Category: National

(WASHINGTON) — Three million pages from the Justice Department’s files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein are being released to the public today, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a press briefing Friday.

Blanche said the release, which follows the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, will include 2,000 videos and 180,000 images related to the Epstein case.

Blanche said in total there were 6 million documents, but due to the presence of child sexual abuse material and victim rights obligations, not all documents are being made public in the current release.

Several categories of pages were withheld from the release due to their sensitive nature, Blanche said. These items include personally identifying information of the victims, victims’ medical files, images depicting child pornography, information related to ongoing cases, and any images depicting death or abuse.

Attorneys for hundreds of Epstein survivors tell ABC News that names and identifying information of numerous victims appear unredacted in this latest disclosure, including several women whose names have never before been publicly associated with the case.

“We are getting constant calls for victims because their names, despite them never coming forward, being completely unknown to the public, have all just been released for public consumption,” attorney Brad Edwards, who has represented Epstein victims for more than 20 years, said in a telephone interview with ABC News. “It’s literally thousands of mistakes.”

ABC News has independently confirmed numerous instances of victims’ names appearing in documents included in the latest release.

Shortly after the new material appeared on Friday morning, Edwards said he and his law partner, Brittany Henderson, began receiving calls from clients.

“We contacted DOJ immediately, who has asked us to flag each of the documents where victim names appear unredacted, and they will pull them down,” Edwards said. “It’s an impossible job. The easy job would be for the DOJ to type in all the victims’ names, hit redact like they promised to do, then release them. “

“They’re trying to fix it, but I said, ‘The solution is take the thing down for now,'” Edwards said. “There’s no other remedy to this. It just runs the risk of causing so much more harm unless they take it down first, then fix the problem and put it back up.

ABC News reached out to the Justice Department for comment.

Blanche also pushed back on the notion that the Justice Department might have protected President Donald Trump from his name appearing in the files.

“We comply with the act, and there is no ‘protect President Trump.’ We didn’t protect or not protect anybody,” Blanche told ABC News Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas. “I mean, I think that there’s a hunger or a thirst for information that I do not think will be satisfied by the review of these documents. And there’s nothing I can do about that.”

Blanche said there was “no oversight” by the White House about what the material showed.

He added that if there was evidence in the files that others had abused victims, the DOJ would pursue charges against them.

One document in Friday’s release is a chart showing connections between Epstein and various employees and associates. Many are redacted — but the faces of several remain visible, including Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s associate Jean Luc Brunel, and Epstein’s lawyer,  accountant, and assistant. The chart is followed by a list of individuals broken into three categories: Day of Arrest, Week of Arrest, and Weeks following arrest.

This ties in with internal DOJ communications released earlier that showed a plan to contact potential witnesses following Epstein’s arrest. There are eight persons who are listed in the accompanying spreadsheet as “suspected co-conspirators,” including Maxwell, Brunel, and Epstein’s assistant Leslie Groff. Two of those designated as “suspected co-conspirators” are also identified also as victims.

Groff has never been charged with a crime and said in a statement to ABC News in 2020 that she “never knowingly booked travel for anyone under the age of 18, and had no knowledge of the alleged illegal activity whatsoever.”

An internal FBI document produced created in August 2019, five days after Epstein’s death, shows nine persons listed as family and associates of Epstein, including eight labeled as “co-conspirators,” most with their names and faces redacted with the exception of Maxwell and Brunel. This points to potential continued interest in pursuing further charges after the death of Epstein. In his statement announcing Epstein’s death, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said “our investigation of the conduct charged in the Indictment — which included a conspiracy count — remains ongoing” Maxwell is the only other person to be charged related to Epstein’s crimes.

Among the other new documents released is what appears to be part of the original indictment against Epstein in his 2005 criminal case in Florida. The 100-page charging document contains information on 58 out the 60 charges against Epstein for his behavior towards six alleged victims. This document had never been made public.

Epstein ending up being offered a plea to reduced charges and was offered a non-prosecution agreement, in a deal that was highly controversial.

