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    Trump administration ousts FBI official who refused to name agents who investigated January 6

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    The Trump administration is forcing out a senior FBI official who resisted demands made earlier this year for the names of agents who investigated the January 6 insurrection, two people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.Brian Driscoll briefly served as acting FBI director in the first weeks of Donald Trump’s new term, and his final day at the bureau is Friday, the people told the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, as they were not authorized to discuss the move. Further ousters were possible.The FBI declined to comment to the Guardian.The New York Times further reported that the FBI was forcing out Walter Giardina, a special agent who worked on cases involving Trump as well as Peter Navarro, a top trade adviser to the president who was convicted of contempt of Congress.The ousters were the latest under the FBI director, Kash Patel, and his deputy, Dan Bongino, who had repeatedly alleged that the bureau had become politicized under Joe Biden. Numerous senior officials, including top agents in charge of big-city field offices, have been pushed out of their jobs, and some agents have been subjected to polygraph exams, moves that former officials say have roiled the workforce and contributed to angst.The FBI Agents Association, which represents current and former bureau staff, issued a statement saying they were “deeply concerned” by reports that senior agents and leaders were going to be fired. “Agents are not given the option to pick and choose their cases, and these agents carried out their assignments with professionalism and integrity. Most importantly, they followed the law,” the organization said.“If these agents are fired without due process, it makes the American people less safe,” they added, noting that they were “actively reviewing all legal options to defend our members”.Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said: “The continued purging of experienced, non-partisan FBI agents by the Trump administration is nothing short of alarming. These are individuals who have dedicated their careers to protecting the American people, and their firings are part of a disturbing pattern of retaliation and politicization at an institution charged with safeguarding national security and the rule of law.“President Trump may believe he can manipulate the levers of power to serve his own ends, but history will not judge this recklessness kindly, and neither should Congress,” he added.Driscoll, a veteran agent who worked on international counter-terrorism investigations in New York and also had commanded the bureau’s Hostage Rescue Team, had most recently served as acting director in charge of the Critical Incident Response Group, which deploys people and resources to crisis situations.He was named acting director in January to replace Christopher Wray and served in the position as Patel’s nomination was pending.He made headlines after he and Rob Kissane, the then deputy director, resisted Trump administration demands for information about agents who had participated in investigations into the January 6 riot at the US Capitol by a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters.Emil Bove, the then senior justice department official who made the request and was last week confirmed for a seat on a federal appeals court, wrote a memo accusing the FBI’s top leaders of “insubordination”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionResponding to Bove’s request, the FBI ultimately provided personnel details about several thousand employees, identifying them by unique employee numbers rather than by names.The FBI has moved under Patel’s watch to aggressively demote, reassign or push out agents. In April, for instance, the bureau reassigned several agents who were photographed kneeling during a racial justice protest in Washington that followed the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, two people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.Numerous special agents in charge of field offices have been told to retire, resign or accept reassignment.Another agent, Michael Feinberg, has said publicly that he was told to resign or accept a demotion amid scrutiny from leadership of his friendship with Peter Strzok, a lead agent on the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation who was fired by the justice department in 2018 following revelations that he had exchanged negative text messages about Trump with an FBI lawyer, Lisa Page. More

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      JD Vance to meet with top Trump officials to plot Epstein strategy – report

