GOP-led House Oversight Committee expected to receive Epstein estate documents on Monday
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(WASHINGTON) — The GOP-led House Oversight Committee is expected to receive documents and communications from the Jeffrey Epstein estate on Monday.
The committee issued a subpoena in late August for information from the estate, which includes a copy of the alleged “birthday book” compiled for the disgraced financier’s 50th birthday. The committee requested a delivery of the documents — which includes banking and financial records, flights logs and calendars — on or before Sept. 8, 2025.
“It is our understanding that the Estate of Jeffrey Epstein is in custody and control of documents that may further the Committee’s investigation and legislative goals. Further, it is our understanding the Estate is ready and willing to provide these documents to the Committee pursuant to a subpoena,” Chairman James Comer said in a statement on Aug. 25.
The alleged “birthday book” was compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003, and the Wall Street Journal reported contains a “bawdy” letter from President Donald Trump.
The estate’s lawyers have said they will comply with all legal process, but have not said if they have the book.
Trump has denied the existence of the letter and filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal. ABC News has not been able to confirm the existence of the letter.
Dow Jones, the parent company of the newspaper, said in a statement that it has “full confidence in the rigor and accuracy” of its reporting and “will vigorously defend against any lawsuit.”
Epstein’s former associate Ghislaine Maxwell told a top official for the Justice Department that Epstein asked her to coordinate contributions to his 50th birthday book, but said she could not recall if Trump, then a private citizen, was among those who responded, according to a transcript of Maxwell’s interview last month with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. In that interview, Maxwell continued to profess her innocence.
Maxwell was convicted in 2021 by a federal jury on sex trafficking and other charges. She is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for aiding and participating in Epstein’s trafficking of underage girls, which involved a scheme to recruit young women and girls for massages of Epstein that turned sexual. Federal prosecutors in New York said Maxwell helped Epstein recruit, groom and ultimately abuse girls as young as 14.
Epstein was arrested in July 2019 and charged in a federal indictment with conspiracy and child sex trafficking. He died in custody a month later, while awaiting trial. His death was ruled a suicide by hanging.
Although the documents are expected to be turned over to the committee on Monday, it may not mean the committee will release anything to the public on the same day.
Last week, the House Oversight Committee released tens of thousands of pages of documents related to Epstein, much of which was already publicly known.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump’s attempt to ensure his pick remains in charge of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey has taken a new twist.
On Thursday, one day before Alina Habba’s tenure as the Interim United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey was set to expire, the White House withdrew her nomination for the post.
Habba then announced on social media that she is now the Acting United States Attorney, seemingly restarting the clock on what is usually a 120-day temporary term. Trump first appointed Habba as the state’s interim U.S. attorney in March.
“I don’t cower to pressure. I don’t answer to politics. This is a fight for justice. And I’m all in,” Habba wrote on social media.
The unorthodox legal maneuver appears to end a stalemate that began when federal judges in New Jersey selected Desiree Leigh Grace, an experienced federal prosecutor, over Habba, the president’s former personal attorney and choice to lead the office. The Department of Justice quickly stated that it fired Grace, leaving unclear who would take over the office.
In a social media post, Grace stated that she would still be willing to lead the office “in accordance with the law.”
“The District Judges for the District of New Jersey selected me to serve as the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey. It will forever be the greatest honor that they selected me on merit, and I’m prepared to follow that Order and begin to serve in accordance with the law,” she wrote.
The Trump administration’s move to pull Habba’s nomination and then install her in an acting capacity appears to take advantage of a section of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which allows an acting officer to serve in a position for no more than 210 days if no one is nominated to the position.
(WASHINGTON) — Over the past six months, Vice President JD Vance has shown how much of a key player he has become in the Trump administration, serving as the president’s most prominent advocate and advancing his agenda.
The latest example came this week, when Vance helped push President Donald Trump’s massive tax and spending bill through Congress.
Vance held a series of meetings with conservative and moderate holdouts and Senate leadership last Saturday to help move the bill forward. A source with direct knowledge stated that Vance played a key role in talking with Senate holdouts throughout the bill before he ended up casting several tie-breaking votes as president of the Senate and move the spending bill along to the House.
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who had been critical of the bill’s cuts to Medicaid and SNAP — the food assistance program — met with Vance, where he thanked her for being a team player despite her concerns with the legislation, just before she voted for the bill.
During the sprint to push the bill through, Vance was criticized for his social post around concerns of the bill’s impact on Medicaid, writing that “the minutiae of the Medicaid policy—is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.”
During all this, Vance was making phone calls to Trump and the two were updating each other on their talks with senators ahead of the bill’s passage.
The vice president attended Wednesday’s meeting at the White House between Trump and several holdouts from the House as the president ramped up the pressure to vote for the bill.
North Carolina GOP Rep. Greg Murphy, who had told reporters on Wednesday night that he was still undecided because of some of the health care provisions, said Thursday that he ultimately decided to support the package after speaking on the phone to Vance and the president.
“I needed assurances,” he said.
A source close to Vance said that he continued to work the phones ahead of the floor vote on the rule, calling multiple House GOP holdouts to make the administration’s case for them to support the bill.
However, it’s not just on the domestic policy front that Vance is having an impact. He has also been critical in supporting Trump’s foreign policy.
While Trump was weighing the decision to strike Iran’s nuclear sites, Vance came to the president’s defense after supporters like Tucker Carlson and those in the MAGA base were outspoken against the U.S. getting involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran.
“He may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian enrichment. That decision ultimately belongs to the president,” Vance wrote on X. “And of course, people are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy. But I believe the president has earned some trust on this issue. And having seen this up close and personal, I can assure you that he is only interested in using the American military to accomplish American people’s goals. Whatever he does, that is his focus.”
