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Khanna names six men appearing in unredacted Epstein files
On the House floor today, congressman Ro Khanna named the six high-profile men that are included in the unredacted version of the documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein.
Khanna named, US businessman Leslie Wexner of Victoria’s Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch and Bath & Body Works fame; Emirati businessman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem; and Salvatore Nuara, Zurab Mikeladze, Leonic Leonov, and Nicola Caputo.
“If we found six men that they were hiding in two hours, imagine how many men they are covering up for in those 3m files,” Khanna said. “Why are they protecting these rich and powerful men? People I call part of the ‘Epstein class’. Why are we in a country where there is no elite accountability for people who do the most heinous things?”
A reminder that this week, the California Democrat went to the Department of Justice with Thomas Massie, a Republican congressman who co-led the Epstein Files Transparency Act effort, to view the unredacted files. The justice department made their most recent release of documents available for members of Congress to view in-person. On Monday, Khanna and Massie the pair had to do “some digging” before finding the new names, they told reporters.
Key events
Senate intelligence committee Democrat wants to know why Tulsi Gabbard was at Georgia elections office
After the FBI search warrant affidavit for its raid an elections office in Fulton County, Georgia was released on Tuesday, showing that it was based in part of debunked conspiracy theories, Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat who is vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee, is demanding an explanation as to why Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, was present.
“The newly unsealed affidavit shows this search originated from the frivolous claims of Kurt Olsen, an attorney who traffics in debunked falsehoods about the 2020 election. It also makes clear there was no foreign intelligence nexus,” Warner said in a statement. “So why was the Director of National Intelligence there?”
“When the nation’s top intelligence official inserts herself into a matter with no connection to a foreign threat, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the objective was political – namely, getting back into Donald Trump’s good graces – and that her presence was meant to lay the groundwork for baseless claims of foreign interference,” warner added. “Americans should be deeply concerned about what someone with sweeping authority over the country’s intelligence apparatus might do to achieve that.”
Warner, joined by Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, also called on Gabbard to “immediately schedule an Intelligence Community briefing for senators on election security concerns”, and to explain her presence at the Georgia raid, which they said would “further perpetuate the repeatedly disproven lie that the 2020 election was stolen.”
Sam Levine
The FBI’s rationale behind raiding the Fulton county election office in Georgia last month was based on debunked claims from election deniers and came after a referral from a White House lawyer who tried to overturn the 2020 election, a search warrant affidavit unsealed on Tuesday reveals.
The warrant offers the first insight for the basis for the FBI’s 28 January raid on the Fulton county election office. FBI officials seized nearly 700 boxes of election materials in the raid.
The FBI’s investigation “originated” from a referral sent by Kurt Olsen, an attorney who sought to overturn the 2020 election and contacted justice department officials to urge them to file a motion at the US supreme court to nullify the election. Olsen began working at the White House last year to investigate election integrity problems.
The FBI’s witnesses in the investigation include a cadre of conservative activists who have been hounding state officials with claims of wrongdoing in Fulton county for years. Many of their claims have been investigated by state officials and debunked.
Other witnesses include two Trump-aligned members of the Georgia state election board whom Trump publicly praised as “pit bulls” at a 2024 rally. Those two members are Janice Johnston and Janelle King, who is married to Kelvin King, a current candidate for Georgia secretary of state.
“Seizure of the election records would corroborate the analysis that evinces that election records were destroyed and or the tabulation of votes included materially false votes, either through duplicated scanning of specific ballots, interjection of pristine ballots, or other methods described above,” Hugh Raymond Evans, an FBI special agent, wrote in the affidavit.
Canadian officials try fact-checking Trump on false claims about Windsor-Detroit bridge
Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, and the premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, have taken on the daunting task of trying to explain to Donald Trump that the reasons he cited for threatening to block the opening of a new bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan are entirely untrue.