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      JD Vance will reportedly host a meeting on Wednesday evening at his residence with a handful of senior Trump administration officials to discuss their strategy for dealing with the ongoing scandal surrounding the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.The vice-president’s gathering, first detailed by CNN, is reportedly set to include the attorney general, Pam Bondi; the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche; the FBI director, Kash Patel; and the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles.Sources familiar with the gathering told CNN and ABC News that the officials will be discussing whether to release the transcript of the justice department’s recent interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s associate and a convicted sex trafficker.Two weeks ago the justice department sent Blanche, who is also one of Donald Trump’s former personal lawyers, to interview Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison for sex trafficking and other crimes.That meeting lasted two days and details from it have not been made public.According to ABC News, the administration is considering publicly releasing the transcripts from the interview as soon as this week.On Wednesday, Alicia Arden, who filed a police report against Epstein in 1997 accusing him of sexually assaulting her, appeared at a news conference and implored the government to release all of the files related to the Epstein case.“I’m tired of the government saying that they want to release them. Please just do it,” she said, adding that she would like to know what Blanche asked Maxwell during their meeting, and what Maxwell’s responses were.Maxwell, Arden said, “should not be pardoned”.“She was convicted of sex-trafficking children,” she added. “This is a terrible crime.”Arden was joined by her lawyer, Gloria Allred, who also said that the Trump administration should release the “entire transcript” of Blanche’s interview with Maxwell “including all of his questions and all of her answers”.Last week, Maxwell was quietly transferred from a Florida prison to a lower-security facility in Texas. Trump claimed to reporters that he “didn’t know” about the transfer.The Trump administration has faced mounting pressure and a bipartisan backlash after the justice department announced it would not be releasing additional documents related to Epstein, despite earlier promises by Trump and Bondi that they would do so.Epstein, who died in prison in New York in 2019 while awaiting federal trial, is the subject of countless conspiracy theories, in part due to his ties to high-profile and powerful individuals.On Tuesday, the House oversight committee subpoenaed the justice department for files related to the Epstein sex-trafficking investigation and issued subpoenas for depositions from several prominent figures.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThey included the former president Bill Clinton; the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton; multiple former attorneys general, including Jeff Sessions, Alberto Gonzales, William Barr and Merrick Garland; and the former FBI directors James Comey and Robert Mueller.Axios pointed out that Trump’s former labor secretary Alex Acosta was absent from the list despite his involvement in the 2008 plea deal with Epstein when Acosta was a top federal prosecutor in Florida. Axios noted that Acosta’s boss during his time in Florida, Gonzales, is on the subpoena list.At the news conference on Wednesday, Allred, who has represented multiple Epstein victims, said she believes that Acosta should also be subpoenaed, as well as Blanche and Bondi.Allred said that she believes that “victims and survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell should be invited to appear before the House and Senate committees” to share their stories, how “they were victimized by Epstein and Maxwell, the impact on them of these crimes, and how the criminal justice system has helped them or failed them”.Maxwell, who was found guilty of sex trafficking and other charges in December 2021, is appealing her conviction to the supreme court, citing Epstein’s plea agreement. This week, her attorneys also opposed the government’s request to unseal grand jury transcripts related to the Epstein case.“Jeffrey Epstein is dead,” her lawyers wrote. “Ghislaine Maxwell is not. Whatever interest the public may have in Epstein, that interest cannot justify a broad intrusion into grand jury secrecy in a case where the defendant is alive, her legal options are viable and her due process rights remain.”Maxwell also said last week that she was willing to testify before Congress if she was granted immunity.The Democratic representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, who has introduced a resolution in Congress that opposes Maxwell receiving a presidential pardon or any other form of clemency, told CNN on Wednesday that he believes the “vast majority of Americans oppose any form of clemency for Maxwell, and we need to say that with one voice in Congress as well”.The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment relating to the Vance meeting. More

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      Democrats demand Pam Bondi and Kash Patel be summoned for Epstein hearing

