Supreme Court allows Trump administration to use citizenship database ahead of midterms
President Donald Trump looks on as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks to reporters following their meeting at Gracie Mansion on September 21, 2026, in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court has given the Trump administration a green light to use a federal citizenship database to verify voters ahead of the midterm elections.
In a 6-3 opinion, the Supreme Court, for now, lifted a lower court order that blocked the Department of Homeland Security from expanding a 40-year-old immigration database — known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system — to help states screen voter records for noncitizens.
The immediate impact of the ruling is unclear, since states are prohibited by law from purging their voter rolls within 90 days of Election Day.
“The District Court’s order thus inhibits the Federal Government’s efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections. Under these circumstances, the equities weigh in favor of a stay,” the majority wrote.
President Donald Trump has characterized noncitizen voting as a pressing threat to free and fair elections, but audits of voter rolls have suggested that voting by noncitizens is exceedingly rare.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Former CEO of Apollo Global Management Leon Black arrives to testify at a closed-door interview with the House Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill on June 26, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Private equity billionaire Leon Black walked out of his transcribed interview with the House Oversight Committee regarding his decades-long relationship with Jeffrey Epstein after refusing to answer questions about nondisclosure agreements allegedly related to the disgraced sex offender, according to a transcript of the June 26 interview released by the committee Friday.
While he said he would be willing to talk about three women involved in lawsuits against him, Black repeatedly declined to answer questions about how many nondisclosure agreements he was involved in, citing the advice of his attorneys.
“I’m not here to talk about confidential NDAs,” Black said, later adding. “I’m not here to talk about who has NDAs.”
Black was issued two subpoenas after his refusals — one compelling him to participate in a deposition and another to turn over any NDAs. A House Oversight Committee spokesperson said Black’s attorney confirmed Black would appear for a deposition on Sept. 3, and he will turn over the NDAs sometime next week.
Black, who maintained a social relationship with Epstein since the mid-1990s and eventually paid him more than $170 million for “tax and estate planning advice,” according to the Senate Finance Committee, appeared before the Oversight panel as part of its ongoing probe into the government’s investigation of the convicted sex offender.
Black acknowledged that he discussed at least one nondisclosure agreement with Epstein, though he denied he sought Epstein’s advice on the matter. According to Black, he agreed to pay a woman with whom he had a six-year affair after she allegedly “blackmailed and extorted” him, ultimately agreeing to pay her more than $21 million over 15 years. Because Epstein was helping manage his finances, Black said he made Epstein aware of the agreement and payments.
“I don’t know whether he had any experience on NDAs. He was not my NDA adviser,” Black said of Epstein, according to the transcript.
Black was served the two subpoenas after he declined to answer broader questions about other alleged nondisclosure agreements. His lawyers argued that Black was not at liberty to discuss confidential agreements he was a party to, and called the subpoenas a stunt.
“Mr. Black came here voluntarily to assist the committee. This was nothing more than a planned political stunt,” said Black’s attorney Aaron Cutler. “Mr. Epstein had no involvement with any NDAs, whether they exist or not.”
Before the interview was cut short, Black faced questions about his decades-long relationship with Epstein, who he first began to see socially before hiring him to manage part of his estate. While Black acknowledged that he saw Epstein somewhat regularly — about once a month — he claimed they were not close friends.
“Friendship is an amorphous term. This is somebody who knew intimately the goings on in my family tax and estate planning entities. It’s also something where, as I mentioned, I’d go over and meet his friends. I know there are emails where he claims that we’re best friends. We were never best friends,” Black said, per the transcript.
Lawmakers pushed back when Black sought to distance himself from Epstein, including by asking about a message Black wrote for a book that Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime associate, created for Epstein’s 50th birthday. According to the Wall Street Journal, Black wrote a two-line poem — “Blonde, Red or Brunette, spread out geographically … with this net of fish, Jeff’s now ‘The Old Man and The Sea'” — which he signed “Love and kisses, Leon.”
Asked to explain the note, Black said he was referencing how Epstein “seemed to know women all over the world,” though he denied knowing any of the women were underage.
“He enjoyed the company of good-looking women, and he was a bachelor,” Black said, saying how Epstein’s surrounding himself with “mostly good-looking women” was “a little bit out of like a James Bond movie.”
The interview was cut short after the topic transitioned to nondisclosure agreements, and Black was not asked about the more than $158 he paid Epstein for “tax and estate planning advice.” During his opening remarks, Black claimed that he paid Epstein so much because he solved a “massive estate problem … that would have destroyed enormous value.” He denied that the money was related to any illegal activities.
“I have never paid Epstein for access to women. I was never blackmailed by Epstein. I was not involved with, and had no knowledge of, any of Epstein’s heinous conduct,” Black said, according to the transcript.
Lesley Groff (C), a former assistant to Jeffrey Epstein, arrives to testify at a closed-door interview with the House Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill on June 09, 2026, in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Lesley Groff, the former executive secretary of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, attempted to deflect any culpability in Epstein’s crimes, telling lawmakers that she routinely scheduled massages for her boss but never booked appointments for anyone she knew to be underage, according to a House Oversight Committee transcript released Tuesday.