As of Friday afternoon, the DOJ had uploaded three “data sets” to its public website. Just one of those sets includes, by ABC News’ count, over 300,000 items.

A team of 500 attorneys from the Justice Department worked around the clock to review and redact material, Blanche said at his press briefing.

Friday’s tranche is the latest in a series of Epstein file releases that began last month in response to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which passed Congress overwhelmingly and was signed into law by Trump on Nov. 19. The act gave the Justice Department 30 days to make publicly available all unclassified records pertaining to investigations and prosecutions of Epstein and his convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.

The bill contains several exceptions that allow for withholding or redacting records, notably to protect the privacy of Epstein’s victims.

Prior to Friday’s release, the DOJ had posted to its online Epstein library roughly 12,000 documents totaling about 125,000 pages — just a small fraction of the millions of records the department has been reviewing.  

Those materials included a record of a complaint to the FBI filed in 1996, years before the disgraced financier was first investigated for child sex abuse. The documents also included new details about the government’s investigation into potential accomplices as well as thousands of photographs of Epstein’s New York and U.S. Virgin Islands properties that were searched by the FBI after Epstein’s arrest in 2019.

The initial release of the files also contained numerous old photos of Epstein traveling with former President Bill Clinton, including pictures of Clinton lounging in a jacuzzi and one of him swimming with Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence after her 2021 conviction for sex trafficking of minors and other offenses.

The images, which were released without any context or background information, contained little information related to Trump, leading a spokesperson for Clinton to accuse the DOJ of selectively disclosing the pictures to imply wrongdoing on the part of Clinton where he said there is none.

“The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton,” Angel Urena said. “This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever. So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be.”

In an interview with ABC News on the day of the initial release, Blanche said that every document that mentions Trump will eventually be released, “assuming it’s consistent with the law.”

“There’s no effort to hold anything back because there’s the name Donald J. Trump or anybody else’s name,” Blanche said.

Both Trump and Clinton have denied all wrongdoing and have denied having any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.

Federal prosecutors have indicated in recent court filings that hundreds of government lawyers have spent weeks reviewing “several millions of pages” of materials — including documents, audio and video files — in preparation for disclosure to the public.

The Epstein Files Transparency Act came after the Trump administration faced months of blowback from its announcement last July that they would be releasing no additional Epstein files, after several top officials — including FBI Director Kash Patel and former Deputy Director Dan Bongino — had, prior to joining the administration, accused the government of shielding information regarding the Epstein case.

The files released thus far have yet to show evidence of wrongdoing on the part of famous, powerful men, against the expectations of many of those who pushed for the files’ release.

Epstein owned two private islands in the Virgin Islands and large properties in New York City, New Mexico and Palm Beach, Florida, where he came under investigation for allegedly luring minor girls to his seaside home for massages that turned sexual. He served 13 months of an 18-month sentence for sex crimes charges after reaching a controversial non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami.

In 2019, prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York indicted Epstein on charges that he “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls at his homes in Manhattan, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida, among other locations,” using cash payments to recruit a “vast network of underage victims,” some of whom were as young as 14 years old.

Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial.

Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Three million pages from the Justice Department’s files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein are being released to the public today, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a press briefing Friday.

Blanche said the release will include 2,000 videos and 180,000 images related to the Epstein case.

Blanche said in total there were 6 million documents, but due to the presence of child sexual abuse material and victim rights obligations, not all documents are being made public in the current release.

Blanche pushed back on the notion that the DOJ might have protected President Donald Trump from his name appearing in the files.

“We comply with the act, and there is no ‘protect President Trump.’ We didn’t protect or not protect anybody. I mean, I think that there’s a hunger or a thirst for information that I do not think will be satisfied by the review of these documents. And there’s nothing I can do about that,” Blanche told ABC News Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas.

Blanche said there was “no oversight” by the White House about what the material showed.

He added that if there was evidence in the files that others had abused victims, the DOJ would pursue charges against them.