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      Democratic members of the House judiciary committee on Thursday demanded that Republicans summon the attorney general, Pam Bondi, the FBI director, Kash Patel, and their deputies for a hearing into the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s death and the sex-trafficking case against him.The letter from all 19 Democratic members on the committee to its Republican chair, Jim Jordan, comes amid a rift between Donald Trump and some of his supporters over the justice department’s conclusion, announced last week, that Epstein’s death in federal custody six years ago was a suicide, and that there is no secret list of his clients to be made public.The US president, who knew Epstein personally, has long claimed that there is more to be made public about his death and involvement in running a sex-trafficking ring for global elites. Last week’s report, together with the justice department’s announcement that nothing further about his case would be made public, has sparked rare criticism of Trump among the rightwing influencers and commentators who are usually among his most ardent defenders.In their letter, Democrats argued that the matter can only be settled if Bondi and her deputy, Todd Blanche, along with Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, appear before the judiciary committee.“The Trump DOJ and FBI’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein matter, and president Trump’s suddenly shifting positions, have not restored anyone’s trust in the government but have rather raised profound new questions about their own conduct while increasing public paranoia related to the investigation,” the Democratic lawmakers wrote.“Only a bipartisan public hearing at which administration officials answer direct questions from elected representatives before the eyes of the American people can restore public trust on the matter.”A spokesperson for Jordan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Democrats have sought to capitalize on the questions raised by the justice department’s announcement, and earlier on Tuesday, House Republicans blocked an attempt by the minority to force release of documents related to the Epstein case.Last week, most Democrats on the judiciary committee signed a letter to Bondi that accused her of withholding some files related to the financier to protect Trump from any damaging disclosures. It went on to call for the release of any documents in the Epstein files that mention Trump, as well as the second volume of former special counsel Jack Smith’s report into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified materials.In this week’s letter, Democrats argued that only a congressional hearing would resolve whether there is indeed a cover-up over Epstein’s death, or if Trump was just promoting conspiracy theories as he sought an advantage on the campaign trail.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We must submit to public scrutiny President Trump’s and MAGA’s longstanding claims about the ‘Epstein files,’ new questions as to whether President Trump himself has something to hide, whether he is keeping damaging information secret to protect other individuals or to maintain future blackmail leverage over public and private actors,” the lawmakers wrote, “or, perhaps the simplest explanation, whether President Trump and his Administration magnified and disseminated groundless Epstein conspiracy theories for purposes of political gain which they are now desperately trying to disavow and dispel.”The reignited turmoil over the Epstein case has sparked reports that Bongino, a former podcaster who has long promoted conspiracies about his death, clashed with Bondi and is considering resigning his position at the FBI.Over the weekend, Trump defended Bondi in a post on Truth Social and pleaded with his supporters. “One year ago our Country was DEAD, now it’s the ‘HOTTEST’ Country anywhere in the World. Let’s keep it that way, and not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about,” he wrote. More

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      Does Kash Patel deserve to run the FBI? Of course he does – and I’ll take a lie detector test to prove it | Arwa Mahdawi

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      ‘Once upon a time, in the land of the free, there lived a wizard called Kash the Distinguished Discoverer.” That piece of verbal wizardry is the opening line of a children’s book trilogy called The Plot Against the King (aimed at children aged three and above) by a Mr Kash Patel. The first book, published in 2022, is like Harry Potter for conspiracy theorists. Kash helps King Donald battle Hillary Queenton and a “shifty knight”, who have been spreading lies about the king working with the Russionians. In the final book in the trilogy (The Plot Against the King 3: The Return of the King) a couple of villains called Comma‑la‑la‑la and Baron Von Biden make an appearance.Not so long ago, publishing deeply weird books about the president while also promoting wild QAnon conspiracy theories would get you put on some kind of watchlist. Now it gets you a top job as the guy in charge of watchlists. Patel is not just a children’s book author; he is also the director of the FBI. His chief qualification for the role appears to be his extreme devotion to President Donald Trump. He certainly didn’t have any FBI experience before getting the job as head of the agency.I don’t know if Patel suffers from impostor syndrome – a condition that normally afflicts overqualified women – but he does seem a tad insecure. Last week the New York Times reported that Patel’s FBI has “significantly” increased its use of lie detector tests to screen employees for loyalty. According to the Times, some people have specifically been asked if they’ve ever been rude about their boss; “disparaging Mr Patel or his deputy, Dan Bongino … could cost people their job”. Woe betide the FBI underling who admits that they think Patel’s official photo on the US Department of Defense website (which has been much-memed online) looks as if he’s just been caught smoking joints behind the bike shed and is trying his very best to act sober.Polygraph tests, which track physiological reactions (eg did your heart rate spike?) while you answer questions, are notoriously unreliable. They can be successfully gamed by people who know how they work and are adept at controlling their bodily responses in high-pressure situations. You know, people like FBI employees. That said, it’s certainly possible that the FBI is secretly in possession of infallible lie-detecting technology (called something like WaterboardingAI™?).While Patel may come across as insecure, paranoid and generally doolally, he is not always wrong. In his 2023 opus Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy, which is written for “grownups”, he writes about how power works in Washington.“I regularly used to tell people that the fastest way to move up in the government is to just screw up, and the bigger the screw-up, the bigger the promotion,” he writes. “Every person implicated in your mistakes has an interest in covering up what they did, so they will promote you. That means the people at the very top are usually the most immoral, unethical people in the entire agency.” No comment there.Anyway, I think I’ve screwed up myself. Like a dimwit, I’ve just realised that all of the above might sound a tad disparaging towards Patel. Which, as a British-Palestinian on a green card that’s up for renewal, was certainly not my intention. So, just to clarify, Kash, I’ve been writing in English-English. While American English tends to be blunt, the king’s English is a whole different kettle of fish.When we say, “That’s very interesting,” for example, we often mean it’s absolute tripe. When we say “quite good”, it means either that something was indeed quite good or that it was actually quite disappointing – you’ve got to read the room. Calling something “not bad”, on the other hand, often means it’s very good.And, of course, the British are also very fond of sarcasm, which Americans can sometimes miss. So, with the greatest respect, Mr Patel, I do not think you are an idiot. I think you are a “distinguished discoverer” and the greatest FBI director to ever walk God’s green Earth. And I’ll even take a lie detector test to prove it. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Who is Dan Bongino? FBI deputy at center of Maga fallout over Epstein files

