Former Trump aide Kayleigh McEnany misleads Fox viewers with false claim Trump was never on Epstein’s plane
Kayleigh McEnany, a Fox News host who was Donald Trump’s first-term White House press secretary, misled the network’s viewers on Friday by claiming, incorrectly, that unlike Bill Clinton, Trump was never on Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet.
McEnany’s false statement came during an on-air discussion of Clinton’s testimony to the House oversight committee on his ties to Epstein, the late sex offender.
“I want everyone who’s mentioned multiple times here to be deposed,” Marie Harf, a former state department spokesperson during the Obama administration, said. “Larry Summers, Bill Gates and, you’re all probably going to yell at me, Donald Trump.”
After Harf elaborated on why she thought that Trump should also be required to testify about the crimes Epstein committed during the nearly two decades the two men were friends, McEnany jumped in to defend her former boss with some misinformation.
“I would note that Donald Trump was not on the plane,” McEnany said, incorrectly. “So putting him in the same pool as Bill Clinton, who was on the plane I think it was 17 times, 27 times” would be unfair, she added.
In fact, while Clinton was on Epstein’s plane 26 times during six trips between February 2002 and November 2003, there is clear evidence in the files made public by the justice department that Trump was also on Epstein’s plane many times.
In one 2020 email exchange made public in December, for instance, a federal prosecutor involved in a discussion of the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s accomplice, told colleagues: “the flight records we received yesterday reflect that Donald Trump traveled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware), including during the period we would expect to charge in a Maxwell case.”
The prosecutor went on to note that Trump “is listed as a passenger on at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996, including at least four flights on which Maxwell was also present. He is listed as having traveled with, among others and at various times, Marla Maples, his daughter Tiffany, and his son Eric.”
“On one flight in 1993, he and Epstein are the only two listed passengers; on another, the only three passengers are Epstein, Trump, and then-20-year-old [name redacted],” the prosecutor in Manhattan, where Maxwell was tried and convicted in 2021. “On two other flights, two of the passengers, respectively, were women who would be possible witnesses in a Maxwell case.”
The name of the 20-year-old who traveled alone with Epstein and Trump on that flight in 1993 has been withheld by the justice department, but in another email from the files, Epstein later bragged to a reporter that he “gave” a woman of that age he dated in 1993 to Trump two years later. Epstein also sent the reporter a link to photos of the woman, the Norwegian cosmetics heiress Celina Midelfart, who was born in 1973 and dated Trump in the late 1990s.
Midelfart was photographed with Epstein at Mar-a-Lago on 22 February 1997, the same night that a now-famous photograph was taken of Trump with his hand on Epstein’s shoulder.
In an except from his 2025 memoir published in the Guardian, the former Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, wrote that when he first met Trump in 2017, the president brought up his former girlfriend.
“You know, Mr President, as former prime minister of Norway, I know that it’s possible to speak with the Russians.”
Trump cast a questioning look. “Are you Norwegian?”
I understood why he was asking – over the years I’ve received many heads of organisations myself, and it isn’t always easy to remember where each comes from. I smiled. “Yes, I’m Norwegian.”
“Do you know Celina Midelfart?”
“Yes, I’ve met her several times. She’s a well-known person in Norway,” I replied.
“Nice girl. What they wrote about us in the Norwegian papers – was it good or bad?”
I remembered seeing newspaper images of Trump and the Norwegian cosmetics heiress and investor at some sporting event or other, but more than that I couldn’t recall. I had no idea what the papers had said.
“Oh yes, the reporting was positive. She’s married to a rich Norwegian now,” I said.
“He’s not rich.”
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Donald Trump said Iran “should make a deal, but they don’t want to quite go far enough”, as his administration seems so intent on effectively disarming the nation, even after it has agreed to stop nuclear enrichment, that war is possible.
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Trump ordered all federal agencies to stop working with Anthropic, after the AI firm refused to allow its model to be used for the mass surveillance or Americans or in weapons that can kill without human input.
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“Is a Rehearing or Readjudication of this case possible???” Trump asked the supreme court on social media over the ruling that most of his tariffs are illegal.
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After Bill Clinton testified to the House oversight committee about Jeffrey Epstein, Kayleigh McEnany misled Fox News viewers by claiming, incorrectly, that Trump was never on Epstein’s private jet. Flight records show he was, many times.
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The artificial intelligence company Anthropic responded late on Friday to defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s announcement earlier in the day that he was directing his department to classify the AI firm as a supply-chain risk to national security.
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“We held to our exceptions for two reasons,” the firm said in a statement. “First, we do not believe that today’s frontier AI models are reliable enough to be used in fully autonomous weapons. Allowing current models to be used in this way would endanger America’s warfighters and civilians. Second, we believe that mass domestic surveillance of Americans constitutes a violation of fundamental rights.”
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“Designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk would be an unprecedented action—one historically reserved for US adversaries, never before publicly applied to an American company,” Anthropic said. “As the first frontier AI company to deploy models in the US government’s classified networks, Anthropic has supported American warfighters since June 2024 and has every intention of continuing to do so.”
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“No amount of intimidation or punishment from the Department of War will change our position on mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. We will challenge any supply chain risk designation in court,” Anthropic added.
