First Contact

Donald Trump has made US$2.2 billion in his second term.

Is this normal?

Benjamin Quail, Queen's University Belfast

At the end of June – in the run-up to America’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence – Donald Trump staged the White House’s first-ever professional sporting event. And while the UFC Freedom 250 evening of mixed martial arts was ostensibly part of the July 4 jamboree, Trump took the opportunity to promote his family’s business interests.

Fighters were paid bonuses in US$1 stablecoins, the cryptocurrency owned by the Trump family, while the event itself cost a reported US$60 million, much of which was taxpayers’ money.

The US president’s ability to make money while in office has been a focus of attention since his financial reports for 2025 were made public at the end of June. His reported revenue jumped from US$622 million in 2024 to US$2.2 billion in 2025, the first year of his second term.

While he and his family claim that there is no conflict of interest, there is little doubt that Trump has been able to profit from his position. But how does his financial gain as president stack up with some of his recent predecessors?

The Kennedy family were famously wealthy. The family’s patriarch, Joseph Kennedy, put some of his money into trusts for his children, allowing John Fitzgerald, Robert Francis and generations of future Kennedys to pursue politics without financial worry or conflicts between business and public service.

Kennedy’s successor Lyndon B. Johnson owned significant land and a small media empire in Austin, Texas with his wife Lady Bird, all of which was put into a blind trust and officially controlled without the Johnsons’ involvement while he was in office.

During the 1972 election cycle, Time magazine reported that incumbent president, Richard Nixon had improved his finances by just over US$300,000 during his first presidential term, noting that he was “not yet a millionaire”. Most of Nixon’s financial assets were tied up in property and his civil service pension.

Jimmy Carter’s famous peanut farm assets were put into a trust when he won office, and he left the presidency in $1m of debt following droughts in Georgia. Ronald Reagan, who succeeded Carter and was not a businessmen but a film actor-turned-politician, came to office with some assets. His assets – valued in 1981 at about US$4 million, mainly made up of his two properties – were also held in trust while he was in office.

George W. Bush made almost US$15m selling his stake in the Dallas-based Texas Rangers baseball franchise in 1998, while he served as governor of Texas. Barack Obama earned money from royalties on book sales while in office, but both he and Bill Clinton have amassed considerable wealth since leaving office.

None of these presidents appeared to leverage their presidency or their image to earn money while in office in the way that Trump has during his second term. Instead, they tended towards waiting until the post-presidency years.

The super-secret truth behind the Reflecting Pool scandal

A closer look at Foulkes’ record on opioids

What she did and didn't do - are the attacks fair?

By Philip Eil, Rhode Island Current

In 2022, when Dan McKee and Helena Buonanno Foulkes first squared off for the democratic gubernatorial nomination, opioids didn’t get a lot of airtime. 

Aside from a few high-profile moments — a jab in a debate by candidate Luis Daniel Munoz, a controversial TV ad where the McKee campaign claimed Foulkes had made money “pumping opioids into our homes” — you could have easily missed discussion of the issue. McKee ultimately won that primary over Foulkes by three percentage points.

This time has been different.

On the day the former CVS executive announced her run again for governor last fall, McKee debuted a website and attack ads tying her to the opioid crisis. And he hasn’t let up, continuing to link her to the crisis via campaign statements, interviews, TV ads, and social media posts. His ongoing criticism of CVS recently prompted a rebuke from some state business leaders. 

Foulkes — who polls show leading McKee by a significant margin — defended her opioids record in her first TV ad of the campaign. To date, CVS — the Woonsocket-based juggernaut with a market capitalization exceeding $125 billion — has been sued by thousands of cities, counties, states, and tribal governments for its role in the crisis. In 2022, the company paid $5 billion to settle those lawsuits, though it stated that the deal was “not an admission of any liability or wrongdoing.” 

CVS has also paid more than $70 million in fines after Department of Justice (DOJ) investigations into opioid-related conduct — involving improper dispensing, filling prescriptions for unauthorized prescribers, record-keeping violations, and more — across 11 states, including Rhode Island and its neighbors, Connecticut and Massachusetts. 

Foulkes was president of CVS’s Pharmacy division from January 2014 to February 2018. During that time she was, as a company-produced bio noted, responsible for all aspects of the company’s retail business, including pharmacy operations. 