A team of 500 attorneys from the Justice Department worked around the clock to redact and review material, Blanche said. 

“If any member of Congress wishes to review any portions of the response of production in any unredacted form, they’re welcome to make arrangements with the department to do so, and we’re happy to do that,” said Blanche. 

Friday’s tranche is the latest in a series of releases that began last month in response to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which passed Congress overwhelmingly and was signed into law by President Donald Trump on Nov. 19. The act gave the Justice Department 30 days to make publicly available all unclassified records pertaining to investigations and prosecutions of Epstein and his convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. 

The bill contains several exceptions that allow for withholding or redacting records, notably to protect the privacy of Epstein’s victims.

The DOJ to date had posted to its online Epstein library roughly 12,000 documents totaling about 125,000 pages — just a small fraction of the millions of records the department has been reviewing.  

Those materials included a record of a complaint to the FBI filed in 1996, years before the disgraced financier was first investigated for child sex abuse. The documents also included new details about the government’s investigation into potential accomplices as well as thousands of photographs of Epstein’s New York and U.S. Virgin Islands properties that were searched by the FBI after Epstein’s arrest in 2019.

The initial release of the files also contained numerous old photos of Epstein traveling with former President Bill Clinton, including pictures of Clinton lounging in a jacuzzi and one of him swimming with Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence after her 2021 conviction for sex trafficking of minors and other offenses.

The images, which were released without any context or background information, contained little information related to Trump, leading a spokesperson for Clinton to accuse the DOJ of selectively disclosing the pictures to imply wrongdoing on the part of Clinton where he said there is none.

“The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton,” Angel Urena said. “This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever. So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be.”

In an interview with ABC News on the day of the initial release, Blanche said that every document that mentions Trump will eventually be released, “assuming it’s consistent with the law.”

“There’s no effort to hold anything back because there’s the name Donald J. Trump or anybody else’s name,” Blanche said.

Both Trump and Clinton have denied all wrongdoing and have denied having any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.

Federal prosecutors have indicated in recent court filings that hundreds of government lawyers have spent weeks reviewing “several millions of pages” of materials — including documents, audio and video files — in preparation for disclosure to the public.

The Epstein Files Transparency Act came after the Trump administration faced months of blowback from its announcement last July that they would be releasing no additional Epstein files, after several top officials — including FBI Director Kash Patel and former Deputy Director Dan Bongino — had, prior to joining the administration, accused the government of shielding information regarding the Epstein case.

The files released thus far have yet to show evidence of wrongdoing on the part of famous, powerful men, against the expectations of many of those who pushed for the files’ release.

Epstein owned two private islands in the Virgin Islands and large properties in New York City, New Mexico and Palm Beach, Florida, where he came under investigation for allegedly luring minor girls to his seaside home for massages that turned sexual. He served 13 months of an 18-month sentence for sex crimes charges after reaching a controversial non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami.

In 2019, prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York indicted Epstein on charges that he “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls at his homes in Manhattan, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida, among other locations,” using cash payments to recruit a “vast network of underage victims,” some of whom were as young as 14 years old.

Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial.

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(NEW YORK) — A federal judge in New York on Friday dismissed the death-eligible counts from Luigi Mangione’s indictment, clearing the way for his federal trial to begin in October.

“Tortured and strange” though she said her conclusion may be, U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett ruled stalking is not a crime of violence and, therefore, not a predicate to make the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson a capital crime.

“No one could seriously question that this is violent criminal conduct,” Garnett wrote. However, her opinion said that the U.S. Supreme Court requires her to analyze the allegations in a way that is “totally divorced from the conduct at issue.”

Garnett said crimes of violence must, by definition, involve force and, theoretically, stalking could be committed without it.

The defense wanted the death penalty taken off the table, arguing that stalking “fails to qualify as a crime of violence” and therefore cannot be the predicate to make Mangione eligible for the death penalty if he is convicted of the federal charges. The defense also argued that the decision to seek the death penalty was political and circumvented the federal government’s protocols.