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After a Pentagon deadline passed on Friday for Anthropic to relent on its refusal to allow the use of its AI model, Claude, for the mass domestic surveillance of Americans or in weapons that can kill without human input, Hegseth called the company’s stance “fundamentally incompatible with American principles”.
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“Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic,” Hegseth wrote on social media.
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Kayleigh McEnany, a Fox News host who was Donald Trump’s first-term White House press secretary, misled the network’s viewers on Friday by claiming, incorrectly, that unlike Bill Clinton, Trump was never on Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet.
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McEnany’s false statement came during an on-air discussion of Clinton’s testimony to the House oversight committee on his ties to Epstein, the late sex offender.
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“I want everyone who’s mentioned multiple times here to be deposed,” Marie Harf, a former state department spokesperson during the Obama administration, said. “Larry Summers, Bill Gates and, you’re all probably going to yell at me, Donald Trump.”
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After Harf elaborated on why she thought that Trump should also be required to testify about the crimes Epstein committed during the nearly two decades the two men were friends, McEnany jumped in to defend her former boss with some misinformation.
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“I would note that Donald Trump was not on the plane,” McEnany said, incorrectly. “So putting him in the same pool as Bill Clinton, who was on the plane I think it was 17 times, 27 times” would be unfair, she added.
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In fact, while Clinton was on Epstein’s plane 26 times during six trips between February 2002 and November 2003, there is clear evidence in the files made public by the justice department that Trump was also on Epstein’s plane many times.
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In one 2020 email exchange made public in December, for instance, a federal prosecutor involved in a discussion of the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s accomplice, told colleagues: “the flight records we received yesterday reflect that Donald Trump traveled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware), including during the period we would expect to charge in a Maxwell case.”
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The prosecutor went on to note that Trump “is listed as a passenger on at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996, including at least four flights on which Maxwell was also present. He is listed as having traveled with, among others and at various times, Marla Maples, his daughter Tiffany, and his son Eric.”
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“On one flight in 1993, he and Epstein are the only two listed passengers; on another, the only three passengers are Epstein, Trump, and then-20-year-old [name redacted],” the prosecutor in Manhattan, where Maxwell was tried and convicted in 2021. “On two other flights, two of the passengers, respectively, were women who would be possible witnesses in a Maxwell case.”
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The name of the 20-year-old who traveled alone with Epstein and Trump on that flight in 1993 has been withheld by the justice department, but in another email from the files, Epstein later bragged to a reporter that he “gave” a woman of that age he dated in 1993 to Trump two years later. Epstein also sent the reporter a link to photos of the woman, the Norwegian cosmetics heiress Celina Midelfart, who was born in 1973 and dated Trump in the late 1990s.
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Midelfart was photographed with Epstein at Mar-a-Lago on 22 February 1997, the same night that a now-famous photograph was taken of Trump with his hand on Epstein’s shoulder.
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In an except from his 2025 memoir published in the Guardian, the former Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, wrote that when he first met Trump in 2017, the president brought up his former girlfriend.
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“You know, Mr President, as former prime minister of Norway, I know that it’s possible to speak with the Russians.”
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Trump cast a questioning look. “Are you Norwegian?”
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I understood why he was asking – over the years I’ve received many heads of organisations myself, and it isn’t always easy to remember where each comes from. I smiled. “Yes, I’m Norwegian.”
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“Do you know Celina Midelfart?”
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“Yes, I’ve met her several times. She’s a well-known person in Norway,” I replied.
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“Nice girl. What they wrote about us in the Norwegian papers – was it good or bad?”
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I remembered seeing newspaper images of Trump and the Norwegian cosmetics heiress and investor at some sporting event or other, but more than that I couldn’t recall. I had no idea what the papers had said.
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“Oh yes, the reporting was positive. She’s married to a rich Norwegian now,” I said.
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“He’s not rich.”
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Donald Trump refused to weigh in on the hotly contested Texas Republican primary for the US Senate now underway, giving shout-outs at his event in Corpus Christi on Friday to both of the leading candidates, the sitting senator, John Cornyn, and his main challenger, the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton.
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The president thanked both men for coming to his event, but declined to say which one he wants to win. “They’re in a little race together. You know that, right? A little bit of a race. It’s going to be an interesting one, right? They’re both great people too. Thank you both,” Trump said.
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Earlier on Friday, the Texas Tribune reported that Trump’s 2024 opponent, the former vice-president Kamala Harris, has taken sides in the Democratic primary, recording a robocall in which she urges voters to back Jasmine Crockett, the Democratic congresswoman from Dallas who is locked in a tight race with James Talarico, who represents Austin in the state legislature.
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“Texas has the chance to send a fighter like Jasmine Crockett to the United States Senate,” Harris says in the call, which was first obtained by the Texas Tribune. “Jasmine has the experience and record to hold Donald Trump and his billionaire cronies accountable.”
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During a section of his ongoing speech in Texas where he singled out a list of prominent supporters in the crowd, Donald Trump just said: “Congressman Tony Gonzales is here.”
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The president then turned to look at the embattled Texas congressman, who has faced calls to resign after the revelation that he had an affair with an aide who then took her own life.
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“Tony,” Trump said, “congratulations.”
