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‘Hellbent on hiding truth’: Dem leader pounces as DOJ official hints at holding back files
The top Democrat in the Senate has directly responded to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche after he said that "thousands" of Jeffrey Epstein files would be withheld by the Department of Justice despite a law requiring "all" documents to be released by Friday.
"I expect that we're going to release more documents over the next couple of weeks. So today, several hundred thousand. And then over the next couple weeks, I expect several hundred thousand more," Blanche told Fox News on Friday.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer responded by indicating that Democrats would not stand for the Trump DOJ flouting the law.
"The law Congress passed and President Trump signed was clear as can be - the Trump administration had 30 days to release ALL the Epstein files, not just some. Failing to do so is breaking the law. This just shows the Department of Justice, Donald Trump, and Pam Bondi are hellbent on hiding the truth," Schumer insisted. "Senate Democrats are working closely with attorneys for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and with outside legal experts to assess what documents are being withheld and what is being covered up by Pam Bondi. We will not stop until the whole truth comes out."
"People want the truth and continue to demand the immediate release of all the Epstein files. This is nothing more than a cover up to protect Donald Trump from his ugly past," he added.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) suggested that Bondi would be "prosecuted" if the DOJ does not release the full Epstein files on Friday.
Rudy Giuliani admits investigators looking at ‘other crimes that maybe I committed’
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani suggested that there could be "other crimes" that he has not been charged with after facing a criminal indictment and a defamation case in Georgia.
On Sunday, Giuliani spoke to Newsmax host Lidia Curanaj about a case where he was found liable for defaming Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.
The former mayor claimed that up to $20 million had been spent on law firms trying to bring him down.
POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?
"So it is punishment by process," he said, arguing that attorneys were filing discovery requests to find "other crimes that maybe I committed" and "crimes that Donald Trump may have committed."
"I do not admit anything," Giuliani added, despite conceding that he had made false statements against the election workers.
Giuliani said that he was "not contesting" the claims against him.
"We want to move on to the legal aspects of the cases," he remarked. "I'm not stupid enough to think I'm going to get a fair trial in front of [the judge] and the District of Columbia."
"I'd have to be not a lawyer to think that," he concluded.
Watch the video below from Newsmax or at the link.
Fani Willis serves up strong warning to defendants demanding separate trials in Trump RICO case
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is warning all 19 defendants, including Donald Trump, in her case alleging racketeering and numerous other charges of election subversion that invoking Georgia’s “speedy trial” law but demanding to have their cases tried individually instead of en masse will bring consequences and deprive them of valuable advantages.
Willis’ goal is to have one trial for all 19 defendants in October.
Attorneys Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro have already requested to have their cases severed from the group. Chesebro’s trial is now scheduled for October 23, as The Messenger reports.
But The Messenger’s senior legal correspondent Adam Klasfeld adds, “Willis wants to advise all of the defendants in the Trump racketeering case that decisions by Ken Chesebro and Sidney Powell to invoke speedy trial rights come with certain consequences.”
Those consequences, based on Georgia law, according to a legal filing Klasfeld posted, include four constraints on the ability to demand discovery materials and call witnesses:
“Defendants cannot now argue that they are entitled to the State’s discovery responses ten (10) days in advance of trial.”
“Defendants cannot now argue that they are entitled to notice of the State’s similar transaction evidence ten (10) days in advance of trial.”
“Defendants are now precluded from calling any witnesses whose statements were not provided to the State at least ten (10) days in advance of trial.”
“Defendants cannot now complain that they received less than seven (7) days notice of the trial date in this case.”
Klasfeld notes, “Willis prompts the defendants to choose their paths in light of these consequences: ‘Should they refuse to waive their speedy trial demand and request a continuance, then any harm to the Defendants would be invited by the Defense and, therefore, not reversible error.'”
Over at The Messenger, Klasfeld writes that Willis’ office has asked the judge “to issue a ruling requiring ‘that the defendants personally place upon the record that this is their decision and preference to proceed in this fashion prior to the trial of the case.’”
Jared Kushner should be subpoenaed over $2 billion deal with Saudi Arabia: Jamie Raskin
Jared Kushner should be subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee over a $2 billion deal his company made with Saudi Arabia, Democrats said Thursday.
In a letter to committee chairman James Comer (R-Ky), the group's leading Democrat Jamie Raskin (Md) asked that records relating to the deal be released for scrutiny, The Messenger reported.
Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald Trump and a senior advisor in the former president's administration, received a $2 billion investment from the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which is controlled by the country's government, on behalf of his company, Affinity Partners. The payment was made six months after he left the White House.
POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?
During his tenure working for Trump, Kushner had worked on a peace deal between Israel and Palestine.
The committee has most recently been mired in an investigation into the business dealings of Hunter Biden, and if they involved his father, President Joe Biden.
Raskin and other House Democrats want to find out if “the investment was tied to Mr. Kushner’s pro-Saudi policies while in office," the letter said.
Even Comer has said in the past that Kushner's deal with the Saudis was suspect.
“I’ve been vocal that I think that what Kushner did crossed the line of ethics,” Comer said to CNN earlier this month.
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‘Hellbent on hiding truth’: Dem leader pounces as DOJ official hints at holding back files
The top Democrat in the Senate has directly responded to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche after he said that "thousands" of Jeffrey Epstein files would be withheld by the Department of Justice despite a law requiring "all" documents to be released by Friday.
"I expect that we're going to release more documents over the next couple of weeks. So today, several hundred thousand. And then over the next couple weeks, I expect several hundred thousand more," Blanche told Fox News on Friday.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer responded by indicating that Democrats would not stand for the Trump DOJ flouting the law.
"The law Congress passed and President Trump signed was clear as can be - the Trump administration had 30 days to release ALL the Epstein files, not just some. Failing to do so is breaking the law. This just shows the Department of Justice, Donald Trump, and Pam Bondi are hellbent on hiding the truth," Schumer insisted. "Senate Democrats are working closely with attorneys for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and with outside legal experts to assess what documents are being withheld and what is being covered up by Pam Bondi. We will not stop until the whole truth comes out."
"People want the truth and continue to demand the immediate release of all the Epstein files. This is nothing more than a cover up to protect Donald Trump from his ugly past," he added.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) suggested that Bondi would be "prosecuted" if the DOJ does not release the full Epstein files on Friday.
‘The brink of illegitimacy’: Professors warn no turning back for ‘noxious’ Supreme Court
Two American university professors Friday warned the "noxious" Supreme Court can no longer be saved.
Harvard law professor Ryan Doerfler and Yale law professor Samuel Moyn wrote an opinion piece published by The Guardian about how the high court's legitimacy has been increasingly damaged under President Donald Trump's second term. Conservative justices have handed Trump and the MAGA movement a number of wins, including overturning of Roe v. Wade, "what remains of the Voting Rights Act," and losing its "nonpartisan image."
The role of the court has shifted and with the conservative majority, the liberal justices had previously "proceeded as if their conservative peers would continue to take their own institution’s legitimacy seriously."
But over the last several months, that has also changed.
"Yet with the conservative justices shattering the Supreme Court’s non-partisan image during Trump’s second term, liberals are not adjusting much," Doerfler and Moyn wrote. "The liberal justices – Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor – have become much more aggressive in their dissents. But they disagree with one another about how far to concede that their conservative colleagues have given up any concern for institutional legitimacy. Encouragingly, Jackson pivoted to 'warning the public that the boat is sinking' – as journalist Jodi Kantor put it in a much-noticed reported piece. Jackson’s fellow liberals, though, did not follow her in this regard, worrying her strategy of pulling the 'fire alarm' was 'diluting' their collective 'impact.'"
By now, Trump has used a "shadow docket" of emergency orders to his advantage and to advance his policies.
"Similarly, many liberal lawyers have focused their criticism on the manner in which the Supreme Court has advanced its noxious agenda – issuing major rulings via the 'shadow' docket, without full-dress lawyering, and leaving out reasoning in support of its decisions," according to the writers.
Critics have argued that the conservative-majority Supreme Court, including Trump's appointees, has used the shadow docket to issue consequential rulings on controversial issues like abortion, voting rights, and immigration with minimal explanation or public deliberation, effectively allowing the court to reshape law through expedited procedures that bypass traditional briefing and oral argument requirements.
Now, "progressives are increasingly converging on the idea of both expanding and 'disempowering' federal courts and looking to see how to shake up the status quo."
"Rather than adhere to the same institutionalist strategies that helped our current crisis, reformers must insist on remaking institutions like the US supreme court so that Americans don’t have to suffer future decades of oligarchy-facilitating rule that makes a parody of the democracy they were promised," Doerfler and Moyn wrote.
"In Trump’s second term, the Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court has brought their institution to the brink of illegitimacy. Far from pulling it back from the edge, our goal has to be to push it off," the writers added.
