In a transparent attempt to distract from the many times his own name appears in the documents from the Epstein estate members of the House Oversight Committee released Wednesday, President Donald J. Trump asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Democrats whose names appeared in the documents. He singled out former president Bill Clinton, former treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers, and Reid Hoffman, who founded LinkedIn and who is a Democratic donor.
Although the attorney general is the nation’s chief law enforcement officer and is supposed to be nonpartisan in protecting the rule of law, Bondi responded that the Department of Justice “will pursue this with urgency and integrity.” Maegan Vazquez and Shayna Jacobs of the Washington Post note that reporters have already covered the relationship of Epstein with Clinton, Summers, and Hoffman for years, and that in July, Justice Department officials said an examination of the FBI files relating to Epstein—a different cache than Wednesday’s—“did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”
Meidas Touch noted: “In normal times, it would be a major scandal for the President to direct his AG to criminally investigate his political opponents to deflect from his own involvement in a major scandal—and for the AG to immediately announce she is doing it. The Epstein scandal and cover up just got even bigger.”
Earlier this week, the administration cited the food delivery app DoorDash as an authority on dropping consumer prices; today the city of Chicago announced a settlement in a four-year lawsuit charging that DoorDash took advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to list restaurants without their permission and mark up food prices. DoorDash will pay $18 million in cash and credits to restaurants, delivery drivers, and consumers.
Trump has steadfastly and falsely maintained that foreign countries pay for tariffs. But today he signed an executive order ending tariffs on beef, coffee, bananas, cocoa, and other commodities from certain countries to lower prices after voters said they are concerned about the economy. Representative Richard Neal (D-MA), the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said the administration was “putting out a fire that they started and claiming it as progress.”
Trump has seemed particularly nervous that the Supreme Court might uphold the lower courts that have declared most of his tariffs illegal, reiterating that having to pay back tariff money would be “a National Security catastrophe.” Representative Jason Crow (D-CO) reminded Really American Media that Trump has been “using tariffs to enrich himself and his family,” using them—or the threat of them—to get golf course deals in countries around the world, as well as using them to punish countries Trump believes are hurting his right-wing allies.
In contrast, Trump’s administration is rewarding his ideological allies. Bloomberg reported yesterday that Argentina’s leader Javier Milei appears to have received more financial support from the U.S. government than the $20 billion more widely reported. The U.S. withdrew $870 million from its account at the International Monetary Fund shortly before a similar sum appeared in Argentina’s IMF fund just in time for that country to pay an $840 million debt. It is, one redditor noted, “turning into a scandal.”
News broke today that the Department of Justice is in talks with Trump’s former national security advisor Michael Flynn to settle his $50 million claim against the government for damages related to the investigation into his conversations with a Russian operative before Trump took office. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, and Trump later pardoned him. A federal judge dismissed Flynn’s lawsuit and the Biden administration fought it, but now the Trump administration appears to have engaged with Flynn over it.
Last week, Flynn suggested he might run for president in 2028 to keep the MAGA movement going.
Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, and Alex Mierjeski of ProPublica reported today that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s $220 million ad campaign, which she says is a crucial tool to stop undocumented immigration, has funneled $143 million to a company in Delaware called Safe America Media. The company lists the Virginia home of a Republican operative, Michael McElwain, as its address and was created days before contracts awarded to it were finalized.
One of the subcontractors who fulfilled a Safe America Media contract was the Strategy Group, whose chief executive officer, Ben Yoho, is married to Noem’s chief spokesperson at the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin. Noem’s top advisor, Corey Lewandowski, who introduced Noem to Yoho, has done significant work for the Strategy Group, and Noem used the Strategy Group for her 2022 campaign for South Dakota governor. Subcontractors are not listed in federal contracting databases.
The Department of Homeland Security skipped the normal competitive bidding process for its ad campaign, citing the need for “critical communications to the public” to go out quickly. Charles Tiefer, a former member of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan and an expert on federal contract law, told Elliott, Kaplan, and Mierjeski, “It’s corrupt, is the word,” suggesting Noem was hiding her friends as subcontractors. He called for an investigation by the House Oversight Committee and the Homeland Security inspector general. That inspector general, Trump loyalist Joseph Cuffari, survived the January 2025 purge of inspectors general.
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said career officials run its contracting and do it “by the book.”
William Turton and Christopher Bing of ProPublica reported today that FBI Director Kash Patel waived the standard polygraph exams required to obtain top security clearances for Deputy Director Dan Bongino and two other senior FBI staff members. The exam includes questions about foreign contacts, drug use, whether someone has a criminal history, and mishandling of classified information.
Like Patel himself, former right-wing podcaster Bongino had no prior experience at the FBI. The deputy director has access to the President’s Daily Brief (PDB), which includes some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets, including information from the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency.
Government officials told Turton and Bing that ascending to the FBI’s second-highest-ranking official without passing a standard background check is unprecedented.
A forthcoming book by reporter Olivia Nuzzi, about which the New York Times reported today, says that Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a recovering heroin addict with whom she had a relationship, told her he uses psychedelics, despite claiming to have stopped using drugs decades ago.
Tonight Trump turned against those Republicans who voted in favor of the release of the Epstein files compiled by the FBI during its investigation of the sex offender. He announced he was “withdrawing my support and Endorsement of ‘Congresswoman’ Marjorie Taylor Greene,” and went after Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY), who introduced the discharge petition, calling him a “LOSER!”
Greene responded that Trump was “coming after me hard to make an example to scare all the other Republicans before next weeks vote to release the Epstein files. It’s astonishing really how hard he’s fighting to stop the Epstein files from coming out that he actually goes to this level…. I have supported President Trump with too much of my precious time, too much of my own money, and fought harder for him even when almost all other Republicans turned their back and denounced him. But I don’t worship or serve Donald Trump.”
Tonight Aaron Rupar of Public Notice wrote: “I just don’t see how we can pretend even for a moment that anything involving our federal government is remotely normal when the president is covering up his involvement in a child sex trafficking ring. Like, what are we doing here[?]”
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo (which was 25 years old yesterday—congratulations, Josh and the TPM folks!) wrote: “Investigate whoever he wants. Trumps drowning on every front.”
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Notes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/11/14/trump-justice-epstein-democrats/
https://www.propublica.org/article/fbi-kash-patel-dan-bongino-waived-polygraph
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/14/doordash-chicago-lawsuit/
https://apnews.com/article/trump-tariffs-coffee-beef-fruit-4fe084c2724ec6d92096efa263fdcf76
https://www.cbc.ca/lite/story/9.6979743
https://www.propublica.org/article/kristi-noem-dhs-ad-campaign-strategy-group
X:
GenFlynn/status/1987644606129881519
Bluesky:
meidastouch.com/post/3m5mp3tnu522r
imstillstanding.bsky.social/post/3m5kmja4tcs2l
wajali.bsky.social/post/3m5n2mrhomk2j
wajali.bsky.social/post/3m5n3s3y76s2j
nikkimcr.bsky.social/post/3m5nbrv2rck2a
yasharali.bsky.social/post/3m5nasvqvp22b
atrupar.com/post/3m5mzfm6q7s2z
joshtpm.bsky.social/post/3m5n2nlt2vk2o
donmoyn.bsky.social/post/3m5fhpy4j422y
Reddit:
economy/comments/1ow17oe/the_imf_affair_is_turning_into_a_scandal_trump/
This post has been syndicated from Letters from an American, where it was published under this address.