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      The future of the deputy FBI director, Dan Bongino, is unclear after he stormed out of a meeting with Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and told friends he was considering quitting over the controversy surrounding Jeffrey Epstein.Bongino, a former New York police officer and Secret Service agent who helped protect George W Bush and Barack Obama, appears on course to be the Trump administration’s first casualty of the Epstein fallout, which is threatening to split the “Make America great again” (Maga) movementHaving failed to appear for work on Friday and reportedly considering his future, it was unclear whether the former rightwing podcaster was at his desk in the bureau’s Washington DC headquarters on Monday.CNN reported that JD Vance had spent the weekend mediating an increasingly bitter feud involving Bondi, Bognino, Kash Patel, the FBI director – and many others.It is not the first time Bongino has appeared unhappy in his work. In May he cried during a live appearance on Fox & Friends, lamenting that he “gave up everything” to take the FBI role.There is currently no word on whether Bognino would follow through on his threat to resign, although insiders suggested his position had become untenable given that Donald Trump had publicly thrown his support behind Bondi and made clear his displeasure over the public squabbling among his supporters over Epstein. The disgraced financier was found dead in his prison cell in 2019 after being arrested on federal charges of sex trafficking minors.It is the lingering aftermath of this case that has put Bongino – by many measurements, an unlikely and controversial choice to be FBI deputy director – in the spotlight.As a rightwing podcaster and media personality, Bongino was in the vanguard of pushing conspiracy theories about Epstein, suggesting that he had been murdered, rather than having taken his own life, and that he had a list of powerful clients who feared being unmasked as pedophiles.Bondi, too, fueled the widespread Maga belief in the existence of a high profile client list when she told Fox News that it was “sitting on my desk right now”. But both were accused of having oversold the story when a Department of Justice (DoJ) memo was published this month concluding that Epstein had indeed committed suicide and the storied client list did not, in fact, exist.It was against this backdrop that the pair clashed last Wednesday, leaving Bongino “out of control furious” in a meeting also attended by Patel, Susie Wiles, the powerful White House chief of staff, and deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich.Far before the fallout, critics warned that Bongino was unqualified for the post.His appointment marked the the first time in the FBI’s 117-year history that the second-in-command position had not been held by one of the bureau’s former agents.It was also seen as reinforcing fears – already ignited by the prior appointment of Patel – that Trump intended to use the bureau as an instrument of revenge against his enemies.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Donald Trump just named far-right MAGA podcaster Dan Bongino, a notorious conspiracy theorist who promoted the lie that the 2020 election was ‘stolen,’ to serve as Deputy Director of the FBI. God help us all,” the Republicans Against Trump group posted on X at the time of his nomination in February..Bongino, a former Fox News host who has written books about the supposed existence of the anti-Trump “deep state”, famously said in 2018 that “my entire life right now is about owning the libs.”Despite siding with Bondi, Trump told reporters over the weekendthat Bongino was “a very good guy … He sounded terrific, actually … I think he’s in good shape.”Bongino has one powerful advocate in Laura Loomer, the far-right social media influencer who is often credited with having Trump’s ear and who broke the news of his unhappiness last week.“I’m told Kash and Bongino are furious with Blondi and the blowback she has caused them with her lack of transparency,” she posted. “Kash Patel and Dan Bongino should call for Blondi’s public resignation today to save themselves and to also push for full transparency into the Epstein files. Someone needs to be fired for this. Giving Blondi courtesy to resign is more than she deserves.” More