Trump’s sudden reversal on the Gordie Howe International Bridge, announced in a social media diatribe on Monday, baffled Canadian officials since the president had endorsed the infrastructure project, which is being paid for by Canada, in 2017, and even signed legislation in 2020 to fund customs and border protection screening systems on the US side.
Carney told reporters that he spoke to Trump on Tuesday about the bridge, “I explained that Canada paid for the construction of bridge, $4bn, that the ownership is shared between the state of Michigan and the government of Canada, and that in the construction of the bridge, obviously there’s Canadian steel, Canadian workers, but also, US steel, US workers that were involved.”
“This is a great example of co-operation between our countries, look forward to its opening,” Carney said he told Trump. “And what is particularly important, of course, is the commerce and the tourism and the voyages of Canadians and Americans that will go across that bridge.”
In his tirade against the bridge late Monday, Trump had wrongly claimed that there was “virtually no U.S. content” used in the construction and said Canada owns “both the Canada and the United States side”.
The bridge is, as Carney said, actually publicly owned by both Canada and Michigan.
In an appearance on CBS News on Tuesday, Ford, the Ontario premier, expressed surprise that Trump had turned against a project he supported during his first term, before construction began. “He was all in favor of it,” Ford noted, accurately.
Blocking the bridge from opening this year, Ford said, “is going to hurt the economy in Michigan, it’ll hurt Ontario, and this is all about politics, it’s not about fact… And it’s unfortunate that he doesn’t have the facts, and I’d be more than happy to give the facts.”
Ford then referenced what he called false claims made at a news conference on Tuesday by Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt. “I heard a little thing from Karoline there and unfortunately his spokesperson doesn’t have the facts either.”
Leavitt claimed that “the fact that Canada will control what crosses the Gordie Howie-Howe bridge and owns the land on both sides is unacceptable to the president.”
“Well, its totally inaccurate, word for word,” Ford said, noting that bridge traffic was determined by a binational agreement between the US and Canada. “And then saying that we control both sides of the bridge is just so far from the truth. Matter of fact, the interchange was built with Michigan workers, Michigan concrete, Michigan steel.”
“They need to get their facts straight,” Ford said, of Trump and his spokesperson.
“And by the way, they’re going to own, Michigan, the agreement is that they own 50% of the bridge, and Canadians paid for it,” Ford added.
Ford’s effort to educate Trump on the facts is an uphill struggle, particularly given that his regional government produced a television ad in October that used historical remarks by Ronald Reagan to argue that tariffs are a terrible idea. That ad enraged Trump, despite being entirely factual.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the owner of a rival, private bridge, who stands to lose revenues to the new bridge, met with Trump’s commerce secretary on Monday, who then spoke with Trump before the president started sharing disinformation about the new, publicly owned bridge.
Trump’s turn against new US-Canada bridge reportedly came after owner of rival bridge met with Lutnick
Donald Trump’s sudden turn against a new, publicly owned bridge being constructed to connect Detroit, Michigan to Windsor, Ontario came right after a Republican donor who owns a private, rival bridge met with Trump’s commerce secretary, the New York Times reports.
Citing two officials briefed on the meeting, the Times reports that Matthew Moroun, the heir to a Detroit-based trucking fortune whose family has operated the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor for decades met with Trump’s embattled commerce secretary Howard Lutnick on Monday in Washington. Lutnick spent part of Monday testifying to Congress about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the late child sex offender, which were closer than he had previously stated.
After that meeting Moroun, Lutnick spoke with Trump by phone about the bridge, the officials told the Times.
Trump then issued his threat to block the bridge, in a hyperbolic post in which he also stated as fact the wild conspiracy theory that China would require Canadians to stop playing ice hockey as a condition of a China-Canada trade deal.
Mouron took over his family business in 2020, after his father, Matty Moroun died at 93. In his father’s obituary, the Detroit Free Press reported that the older Moroun’s “relentless efforts to defend his monopoly as owner of the only bridge crossing between Detroit and Windsor led to endless litigation in the U.S. and Canada. A Wayne County judge even threw Moroun in jail for contempt in 2012 for his failure to comply with the judge’s orders.”
