Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa has died, GOP leaders say

(NEW YORK) — The No. 2 official in the Justice Department told ABC News in an interview Friday that there has been “no effort” to redact President Donald Trump’s name from the release of files stemming from federal investigations into convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche was asked Friday in an interview by ABC News Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas whether every document that mentions Trump will be released as the government continues its rollout of hundreds of thousands of files in the coming weeks.

“Assuming it’s consistent with the law, yes,” Blanche said. “So there’s no effort to hold anything back because there’s the name Donald J. Trump or anybody else’s name, Bill Clinton’s name, Reid Hoffman’s name. There’s no effort to hold back or not hold back because of that and — and so — but again, we’re not, we’re not redacting the names of famous men and women that are associated with Epstein.” 

When directly pressed over whether there’s been any order to DOJ  personnel to redact materials involving Trump, Blanche rejected any such suggestion and accused Democratic lawmakers of using selective disclosures from Epstein’s estate to present Trump in a negative light.  

“President Trump has certainly said from the beginning that he expects all files that can be released to be released and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Blanche said. 

Blanche sat for the interview just hours before the department released its first tranche of thousands of files, which contained little information related to Trump and instead included images of former President Bill Clinton without context, which were highlighted on social media by DOJ and White House officials.

A spokesperson for Clinton accused the department of selectively disclosing the pictures in a statement and denied that they showed any wrongdoing by the former president.

“The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday only to protect Bill Clinton,” Clinton’s spokesperson Angel Urena said Friday. “They can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton.”

“Everyone, especially MAGA, expects answers, not scapegoats,” the spokesperson said.

In the ABC News interview, Blanche further sought to defend the department’s decision not to release the entirety of its files subject to disclosure under the bill signed into law by Trump, which gave the Justice Department a 30-day deadline to release the entirety of its Epstein investigative files. 

“I did not say that all the files will not be released, I said all the files will not be released today,” Blanche said when asked about an interview he gave earlier Friday to Fox News. “And the law is very specific that the Department of Justice is required to make sure that we protect victims. And as recently as Wednesday, we learned of additional victim names, and so we’ve received over 1,200 names of victims and their family members since we started this process. And so there’s an established precedent that in a situation like this, where it’s in essence impossible for us to comply with the law today, that we comply with the law, consistent with the law.”

When asked whether the public should be confident that Blanche, who previously served as Trump’s personal defense attorney, would act in the public’s interest over Trump, Blanche said the American people should look at what the department ultimately releases.

“Your confidence should be in the fact that for decades, lots of people have been trying to go after President Trump falsely, and when it came to the Epstein saga, it’s exactly the same story.”  

Blanche added that the process to make redactions to the documents, “was not Attorney General [Pam] Bondi, [FBI] Director Patel, Todd Blanche going through and coding millions of documents and saying, ‘yes, no, yes, no.’ You have multiple, dozens and dozens of the most highly trained lawyers in the Department of Justice working for the National Security Division. These are career lawyers engaged in this process.”

Blanche defends prison transfer of Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell  

In the interview, Blanche also defended the department’s controversial move over the summer to transfer Epstein’s convicted associate Ghislaine Maxwell to a lower security prison facility just days after he sat for an interview with her over two days in Florida.

In an interview released by Vanity Fair earlier this week, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles denied that Trump was involved in the decision and said he disapproved of Maxwell’s transfer. 

While Blanche said he was “not permitted” to talk about security for individual inmates, he said Maxwell was facing “multiple threats” that warranted her being moved to a separate low-security facility in Texas.

“At the time that she was moved, there were multiple threats against her life, and like happens all the time at the Bureau of Prisons when that happens, one of the things that one of the options available to the warden and the security system within the Bureau of Prisons is to move the inmate,” Blanche said. “She’s not released. She’s in federal prison.”

Blanche further denied Maxwell was receiving any preferential treatment in the new facility, despite recent whistleblower disclosures released by congressional Democrats. 

 Blanche says investigations into Comey, James will continue

ABC News separately asked Blanche whether the department plans to continue pursuing prosecutions against two of Trump’s top political targets, New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey after a federal judge tossed their indictments in November on the basis that a Trump-installed prosecutor was unlawfully appointed. 

 Two separate federal grand juries in the past two weeks have rejected the department’s efforts to re-indict James on mortgage fraud charges and a separate federal judge in Washington, D.C., has restricted prosecutors from accessing key evidence in their probe of Comey.

Blanche confirmed the department’s investigation into Comey “is continuing” and said it was “not a mystery” that DOJ plans to still seek charges against him and rejected any suggestion the prosecution was “vindictive.”

James and Comey have denied all wrongdoing.

When asked about the interview that Wiles, the White House chief of staff, gave to Vanity Fair in which she candidly appeared to concede the DOJ’s prosecution of James was “retribution,” Blanche again defended the department’s actions.

“Because we’re looking at the evidence, we’re investigating them, investigating the cases. We have law enforcement, career law enforcement, doing the investigations are being presented to a grand jury in the normal course,” Blanche said.

ABC News has previously reported that career prosecutors on both the James and Comey investigations recommended prosecutors not pursue  either indictment based on what they considered the lack of sufficient evidence to secure a conviction.

