White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt's one-word answer was flagged Saturday as a clear sign of the damage Jeffrey Epstein has wreaked on MAGA.Asked whether President Donald Trump or his administration planned to intervene in the UK extradition case against Andrew and Tristan Tate, Leavitt replied flatly: "No." The i Paper columnist Sarah Baxter argued Saturday that the single syllable reveals how thoroughly Trump's ties to the late Jeffrey Epstein have depleted his political capital. The president, she wrote, can no longer afford to spend it defending a pair of accused sex abusers — despite them being major allies.Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed the posture a day earlier from the Philippines. "There's no role for us to play at this moment or maybe ever in that regard," Rubio told reporters, according to Axios.The cold shoulder marks a striking reversal. In February 2025, the Financial Times reported that Trump officials pressured Romania to ease travel restrictions on the Tates, and days later the brothers boarded a private jet to Fort Lauderdale.The Tates, dual British-American citizens, were arrested by U.S. Marshals in Miami on July 18 after British prosecutors filed 38 new sex-crime charges, bringing their combined total to 59 counts. Andrew Tate faces 42 charges including rape, sex trafficking and offenses relating to indecent images of a child; Tristan Tate faces 17.Their lawyer, Joseph McBride, who previously represented January 6 defendants, has tried to press familiar buttons. He wrote on X that the brothers were being held as "political prisoners on American soil" in solitary confinement. Andrew Tate himself claimed he was locked in a unit next to "a cannibal who screams throughout the night."None of it has moved the administration.On Capitol Hill, Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ), a House Oversight Committee member, sent a letter to Chair James Comer this week requesting an investigation into "potential political interference" surrounding the Tates' case. Ansari also asked that Barron Trump be called to testify about any knowledge of the brothers' alleged crimes. A spokesperson for the Tates has previously called reports linking Barron to Andrew Tate fake news.
Between honorable mentions and outright roasts, some leftists got it worse than others as the president yucked it up at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. “Oh, […]
A letter from former special counsel Jack Smith's lawyers went public Friday, exposing Rep. Jim Jordan's (R-OH) criminal referral as a bad-faith attack on a "nonpartisan public servant."Covington attorneys Lanny Breuer and Peter Koski wrote the letter July 22 to Jordan and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, calling the referral "spurious."Legal journalist Roger Parloff posted a downloadable version Friday, calling it a "succinct demolition of Jim Jordan's bad-faith accusations."Jordan referred Smith to the Justice Department last week, claiming Smith made false statements during his December 2025 deposition before the House Judiciary Committee. Smith had testified that his team sought only toll records from lawmakers — call logs showing who called whom, with no message content.Jordan says Smith should have volunteered that his team separately obtained texts from 44 members of Congress through a National Archives request for White House phones. He referred Smith under the federal false-statements law.Smith's legal team carefully dissected Jordan's logic in the July 22 letter."During his testimony, Mr. Smith provided truthful, responsive answers and candidly discussed his work as Special Counsel," Breuer and Koski wrote. "Those answers are unimpeachably truthful. Notably, the referral letter does not contest the truthfulness of Mr. Smith's answers."Jordan's fallback, the letter said, was an "unprecedented theory" — that Smith committed perjury "not because of what he said, but because of what he did not say.""This dangerous theory of criminal liability has no limiting principle and risks ensnaring every witness who testifies before a congressional committee who does not proactively disclose information that is not responsive to a question asked," Breuer and Koski wrote.The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals already rejected that theory, the letter noted, citing a ruling that held witnesses are not required to volunteer answers to questions they were never asked.Former federal prosecutors have repeatedly criticized the legal theory put forth by Jordan."This referral letter is an embarrassment," CBS News quoted former federal prosecutor Kyle Freeny as saying."If they have bad questions, they do not get the answers that they want. It's almost like deposition 101," Freeny added.Former prosecutor Gregory Rosen called the referral "legally untenable, if not ridiculous.""If Congress wanted different answers, they should have asked different questions," Rosen said.Jordan also argued the texts violated the Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause, which protects lawmakers' official acts from scrutiny. But the letter from Smith's lawyers dismantled that too, noting the messages were voluntarily sent by members of Congress to White House officials and did not involve any intrusion into legislative business.Blanche, Trump's former personal defense attorney in both of Smith's federal cases against him, would have received the congressional texts as part of that discovery process — yet never challenged their legality in court, the letter noted."If President Trump's attorneys thought that Mr. Smith and his team had done something unlawful or improper in obtaining these text messages, they could have filed a motion to that effect," Breuer and Koski wrote. "Notably, they did not.""President Trump has repeatedly ordered that Mr. Smith be prosecuted and jailed," Breuer and Koski wrote. "That is not the rule of law."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week revealed that the measles rates so far this year have already exceeded figures from 2025, marking a 35-year high. The United States logged 2,318 measles cases in the first seven months of this year, up from the total of 2,289 last year, according to the CDC. The […]
A Politico survey conducted this week found support among President Donald Trump’s supporters for continuing the war with Iran, even at rising domestic costs, falling from 50% in May to 37% in July. Nearly 1 in 5 MAGA voters is ready to end the fighting, whatever the cost, and 57% say the war has pushed gas prices […]