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The president, who was convicted of fraud for concealing 2016 payments to a porn actress who threatened to go public with her accusation that they slept together shortly after his wife, Melania Trump, had given birth to their son Barron, did not say what he was congratulating the congressman on doing.
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The president then brought the actor Dennis Quaid on stage and asked him to say a few words. “I love Donald Trump!” the actor said.
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“Thank you Dennis,” Trump said. “Did a great job.”
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Donald Trump is now speaking to supporters in Corpus Christi, Texas, wearing a red cap, with the words “Gulf of America” on the front and the numbers 45-47 on the side, in reference to his terms as the 45th and 47th president of the United States.
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While the event is officially an energy themed address, Trump is in full campaign mode, teasing the possibility of running for an unconstitutional third term, to cheers from his supporters, and attacking two Democratic congresswomen, Omar Ilhan and Rashida Tlaib, for refusing to stand when he demanded it during his State of the Union address, and heckling him instead, which incited boos from the crowd. Trump suggested, as he has for years, that Omar, a Somali American who arrived as a refugee before becoming a citizen, should get “the hell out of here”.
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“Time flies. Maybe we should – maybe we do one more term,” Trump said. “Should we do one more term? Do one more term.”
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“Well, we’re entitled to it, because they cheated like hell on the second one,” he added, once again claiming falsely, that he did not lose the 2020 election in which Joe Biden got 7m more votes than him and won every swing state.
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On his way to an event in Texas, Donald Trump posted a bizarre appeal on his social media platform, asking the US supreme court to reconsider its ruling that many of his tariffs are illegal.
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The president began his post by suggesting, falsely, that the supreme court decision that he does not have the power to impose tariffs under economic emergency legislation means that “hundreds of billions of dollars” could now “be returned to Countries and Companies that have been ‘ripping off’ the United States of America”. In fact, any refund of the estimated $175bn in illegal import taxes paid to the US government since last year would go not to foreign countries, which do not pay tariffs, but domestic, US importers, who do.
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After then calling the ruling “highly disappointing, to say the least”, Trump ended his post with what appeared to be a direct plea to the supreme court in which he asked the justices to junk the entire process of the US justice system and simply grant him a do-over. “Is a Rehearing or Readjudication of this case possible???” the president asked, plaintively.
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Writing on his social media platform, Donald Trump said that he is ordering all federal agencies stop using Anthropic’s technology, after the company refused to allow the defense department to use it AI product, Claude, for mass domestic surveillance or in autonomous weapons systems that can kill people without human input.
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“The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution,” the president wrote.
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“We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again! There will be a Six Month phase out period for Agencies like the Department of War who are using Anthropic’s products, at various levels.,” he added.
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Democrats on the House oversight committee have the votes to force Trump’s commerce secretary Howard Lutnick to testify over his ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, representative Ro Khanna told reporters this morning.
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“I believe we will have the votes to subpoena him,” Khanna said outside Chappaqua Performing Arts Center in New York ahead of Bill Clinton’s deposition.
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Republican Nancy Mace, of South Caroline, joined today in calling for the commerce secretary to come before the committee as part of its Epstein investigation.
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Lutnick has come under intense scrutiny after Epstein-related files released by the DoJ last year contradicted his previous claims of having distanced himself Epstein in 2005 and revealed the extent of his relationship with the disgraced financier.
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in suit looks ahead”,”caption”:”Howard Lutnick testifies before the Senate appropriations subcommittee on 10 February.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters”}},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”
Lutnick was a longtime next-door neighbor of Epstein in New York but said on a podcast several months ago that he severed ties with Epstein following a 2005 tour of Epstein’s home that disturbed Lutnick and his wife after Epstein used sexual innuendo to explain why he owned a massage table in a room of his home.
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However, the DoJ’s release of case files showed that Lutnick actually had two engagements with Epstein years later. He attended a 2011 event at Epstein’s home, and his family had lunch with Epstein on his private island in 2012 – four years after Epstein was sentenced to 13 months in jail for procuring a minor for prostitution.
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The Wall Street billionaire and longtime Trump ally admitted to the 2012 lunch earlier this month in testimony before the Senate appropriations committee.
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n
I did have lunch with him, as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation. My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies. I had another couple with – they were there as well, with their children. And we had lunch on the island, that is true, for an hour.
n
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In that testimony, Lutnick insisted that he “barely had anything to do” with Epstein. He testified:
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n
I’m glad to be here to make it clear that I met Jeffrey Epstein when he moved, when I moved to a house next door to him in New York. Over the next 14 years, I met him two other times that I can recall, two times. So six years later, I met him, and then a year and a half after that, I met him, and never again.
n
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Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have called for Lutnick’s resignation following his initial misrepresentation of the relationship. “He should be removed from office and at a minimum should come before the committee,” the House oversight committee’s top Democrat, Robert Garcia, has said.
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As we’ve reported, Donald Trump earlier defended his commerce secretary, calling him a “very innocent guy” who is “doing a great job”.
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Lutnick has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.
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Democrats on the committee praised former president Bill Clinton for attending the deposition, saying he has been transparent and is answering tough questions about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
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Updating the media just now outside the hearing in Chappaqua, they said that the former president made more sense to question than Hillary Clinton, given he had documented interactions with Epstein over the years. Bill Clinton has been cooperative and thorough in his responses, they said.