In her answers to reporters’ questions and in stump speeches, Foulkes has returned to a few points: the company’s record of cutting off pill mill doctors, its role in passing legislation that lowered the number of pills allowed in initial opioid prescriptions, the sweeping drug-takeback initiatives on her watch, and a steep overall drop in opioids dispensed during her tenure. 

Here’s a closer look at her claims:

Art of the Deal 2.0

The Mounting Humiliations of D. J. Trump

They're making him even more erratic and dangerous

Robert Reich

Nothing makes Trump angrier than being humiliated. Humiliation involves public shame, which Trump’s malignant narcissism cannot abide.

But Trump is facing humiliation after humiliation. They’re causing him to lose his mind even faster than before.

The Iranian regime knows this, which is why it’s publicly humiliating Trump by contradicting everything he says about making progress on the peace talks.

Yesterday, Iran went further. It refuted Trump’s claim that Iran did not control the Strait of Hormuz, and that the strait was again open to shipping, by striking a container ship passing through the strait. Oil prices immediately jumped.

Meanwhile, American judges are humiliating Trump by ordering his name off the Kennedy Center, requiring that the center remain open, pausing work on his billionaire ballroom, threatening to stop his Arch de Trump, ending his slush fund, and vacating charges that Trump’s Justice [sic] Department has brought against Trump’s enemies.

Performing artists are humiliating him by pulling out of his so-called “Great American State Fair” on the National Mall because they don’t want any part in what’s become a Trump rally.

Congressional Republicans are humiliating him by rejecting his demands that they enact the “SAVE” Act (which would make it harder for millions of people to vote), pass his next reconciliation package, and blow up the Senate filibuster.

Four Senate Republicans even crossed party lines to back a war powers resolution directing Trump to halt military operations against Iran or seek congressional authorization to continue. 

Their support delivered a bipartisan rebuke to Trump’s handling of the war. (After lobbying by Trump, the Senate reversed its stance and rejected the resolution in a late-night vote.)

Turning 80 is itself a humiliation for Trump. Even if the media weren’t harping on it, his body is continuously reminding him that he’s the oldest president ever elected. 

Not to mention increasing calls from Democrats to invoke the 25th Amendment in light of Trump’s erratic behavior — including his feud with the pope, his doomsday threats on Truth Social, and his posting of an AI photo of himself as Jesus.

But the very worst type of humiliation for Trump is ridicule — as first became apparent in 2011 when Obama skewered him at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner by producing his birth certificate and saying Trump could “now get back to focusing on important issues like did we fake the moon landing?”

The audience roared. Trump fumed.

Trump can’t take ridicule — which is why he tried to get ABC to fire Jimmy Kimmel and gloated when CBS got rid of Stephen Colbert.

Yet late-night comedians are now having a field day with Trump’s algae-infested Reflecting Pool. Some are calling it the Strait of Warm Ooze.

The pile-up of humiliations is causing Trump to lash out at anyone and everyone, including his recent explosion at NBC correspondent Kristen Welker on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and Wednesday’s reported shouting match with Republican Senator Bill Cassidy during a closed-door lunch at the Capitol. The lunch came just after Trump dropped a bombshell by canceling plans to sign a bipartisan landmark housing affordability bill until he gets his way on the SAVE Act.

I’m tempted to enjoy the Trump humiliations. But I think it also important to note that as they mount, Trump is becoming even more erratic and dangerous. So beware.

How to "deal" with Iran

 

Celebrate!

Of course he did

Two Presidents speak...

Trump's polling is terrible and getting worse

Looking behind Trump's cratering polls

Tom Schaller

The irony is profound: Donald Trump, a man who craves adulation and perhaps deification, is the least-liked American president ever.

Trump’s approval ratings have reached historic lows. He’s polling lower than he did at the same point in his first term, and he suffers net-negative approval ratings in all but nine states. Americans overwhelmingly reject him, his policies, and his job performance as president. 

In fact, if the third of Americans who comprise his bedrock base of red-hatted MAGAs are held aside, the rest of the nation is now nearly unified in deeming Trump’s second term a failure, if not a disaster.

No matter the pollster or topic, no matter how questions are phrased nor the subgroup of Americans tracked, Trump and his policies are disfavored, even despised. His numbers were bad before he started his reckless Iran war and they have fallen further since. And most recent approval ratings came before Trump began circulating images that likened him to Jesus. (More on that at the end.)