Mangione, who is accused of stalking and killing Thompson in Midtown Manhattan in December 2024, has pleaded not guilty to state and federal charges.

With the death penalty off the table, Garnett said Mangione’s federal trial will begin with opening statements on Oct. 13. Garnett said jury selection will begin on Sept. 8. 

The Manhattan district attorney’s office is separately trying to convince a state judge to put Mangione on trial on July 1, before the federal case.

Garnett on Friday also declined to suppress evidence seized from Mangione’s backpack when he was apprehended in Altoona, Pennsylvania. This ruling will allow prosecutors to use key evidence at trial, including the alleged murder weapon and writings that prosecutors say amount to a confession.

Garnett said the search fell within multiple exceptions to the requirements for obtaining a search warrant, including the discovery of the weapon and the likelihood that the evidence would have been discovered inevitably. 

Mangione’s lawyers had argued the backpack search was illegal.

ABC News’ Peter Charalambous contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Former CNN journalist Don Lemon was arrested early Friday morning in connection with an incident in which anti-ICE protesters disrupted a service at a Minnesota church, according to Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The incident unfolded on Jan. 18, when protesters entered Cities Church in St. Paul. The protesters said one of the pastors is the acting field director of the St. Paul ICE field office.

Bondi said on social media that Lemon and three others were arrested early Friday “at my direction” “in connection with the coordinated attack on Cities Church.”

At least three additional people were previously arrested in connection with the protest.

Lemon’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said last week that a magistrate judge rejected charges against Lemon. A source told ABC News that Bondi last week was “enraged” at the magistrate judge’s decision to not charge the journalist.

Lowell said on Friday that Lemon was taken into custody by federal agents while he was covering the Grammy Awards.

“Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done,” Lowell said in a statement. “The First Amendment exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable.”

“Instead of investigating the federal agents who killed two peaceful Minnesota protesters, the Trump Justice Department is devoting its time, attention and resources to this case,” Lowell said, calling the arrest an “attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration.”

Lowell called Lemon’s arrest an “unprecedented attack on the First Amendment” and said the journalist “will fight these charges vigorously and thoroughly in court.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(NEW YORK) — The judge overseeing Luigi Mangione’s federal case may decide on Friday if the death penalty will remain a sentencing option if he’s convicted.

Mangione, who is accused of stalking and killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Midtown Manhattan in December 2024, will return to the federal courtroom on Friday. He has pleaded not guilty to state and federal charges.

The defense argued that stalking “fails to qualify as a crime of violence” and therefore cannot be the predicate to make Mangione eligible for the death penalty if he is convicted of the federal charges. The defense also argued that the decision to seek the death penalty was political and circumvented the federal government’s protocols.

Judge Margaret Garnett has said Mangione would stand trial for the federal case in January 2027 if capital punishment remains on the table, and that the federal trial would begin in October if the death penalty is taken off the table. Either way, she set jury selection for Sept. 8.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office submitted a letter this week urging Mangione’s state trial to begin on July 1, before the federal case.

Garnett is also set to rule on a defense request to exclude evidence seized from Mangione’s backpack when he was apprehended in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

Federal prosecutors contend the Altoona Police Department’s search followed departmental procedures. Mangione’s lawyers have argued the backpack search was illegal and police should not have had immediate access to the items inside, including the alleged murder weapon, a notebook and writings.

In making their case for a July 1 state trial, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said the state has a “deep interest” in upholding the right to life, maintaining public order and delivering justice for Thompson’s family.

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(BROOKLYN) — A New Jersey man is facing attempted assault as a hate crime and other charges after police said he repeatedly drove his car into the back of Chabad World Headquarters in Brooklyn.

Police were already assigned to a detail at the Chabad in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood when they heard a commotion in the building’s main entrance Wednesday evening, New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. When officers responded, they saw a car strike the rear door, reverse and then strike the door again.

Video showed the suspect, 36-year-old Dan Sohail, get out of his Honda Accord after the crash and tell the crowd, “I dunno, it slipped! It slipped, you f—— a——!” Sohail appeared to spit at the crowd as NYPD officers led him toward their police cruiser.