Republican congressman says he is ‘still investigating’ Bad Bunny lyrics he could not understand
In an appearance on the rightwing channel Real America’s Voice on Tuesday, a Republican congressman from Missouri, Mark Alford, said “we are still investigating” the lyrics of a song performed in Spanish by the Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny during his Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday.
“The lyrics, from what we have seen, from Bad Bunny are very disturbing,” Alford said, apparently referring to outrage stirred by a rightwing media personality, Megan Basham, who posted an English translation of explicit lyrics from the Spanish-language song Safaera without realizing that Bad Bunny had performed a cleaned-up version for the televised broadcast, which was also partially obscured by bleeps.
“If it holds true that, um… you know I don’t speak fluent Spanish, okay?” Alford continued. “I know how to ask where the bathroom is – but, these lyrics, if it is true what was said on national television, we have a lot of questions for the entities that broadcast this and we’ll be talking with Brendan Carr from the FCC about this.”
“This could be much worse than than the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction, let’s put it that way,” Alford added.
“But at least that was a malfunction, I mean this was apparently intentional,” the host Gina Loudon, a former Trump campaign surrogate who once appeared on the reality show Wife Swap, said.
“This was intentional, yes” Alford said.
“And they could not have said this were it in English,” Loudon added, apparently also unaware that the explicit lyrics had not been heard on the broadcast, before calling the show “fully not understandable to English-speaking people”.
The host then praised Alford for his work – investigating things that did not happen. “Congressman Mark Alford, always on top of it,” Loudon said. “Thank you so much for being here.”
Nick Robins-Early
Jeffrey Epstein engineered an intimate relationship between a woman in his network and Kimbal Musk, who is the brother of Elon Musk and on the board of directors at Tesla, according to emails from the Department of Justice’s recent release of documents involving the convicted sex offender. The younger Musk and the woman were involved for around six months between 2012 and 2013, with Kimbal Musk describing them as “dating”.
In the lead up to Musk and the woman’s first meeting, Epstein and his longtime associate Boris Nikolic labored to set them up and bring her to a birthday party Musk was throwing – with Nikolic telling Epstein “please prepare [the woman] —;)”.
“Jeffrey and Boris, many thanks for connecting me with [the woman],” Musk later emailed Epstein and Nikolic in October 2012 after a lunch at Epstein’s Manhattan apartment. “I believe you both played a role. :)”
Throughout Musk and the woman’s time together, she forwarded Epstein several of the personal messages Musk sent to her and asked Epstein for guidance on the relationship. There is nothing in the emails to suggest that Musk was aware of her backchannel correspondence with Epstein.
Through her lawyer, the woman has said in recent years that she was trapped, coerced and abused by Epstein while in his circle. The woman has not publicly told her story nor spoken about her relationship with Musk, and the Guardian has chosen not to publish her name. Her full name appears in the documents due to a faulty redaction, while other mentions in the emails match her first name and an itinerary of her travels with Musk that Epstein retained. Attempts to reach her and her lawyer did not receive any reply. A request for comment sent to Nikolic via his venture capital firm did not receive a reply. Nikolic, who was named as a backup executor of Epstein’s estate, has not been accused of any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein and previously said he did not consent to being named as an executor.
Around an hour after the Guardian sent Kimbal Musk a request for comment Monday for this article, he posted a statement on X about his relationship with Epstein and the woman. A spokesperson from his family office directed the Guardian to his post, but Musk did not respond to a detailed set of questions on his ties to Epstein. Musk has not been accused of any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.
Trump confirms to Fox host that he sets tariff rates based on his own mood
As the US supreme court prepares to rule on whether Donald Trump does have the power to impose tariffs on foreign imports, to address a self-declared economic emergency, the president confirmed in an interview broadcast on Tuesday that he sets tariff rates based, in part, on his own feelings about the leaders of other nations.