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(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled Saturday mostly in favor of Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, in her effort to obtain more details about the planned closure and renovation of the Kennedy Center, which is set for a board vote at the White House on Monday.

Judge Christopher Cooper also ruled that as a trustee, Beatty must be afforded a “meaningful opportunity to provide input” and not be “categorically barred” from speaking at the meeting, which President Donald Trump is set to chair.

But Cooper stopped short of requiring at this stage that Beatty be permitted to cast a vote as a trustee, saying that is a “trickier question” with no clearcut answers.

“As the foregoing facts suggest, a project of this salience and magnitude—which threatens to involve at least some demolition and reconstruction of a major national memorial and active performing arts theater—does not happen overnight,” Cooper said in his ruling.

The judge directed the government to provide Beatty with materials on the project ahead of the Monday meeting.

“The government’s assertion, both in its briefing and at the hearing, that such information is ‘preliminary’ and not yet sufficiently ‘finalized’ to share with the full slate of decisionmakers—just four days before the Board is set to vote on a complete, two-year closure of the Center they are statutorily charged with overseeing—borders on preposterous,” Cooper said.

Beatty’s pending lawsuit challenges the renaming of the Kennedy Center to the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, as well as the pending closure and renovations. Cooper said the court will address those issues at a later date.

“No president has the authority to shut Congress out of the governance of the Kennedy Center, much less unilaterally rename or demolish it,” Beatty said in a statement Saturday. “We will not stand by while an important part of our national heritage is jeopardized, and I intend to make that clear at next week’s board meeting.”

The White House didn’t immediately have a comment about the ruling.

Asked for comment on the lawsuit previously, White House spokesperson Liz Huston told ABC News in a statement that the Kennedy Center’s board voted to rename it after Trump “stepped up and saved the old Kennedy Center.”

As for whether a sitting member of the House who serves on the Kennedy Center board as a function of her office can vote, Judge Cooper said that the legal argument in Beatty’s favor is strong, but how the board has operated in practice in that respect is not clear.

Some veterans of the Kennedy Center recalled ex-officio members of the board voting, while others say they never observed that.

The board approved a bylaws change last May to delineate presidentially-appointed general trustees from “nonvoting” ex-officio members.

“Though the Court thinks that Beatty has the better statutory argument as to both participation and the right to vote, her battle for emergency relief on these fronts is not yet won,” Cooper ruled. 

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(HARRISBURG, Pa.) — Editor’s note: The story’s headline has been updated. 

In the wake of the firebombing of his official residence earlier this year, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is now facing questions about how he is spending tax dollars on security improvements for his private home.

A GOP-led committee in the state legislature voted Tuesday to issue three subpoenas seeking records related to, among other things, roughly $1 million in security upgrades to his personal home in the suburbs of Philadelphia. The Intergovernmental Operations Committee is also seeking documents concerning “several charter flights arranged for the Governor’s Office” in mid-January. 

The three subpoenas will be sent to the Pennsylvania State Police, the open records officer in the local township of Shapiro’s private residence and the charter flight company. They have until Jan. 16, 2026, to comply. 

In a statement to ABC News, a spokesperson for the governor called the move a “partisan attack” and said they’ve already provided some information.

“The Pennsylvania State Police and independent security experts conducted thorough reviews to pinpoint security failures, review protocols, identify gaps, and make concrete recommendations for improvements to the Governor’s security. As a direct result of those recommendations, security improvements have been put in place to keep the Governor and his family safe,” the spokesperson said. “The Shapiro Administration has repeatedly responded to lawmakers’ inquiries on this matter and publicly released a substantial amount of information about the security improvements put in place by PSP without compromising those security protocols.”

The Democratic governor is among several contenders rumored for his party’s presidential nomination in 2028. As his political star has risen, so too have the threats against him and other high-profile figures. 

The security improvements were recommended following the arson attack on the official governor’s residence in Harrisburg in April.

The attack occurred in the middle of the night, hours after the Shapiro family hosted more than two dozen people for the first night of Passover. Some Republicans in the legislature have said that while proper protections are appropriate — particularly amid rising political violence — they charge the governor has not been transparent. 

“No one disputes that the governor should have reasonable and appropriate security protection or that the governor should have access to transportation for reasonable and appropriate travel associated with this role,” state Sen. Jarrett Coleman, chairman of the Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee, told the committee as he made a motion to authorize the subpoenas. “But no administration — Republican or Democrat — should be allowed to operate in the shadows and refuse to provide basic data about their decisions when millions of dollars of taxpayer funds are involved and precedents are being set.”

The subpoenas were authorized on party-line votes of 7-4. Committee Democrats objected to the formal requests for records, Sen. Jay Costa dubbing it a “fishing expedition.” 

The subpoenas seek, among other things, records from the Pennsylvania State Police related to “any construction, landscaping/hardscaping, equipment and installation” as well as related legal services at the governor’s private family home, as well as police body camera footage from the grounds between Sept. 20, 2025, and Nov. 19, 2025.

They also seek texts, emails, and other communications between the State Police, the construction services and the local township related to the upgrade work that could shed light on how decisions were made about the upgrades.

They also seek records and correspondence from the township, including communications between the local zoning officer and Shapiro or his wife.

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