Per pollster G. Elliott Morris, comparing Trump to other recent presidents 15 months into their terms confirms how badly the public rates him. At -21.6 net negative approval, Trump lags behind Joe Biden (-10.8), Barack Obama (+2.3), and a post-9/11 George W. Bush (+57.0) at comparable points of their terms. In fact, Trump already lags more than 8 points behind the 15-month mark of his own first term (-13.3).

Even if his current term is treated as a second term — when presidents tend to experience declining approval — the comparisons are still grim.

At the end of the first year of their second terms, only the Watergate-addled Nixon had a lower net approval number, -29.6, than the -16.2 net disapproval Trump had at the end of his fifth combined year in office. And that low rating came three months ago, before the ICE/CBP shootings in Minneapolis and the Iran war eroded Trump’s support by another five points and counting.

Disgraced former Rhode Island general Mike Flynn just ripped you off for $1.25 million

DOJ payout to Mike Flynn has J6-ers lining up at the trough

Liz Dye

The Department of Justice announced that it was “settling” a malicious prosecution case with Michael Flynn for $1.25 million.

Flynn’s claims were entirely without merit, and a federal judge had already dismissed them once. But the Justice Department decided to pay him anyway, calling it a righteous vindication of Trump’s constant whining that he was illegally targeted by the FBI and Robert Mueller.

"Those who instigated the Russia Collusion Hoax and Crossfire Hurricane abused their power to mislead the American people and tarnish the reputations of President Trump and his supporters,” a DOJ spokesperson told ABC. “Today’s settlement, secured by this Justice Department, is an important step in redressing that historic injustice."

Encouraged by this blatant corruption, Trump’s most ardent supporters are demanding their own cut. This week, a group of January 6 rioters filed a class action lawsuit demanding recompense for the injuries they suffered when they attempted to overturn the election.

The stage is set for the wholesale looting of the federal coffers by Trump and his MAGA allies.

Success! Life is worse for almost everybody.

Trump opens New England's National Marine Monument to commercial fishing

Atlantic Ocean’s Only Sanctuary Gutted

By Frank Carini / ecoRI News columnist

EDITOR'S NOTE: I couldn't remember ever seeing Trump
at the beach or on a boat. I searched and found almost all AI-fakes,
like the one above showing Trump at "Trump Gaza"
with Israel's leader Benyamin Netanyahu. There were
some old articles about Trump's interest in super-yachts,
but I found no photos of him on a boat. He hates
"windmills" because he hates how they look to him at
his golf resort in Scotland.   - Will Collette

The Mad King has disemboweled protections for a marine sanctuary some 130 miles southeast of the Cape Cod coast. His declaration is moronically titled “Unleashing American Commercial Fishing in the Atlantic.” He likely wants his Feb. 6 proclamation printed out and displayed on fisher refrigerators throughout the region.

Commercial fishing off the New England coast has been an industry for four centuries. It has led to the “overexploitation and eventual collapse of species after species,” according to NOAA Fisheries. Atlantic halibut, haddock, ocean perch, and yellowtail flounder are now all but commercially extinct. NOAA Fisheries has also warned Atlantic cod, “resilient to years of overfishing,” could join the ranks of species written off as commercially extinct.

In September 2016 President Obama designated the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument as the first Atlantic Ocean monument. It remains, kind of, the only national marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean. There are four in the Pacific, kind of. Similar to national marine sanctuaries, marine national monuments are designated to protect biodiversity-rich ocean areas. They are designated by presidential proclamation under the Antiquities Act of 1906 to conserve pristine ecosystems, deep-sea habitats, and sea life.

Monument rules prevent commercial fishing. Special interest groups sued unsuccessfully to stop the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.

Less than four years later, in June 2020, the Mad King, then self-serving in his first term, revoked the Obama-era commercial fishing restrictions on the Atlantic monument in a nearly identical proclamation. President Biden then reversed the Mad King’s proclamation with one of his own. Capt. Chaos has now reversed the reversal.

Racist Trump Denounced for Sharing Vile Video Depicting Obamas as Monkeys

Trump is truly FUBAR

Brad Reed

A screenshot of the video Trump shared

Donald Trump, a documented racist, drew swift condemnation on Friday night after he posted a video on his Truth Social account depicting former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as monkeys.

As reported by The Guardian, the racist depiction of the Obamas was part of a longer video that featured “false and disproven claims that ballot-counting company Dominion Voting Systems helped steal the 2020 presidential election” from Trump.

The outrage over the post was immediate, even as Trump’s racism is well known and documented over many years.