Speaking to the Fox host Larry Kudlow, who was the director of the National Economic Council during Trump’s first term, Trump repeated a story he told at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month about why he raised tariffs on imports from Switzerland because the country’s female leader irritated him in a phone call.
“I had an incident with a very nice country, Switzerland,” Trump began. “I put on a 30% tariff, which is very low… and I got an emergency call from, I believe the prime minister of Switzerland.” The president was referring to. call from Switzerland’s president at the time, Karin Keller-Sutter.
“She was very aggressive, but nice, but very aggressive. ‘Sir, we are small country. We can’t do this, we can’t do this, we are a sm-’, I couldn’t get her off the phone,” Trump recalled.
“I said, ‘You may be a small country, but we have a $42 billion deficit with you,’ Trump recalled saying. In fact, the US goods trade deficit with Switzerland was $38.3 billion in 2024; but the US also had a services trade surplus of $29.7 billion with the country the same year.
“‘No, no, we are small country’, again and again and again,” Trump said Keller-Sutter, whose name he never used, told him. “I couldn’t get her off the phone. So it was a 30%, and I didn’t really like the way she talked to us, and so, instead of giving her a reduction, I raised it to 39%.”
Katie Porter says ‘pathetic’ Trump is cutting health funds for Californians ‘just because we didn’t vote for him’
Katie Porter, the former Democratic congresswoman who is running for California governor, attacked Donald Trump in response to a report from Bloomberg News that the administration is cutting public health grants from four states run by Democrats.
On Monday, Bloomberg News reported:
The Department of Health and Human Services is expected to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in public health grants to four Democratic states because they don’t align with the White House’s priorities, according to people familiar with the matter.
The agency is starting to slash the funding later this week with the goal of reaching about $600 million in cuts to California, Minnesota, Illinois and Colorado, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans are not public.
In response to the news, Porter, the former frontrunner whose campaign has flagged since video of her losing her tempter with a reporter and an aide went viral last year, suggested that Californians need “a fighter” like her to deal with Trump.
“Donald Trump is systematically gutting public health funding for Californians—just because we didn’t vote for him,” Porter wrote on social media. “It’s pathetic and unbecoming of a leader. Our next governor needs to be a fighter who is unafraid to dish it back at Trump and protect these essential programs.”
“The CDC claims these grants undermine American values. I disagree,” she added. “Access to health care is an American value. Cutting funding for HIV prevention and support for LGBTQ+ seniors is a betrayal of the very people the government is sworn to protect. This is federal malpractice, plain and simple.”
“By abandoning these federal commitments, the CDC is leaving local governments holding the bag and shifting the bill onto California taxpayers. This can’t continue. As Governor, I’ll use every option on the table to fight back and limit Trump’s harm to Californians,” Porter pledged.
Since the clips of her ill-tempered exchanges were published, Porter has sought to frame her combative personality as an asset in the era of Trump. It remains to be seen whether California voters agree.
Here’s a recap of the day so far
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On the House floor today, congressman Ro Khanna named the six high-profile men that are included in the unredacted version of the documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein. Khanna named, US businessman Leslie Wexner of Victoria’s Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch and Bath & Body Works fame; Emirati businessman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem; and Salvatore Nuara, Zurab Mikeladze, Leonic Leonov, and Nicola Caputo. “If we found six men that they were hiding in two hours, imagine how many men they are covering up for in those 3m files,” Khanna said.
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The US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, had lunch with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on the disgraced financier’s private island, he said on Tuesday, as he faces mounting calls to resign from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. “I did have lunch with him, as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation” in 2012, Lutnick told lawmakers on a Senate appropriations committee. Lutnick had previously claimed that he distanced himself from Epstein in 2005.
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In response, the White House said that it supports Lutnick whole heartedly. Speaking to reporters at the White House today, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Lutnick “remains a very important member” of Donald Trump’s team.