No one was hurt but the building was evacuated as a precaution.

“The hate crime right now is that he basically attacked a Jewish institution,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said. “He knew it was a synagogue.”

Kenny said Sohail visited the Chabad World Headquarters previously before he returned Wednesday night.

According to Jewish community leaders, Sohail told police he had been to synagogues in New York and New Jersey in recent months, asking how he could convert and looking for spiritual guidance. They said he seemed like he had studied Judaism as a way to deal with the problems he was having in life. 

No explosives or other devices were found in the suspect’s car, police said.

The incident occurred during a Chabad holiday, when thousands of people from around the world were gathered at the headquarters, New York Attorney General Letitia James told reporters.

The Anti-Defamation League of New York and New Jersey said in a statement that it was “deeply disturbed.”

At a news conference, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani called it a “horrifying incident” and said “antisemitism has no place in our society.”

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(WASHINGTON) — In the hours after FBI agents seized 2020 election ballots from an elections facility in Georgia on Wednesday, President Donald Trump posted a series of thoroughly discredited conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election — and the 2016 election too. 

Fulton County officials said Wednesday that the FBI seized original 2020 voting records while serving a search warrant at the county’s Elections Hub and Operations Center. The FBI said they were conducting court-authorized activity at the facility, but said they would provide no further information.

Late Wednesday night, the president reposted to his social media platform a claim that Italian military satellites had been used to hack into U.S. voting machines to flip votes from Trump to Joe Biden.  

“China reportedly coordinated the whole operation,” the post reads. “The CIA oversaw it, the FBI covered it up, all to install Biden as a puppet.”

That was just one of a flurry of posts and reposts by Trump making discredited claims about the 2020 election, directly tying the allegations to the FBI’s seizure of ballots on Wednesday.  

“This is only the beginning,” Trump said, reposting other posts about the FBI’s action in Georgia. “Prosecutions are coming.”

The development comes after Trump has repeatedly made baseless claims that there was voter fraud in the 2020 election, specifically in Georgia, that contributed to his election loss. Georgia officials audited and certified the results following the election, and numerous lawsuits challenging the election results in the state were rejected by the courts.

Among the statements posted and reposted by Trump following the FBI’s actions in Georgia is one on the 2016 election that falsely claims that “Barack Hussein Obama” falsified intelligence and “conspired with foreign powers, not one, not two, not three, but four times to overthrow the United States government in 2016.”

In addition to being baseless, the claim ignores the fact that Obama was president in 2016, so if he tried to overthrow the government, he would have been overthrowing himself. 

The conspiracy theory about Italian military satellites is not new. In 2021, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows directed both the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense to look into the matter.

As documented in my 2021 book, “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show,” the conspiracy theory was brought to the White House by a woman who went by several aliases including “The Heiress” and was known at the Pentagon for her claimed ties to Somali pirates. She passed her material off to a national security council official at a supermarket parking lot in Arlington. 

The Italian spy satellite theory was just one of many unsubstantiated allegations made about the 2020 election by Trump and his supporters. At a Trump campaign press conference in November 2020, lawyer Sydney Powell infamously claimed that voting machines had been rigged using software that was “created at the direction of Hugo Chavez.” This was an especially extravagant claim because Chavez, the former leader of Venezuela, had died three years earlier. 

In 2023, Powell pleaded guilty to state charges of conspiracy to commit “intentional interference with performance of election duties” in Georgia and agreed to serve six years of probation and to pay a $6,000 fine.  

And now it appears that Sidney Powell is back. In a post on X Thursday morning, DOJ official Ed Martin posted a picture of himself with Powell, writing, “Good morning, America. How are ya’?”

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(MINNEAPOLIS) — The man who was arrested after charging at Rep. Ilhan Omar during a town hall in Minneapolis has been charged by the Justice Department with assaulting a federal representative, a complaint shows.