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      Trump says he spoke to Dan Bongino after reports deputy FBI director could leave post over Epstein files fallout – US politics live

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      Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.We begin with news that president Donald Trump said on Sunday he spoke to deputy FBI director Dan Bongino to try to calm an uproar over how the Justice Department handled the probe into the death of accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged clientele, Reuters reported.Asked by reporters if Bongino remained in his position after reportedly pondering resigning, Trump said: “Oh I think so… I spoke to him today. Dan Bongino, very good guy. I’ve known him a long time. I’ve done his show many, many times. He sounded terrific, actually.”Bongino represents a part of Trump‘s ‘Make America Great Again’ base of support that has long been suspicious of Epstein, whose 2019 death in federal custody has been ruled a suicide. In a joint memo released last Monday, the FBI and the Justice Department said there was no evidence to support a number of long-held conspiracy theories about Epstein’s death and his alleged clientele.Conservative influencers from Laura Loomer to Elon Musk have criticized Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel for their findings, which came months after Bondi pledged to reveal major revelations about Epstein, including “a lot of names” and “a lot of flight logs.”US media, including Fox News and NBC News, have reported that Bongino has clashed with Bondi over the issue and was considering stepping down.Patel and Bongino, a former conservative podcaster, both previously made statements before working at the FBI about a so-called client list and often suggested that the government was hiding information about Epstein from the American public.In other news:

      King Charles has invited Donald Trump for an unprecedented second state visit in September, scheduling the trip for three days when parliament is not sitting and removing the possibility of the US president addressing parliament. The visit is a coup for the White House, with Trump becoming the first elected politician in modern history to be granted two state visits, after his earlier one in 2019.

      However, the US president received a frostier reception when he made an appearance at the Club World Cup final in New Jersey on Sunday. Trump was booed and jeered by the crowd during the national anthem before the match and again while presenting the trophy to Chelsea alongside Fifa president Gianni Infantino.

      The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has called on the EU to “defend European interests resolutely” after Trump threatened to impose 30% tariffs on nearly all imports from the EU. It came as the EU moved to de-escalate tensions after the blunt move by Trump on Saturday. The bloc declared a further pause on €21bn of retaliatory tariffs until 1 August, dovetailing with the US president’s new deal deadline.

      On Monday, in an extraordinary show of force, a convoy of federal agents descended upon Los Angeles’s MacArthur Park. Chaperones from a summer camp hurried children indoors, as protesters and media rushed to the scene. City leaders denounced the spectacle as a “political stunt” designed to terrorize Angelenos who have been reckoning with a relentless onslaught of immigration raids that began in early June.

      Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said on Sunday that Trump wants to have the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) “remade” instead of eradicated entirely. In a new interview on Sunday with NBC, Noem defended the Trump administration’s response to the deadly Texas floods that have killed at least 120 people, saying: “I think the president recognizes that Fema should not exist the way that it always has been. It needs to be redeployed in a new way, and that’s what we did during this response.”

      Rosie O’Donnell has shrugged off a threat from Trump to revoke her US citizenship on the grounds that she is “a threat to humanity”. The New York-born actor and comedian said on Sunday that she was the latest in a long list of artists, activists and celebrities to be threatened by the US president.

      A new Senate committee report on the attempted assassination of Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last year, described the events as a “cascade of preventable failures” and called for more severe disciplinary action to be taken with the Secret Service in the future. In the 31-page, highly critical findings released on Sunday, the Senate homeland security and governmental affairs committee lamented the mishandling of communications around the rally and said Trump was denied extra security on the day.

      Trump said the US will send Patriot air defence systems to Ukraine to help it fight off Russian attacks amid a souring of his relations with Vladimir Putin.