“The most foundational racist idea is likening Black people to apes,” said Howard University historian Ibram X. Kendi in a social media post. “Since humans evolved from an ape-like ancestor, racist ideas cast white people as the most evolved people and the furthest away on the evolutionary scale from apes. Racist ideas cast Black people as the least evolved people and the closest on the evolutionary scale to apes. Almost all racist ideas build on this foundational one expressed by Trump.”

In 2009, Trump and his kids co-signed President Obama statement calling for action on climate change

Donald Trump’s Descent into Climate Chaos 

By Thomas Schueneman

Back in 2009, in the lead-up to COP15 in Copenhagen, a group of concerned business leaders and “liberal luminaries” called for urgent action on climate change in an open letter to then-President Obama published in the New York Times. The letter said in part: 

“If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet.” 

Donald Trump and his three adult children were all signatories.

The letter went on to promote the United States as a model for climate leadership and action:

“Please allow us, the United States of America, to serve in modeling the change necessary to protect humanity and our planet.”

An Inconvenient Truth

If we didn’t know it then, we do now. Trump’s commitment to anything is inexorably tied to his own base ambitions, malignant narcissism, and infantile ego. 

I can’t say what motivated Trump to align with climate action proponents, but it’s safe to say he didn’t much care about climate change one way or another. 

There was something in it for him, until there wasn’t. 

His political ambitions and golf courses splattered across the globe change all that. It didn’t take long for his professed climate concern to morph into derision. Starting in 2012, he abandoned his firmly held belief (I jest, he has no firmly held beliefs). That’s when he started accusing China of creating the climate change hoax as a means of keeping America down. 

He has held to his hoax-y rhetoric since then. What better way to curry favor with his recalcitrant MAGA cult and attract Big Oil money than call global warming a hoax? An added bonus is owning the libs, what with their calls for emissions reductions and renewable energy. And it isn’t just the libs who Trump trolls with his rapier wit and intellectual framing. 

He chides other nations, claiming that their efforts to secure a sustainable future, however minimal, will be their downfall. 

Here's a blowup of the NY Times ad, showing the Trump family members names as co-signers:

The ‘sacred’ pledge that will power the relaunch of far-right militia Oath Keepers

January 6 insurrectionists staging a come-back?

Alexander Lowie, University of Florida

Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia, announced in November 2025 that he will relaunch the group after it disbanded following his prison sentence in 2023.

Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy and other crimes committed during the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

In January 2025, Donald Trump granted clemency to the over 1,500 defendants convicted of crimes connected to the storming of the Capitol.

Trump did not pardon Rhodes – or some others found guilty of the most serious crimes on Jan. 6. He instead commuted Rhodes’ sentence to time served. Commutation only reduces the punishment for a crime, whereas a full pardon erases a conviction.

As a political anthropologist I study the Patriot movement, a collection of anti-government right-wing groups that include the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Moms for Liberty. I specialize in alt-right beliefs, and I have interviewed people active in groups that participated in the Capitol riot.

Former Charlestown state Rep. Blake "Flip" Filippi represented the Oath Keepers
at this illegal rally. The town banned this rally because all its police were tied up
 in the search for the Boston Marathon Bombers.

Rhodes’ plans to relaunch the Oath Keepers, largely composed of current and former military veterans and law enforcement officers, is important because it will serve as an outlet for those who have felt lost since his imprisonment. 

The group claimed it had over 40,000 dues-paying members at the height of its membership during Barack Obama’s presidency. 

I believe that many of these people will return to the group, empowered by the lack of any substantial punishment resulting from the pardons for crimes committed on Jan. 6.

Some powerful Christmas messages

Holiday greetings from alternate universes

And then, there's this

MAGA's Epstein gaslighting is unsustainable

To believe anything Trump's MAGA defenders say requires a complete suspension of common sense.

Justin Glawe

Home of the Brave paid for this billboard in Times Square earlier this month. (Adam Gray/Getty)

After months of pushing conflicting and nonsensical talking points about the release of the Epstein files, Donald Trump is running out of time on his administration’s failing coverup of his longtime friendship with one of the world’s most notorious sex traffickers.

Trump, the White House, and congressional Republicans have spent nearly the entire first year of the president’s second term pushing an ever-expanding number of contradictory narratives about not just what’s in the files, but why Democrats and even staunch conservatives like Rep. Thomas Massie have been demanding their release.

