Experts flag new legal woes for Trump in Epstein case: 'It's become a big problem'
Far Left
President Donald Trump has had a hard time distancing himself from the Jeffrey Epstein saga, and a new development in the case might prove to be more of a headache than he wants, according to two legal experts. Earlier this month, convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein's assistant, Lesley Groff, testified before Congress about her relationship with the disgraced financier and his crimes. The transcripts of that interview were released late last week, and some of the details Groff shared with investigators raised red flags for attorneys Brian Kabateck and Shant Karnikian, who co-host the "Civil Action" podcast on the Legal AF Network. For instance, Kabateck pointed out in a new episode on Sunday that Groff testified she began working for Epstein in 2001 and that Epstein and Trump were in contact for at least a decade. That seems to contradict Trump's previous claim that he cut off communications with Epstein in 2004 or 2005, well before Trump became president, Kabateck noted. Another issue is that those dates extend beyond Epstein's 2008 felony conviction for soliciting a minor, which is another "problematic" aspect of the timeline, Kabateck said. Karnickian said the transcript showed that Trump "has something to hide" in the case. "Early on, we talked about Epstein, and we thought this is a sideshow, and maybe Trump's deliberately putting it out there," Karnikian said. "It's become a big problem for him, and it's clear that he has something to hide here."
Political commentators took shots at President Donald Trump on Sunday after CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins posted a new photo of the Kennedy Center's newest renovation project. In May, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to remove Trump's name from the Kennedy Center facade after the administration abruptly put it up without going through the proper approval process. The move was part of Trump's effort to rebrand the center as the Trump Kennedy Center, which prompted bipartisan scrutiny of the administration. In response to the judge's order, the Trump administration put up scaffolding and tarps, obscuring the Kennedy Center's signage. Some political analysts have theorized that the move was designed to make it appear that the administration is removing Trump's name when it really has no intention of doing so. The photo Collins posted showed the Kennedy Center's signage still obscured by scaffolding and tarps, sparking mockery. "Donald Trump’s ego is as fragile as a china eggshell," Bill Prady, creator of "The Big Bang Theory," posted on X. "We are governed by children," Douglas Heye, a former Republican National Committee official, posted on X. "This administration's level of pettiness is truly mindboggling," Franklin Harris, an editorial writer for Decatur Daily, posted on X. The name of the Kennedy Center remains covered by a tarp and scaffolding. Two guards are standing in front of it. pic.twitter.com/QguvnUmANL— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) June 28, 2026
President Trump announced on Sunday that he will meet with the Democratic Nominee for DC Mayor and likely winner of the upcoming election, Janeese Lewis George, but put her and her Communist supporters on notice. "I will meet with Janeese Lewis George, but must forewarn everyone that Washington, D.C., is again a Safe and Prestigious Community," the President said.
The post Trump Puts Incoming DC Mayor Janeese Lewis George on Notice, Says He Will Meet With Her But Never Let DC Be “Destroyed by a Communist Adherent” appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Fox News was roundly mocked on Sunday after one segment claimed that pictures of the sparsely attended Great American State Fair, organized by an entity linked to President Donald Trump called Freedom 250, did not tell the full story of the event. Kevin Corke, Fox News's senior national correspondent, claimed on "The Big Weekend Show" that the energy at the state fair was much greater than what pictures of the event showed. Several photos emerged online on Sunday showing that few people were at the event, held at the National Mall, due to rainstorms in the area. "Sometimes the pictures don't tell the full story because if you look behind us, a couple of hundred people back there, but when you make your way over here, and you're in this wash of people," Corke said. Onlookers mocked Corke's claims on social media. "Don't believe your lying eyes. Believe Fox," Ron Filipkowski, editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch, posted on X. "Pictures tell the story," Fred Wellman, a Democratic political candidate in Missouri, posted on X. "Allow me to explain why you should not believe your lying eyes," Kelly Scaletta, a political commentator known as "Machine Pun Kelly" online, posted on X. "Are the people in the room with you right now?" Hemant Mehta, a writer and former "Jeopardy!" champion, posted on X. FOX: Sometimes the pictures don't tell the full story because if you look behind us, a couple hundred people back there but when you make your way over here and you're in this wash of people. pic.twitter.com/pQIiqX1CjX— Acyn (@Acyn) June 28, 2026