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The FBI released new images from security camera footage outside Nancy Guthrie’s home on the morning of 1 February, the day the 84-year-old went missing. The images and video show a figure wearing a ski mask, gloves and a backpack. Strapped to the person’s waist is what appears to be a gun.
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Minnesota governor Tim Walz said he expects the ongoing immigration crackdown in the state to end in a matter of days. Speaking to reporters, Walz relayed that his recent conversations with border czar Tom Homan and Susie Wiles, the president’s chief of staff, have given him hope. “We’re very much in a trust but verify mode,” Walz said. “We are talking days, not weeks and months of this occupation.”
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At a tense hearing, House members grilled leaders of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). While there were occasional moments where lawmakers from both sides of the aisle wanted to see greater oversight from federal immigration enforcement, particularly after the fatal shooting of two US citizens in Minneapolis, it was ultimately a partisan display of disfunction.
Dharna Noor
The Trump administration on Thursday will roll back the mechanism allowing the government to regulate planet-warming pollution, the White House press secretary has told reporters.
“President Trump will be joined by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to formalize the recession of the 2009 Obama-era endangerment finding,” spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said at a press conference on Tuesday. “This will be the largest deregulatory action in American history.”
The finding determined that CO2 other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, establishing a legal basis to regulate them under the Clean Air Act and forming the underpinning of virtually all federal climate regulations. Its reversal is certain to be challenged in court.
Climate experts are outraged at the planned decision.
“The Trump EPA is cynically pretending climate change isn’t a risk to Americans’ health and welfare,” said Meredith Hankins, federal climate legal director at the environmental advocacy nonprofit National Resources Defense Council. “This is the biggest attack ever on federal authority to tackle the climate crisis, and a devastating blow to millions of Americans facing growing risks of unnatural disasters.”
Zeldin submitted the repeal of the legal determination for White House review last month. After he announced the plan to repeal the finding in July, the agency received half a million comments on the proposal.
Among those comments was one filed by science group Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) on behalf of its half a million supporters and network of more than 22,000 scientists, opposing the rollback.
“The American public deserves a government that will face the challenge of the climate crisis head on with proven policy solutions,” said Dr. Gretchen Goldman, UCS president who previously served in the Department of Transportation and the White House,”not actively serve as agents of destruction by worsening it to boost fossil fuel profits.”
Johnson says it would be ‘absurd’ for commerce secretary to resign amid Epstein controversy
Republican House speaker Mike Johnson said it would be “absurd” for commerce secretary Howard Lutnick to resign over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
Earlier today, Lutnick said that he did visit the disgraced financier on his private island in 2012 – four years after Epstein was convicted on state prostitution charges.
Johnson told reporters today that Lutnick has “done an extraordinary job for the country” and argued that Thomas Massie, the Republican congressman who has pushed for the commerce secretary to step down, “should stop playing political games”.
In response to the latest images and video, shared by the FBI, of a masked suspect at Nancy Guthrie’s door the morning of her disappearance, her daughter – Today show anchor Savannah Guthrie – shared the recovered footage to social media.
“Someone out there recognizes this person,” Guthrie wrote. “We believe she is still out there. Bring her home.”
Chris Stein
Susan Collins, the Maine Republican senator who is a top target of Democrats in this year’s midterm elections, on Tuesday launched her campaign for a sixth term in office.
She is expected to face one of the toughest re-election battles of the year, as victory in Maine is seen as essential to Democrats’ hopes of winning back control of the Senate, and putting a halt to Donald Trump’s legislative agenda.
First elected in 1996, Collins is among the few Republican senators who occasionally defy the president, and is the only one representing a state that the president did not carry in his successful re-election bid two years ago.
“True leaders bring both sides together to seek common ground, not shout the loudest or seek the most social media clicks. I have a proven record of working for you, and I’m running for reelection because my experience, seniority and independence matter,” Collins wrote in an op-ed published in the Bangor Daily News of Bangor, Maine.