There’s a very simple reason for this: Trump and Republicans have no idea how to cover for a president who is clearly all over the files.

The White House and congressional Republicans have argued that if the Epstein files contain highly damaging information about Trump, former president Joe Biden would have released them while he was in office. Simultaneously, Republicans are arguing that Democrats are behind the push to release the Epstein files because they will be bad for Trump.

“If they had anything, they would’ve used it before the election,” Trump told reporters on November 14, before suggesting Democrats doctored the files. “I can’t tell you what they have put in since the election.”

Meanwhile, Democrats are “trying to manufacture some sort of hoax that the president had something to do with Epstein,” House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed the same day.

The Epstein files are all a “hoax,” Trump has said — a lie made up by Democrats to make him look bad. Yet somehow, at the same time, there’s nothing in the files that could make him look bad — because if there was, Biden would have released them.

So which is it? The White House and congressional Republicans can’t say. That’s because it’s difficult to cover up Trump’s ties to Epstein when they are so widely known and obviously incriminating.

Dig a little deeper into Republican talking points about the Epstein files and it gets even more confusing. When asked on November 13 by CNN’s John Berman why Trump won’t simply release the files, Rep. Pete Sessions claimed the president is just doing the same thing as Obama and Biden before him: not releasing context-free materials about those in Epstein’s orbit en masse.

“To simply take things that are emails and accusations that people make is not a legitimate way for us to approach this,” Sessions said following the release of emails by House Democrats showing even more ties between Trump and Epstein. To hear Sessions tell it, Trump is simply following the lead of Obama and Biden, who he suggested “concluded” the files should be released in a “different way.”

"Now, they did not ever really approach it,” Sessions said of Trump’s predecessors, “and we’re trying to do that now.”

While Republicans have argued that Democrats want the files released to hurt Trump — and that if there was damaging information therein Biden would have already released them — they’ve also said the 50,000 pages of documents and emails that have already been released by congressional committees exonerate Trump.

“The evidence we’ve gathered does not implicate President Trump in any way,” Rep. James Comer claimed on October 21.

None of this has worked, forcing Republicans in Congress to pass a bill ordering the release of at least some of the Justice Department’s materials on Epstein, which Trump has signed into law.

Now, Republicans are adjusting tactics slightly, saying that even if Trump is in the files, it’s not evidence of any wrongdoing.

“I need to see evidence at trial and people being convicted,” Rep. Warren Davidson said on November 21. “I don’t really need more rage bait in terms of public documents, I want to know when are the prosecutions underway.”

These confusing and completely contradictory arguments — Biden didn’t release the files so there’s nothing bad about Trump in them, but also Democrats want them released so they can score points against Trump, and simultaneously the files will exonerate the president — are all part of an attempted coverup of what has been obvious for a long time: Trump has deep ties to Epstein and at the very least is mentioned in materials collected as part of the DOJ’s investigation.

The DOJ now has 30 days to begin releasing records related to its investigation of Epstein. Almost surely, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel will continue to run cover for Trump on the materials they’re now bound by law to release — as they have already done for months now. In fact, Bondi is already claiming that an investigation into prominent Democrats in Epstein’s orbit — an investigation Trump himself publicly demanded — prevents her from discussing anything Epstein related.

Endless contradictions

Trump's hand-made birthday greeting
for Jeffrey Epstein

The lies and conflicting narratives about the Epstein files began almost from the moment of Trump’s second inauguration. After riling up his supporters for years about Epstein — stoking the MAGA base on the campaign trail and subsequently choosing two of the biggest Epstein conspiracists, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, to lead the FBI — Trump’s line suddenly changed once he returned to the White House.

A month into the second Trump administration, Bondi told Fox News that the list of Epstein’s clients was “sitting on my desk right now.” A week later, she announced the release of the “first phase” of the Epstein files, most of which had already been made publicly available during the Biden administration.

Bondi then invited MAGA influencers to the White House to receive these materials. They dutifully showed off their binders full of already-available documents as if they had just received damning evidence on a global cabal of sex predators — before some of them took to social media to complain that the files contained nothing new. (A second “phase” of Epstein files was never released.)

Bondi and Patel subsequently claimed a “whistleblower” at the FBI field office in New York said agents there had withheld “thousands of pages of documents” related to Epstein. In a February 28 letter to Patel, Bondi ordered the FBI director to “conduct an immediate investigation” into why the files in New York were withheld from the DOJ and to file a “comprehensive report of your findings and proposed personnel action within 14 days.” There is no indication that any such report was ever filed.

