July 18, 2025 at 9:44 PM EDT
'Made that impossible': Attorney reveals 'big problem' guaranteed to sink Trump's lawsuit

President Donald Trump's legal team made several grave errors in their new $10 billion lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, NewsCorp and Rupert Murdoch, according to an attorney who specializes in First Amendment law. In a thread posted to his X account Friday, Atlanta, Georgia-based lawyer Andrew Fleischman predicted that Trump's lawsuit will be promptly thrown out due to multiple glaring issues. Chiefly, Trump filed the lawsuit in federal court in the Southern District of Florida. While he may have done so as a means of drawing U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon -- the Trump appointee who officially scuttled former DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith's classified documents case against Trump last July -- Fleischman pointed out that Florida has an anti-SLAPP statute [Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation] that will doom Trump's litigation.

July 18, 2025 at 8:48 PM EDT
'This now resides within the DOJ': Trump tells AG that Epstein is officially her problem

President Donald Trump is now communicating that the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein controversy -- which has been an albatross around the administration's neck for weeks -- is now exclusively for Attorney General Pam Bondi to handle. NBC News reported Friday that Trump "is no longer interested in taking heat" for Bondi when it comes to the Department of Justice's handling of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein's case. Four unnamed White House sources told the network that Trump has offloaded his Epstein problem on the attorney general, and expects her to be the administration's point person on the matter.

July 18, 2025 at 7:43 PM EDT
Trump admin wants Epstein grand jury testimony released -- with one 'huge caveat': report

President Donald Trump's administration is now formally seeking to unseal grand jury testimony related to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein -- but there's a catch. Politico legal correspondent Kyle Cheney reported Friday that even if the motion to unseal the Epstein materials, which was filed by Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, is granted, a lot of information will remain secret. Cheney posted a snippet of the motion and called attention to a "huge caveat," in that any "personal identifying information" would be redacted from the materials.

July 18, 2025 at 6:13 PM EDT
'Fever is breaking': Ex-MAGA activist says Trump-Epstein controversy may be 'final straw'

One longtime MAGA activist who supported President Donald Trump for nearly a decade is now calling on his former community to publicly distance themselves from the movement over the Trump administration's ongoing Jeffrey Epstein controversy. In a Friday segment on MSNBC's "Deadline: White House," Rich Logis -- the founder of the organization "Leaving MAGA" -- sought to extend an olive branch to the MAGA community and give them permission to leave the pro-Trump movement. He began the segment by apologizing for his work on Trump's 2016 and 2020 campaigns, and acknowledged the "cognitive dissonance" many Trump supporters are likely feeling in the midst of the Epstein fallout. He then said there has likely never been a time in which more "MAGA Americans are questioning their support for Donald Trump" than the past week.

July 18, 2025 at 5:26 PM EDT
'Third rate newspaper': Trump announces lawsuit against Wall Street Journal and Murdoch

President Donald Trump is reportedly suing Rupert Murdoch and Dow Jones, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, over the publication of a story alleging he sent a "bawdy" birthday letter in 2003 to Jeffrey Epstein, the now-notorious convicted sex offender who died in 2019. "Court records show that Trump filed a lawsuit alleging libel against Murdoch, the Journal's publisher, Dow Jones, and the reporters who wrote the article in federal court for the Southern District of Florida," CNBC reported late Friday afternoon.

July 18, 2025 at 4:33 PM EDT
'Makes no sense': Analyst reveals why Trump's defense over Epstein letter 'won't hold'

After a tumultuous 24 hours, one analyst is now observing that President Donald Trump must cling to one of three main defenses in response to the Wall Street Journal's recent bombshell report delving into his close friendship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. In the report, Trump is alleged to have written a racy birthday message to Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003 (three years before his first conviction). The message alludes to the two having "certain things in common" and calls Epstein a "pal" with whom he may share "a wonderful secret." Trump responded to the story saying that he planned to sue the Journal , its parent company Newscorp and owner Rupert Murdoch.

July 18, 2025 at 3:23 PM EDT
'Infuriated': How Trump 'berated' Murdoch and WSJ editor in attempt to kill Epstein story

Before the Wall Street Journal published its story on President Donald Trump's purported lewd birthday message to Jeffrey Epstein, Trump reportedly called the Journal's leadership in a fruitless attempt to keep the article from coming to light. That's according to Status News reporter Oliver Darcy, who shared details of Trump's work behind the scenes to suppress the report with MSNBC host Katy Tur on Friday. Darcy said Trump's effort to kill the story "runs contrary to everything the MAGA movement really wanted" from him, in regard to his promises to fully declassify the DOJ's Epstein files.

July 18, 2025 at 2:59 PM EDT
FBI agents 'told to flag records' in Epstein files that mentioned Trump: senator

One thousand employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation sifting through thousands of pages of the Epstein files were instructed to flag any mentions of President Donald Trump, according to Democratic U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, the Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee. "According to information my office received," Senator Durbin wrote in a letter (below) to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday, "you"pressured the FBI to put approximately 1,000 personnel"on 24-hour shifts to review approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records in order to produce more documents that could then be released on an arbitrarily short deadline."

July 18, 2025 at 12:07 PM EDT
Invasion of flesh-eating fly could cause devastation across the US

A flesh-eating parasitic fly is invading North and Central America. The consequences could be severe for the cattle industry, but this parasite is not picky - it will infest a wide range of hosts, including humans and their pets. The "New World screwworm" (Cochliomyia hominivorax) was previously eradicated from these regions. Why is it returning and what can be done about it?

July 18, 2025 at 11:47 AM EDT
'Wild card': Why 'Crafty' Mitch McConnell 'doesn't mind sticking Trump in the eye'

In the past, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) was a major source of frustration to Democrats. The former Senate majority leader, after the death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016, blocked then-President Barack Obama's nominee Merrick Garland -- only to ram through all three of President Donald Trump's nominees for the High Court: Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. Yet McConnell, who stepped down as GOP leader in the U.S. Senate in 2024, is neither a MAGA Republican nor a Never Trumper. Although there is a lot of bad blood between McConnell and Trump and the Kentucky Republican would have much preferred another GOP presidential nominee in 2024, McConnell gave Trump a lukewarm, unenthusiastic endorsement after former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley dropped out of the race.

July 18, 2025 at 11:35 AM EDT
'He's so frustrated': Johnson defends Trump over explosive Epstein birthday letter

After weeks of mounting scrutiny and days of growing scandal surrounding President Donald Trump""culminating Thursday night with a bombshell Wall Street Journal expose' revealing a "bawdy," innuendo-laced letter he reportedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday""the White House appears to be circling the wagons, as allies hit the airwaves in his defense. On Friday, Republican former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy appeared on Fox News, where he twice defended Donald Trump as "the most transparent president." But it was his successor's remarks that drew the most attention.

July 18, 2025 at 10:47 AM EDT
Firing of 'high-profile' prosecutor shows Trump 'is not thinking clearly': analysis

Salon Senior writer Amanda Marcotte says it's easy to see why Donald Trump's lawyers did not want him taking the stand in any of his criminal or civil trials. "The former reality TV host's increasingly frantic efforts to talk his way out of the ballooning outrage over his flagrant cover-up of the Jeffrey Epstein case are backfiring," said Marcotte, "making him look like nothing more than a man who has a whole lot to hide."