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“We are thankful that President Clinton came in and answered tough questions from both the minority party and the majority party,” ranking member Robert Garcia said. “We also think it’s important to note … that he does not understand nor do we why we spent so much time yesterday grilling Secretary Clinton.”
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But, they say, now that a former president has come to the committee, it shows that Donald Trump should come in as well.
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“We have a new precedent in this country,” Garcia said. “We can now demand presidents and former presidents to testify in front of the oversight committee. So we are once again demanding that now President Trump, who was in the Epstein files almost more than anyone else besides Ghislaine Maxwell, answer our questions.”
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Garcia also pushed back on James Comer’s comment earlier that Bill Clinton said it was up to the committee whether to bring Trump in for questioning, saying he didn’t think Comer’s accounting was a complete and accurate summation of what Clinton said.
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James Comer, the chair of the House oversight committee, just updated the media on a response from former president Bill Clinton regarding Donald Trump.
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He said Democratic ranking member Robert Garcia asked Clinton whether Trump should be called to answer questions from the committee.
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“And President Clinton said, that’s for you to decide,” Comer said. “And the President went on to say, President Trump has never said anything to me to make me think he was involved.”
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Donald Trump weighed in on Bill Clinton appearing before the committee, according to a White House pool report.
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“I don’t like seeing him deposed. But they certainly went after me more than that,” Trump said.
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CNN’s Kristen Holmes said Trump told her that commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, who has ties with Epstein, was a “very innocent guy” who is “doing a great job”. He “would go in and do whatever he has to say”, Trump said.
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In his opening statement, former president Bill Clinton also said he saw no signs of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes.
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n
As someone who grew up in a home with domestic abuse, not only would I have not flown on his plane if I had any inkling of what he was doing – I would have turned him in myself and led the call for justice for his crimes, not sweetheart deals.
n
But even with 20/20 hindsight, I saw nothing that ever gave me pause. We are only here because he hid it from everyone so well for so long. And by the time it came to light with his 2008 guilty plea, I had long stopped associating with him.
n
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Former president Bill Clinton has delivered his opening statement to lawmakers on the House oversight committee’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation.
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“I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong,” Clinton said. Here’s the extract:
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n
First, I had no idea of the crimes Epstein was committing. No matter how many photos you show me, I have two things that at the end of the day matter more than your interpretation of those 20-year-old photos.
n
I know what I saw, and more importantly, what I didn’t see.
n
I know what I did, and more importantly, what I didn’t do.
n
I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong.
n
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A reminder that Clinton has not been accused of wrongdoing.
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Robert Garcia also said that Democrats are demanding that Donald Trump testify before the House oversight committee about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, as “Republicans have now set a new precedent, which is to bring in presidents and former presidents to testify”.
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Trump appears in the Epstein files “almost more than anybody else”, Garcia said.
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n
It’s time for the president to answer why there are files missing from the DoJ, why there’s been a White House cover-up, and why they continue in that administration to call this investigation a hoax.
n
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Democrat Ro Khanna also told reporters ahead of Bill Clinton’s deposition:
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n
A new precedent has been set in America today. Before this we had the ‘Trump Rule.’ Trump defied, as all of you know, a congressional subpoena with the January 6th Committee. He said presidents don’t have to testify. Now we have the ‘Clinton Rule,’ which is that presidents and their families have to testify when Congress issues a subpoena.
n
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A reminder that Bill Clinton’s closed-door deposition in Chappaqua, New York, today marks the first time a former president has been compelled to testify to Congress. It came a day after his wife, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, appeared before lawmakers for her own deposition.
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Trump has consistently denied wrongdoing related to Epstein, and said last week: “I did nothing.”
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For the Democrats on the House oversight committee, ranking member Robert Garcia told reporters ahead of Bill Clinton’s deposition:
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n
What we’re interested in today is a serious deposition. We have real questions that deserve serious answers from former president Clinton.
n
We have said from day one that Democrats want to talk to anyone, whether they are a Republican or a Democrat, no matter how powerful they are, whatever position that they’ve been in.
n
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He said that they do not want to see another “sideshow” today, referring to questions from Republicans about UFOs and conspiracy theories during Hillary Clinton’s deposition yesterday.
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The motorcade carrying Bill Clinton appears to have arrived at the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center in New York.
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of a motorcade believed to be carrying former resident Bill Clinton arrives at the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center, New York.”,”caption”:”Vehicles of a motorcade believed to be carrying former resident Bill Clinton arrives at the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center, New York.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1772209406000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”11.23 EST”,”blockLastUpdated”:1772209638000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”11.27 EST”,”blockFirstPublished”:1772209639000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”11.27 EST”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”11.27″,”title”:”Bill Clinton arrives to testify before House committee investigating Epstein links”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Fri 27 Feb 2026 21.59 EST”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Fri 27 Feb 2026 07.07 EST”},{“id”:”69a1be7f8f087867aa5460e9″,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”
James Comer, the chair of the House oversight committee, said the committee’s list of questions for Bill Clinton grew longer after Hillary Clinton’s deposition yesterday, where she deferred a host of questions to her husband.
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“So we already had a big portfolio of questions for him, and that increased yesterday,” Comer said at a press conference outside the building where the closed-door deposition was set to begin shortly.