      Kevin Hassett, the White House economic adviser, said Trump has seen some trade deal offers and thinks they need to be better, adding that the president will proceed with threatened tariffs on Mexico and the EU if they don’t improve.
      Donald Trump’s threat to impose 30% tariffs on European goods would “practically prohibit” transatlantic trade, the EU’s lead negotiator with the US has said.Arriving for talks with European ministers in Brussels, Maroš Šefčovič, the EU trade commissioner, said a tariff of 30% or more would have a huge impact, making it “almost impossible to continue” current transatlantic trade, which is worth €4.4bn (£3.8bn) a day.Expressing disappointment, he said his negotiating team thought they had been close to a deal. “The feeling on our side was that we are very close to an agreement,” as he said the two sides had been negotiating an agreement in principle – the outlines of a deal – for four weeks prior to Trump’s blunt announcement at the weekend.The US president said on Saturday that EU imports would face a tariff of 30% from 1 August, denting European optimism that talks to secure a still painful 10% duty were almost finalised.In response to Trump’s latest deadline, the EU decided to postpone retaliatory countertariffs on €21bn of US goods that had been due to kick in at midnight on Monday until 1 August.Ministers will also discuss plans for a further round of countermeasures, targeting €72bn of US imports to the EU.Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.We begin with news that president Donald Trump said on Sunday he spoke to deputy FBI director Dan Bongino to try to calm an uproar over how the Justice Department handled the probe into the death of accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged clientele, Reuters reported.Asked by reporters if Bongino remained in his position after reportedly pondering resigning, Trump said: “Oh I think so… I spoke to him today. Dan Bongino, very good guy. I’ve known him a long time. I’ve done his show many, many times. He sounded terrific, actually.”Bongino represents a part of Trump‘s ‘Make America Great Again’ base of support that has long been suspicious of Epstein, whose 2019 death in federal custody has been ruled a suicide. In a joint memo released last Monday, the FBI and the Justice Department said there was no evidence to support a number of long-held conspiracy theories about Epstein’s death and his alleged clientele.Conservative influencers from Laura Loomer to Elon Musk have criticized Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel for their findings, which came months after Bondi pledged to reveal major revelations about Epstein, including “a lot of names” and “a lot of flight logs.”US media, including Fox News and NBC News, have reported that Bongino has clashed with Bondi over the issue and was considering stepping down.Patel and Bongino, a former conservative podcaster, both previously made statements before working at the FBI about a so-called client list and often suggested that the government was hiding information about Epstein from the American public.In other news:

      King Charles has invited Donald Trump for an unprecedented second state visit in September, scheduling the trip for three days when parliament is not sitting and removing the possibility of the US president addressing parliament. The visit is a coup for the White House, with Trump becoming the first elected politician in modern history to be granted two state visits, after his earlier one in 2019.

      However, the US president received a frostier reception when he made an appearance at the Club World Cup final in New Jersey on Sunday. Trump was booed and jeered by the crowd during the national anthem before the match and again while presenting the trophy to Chelsea alongside Fifa president Gianni Infantino.

      The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has called on the EU to “defend European interests resolutely” after Trump threatened to impose 30% tariffs on nearly all imports from the EU. It came as the EU moved to de-escalate tensions after the blunt move by Trump on Saturday. The bloc declared a further pause on €21bn of retaliatory tariffs until 1 August, dovetailing with the US president’s new deal deadline.

      On Monday, in an extraordinary show of force, a convoy of federal agents descended upon Los Angeles’s MacArthur Park. Chaperones from a summer camp hurried children indoors, as protesters and media rushed to the scene. City leaders denounced the spectacle as a “political stunt” designed to terrorize Angelenos who have been reckoning with a relentless onslaught of immigration raids that began in early June.

      Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said on Sunday that Trump wants to have the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) “remade” instead of eradicated entirely. In a new interview on Sunday with NBC, Noem defended the Trump administration’s response to the deadly Texas floods that have killed at least 120 people, saying: “I think the president recognizes that Fema should not exist the way that it always has been. It needs to be redeployed in a new way, and that’s what we did during this response.”

      Rosie O’Donnell has shrugged off a threat from Trump to revoke her US citizenship on the grounds that she is “a threat to humanity”. The New York-born actor and comedian said on Sunday that she was the latest in a long list of artists, activists and celebrities to be threatened by the US president.

      A new Senate committee report on the attempted assassination of Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last year, described the events as a “cascade of preventable failures” and called for more severe disciplinary action to be taken with the Secret Service in the future. In the 31-page, highly critical findings released on Sunday, the Senate homeland security and governmental affairs committee lamented the mishandling of communications around the rally and said Trump was denied extra security on the day.