Anthony Kazmierczak, 55, has been charged with “forcibly assaulted, opposed, impeded, intimidated and officer and employee of the United States,” according to the federal complaint.

He allegedly had a syringe filled with apple cider vinegar when he charged at Omar while she stood at a podium on Tuesday, according to the affidavit.

“I squirted vinegar,” he allegedly said after being tackled by security, according to the affidavit, which included an image of the syringe.

At the time of the incident, Omar was talking about how Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem should resign.

“She’s not resigning. You’re splitting Minnesotans apart,” Kazmierczak allegedly said as he was being led away, according to the affidavit.

He was arrested and initially booked into Hennepin County Jail on suspicion of third-degree assault, Minneapolis police said Tuesday.

A “close associate” of the suspect told the FBI that several years ago, Kazmierczak allegedly said, “Someone should kill that b****,” while talking about Omar during a phone call, according to the affidavit.

After the incident, Omar told reporters that she won’t be intimidated.  

“You know, I’ve survived more, and I’m definitely going to survive intimidation and whatever these people think that they can throw at me because I’m built that way,” she said.

Tuesday’s attack came amid tensions in Minneapolis between local officials and the Trump administration over the immigration crackdown in the city that has seen two U.S. citizens killed in shootings involving federal law enforcement.

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(WASHINGTON) — In the hours after FBI agents seized 2020 election ballots from an elections facility in Georgia on Wednesday, President Donald Trump posted a series of thoroughly discredited conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election — and the 2016 election too.

Fulton County officials said Wednesday that the FBI seized original 2020 voting records while serving a search warrant at the county’s Elections Hub and Operations Center. The FBI said they were conducting court-authorized activity at the facility, but said they would provide no further information.

Late Wednesday night, the president reposted to his social media platform a claim that Italian military satellites had been used to hack into U.S. voting machines to flip votes from Trump to Joe Biden.  

“China reportedly coordinated the whole operation,” the post reads. “The CIA oversaw it, the FBI covered it up, all to install Biden as a puppet.”

That was just one of a flurry of posts and reposts by Trump making discredited claims about the 2020 election, directly tying the allegations to the FBI’s seizure of ballots on Wednesday.  

“This is only the beginning,” Trump said, reposting other posts about the FBI’s action in Georgia. “Prosecutions are coming.”

The development comes after Trump has repeatedly made baseless claims that there was voter fraud in the 2020 election, specifically in Georgia, that contributed to his election loss. Georgia officials audited and certified the results following the election, and numerous lawsuits challenging the election results in the state were rejected by the courts.

Among the statements posted and reposted by Trump following the FBI’s actions in Georgia is one on the 2016 election that falsely claims that “Barack Hussein Obama” falsified intelligence and “conspired with foreign powers, not one, not two, not three, but four times to overthrow the United States government in 2016.”

In addition to being baseless, the claim ignores the fact that Obama was president in 2016, so if he tried to overthrow the government, he would have been overthrowing himself.

The conspiracy theory about Italian military satellites is not new. In 2021, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows directed both the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense to look into the matter.

As documented in my 2021 book, “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show,” the conspiracy theory was brought to the White House by a woman who went by several aliases including “The Heiress” and was known at the Pentagon for her claimed ties to Somali pirates. She passed her material off to a national security council official at a supermarket parking lot in Arlington.

The Italian spy satellite theory was just one of many unsubstantiated allegations made about the 2020 election by Trump and his supporters. At a Trump campaign press conference in November 2020, lawyer Sydney Powell infamously claimed that voting machines had been rigged using software that was “created at the direction of Hugo Chavez.” This was an especially extravagant claim because Chavez, the former leader of Venezuela, had died three years earlier.

In 2023, Powell pleaded guilty to state charges of conspiracy to commit “intentional interference with performance of election duties” in Georgia and agreed to serve six years of probation and to pay a $6,000 fine.  

And now it appears that Sidney Powell is back. In a post on X Thursday morning, DOJ official Ed Martin posted a picture of himself with Powell, writing, “Good morning, America. How are ya’?”

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