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Comer said committee members would be asking about Bill Clinton’s ties to Epstein, including documented visits to the White House and rides on his airplane, and Epstein’s ties to Clinton-related initiatives.
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He said he expects video of Hillary Clinton’s testimony to be released either later today or tomorrow, giving the public insight into what was asked and how she responded. He defended the repetitive line of questioning about Epstein to Hillary Clinton.
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woman speaks into a microphone outside”,”caption”:”Nancy Mace speaks outside the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center on Friday.”,”credit”:”Photograph: David Dee Delgado/Getty Images”}},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”
“Every item of evidence that would suggest Hillary Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein had a close relationship, we went and asked about that,” he said. “So it may have seemed repetitive, because there was a lot of documentation that would suggest that she had a relationship with Epstein.”
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Hillary Clinton was adamant that she did not know Jeffrey Epstein and had not met him, to her knowledge.
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Nancy Mace, the South Carolina Republican representative, claimed Hillary Clinton responded to some of Mace’s questioning by “screaming” and called Hillary Clinton “unhinged”.
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“I hope that President Clinton is less unhinged today than his wife was yesterday,” Mace said.
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James Comer, the chair of the House oversight committee, said on Fox News that Hillary Clinton deferred answers to her husband, former president Bill Clinton, nearly a dozen times during her deposition on Thursday.
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“Today, former President Bill Clinton is sitting down with the House Oversight Committee and answering questions under oath,” Comer wrote on X.
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Comer suggested Thursday that Bill Clinton’s deposition would be “even longer” than Hillary Clinton’s, as Bill Clinton has more documented ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
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“She kept saying, not only did she not have a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, that he was a huckster and, you know, he was a con artist and all of that,” Comer told Fox. “Well, she said many times under oath that she had never met Jeffrey Epstein. But the reason she was asked so many times is we kept presenting new items of evidence.”
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Hillary Clinton was questioned on Epstein ties to the Clinton Global Initiative, but said she was in elected office at the time Republicans were asking about, Comer said. But Bill Clinton will likely be asked about these ties to the Clinton network as well.
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A higher percentage of Americans now sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis in the Middle East, a new Gallup poll released today shows.
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According to the poll, 41% of Americans say they sympathize more with Palestinans, compared to 36% who sympathize more with Isrealis.
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“The five-percentage-point difference is not statistically significant, but it contrasts with a clear lead for the Israelis only a year ago (46% vs. 33%) and larger leads over the prior 24 years,” Gallup notes in its writeup of the poll results.
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Until last year, Israelis consistently polled double-digits ahead with Americans on their Middle East sympathies, but that gap began to narrow in 2019.
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The poll also showed a new high for Americans who view the Palestinian territories favorably, at 37%, which trails Israel, at 46%. The percent of Americans who favor an independent Palestinian state nearly matched Gallup’s highest measurement on the topic from 2003, with 57% of Americans in favor.
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Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
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Former US president Bill Clinton will face questions from a Congressional panel on Friday on his well-documented links to Jeffrey Epstein, as Democrats seek to shift focus onto Donald Trump’s own ties to the convicted sex offender.
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Clinton features prominently throughout the latest Epstein files disclosures, with the former president insisting that he broke ties with him well before the disgraced billionaire’s 2008 conviction for sex offenses.
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Being mentioned in the files released by the US Department of Justice does not imply wrongdoing, and Clinton has not been accused of a crime or formally investigated, AFP reports.
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He follows his wife, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who testified on Thursday, calling for Donald Trump – who like Bill Clinton had ties with Epstein – to appear before the panel.
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“If this committee is serious about learning the truth about Epstein’s trafficking crimes… it would ask [Trump] directly under oath about the tens of thousands of times he shows up in the Epstein files,” she said in an opening statement published online.
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The depositions are being held behind closed doors even though the Clintons called for them to be open and televised, a move Bill Clinton denounced as akin to a “kangaroo court.”
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In other developments:
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Zohran Mamdani, New York’s mayor, met again with Donald Trump in the Oval Office to discuss federal funding for a housing project, and persuaded the president to release a Columbia University student detained by ICE agents.
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Hillary Clinton said that, after she repeatedly told House Republicans she did not know Jeffrey Epstein, their questions got “quite unusual, because I started being asked about UFOs and a series of questions about Pizzagate, one of the most vile, bogus conspiracy theories that was propagated on the internet”.
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The Federal Aviation Administration closed the airspace in an area around Fort Hancock, Texas after congressional Democrats said a military laser-based anti-drone system accidentally shot down a Customs and Border Protection drone.
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Democratic leaders in the US Senate said they will also force a vote “in the coming days” on a war powers resolution to make sure any US participation in military action against Iran requires congressional authorization.
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Thomas Massie, a Republican congressman from Kentucky, called on the justice department to explain why a photograph that appears to show Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, with Jeffrey Epstein, was removed from the public database of Epstein files.
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Three memos that describe four interviews conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2019 contain explicit but unsubstantiated claims that Donald Trump sexually abused a woman when she was a minor in the early 1980s with the assistance of Jeffrey Epstein, according to a Guardian review of those documents.