      Trump said the US will send Patriot air defence systems to Ukraine to help it fight off Russian attacks amid a souring of his relations with Vladimir Putin.

      Kevin Hassett, the White House economic adviser, said Trump has seen some trade deal offers and thinks they need to be better, adding that the president will proceed with threatened tariffs on Mexico and the EU if they don’t improve. More

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      Kash Patel denies rumors he’s quitting the FBI over DoJ ruling on Epstein files

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      FBI director Kash Patel has denied swirling resignation rumors over reported unhappiness at a justice department decision to close the book on Jeffrey Epstein after administration officials teased a big reveal earlier in the year.In a Saturday social media post, the agency director said: “the conspiracy theories just aren’t true, never have been. It’s an honor to serve the President of the United States – and I’ll continue to do so for as long as he calls on me.”Over the past week, Maga hardliners, including Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, former White House adviser Steve Bannon and – reportedly – FBI deputy director Dan Bongino, have been strongly critical of a joint decision by US attorney general Pam Bondi and the FBI to not release further information about Epstein held in government files, including a so-called client list.Critics have slammed the FBI-justice department conclusion about Epstein’s official autopsy that the disgraced financier had hung himself in his cell. Many have refused to accept that, repeating a conspiracy theory that Epstein, who died in August 2019 while awaiting trial, was in fact murdered to silence him.“This systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list’,” the memo stated. “There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”Rumors of a rift between the FBI and the justice department over the memo have been denied by deputy attorney general Todd Blanche, who wrote on social media that there is “no daylight” between the FBI and the Department of Justice leadership on the issue.“I worked closely with [Kash and Bongino] on the joint FBI and DOJ memo regarding the Epstein Files. All of us signed off on the contents of the memo and the conclusions stated in the memo. The suggestion by anyone that there was any daylight between the FBI and DOJ leadership on this memo’s composition and release is patently false,” Blanche said.But on Friday, NBC News reported that Bongino is considering stepping down from his post at the FBI after a “heated confrontation” with Bondi over the issue.“Bongino is out-of-control furious,” the person who has spoken with the deputy FBI director said. “This destroyed his career. He’s threatening to quit and torch Pam unless she’s fired.”Donald Trump has also grown testy with repeated questions about Epstein, who was once a neighbor in Palm Beach. He erupted on Tuesday when he was pressed on an apparent one-minute gap in a 10-hour video recorded outside of Epstein’s cell.“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” he said. “This guy’s been talked about for years … Are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable.”Bondi has since explained that the missing minute of surveillance film was simply the recording equipment resetting itself, as it does every night.Still, it is not clear that Maga hardliners are willing to let the Epstein conspiracy theories go – they have provided a constant stream of material that supposedly supports their theories of a deep state.But no evidence has emerged that Epstein was engaged in a conspiracy to blackmail high-profile visitors, including Britain’s Prince Andrew, to his homes in New York, Florida, New Mexico and the US Virgin Islands.The FBI-DoJ memo stated that it had uncovered “a significant amount of material”, including more than 300GB of data and physical evidence that included “a large volume of images of Epstein, images and videos of victims who are either minors or appear to be minors, and over ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography”.“Through this review, we found no basis to revisit the disclosure of those materials and will not permit the release of child pornography,” the memo said. More

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      FBI to reinvestigate 2023 White House cocaine find and leak of supreme court Dobbs draft