Vance’s comments were a departure from his prior statements that the U.S. should not get entangled in foreign conflicts.
A prime example is the vice president’s opposition to the U.S. providing more aid to Ukraine.
“I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” Vance said in February 2022, amid an explosion of bipartisan support for the country following the aftermath of Russia’s invasion.
Most recently, Vance expressed concerns about the president’s decision to strike the Houthis in Yemen in a Signal group chat with other top administration officials.
“I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now,” Vance wrote in the chat. “There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”
In the lead-up to the strikes, Trump was trying to engage the MAGA base with Vance to see what their reaction would be if he ordered the bombing.
Prior to the strikes, Trump told reporters on Air Force One while flying back from the G7 summit in Canada that it was possible he could send Vance and special envoy Steve Witkoff to meet with Iranian negotiators.
Vance’s active role in moving Trump’s agenda forward was always part of the plan.
In November, following the election, a source close to the vice president told ABC News that Vance had been tasked to ensure that all of the priorities of the Trump administration move forward and would work on any of the issues Trump needed him to further, signaling that the vice president would not be assigned one specific issue to work on, but would be involved in several policy issues.
It was also expected that Vance would be Trump’s “eyes and ears” in the Senate to ensure that his agenda moves forward, the source also said. It’s familiar territory for Vance, who was elected to the Senate in 2022.
All this comes as Vance is viewed by some as the MAGA heir apparent to Trump ahead of the 2028 election. At the same time, he is working to raise as much money as possible for Republicans ahead of the 2026 midterms as chair of the Republican National Committee — the first time a vice president has ever held the role.
Joel Goldstein, a vice-presidential scholar and former professor at Saint Louis University Law School, told ABC News that Vance is working in a different timeline compared to his predecessors, as he will serve only one term as vice president under Trump.
“Every vice presidency is different and one of the things that is unique about Vance’s is that every other vice president, you know, with the possible exception of Harris, entered office with the expectation that the president was going to run for reelection,” Goldstein said.
“I think he’s in a very unique position in that his first term as vice president is his last, and so his presidential ambitions, the time for reckoning comes up, you know, much quicker than is normally the case.”
Following his tie-breaking votes in the Senate, several Democrats who might be opponents in the 2028 presidential election attempted to make Vance the face of Trump’s spending bill.
In a post on X, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg called out Vance for casting the tie-breaking vote to allow the bill to move forward.
“VP Vance has cast the deciding vote in the Senate to cut Medicaid, take away food assistance, blow up the deficit, and add tax breaks for the wealthiest,” Buttigieg wrote. “This bill is unpopular because it is wrong,” he continued.
California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom told Americans on X to “bookmark” this moment, writing that “JD Vance is the ultimate reason why 17 million Americans will lose their healthcare.”
In an interview with NBC News, Trump pointed to Vance and Secretary of State and interim national security adviser Marco Rubio as possible successors, and said, when asked, that he believes his MAGA movement can survive without him.
Asked about the president’s comments, Vance said that if he does end up running for president, he’s “not entitled to it.”
(NEW YORK) — Just over a year after Donald Trump became the first former president to be found guilty of a felony, an appeals court is set to hear the president’s bid to move his case to federal court.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit has scheduled oral arguments Wednesday to consider whether to move the president’s criminal hush money case from state to federal court.
Trump was found guilty last year on 34 felony counts after Manhattan prosecutors alleged that he engaged in a “scheme” to boost his chances during the 2016 presidential election through a series of hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, and then falsified New York business records to cover up that alleged criminal conduct.
Trump’s lawyers have argued that the conduct at issue during his criminal trial included “official acts” undertaken while he was president, giving the president broad immunity for his actions and the right to remove the case to federal court. They say that the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling last year granting the president immunity for official acts — which was decided after Trump was convicted in May — would have prevented prosecutors from securing their conviction.
“The fact that it was not until after the conclusion of his state criminal trial that the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision defining the contours of presidential immunity — including a broad evidentiary immunity prohibiting prosecutors from inviting a jury to probe a President’s official acts, as President Trump’s removal notice alleges occurred here — supplies good cause for post-trial removal,” Department of Justice lawyers argued in an amicus brief filed with the court.
Trump decried the prosecution as politically motivated and successfully delayed his sentencing multiple times before New York Judge Juan Merchan, on the eve of Trump’s inauguration, sentenced the former president to an unconditional discharge — the lightest possible punishment allowed under New York state law — saying it was the “only lawful sentence” to prevent “encroaching upon the highest office in the land.”
“I did my job, and we did our job,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the case, said following Trump’s conviction. “There are many voices out there, but the only voice that matters is the voice of the jury, and the jury has spoken.”
Bragg has pushed back on Trump’s attempt to remove the case from state court, arguing that a case cannot be moved to federal court after sentencing.
“These arguments ignore statutory indicia that Congress intended for removal of criminal cases to happen before sentencing by anticipating that essential federal proceedings will take place prior to a final criminal judgment,” prosecutors have argued.
Trump’s appeal will be heard by a panel of three federal judges, each of whom was nominated to the bench by Democratic presidents.
With Trump’s former defense attorneys now serving top roles at the Department of Justice, the president will now be represented by former Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall of the elite law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. In an usual step, lawyers with the Department of Justice filed an amicus brief in support of Trump’s request.
“The United States has a strong and direct interest in the issues presented in this appeal,” they argued.
If the appeals court grants Trump’s request, his conviction would still remain. The only change is that his appeal will play out in a federal, rather than state, courtroom.
In either scenario, Trump could ultimately ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. Moving the case into federal court could also open up the possibility that Trump could potentially pardon himself.