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The Department of Justice did not release those records when it uploaded millions of pages of files related to Epstein beginning in December. The existence of the missing documents was first reported by independent journalist Roger Sollenberger and subsequently confirmed by NPR, causing outrage in Washington and sparking an investigation from congressional Democrats.
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The Guardian obtained the missing FBI form 302 reports, which memorialize 25 pages of agents’ notes from the four interviews conducted in the summer and fall of 2019. The notes describe how the woman came forward to tell agents she recognized Epstein from a photo sent by a childhood friend. Only the first session, in which she did not name Trump, made it into the public release. The Guardian has chosen not to publish the woman’s name.
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Her allegations have not been verified, and the FBI never brought charges related to her claims, which at times appear outlandish. Her statements also contradict what is known about Epstein’s life in the early 1980s. The millions of investigative documents released by the DoJ have contained explosive allegations that have led to resignations and arrests, but also specious claims that have later proven false. Trump has consistently denied wrongdoing related to Epstein, and said last week: “I did nothing.”
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Key events
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Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are the latest developments:
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Donald Trump said Iran “should make a deal, but they don’t want to quite go far enough”, as his administration seems so intent on effectively disarming the nation, even after it has agreed to stop nuclear enrichment, that war is possible.
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Trump ordered all federal agencies to stop working with Anthropic, after the AI firm refused to allow its model to be used for the mass surveillance or Americans or in weapons that can kill without human input.
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“Is a Rehearing or Readjudication of this case possible???” Trump asked the supreme court on social media over the ruling that most of his tariffs are illegal.
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After Bill Clinton testified to the House oversight committee about Jeffrey Epstein, Kayleigh McEnany misled Fox News viewers by claiming, incorrectly, that Trump was never on Epstein’s private jet. Flight records show he was, many times.
Anthropic says it will take the Pentagon to court over Hegseth’s move to designate AI firm a supply-chain risk to national security
The artificial intelligence company Anthropic responded late on Friday to defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s announcement earlier in the day that he was directing his department to classify the AI firm as a supply-chain risk to national security.
“We held to our exceptions for two reasons,” the firm said in a statement. “First, we do not believe that today’s frontier AI models are reliable enough to be used in fully autonomous weapons. Allowing current models to be used in this way would endanger America’s warfighters and civilians. Second, we believe that mass domestic surveillance of Americans constitutes a violation of fundamental rights.”
“Designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk would be an unprecedented action—one historically reserved for US adversaries, never before publicly applied to an American company,” Anthropic said. “As the first frontier AI company to deploy models in the US government’s classified networks, Anthropic has supported American warfighters since June 2024 and has every intention of continuing to do so.”
“No amount of intimidation or punishment from the Department of War will change our position on mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. We will challenge any supply chain risk designation in court,” Anthropic added.
After a Pentagon deadline passed on Friday for Anthropic to relent on its refusal to allow the use of its AI model, Claude, for the mass domestic surveillance of Americans or in weapons that can kill without human input, Hegseth called the company’s stance “fundamentally incompatible with American principles”.
“Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic,” Hegseth wrote on social media.
Former Trump aide Kayleigh McEnany misleads Fox viewers with false claim Trump was never on Epstein’s plane
Kayleigh McEnany, a Fox News host who was Donald Trump’s first-term White House press secretary, misled the network’s viewers on Friday by claiming, incorrectly, that unlike Bill Clinton, Trump was never on Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet.
McEnany’s false statement came during an on-air discussion of Clinton’s testimony to the House oversight committee on his ties to Epstein, the late sex offender.
“I want everyone who’s mentioned multiple times here to be deposed,” Marie Harf, a former state department spokesperson during the Obama administration, said. “Larry Summers, Bill Gates and, you’re all probably going to yell at me, Donald Trump.”
After Harf elaborated on why she thought that Trump should also be required to testify about the crimes Epstein committed during the nearly two decades the two men were friends, McEnany jumped in to defend her former boss with some misinformation.
“I would note that Donald Trump was not on the plane,” McEnany said, incorrectly. “So putting him in the same pool as Bill Clinton, who was on the plane I think it was 17 times, 27 times” would be unfair, she added.
In fact, while Clinton was on Epstein’s plane 26 times during six trips between February 2002 and November 2003, there is clear evidence in the files made public by the justice department that Trump was also on Epstein’s plane many times.
In one 2020 email exchange made public in December, for instance, a federal prosecutor involved in a discussion of the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s accomplice, told colleagues: “the flight records we received yesterday reflect that Donald Trump traveled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware), including during the period we would expect to charge in a Maxwell case.”
The prosecutor went on to note that Trump “is listed as a passenger on at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996, including at least four flights on which Maxwell was also present. He is listed as having traveled with, among others and at various times, Marla Maples, his daughter Tiffany, and his son Eric.”
“On one flight in 1993, he and Epstein are the only two listed passengers; on another, the only three passengers are Epstein, Trump, and then-20-year-old [name redacted],” the prosecutor in Manhattan, where Maxwell was tried and convicted in 2021. “On two other flights, two of the passengers, respectively, were women who would be possible witnesses in a Maxwell case.”
The name of the 20-year-old who traveled alone with Epstein and Trump on that flight in 1993 has been withheld by the justice department, but in another email from the files, Epstein later bragged to a reporter that he “gave” a woman of that age he dated in 1993 to Trump two years later. Epstein also sent the reporter a link to photos of the woman, the Norwegian cosmetics heiress Celina Midelfart, who was born in 1973 and dated Trump in the late 1990s.