In March, the FBI tasked its agents in New York with searching through an estimated 100,000 documents for references to Trump — and redacting any mention of the president. In May, Bondi reportedly informed Trump that he was in the massive trove of materials at the Justice Department. This was the point at which Trump switched gears from loudly proclaiming for years that he would release the files to attempting to dismiss them entirely.

“Are you still talking about Jeffery Epstein?” Trump asked a reporter incredulously on July 9. “Are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable.”

“I don’t understand why the Jeffery Epstein case would be of interest to anybody,” Trump said the next week. “It’s pretty boring stuff.”

Bogus transparency claims

As Trump himself tried to dismiss the Epstein files at every opportunity, his underlings at the Justice Department launched a new plan to tamp down on the growing clamor for the files: “Interview” Ghislaine Maxwell in prison and ask courts to unseal transcripts of grand jury testimony from her trial.

Deputy AG Todd Blanche conducted the interview with Maxwell, who told Blanche that she never saw the president engage in any criminal or inappropriate conduct.

“I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting. I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way,” Maxwell said, according to transcripts of her conversation with Blanche that were released by the Justice Department. “The president was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.”

Apparently as a reward for exonerating the president, Maxwell was sent to a low-security prison in Texas where she has enjoyed perks not afforded to other inmates. At the same time, the DOJ made a slapdash attempt to feign transparency by asking courts to unseal grand jury testimony from Maxwell’s trial.

Three federal judges denied the motions. Among them was US District Court Judge Paul Engelmayer, who excoriated the DOJ for its half-hearted effort at providing the public with new information about Epstein.

The DOJ’s “entire premise — that the Maxwell grand jury materials would bring to light meaningful new information about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes, or the Government’s investigation into them — is demonstrably false,” Engelmeyer wrote in a 31-page decision denying the government’s motion to unseal the transcripts of grand jury testimony. “The materials do not identify any person other than Epstein and Maxwell as having had sexual contact with a minor. They do not discuss or identify any client of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s. They do not reveal any heretofore unknown means or methods of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s.”

Engelmeyer’s denial of the motion to unseal provided a convenient — albeit temporary — talking point for the Trump administration: We tried to release more information but a judge stopped us.

After House Democrats released the trove of emails showing even more ties between Trump and Epstein than were previously known — and as it became clear that Congress would force the president and the DOJ to release the files — the Trump administration launched its latest attempt to make all of this go away.

First, Trump demanded that the DOJ investigate prominent Democrats tied to Epstein. Bondi ceded to the demand, tasking the Southern District of New York (SDNY) with launching Trump’s politically-motivated investigations based on findings the Justice Department has already said don’t warrant further investigation.

As expected, Bondi is saying that this new, ongoing investigation prevents the Justice Department from discussing Epstein matters. On November 19, Bondi was asked whether the SDNY investigation would expand beyond the prominent Democrats who Trump demanded be investigated for their ties to Epstein. She demurred.

“We’re not going to say anything else about that because it is a pending investigation,” Bondi said.

With Bondi so quick to use the “ongoing investigation” defense to avoid having to answer questions about the DOJ’s investigation into Epstein and others, it’s entirely possible that the agency could try to use the same defense to make significant redactions in releasing the files as ordered by the law passed by Congress.

Reviewing the meandering path of arguments that have been screen tested on the American people over the last 10 months reveals the desperation with which Republicans have attempted to make all this go away. First, Biden and Democrats didn’t care about the Epstein files because they implicated people like Bill Clinton. Then, those files didn’t contain anything damaging on Trump or else Biden would have released them. Now, Democrats want the files released because they do contain damaging information about Trump, but maybe that’s only the case because they tampered with them.

In July, the DOJ said no further investigations were warranted. Now, investigations into prominent Democrats based on the files are necessary. For years, Trump said the files should be released — until he found out he was in them. Then, the files became nothing but hearsay that could hurt innocent people. Now, they can’t be fully released under the ongoing investigations Trump himself demanded.

The story has become bewildering and insane. To believe anything about Epstein coming from Trump or Republicans requires a complete suspension of common sense, which is why it’s good to remember that the simplest explanation is often the correct one: Trump and Republicans are lying. Lie after desperate, confusing, and impossible lie, all aimed at an impossible goal: erasing history and the many deep and troubling ties between Epstein and Trump.

2025 election results were meaningless, he thinks