Collins has had a rocky relationship with Trump since beginning his second term. While she voted to confirm much of his cabinet, she opposed several of his most controversial nominees, including the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and FBI director, Kash Patel.
The president has recently lashed out at her, saying Collins and other senators who voted in support of a war powers resolution to block further attacks on Venezuela “should never be elected to office again”.
Maine’s governor, Janet Mills, is among the Democrats who are seeking to unseat Collins, along with Graham Platner, an oyster farmer and marine veteran. They will face off for the Democratic nomination in the 9 June primary.
White House continues to support commerce secretary after he admits to Epstein island visit
Speaking to reporters today, Karoline Leavitt said commerce secretary Howard Lutnick “remains a very important member” of Donald Trump’s team. This comes after Lutnick admitted to visiting Jeffrey Epstein’s island in 2012 – four years after Epstein was sentenced to 13 months in jail for procuring a minor for prostitution.
At a Senate subcommittee hearing today, the commerce secretary said he and his family “had lunch” with Epstein on the disgraced financier’s private island. This, despite Lutnick’s previous protestations that he made little to no contact with Epstein after 2005.
Leavitt added that Trump “fully supports” the commerce secretary, when asked about the revelation.
Karoline Leavitt batted off a question about whether Donald Trump spoke to a former Palm Beach police chief about Jeffrey Epstein in 2006.
“Everyone has known he’s been doing this,” Trump told Michael Reiter about the late sex-trafficker, according to an account of a conversation contained within the justice department’s release of 3m Epstein files. Reiter, who retired in 2009, later confirmed the conversation to the Miami Herald.
“I don’t know the answer to that question,” Leavitt said. “What I’m telling you is that what President Trump has always said … that he kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club because Jeffrey Epstein was a creep. And that remains true. And this call, if it did happen, corroborates exactly what President Trump has said from the beginning.”
This dramatically contrasts with the president’s public statements, where he has previously said that he was unaware of Epstein’s crimes before the pair allegedly fell out in the early 2000s.
“I’m sure many of you, when you read that, that alleged FBI report probably thought to yourself: ‘Wow, this really cracks our narrative that we’ve been trying to push about this president for many years.’ So we’re moving on from that,” Leavitt said.
Leavitt addresses reporters at White House, notes White House meeting with Netanyahu
Back in Washington, Karoline Leavitt is speaking to reporters at the White House.
She kicked things off by noting the new images and video released by the FBI in the case of Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance, and urged those with any information to contact federal law enforcement.
Leavitt also noted that Trump will host Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Wednesday.
Walz says federal immigration surge in Minnesota could end in ‘days’
Speaking to reporters today, Minnesota governor Tim Walz said that he spoke recently to border czar Tom Homan and Susie Wiles, the president’s chief of staff, and expects the immigration crackdown in the state to end in a matter of days.
“We’re very much in a trust but verify mode,” Walz said. “We are talking days, not weeks and months of this occupation.”
Walz added he was wary of speaking candidly for fear of retaliation. “I’m very careful with dealing with this administration,” he said. “I’ll let them make the announcements. We have been absolutely clear that they need to reduce these [federal immigration enforcement] numbers back to the pre surge level.”
FBI releases new images of masked suspect outside Nancy Guthrie’s home
The FBI released new images from security camera footage outside Nancy Guthrie’s home on the morning of 1 February, the day the 84-year-old went missing.
The images and video show a figure wearing a ski mask, gloves and a backpack. Strapped to the person’s waist is what appears to be a gun.
The latest imagery was recovered after the FBI, Pima county sheriff’s department and “private sector partners” continued their search for pictures or footage that may have been “lost, corrupted, or inaccessible due to a variety of factors – including the removal of recording devices”, according to FBI director Kash Patel. “The video was recovered from residual data located in backend systems,” he added.