Midelfart was photographed with Epstein at Mar-a-Lago on 22 February 1997, the same night that a now-famous photograph was taken of Trump with his hand on Epstein’s shoulder.
In an except from his 2025 memoir published in the Guardian, the former Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, wrote that when he first met Trump in 2017, the president brought up his former girlfriend.
“You know, Mr President, as former prime minister of Norway, I know that it’s possible to speak with the Russians.”
Trump cast a questioning look. “Are you Norwegian?”
I understood why he was asking – over the years I’ve received many heads of organisations myself, and it isn’t always easy to remember where each comes from. I smiled. “Yes, I’m Norwegian.”
“Do you know Celina Midelfart?”
“Yes, I’ve met her several times. She’s a well-known person in Norway,” I replied.
“Nice girl. What they wrote about us in the Norwegian papers – was it good or bad?”
I remembered seeing newspaper images of Trump and the Norwegian cosmetics heiress and investor at some sporting event or other, but more than that I couldn’t recall. I had no idea what the papers had said.
“Oh yes, the reporting was positive. She’s married to a rich Norwegian now,” I said.
“He’s not rich.”
As Trump praises both candidates in Texas Republican primary for US Senate, Kamala Harris records robocall for Jasmine Crockett in Democratic primary
Donald Trump refused to weigh in on the hotly contested Texas Republican primary for the US Senate now underway, giving shout-outs at his event in Corpus Christi on Friday to both of the leading candidates, the sitting senator, John Cornyn, and his main challenger, the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton.
The president thanked both men for coming to his event, but declined to say which one he wants to win. “They’re in a little race together. You know that, right? A little bit of a race. It’s going to be an interesting one, right? They’re both great people too. Thank you both,” Trump said.
Earlier on Friday, the Texas Tribune reported that Trump’s 2024 opponent, the former vice-president Kamala Harris, has taken sides in the Democratic primary, recording a robocall in which she urges voters to back Jasmine Crockett, the Democratic congresswoman from Dallas who is locked in a tight race with James Talarico, who represents Austin in the state legislature.
“Texas has the chance to send a fighter like Jasmine Crockett to the United States Senate,” Harris says in the call, which was first obtained by the Texas Tribune. “Jasmine has the experience and record to hold Donald Trump and his billionaire cronies accountable.”
Trump offers his ‘congratulations’ to Republican congressman Tony Gonzales who faces calls to resign over affair with aide who took her own life
During a section of his ongoing speech in Texas where he singled out a list of prominent supporters in the crowd, Donald Trump just said: “Congressman Tony Gonzales is here.”
The president then turned to look at the embattled Texas congressman, who has faced calls to resign after the revelation that he had an affair with an aide who then took her own life.
“Tony,” Trump said, “congratulations.”
The president, who was convicted of fraud for concealing 2016 payments to a porn actress who threatened to go public with her accusation that they slept together shortly after his wife, Melania Trump, had given birth to their son Barron, did not say what he was congratulating the congressman on doing.
The president then brought the actor Dennis Quaid on stage and asked him to say a few words. “I love Donald Trump!” the actor said.
“Thank you Dennis,” Trump said. “Did a great job.”
Trump gives campaign-style speech on energy in Texas
Donald Trump is now speaking to supporters in Corpus Christi, Texas, wearing a red cap, with the words “Gulf of America” on the front and the numbers 45-47 on the side, in reference to his terms as the 45th and 47th president of the United States.
While the event is officially an energy themed address, Trump is in full campaign mode, teasing the possibility of running for an unconstitutional third term, to cheers from his supporters, and attacking two Democratic congresswomen, Omar Ilhan and Rashida Tlaib, for refusing to stand when he demanded it during his State of the Union address, and heckling him instead, which incited boos from the crowd. Trump suggested, as he has for years, that Omar, a Somali American who arrived as a refugee before becoming a citizen, should get “the hell out of here”.
“Time flies. Maybe we should – maybe we do one more term,” Trump said. “Should we do one more term? Do one more term.”
“Well, we’re entitled to it, because they cheated like hell on the second one,” he added, once again claiming falsely, that he did not lose the 2020 election in which Joe Biden got 7m more votes than him and won every swing state.
‘Is a Rehearing or Readjudication of this case possible???’ Trump pleads with supreme court for tariffs do-over on social media
On his way to an event in Texas, Donald Trump posted a bizarre appeal on his social media platform, asking the US supreme court to reconsider its ruling that many of his tariffs are illegal.
The president began his post by suggesting, falsely, that the supreme court decision that he does not have the power to impose tariffs under economic emergency legislation means that “hundreds of billions of dollars” could now “be returned to Countries and Companies that have been ‘ripping off’ the United States of America”. In fact, any refund of the estimated $175bn in illegal import taxes paid to the US government since last year would go not to foreign countries, which do not pay tariffs, but domestic, US importers, who do.
After then calling the ruling “highly disappointing, to say the least”, Trump ended his post with what appeared to be a direct plea to the supreme court in which he asked the justices to junk the entire process of the US justice system and simply grant him a do-over. “Is a Rehearing or Readjudication of this case possible???” the president asked, plaintively.