The Trump Pentagon has been rocked by controversy over a recent spate of firings and blocked promotions, and now, one lawmaker has accused President Donald Trump's defense chief of being motivated by a petty "grudge" as he causes significant damage to the military.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has come under significant fire over the course of his tenure for removing several respected and experienced officers and blocking others from receiving promotions. He most recently took flak for the latter after the already-approved promotions of several Naval officers, most of them being either women or people of color.Critics have put forward various theories for what could be driving this trend, including a desire to punish or remove officers who took part in past diversity initiatives, or a plot to remove non-loyalists who might stand in the way of a 2028 "auto-coup" to keep Trump in power.During a Sunday appearance on CBS News's Face the Nation, Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, put forward another theory of what is driving Hegseth: "personal" revenge for his own time in the armed services. Kaine specifically touched on the recent ouster of General Chris Donahue, a highly respected officer whose departure even caused alarm among conservatives.“Are you pushing out the truth tellers to surround yourself by yes-men? And in particular, it looks like the secretary is coming down hardest… on the Army,” Kaine told CBS host Margaret Brennan. “He served in the Army, he felt like he wasn’t treated well by the Army, that’s a grudge he’s carried that he’s described publicly."Kaine added: “And so, when you see Army officers forced out, you got to wonder, is this a personal thing, or is it really what’s best for the nation?”"Donahue, the commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, submitted his paperwork to retire earlier this week after a little over a year in his role, according to a Pentagon official," The Hill detailed in a report about Kaine's remarks. "Donahue's departure is the latest in a lengthy list of military leaders Hegseth has either removed or pushed out. That includes Gen. CQ Brown Jr., the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Navy’s chief of naval operations, Adm. Lisa Frachetti; the commandant of the Coast Guard, Adm. Linda Fagan; Gen. Randy George, the Army’s chief of staff; and Gen. James Mingus, the vice chief of staff of the Army."Donahue's ouster drew criticism from GOP lawmakers as well."Strong leaders are not threatened by accomplished commanders," Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina wrote in a social media post. "Weak ones are. [Hegseth's] paranoid micromanagement of senior military leaders and promotion lists is pure insecurity dressed up as reform."
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth just hijacked more promotions of high-ranking service members, this time blocking career professionals with exemplary records who were on track to become one-star generals and admirals. Not only is Hegseth’s behavior unusual, there is no clear legal authority for what he is doing. Congress entrusted military promotions largely to the respective promotion boards and Secretaries of the Military Departments, not the Secretary of Defense. Although 10 U.S.C. § 629 empowers the President with removal authority, a longstanding executive order limits the Secretary of Defense’s removal authority to grades below colonel or captain, not the general or admiral promotions Hegseth has blocked. The Pentagon’s own regulations restrict grounds for removing an officer from a promotions list to specific circumstances like moral, mental, or professional deficiencies, none of which were present in Hegseth’s removals.It’s obvious that a disproportionate number of Hegseth’s blocked, delayed, or demoted officers are women and people of color. However, while mainstream headlines suggest Hegseth is motivated by race and gender animus, an even worse—and more dangerous— likelihood is that he is weeding out those he deems “ideologically incompatible” with how he and Trump plan to use the military.Hegseth likes to emphasize that “every officer serves at the pleasure of the president,” arguing that Trump’s policy goals require removing commanders “tied to the culture” of previous administrations. He argues that past promotions were based on race and gender instead of qualifications, but military records dispute those claims, and there is no evidence that any promotions he blocked were attributable to anything other than merit.An unqualified hack defends his ownHegseth, a former Fox News bobble head, is notoriously unqualified to serve as Secretary of Defense, which seems to have been Trump’s point in naming him. He was a mid-level National Guard officer, had no senior leadership role in the military, and had no experience anywhere that qualified him to oversee three million personnel and an annual budget of $800 billion. More dangerous than his lack of qualifications is his bloodlust. As a media commentator, he lobbied aggressively for presidential pardons for service members convicted or accused of notorious war crimes, including Army Lt. Clint Lorance, convicted of murdering two Afghan civilians, and Maj. Matt Golsteyn, who admitted during an interview for the CIA that he and another soldier took an alleged Taliban bomb-maker off base in 2010, shot him, and buried his remains. Trump granted full pardons to both.In Iraq, Hegseth’s own unit was nicknamed “Kill Company” and he kept a ‘kill board’ that tallied kills, including dead civilians, expressing daring contempt for the military's strict rules of engagement. It’s anyone’s guess what gruesome deeds he got up to. Today, he barks a constant mantra about “war fighters” and “lethality” and sees violence and unrestrained power as a distinct virtue.Ineptitude with a platitude chaserHegseth’s tenure has been marred by a series of high-profile blunders, including the SignalGate security breach, his ‘dirty line’ Pentagon internet setup, and unforced diplomatic errors such as upbraiding NATO allies without understanding the subject matter. Just as Trump governs by spectacle over substance, Hegseth manages by platitude. His attempts to project authority through chest thumping—“Maximum lethality not tepid legality”— like his sophomoric speech to the Generals at Quantico, routinely fall flat and inspire parody. Hegseth’s embrace of violence over circumspection (“Lethality is our calling card”) while rejecting what he calls ‘stupid rules of engagement’ reveals an almost pathological immaturity. While pushing back against operational restraints, i.e., military rules of engagement, and weeding out generals who don’t suit him, he insists that, under him, there will be “No politically correct wars.” What he’s really weeding out are legal protocols in order to elevate ‘maximum lethality’ in pursuit of politically incorrect and illegal wars: Trump’s.History is clear on why the military should never be politicizedThroughout history, authoritarian regimes have tried to put professional militaries under the direct control of their own political movements. Recognizing that an independent officer corps poses an existential threat to one-party rule, in Nazi Germany, Hitler systematically dismantled the autonomy of the traditional Wehrmacht, and required all soldiers to swear a personal oath of loyalty to him rather than to the state or constitution. In the former Soviet Union, Stalin subjected the Red Army to the Communist Party's political commissar system, embedding party officials at every level of command to monitor ideological conformity.
President Donald Trump's administration has become mired in embarrassment over his latest botched remodeling project, but according to a new analysis from MS NOW, the threats he has made in response to the affair reveal him as both "comical" and "ominous."As part of his ongoing campaign to remodel iconic fixtures of Washington, D.C., to his own liking, Trump made a big deal out of his plan to have the Lincoln Memorial's Reflecting Pool painted a color he called "American Flag Blue." Once the project — handed off to a GOP donor through a swift no-bid contract — was completed, it promptly blew up in his face, as the pool became overrun with green algae, which numerous experts have said was actively made worse by the change in color.Despite the administration's efforts, the algae have remained, threatening to stick around as a highly visible embarrassment for Trump during the country's 250th birthday celebrations. In response to this predicament, Trump has tried to save face by claiming that the algae bloom was caused by vandals, with a former Olympian getting arrested and charged by the U.S. Park Police after touching a piece of peeling paint in the Reflecting Pool. Multiple other people near the pool, whom Trump accused of being "vandals," have also been arrested, though there have been no charges leveled against them.Writing for MS NOW on Saturday, political strategist Symone Sanders-Townsend argued that "the ongoing debacle of the Reflecting Pool has been a helpful distillation of [Trump's] approach" to governance: "Make a big promise, use it to reward your allies, blame setbacks on your opponents, criminalize dissent and then attack the press.""The first three steps are fairly common in politics, especially among populists with little experience in government," she explained. "But it’s the last two that turn Trump into something more than just a run-of-the-mill incompetent politician. Authoritarianism often begins with the habit of treating ordinary problems as criminal conspiracies. A court strikes down his policy, and he calls the judge 'crooked' or 'corrupt.' A protest escalates, and he calls the protesters 'paid agitators.'”She added: "If an authoritarian government cannot accept criticism, then it has to label critics enemies. If it cannot admit a mistake, then it has to blame sabotage. And if it cannot accept failure, then it has to find someone to punish."Sanders-Townsend further argued that while it may be "comical" to see Trump deploy this predictable authoritarian playbook over something like the Reflecting Pool debacle, it is also "ominous" and must be taken seriously. This sort of impulse, she explained, is exactly why the nation's founders "built a system designed to restrain power rather than indulge it.""The Reflecting Pool is simply the latest reminder that, in Trump’s Washington, the line between politics and criminality is growing dangerously thin," she continued. "That’s because the common thread is not just inflammatory rhetoric. It is the growing weaponization of government against ordinary political activity and the ordinary people who engage in it. When a president begins treating ordinary politics as criminality, it does not stay rhetorical for long. Eventually, someone gets investigated. Someone gets detained. Someone gets arrested."