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      The FBI will launch new investigations into the 2023 discovery of a bag of cocaine at the White House during Joe Biden’s term, as well as into pipe bombs discovered at Democratic and Republican party headquarters before the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot by supporters of Donald Trump, and the leak of the supreme court’s draft opinion before the historic overturning of national abortion rights with the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned Roe v Wade in 2022.Dan Bongino, a rightwing podcaster turned deputy director of the FBI, made the announcement on X, where he said he had requested weekly briefings on any progress in looking into the old cases. The incidents have been popular talking points on America’s political right wing and among conspiracy theorists.Bongino said that he and the FBI director, Kash Patel, had been evaluating “a number of cases of potential public corruption that, understandably, have garnered public interest” and had made a decision “to either re-open, or push additional resources and investigative attention, to these cases”.The FBI deputy director made an appeal for “investigative tips on these matters”.The discovery of a small, zippered bag of cocaine in a cubby near the entrance to the West Wing two years ago drew excited commentary from Republicans, including then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has said it was implausible the drugs could belong to anyone beyond Joe Biden or son Hunter Biden – even though the Biden family was away from Washington at the time.Bongino has previously alleged, without presenting any evidence, that he was in touch with whistleblowers who told him they were “suspicious” that evidence from the White House cocaine bag “could match a member of the inner Biden circle”.A formal laboratory test confirmed that the powder found was indeed cocaine and the Secret Service said the substance was found in a “highly trafficked” area of the White House and it was reviewing visitor logs to determine how it had gotten there.Then White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that public tours of the West Wing had taken place over the weekend when the discovery was made, prompting an evacuation of the executive mansion.“We have confidence that they will get to the bottom of this,” Jean-Pierre later said, referring to the Secret Service. A White House spokesperson said that the allegations that Hunter Biden was involved was “incredibly irresponsible”.But in his first interview as a president in February this year, Trump returned to the subject, arguing that forensic analysis should have revealed fingerprints but the evidence appeared to have been deliberately wiped clean. He described the cocaine discovery as a “terrible thing”.The pre-emptive publication of the supreme court’s opinion ending the constitutional right to abortion in Politico on 2 May 2022 provoked condemnation from Trump, who called the source of the leak “slime” and demanded that the journalists involved be imprisoned until they revealed who it was.Eight months later, the supreme court released a 23-page report into the leak saying the investigative team “has to date been unable to identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence”.Investigations into both cases ended without identifying who was responsible for the cocaine or the leak.Bongino also announced more resources for the FBI’s investigation into the placement of pipe bombs at the Democratic national committee and the Republican national committee in Washington.The bombs, which were later defused, had been planted the night before Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol in a failed bid to block Congress from certifying Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      James Comey investigated over seashell photo claimed to be ‘threat’ against Trump

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      A photo of seashells posted on Instagram by the former FBI director James Comey is now being investigated by the US Secret Service, after the US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem said it constituted a “threat” against Donald Trump.On Thursday, Comey posted a photo of seashells forming the message “8647”, with a caption that read: “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”Trump’s supporters have interpreted the message as an endorsement of violence against Trump – the 47th president. There is more debate around the use of 86, a slang term often used in restaurants to mean getting rid of or throwing something out, and which, according to Merriam-Webster, has been used more recently, albeit sparingly, to mean “to kill”.Comey later took down his post, saying in a statement that he was unaware of the seashells’ potential meaning and saying that he does not condone violence of any kind.“I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message,” Comey said in a statement. “I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”A spokesperson for the Secret Service confirmed the agency was “aware of the incident” and said it would “vigorously investigate” any potential threat, but did not offer further details.The post ignited a firestorm on the right, with Trump loyalists accusing the former FBI director of calling for the president’s assassination. Trump survived an attempt on his life at a campaign event in Pennsylvania last year.“Disgraced former FBI director James Comey just called for the assassination of POTUS Trump,” Noem wrote on X. “DHS and Secret Service is investigating this threat and will respond appropriately.”Comey and Trump have a deeply antagonistic relationship that stretches back to the early days of the first Trump administration when, according to Comey, Trump sought to secure a pledge of loyalty from the then FBI director, who refused.In a move that shocked Washington, Trump dismissed Comey, who was leading the criminal investigation into Russian meddling in the US election. Comey later wrote a memoir that recounted the episode, prompting Trump to declare him an “untruthful slime ball”.Comey has remained a Maga world bête noire, drawing rightwing ire whenever he steps into the political fray.Allies of the president were swift to condemn Comey on Thursday. “We are aware of the recent social media post by former FBI director James Comey, directed at President Trump,” Kash Patel, the FBI director, wrote on X, adding: “We, the FBI, will provide all necessary support.”Taylor Budowich, the White House deputy chief of staff, also responded by calling the photo “deeply concerning” and accused Comey of putting out “what can clearly be interpreted as ‘a hit’ on the sitting President of the United States”.Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett, a staunch Trump supporter, called for Comey to be jailed. “Arrest Comey,” he wrote on X. More