Trump orders all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic technology over AI limits dispute
Writing on his social media platform, Donald Trump said that he is ordering all federal agencies stop using Anthropic’s technology, after the company refused to allow the defense department to use it AI product, Claude, for mass domestic surveillance or in autonomous weapons systems that can kill people without human input.
“The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution,” the president wrote.
“We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again! There will be a Six Month phase out period for Agencies like the Department of War who are using Anthropic’s products, at various levels.,” he added.
As we reported earlier, during a break in Bill Clinton’s testimony, House oversight committee chair James Comer told reporters that the former president had told the committee that Donald Trump had never said anything to him to make him think he was involved in criminal activity with Epstein.
But ranking member Robert Garcia, of California, said that Comer’s remarks were “not a complete accurate description of what was said”. He said Clinton “did bring up some additional information about some discussions with President Trump”, and a full record of what was said “brings up some very important new questions about comments that President Trump has actually said in the past”. Garcia didn’t disclose any details but called for the complete transcript to be released.
Republican representative Nancy Mace, of South Carolina, posted this on X earlier about New Mexico’s Melanie Stansbury, a Democrat:
I am going to say something I never thought I’d ever say, so please forgive me, @Rep_Stansbury showed courage and bravery today in her questioning of President Clinton. Thank you, Rep. Stansbury. Every survivor thanks you.
Democrats believe they have the votes to subpoena Lutnick in Epstein investigation
Democrats on the House oversight committee have the votes to force Trump’s commerce secretary Howard Lutnick to testify over his ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, representative Ro Khanna told reporters this morning.
“I believe we will have the votes to subpoena him,” Khanna said outside Chappaqua Performing Arts Center in New York ahead of Bill Clinton’s deposition.
Republican Nancy Mace, of South Caroline, joined today in calling for the commerce secretary to come before the committee as part of its Epstein investigation.
Lutnick has come under intense scrutiny after Epstein-related files released by the DoJ last year contradicted his previous claims of having distanced himself Epstein in 2005 and revealed the extent of his relationship with the disgraced financier.
Lutnick was a longtime next-door neighbor of Epstein in New York but said on a podcast several months ago that he severed ties with Epstein following a 2005 tour of Epstein’s home that disturbed Lutnick and his wife after Epstein used sexual innuendo to explain why he owned a massage table in a room of his home.
However, the DoJ’s release of case files showed that Lutnick actually had two engagements with Epstein years later. He attended a 2011 event at Epstein’s home, and his family had lunch with Epstein on his private island in 2012 – four years after Epstein was sentenced to 13 months in jail for procuring a minor for prostitution.
The Wall Street billionaire and longtime Trump ally admitted to the 2012 lunch earlier this month in testimony before the Senate appropriations committee.
I did have lunch with him, as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation. My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies. I had another couple with – they were there as well, with their children. And we had lunch on the island, that is true, for an hour.
In that testimony, Lutnick insisted that he “barely had anything to do” with Epstein. He testified:
I’m glad to be here to make it clear that I met Jeffrey Epstein when he moved, when I moved to a house next door to him in New York. Over the next 14 years, I met him two other times that I can recall, two times. So six years later, I met him, and then a year and a half after that, I met him, and never again.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have called for Lutnick’s resignation following his initial misrepresentation of the relationship. “He should be removed from office and at a minimum should come before the committee,” the House oversight committee’s top Democrat, Robert Garcia, has said.
As we’ve reported, Donald Trump earlier defended his commerce secretary, calling him a “very innocent guy” who is “doing a great job”.
Lutnick has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.
Democrats say Clinton’s cooperation and transparency sets precedent for summoning presidents
Democrats on the committee praised former president Bill Clinton for attending the deposition, saying he has been transparent and is answering tough questions about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
Updating the media just now outside the hearing in Chappaqua, they said that the former president made more sense to question than Hillary Clinton, given he had documented interactions with Epstein over the years. Bill Clinton has been cooperative and thorough in his responses, they said.
“We are thankful that President Clinton came in and answered tough questions from both the minority party and the majority party,” ranking member Robert Garcia said. “We also think it’s important to note … that he does not understand nor do we why we spent so much time yesterday grilling Secretary Clinton.”
But, they say, now that a former president has come to the committee, it shows that Donald Trump should come in as well.
“We have a new precedent in this country,” Garcia said. “We can now demand presidents and former presidents to testify in front of the oversight committee. So we are once again demanding that now President Trump, who was in the Epstein files almost more than anyone else besides Ghislaine Maxwell, answer our questions.”
Garcia also pushed back on James Comer’s comment earlier that Bill Clinton said it was up to the committee whether to bring Trump in for questioning, saying he didn’t think Comer’s accounting was a complete and accurate summation of what Clinton said.
Comer: Clinton defers to House committee when asked about summoning Trump
James Comer, the chair of the House oversight committee, just updated the media on a response from former president Bill Clinton regarding Donald Trump.
He said Democratic ranking member Robert Garcia asked Clinton whether Trump should be called to answer questions from the committee.
“And President Clinton said, that’s for you to decide,” Comer said. “And the President went on to say, President Trump has never said anything to me to make me think he was involved.”
