching AI portrait of its titular hero. The documentary Welcome to Chechnya deploys deepfake masks to protect its persecuted gay subjects, while A Life Uncharted uses real audio of its deceased protagonist, Thunderbirds creator Gerry Anderson, to construct a candid deepfake interview.Deepfakes come with very real risks that demand urgent regulation: cybercrime, corporate fraud, intimate image-abuse and political disinformation among them. But it is vital that AI’s escalating persuasive power is regulated without stifling creativity and innovation.On this, at least, film-makers and big tech are aligned. When xAI unveiled its new Grok AI tool, German satirists used it to make a deepfake of Elon Musk committing an armed robbery – and thanked him for supporting free speech.

      Dr Anna Broinowski is a film-maker, author and synthetic media researcher at the University of Sydney. She will be speaking on a panel about AI at Curious festival, held at Sydney Opera House on Sunday 28 September More

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      Jimmy Kimmel: ‘Only Donald Trump would try to prove he wasn’t threatening ABC by threatening ABC’

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      Late-show hosts discuss Jimmy Kimmel’s record-breaking return to air and Donald Trump’s escalator snafu at the United Nations.Jimmy KimmelAfter breaking his own YouTube monologue record and attracting 6.2 million broadcast viewers on Tuesday night, Kimmel celebrated the fact that his show returned again on Wednesday – at least, “for most of the country”, as Jimmy Kimmel Live! remained off the air for a number of ABC affiliates, including channels in Seattle, Washington DC, Nashville, New Orleans, St Louis and elsewhere.“Thank God they’re not pre-empting the new season of The Golden Bachelor because of this,” he joked, referring to his suspension by ABC owner Disney under pressure from the Trump administration. “The FCC might not like jokes about the president, but they are still very OK with Poppop getting a squeezer in a Jacuzzi, and I think we can be very grateful for that.“A lot of people watched our show last night,” he continued. “I got so many texts from so many people – it made me realize how many of my friends are never watching the show at any other time.”That included “one very special friend” – Trump, Kimmel’s beloved “mad red hatter”, who wrote on Truth Social hours before Kimmel aired: “I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back. The White House was told by ABC that his Show was cancelled! Something happened between then and now because his audience is GONE, and his ‘talent’ was never there.”“You can’t believe they gave me my job back?” Kimmel mused. “I can’t believe we gave you your job back.”Trump continued: “I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative. A true bunch of losers!”Kimmel fired back: “There’s the threat again, this time straight from FCC-biscuit’s mouth. Only Donald Trump would try to prove he wasn’t threatening ABC by threatening ABC.“You almost have to feel sorry for the people who work for him, who try to clean up the messes,” he added. “They go to all these lengths to say, ‘Oh, it wasn’t coercion! The president was just musing!’ And then the second Trump is alone, he sits on the toilet, he gets his grubby little thumbs on his phone, and he immediately blows their excuses to smithereens, and says it was ratings that got me fired.”Trump ended his Truth Social rant with: “Let Jimmy Kimmel rot in his bad ratings.”“And he does know bad ratings. He has some of the worst ratings any president has ever had,” Kimmel laughed, referring to Trump’s record-low poll numbers. “So on behalf of all of us, welcome to the crappy ratings club, Mr President.”Late in the monologue, Kimmel offered an explanation to his critics for his continued focus on Trump. “I talk about Trump more than anything because he’s a bully. I don’t like bullies – I played the clarinet in high school.” And Trump, he said, was “an old-fashioned, 80s movie-style bully”.Backing Trump was like “rooting for Biff from Back to the Future”, he added, referring to the villain of the 1985 film. “I don’t know about you, I’m with Marty McFly.”Stephen ColbertStephen Colbert opened Wednesday’s Late Show monologue in a good mood, “because last night our good friend Jimmy Kimmel returned to television”.“Jimmy spoke beautifully about free speech and unity,” he said. “He made great jokes, showed his deep emotions, got huge ratings.”But “that wasn’t the only victory for free speech yesterday”, as a statue depicting Trump and Jeffrey Epstein skipping and holding hands was placed on the National Mall. “It’s a lovely piece, but I’ve gotta say, not very realistic – Trump can’t stand on one leg, not with those cankles!” Colbert joked. “It would be like trying to balance on a sock full of overripe honeydew.”The controversial statue was put up by artists issued an official permit to “demonstrate freedom of speech and artistic expression using political imagery” by the National Park Service. “Good for you, National Park Service,” said Colbert, “and thank you for protecting free speech for almost 24 hours”, because despite the permit allowing the sculpture to stand until Sunday, park police removed it on Wednesday morning.In response, Colbert pretended to navigate the cancellation of Disney+ on his phone – “worked last time!”Park police said the statue was not “in compliance” with the permit, though it did not specify how. “I think we know how it violated the permit,” said Colbert. “We’ve all seen those signs in the national parks: ‘Leave no trace … of the Epstein files.’”Seth MeyersAnd on Late Night, Seth Meyers focused on Trump’s visit to the UN in New York this week. “It’s easy to forget because so much has happened, but when Trump was running for president last year, he was adamant he was going to bring peace to the world,” he reminded viewers before several clips of Trump making such claims as “I will end the chaos in the Middle East quickly” or end the war in Ukraine “in no longer than one day”.“In fairness, he said it would take him one day, he didn’t say which day,” Meyers laughed. But “as a general rule, you should always be skeptical when someone tells you they can solve any problem in one day”.But Trump didn’t focus on any of that at his UN address. Instead, he was thrown off by a broken escalator, which shut down as soon as he stepped on to it. On Fox News, Karoline Leavitt accused the UN of trying to “sabotage” him with the frozen escalator and teleprompter.“Man, you know I’ve heard a lot about these globalists over the years, but I didn’t realize their MO was to just burn you with soft pranks,” Meyers laughed.“Teleprompter down, escalator off. When the president was talking, someone tied his shoelaces together! Are they a shadowy cabal or Kevin from Home Alone?”On Wednesday evening, Trump took to Truth Social to name the escalator episode among three “very sinister events” that took place during his UN visit. He claimed that Melania avoided a “disaster” by not falling “forward onto the sharp edges of these steel steps, face first”. He then called for the arrest of the person responsible for the frozen escalator.A spokesperson for the UN previously blamed Trump’s videographer for the incident, suggesting that they may have “inadvertently triggered” a built-in safety function while proceeding backward up the escalator to film his arrival.Meyers had to laugh: “Oh, hey, look at that – they solved the conflict in one day! How about that?” More