“I never met these women, so I didn’t know if they were young or how old they were,” Groff said during her appearance earlier this month. “I thought that it was just something that he did, like going to the gym.”
Groff, who worked for Epstein in New York for more than 18 years, was previously described by her boss as an “extension of my brain.” She appeared as part of the committee’s ongoing inquiry into the federal government’s handling of investigations into Epstein and his alleged accomplices.
Once identified by federal prosecutors as a potential co-conspirator in Epstein’s crimes, Groff said she hoped her interview would “dispel the false notions” that she “knowingly enabled or conspired with him to commit his evil acts.”
Over the course of an eight-hour interview, Groff faced at times skeptical inquiries from committee members and staff, who questioned how she could have been unaware of Epstein’s predilection for sexualized massages, the transcript shows.
“You want us to believe that after 18 years working in the employ of Mr. Jeffrey Epstein that not on one occasion did you believe that any of your contacts in setting up these appointments with Jeffrey Epstein were either a minor or an underage person, correct?” asked Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill.
“Ms. Groff, do you think that a 14-year-old sounds the same as a person in their 20s or 30s or 40s?” asked an attorney for the committee.
“It’s possible. I don’t know. I was not evaluating voices,” Groff replied. “Nobody ever sounded like they were underage.”
Groff, now 59, appeared voluntarily for the interview, which was not under oath and not recorded. It marks the first time she has faced questions since speaking to the FBI in New York in 2021, two years after Epstein’s death. Later that year, prosecutors informed her that she would not be charged, according to her attorneys.
Groff told the committee that she was hired by Epstein in 2001 and was immediately “astonished by the truly impressive people in his circle,” including past presidents, actors, musicians and scientists.
“I actually felt lucky to have found such an amazing job. I was thrust into the lifestyles of the rich and famous,” she said in her prepared opening remarks.
She said Epstein’s directive for daily massages was a “very small part” of her duties in coordinating Epstein’s schedule. From the moment she was hired, Epstein and his then-partner Ghislaine Maxwell “established guardrails” and made it clear that she was never to associate with their friends.
“Their business was none of my business,” she said she was told.
When Epstein came under law enforcement scrutiny in Florida in the mid-2000s — first by the Palm Beach police and later by the FBI — Groff said he told her he had been set up for blackmail by a girl who lied about her age.
“It was a shakedown, he claimed, for money,” Groff said. “At the time, I actually felt sorry for him. I thought, ‘Wow, this must be really difficult to be a wealthy person and not know who you can trust because everybody wants your money.'”
Groff said she first learned of the criminal investigation when the FBI showed up at her home in Connecticut in 2007.
“I let them in my house and sat with them on my sofa, and they started asking me some questions. That’s how I found out,” she said. “I think my head was probably spinning. I had no idea.”
Groff told the committee she excused herself to check on her son and then called Epstein’s in-house lawyer about the FBI visit. She said she was advised not to talk to the agents without a lawyer.
“And so I went downstairs and said, ‘I don’t think I should be speaking to you without an attorney present.’ And they didn’t really like that, and then they left,” she said.
Groff said that after Epstein went to jail in 2008, she considered resigning. She stayed, she said, because she “actually believed he had been set up” and because she saw that the “same VIP’s continued to surround” him after his conviction.
“I looked around the office and I felt people smarter than me were still there and stayed there. All his contacts and business people, no one left,” she said, according to the transcript.
After Epstein’s arrest in July 2019, federal prosecutors in New York included Groff in a list of potential co-conspirators and sent her a subpoena. Her attorney informed the government, just four days after Epstein’s arrest, that Groff “would invoke her Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination” if called to appear before a grand jury, according to DOJ records released in response to the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Prosecutors informed Groff’s lawyer that “numerous victims [of Epstein] had indicated that she was responsible for scheduling massages during which they were sexually abused,” and that she should consider cooperating with the investigation, according to the DOJ records.
Groff eventually interviewed with the investigators two years later, telling prosecutors that “making massage appointments was just another appointment she had to make” for Epstein.
The DOJ files also include an account from a witness — who was a minor at the time of her alleged abuse by Epstein — who told the FBI that she felt Groff “knew that the massage appointments were sexual” and “felt it was pretty obvious Lesley knew what was going on.” The witness also alleged that she explicitly told Groff she was not 18 years old and needed money for an abortion, according to the FBI report.
Asked by a committee attorney about those allegations, Groff said she felt “terrible for this survivor” but contended the witness’s recollections were inaccurate.
“I’m not saying that what she’s thinking — that she told someone — but she did not tell me,” Groff said. “I think she is mistaken. I know she is mistaken.”
Groff said that after Epstein was released from jail in 2010, she was never again asked to book a massage appointment for him. She acknowledged she booked travel — at Epstein’s direction — for women who would later allege to have been sexually exploited. But she contended she had no reason to think the women were being abused.
“I believed them to be traveling assistants, and none of them ever looked unhappy or under duress,” she said. “In hindsight, it’s terrible, I can’t imagine what they were going through.”
She said she was not alarmed by now-public email messages from Epstein’s associates sharing photographs and information about foreign women — because of Epstein’s connections in the modeling and fashion industries. She conceded that some of the emails released by the Justice Department appear alarming in retrospect, but insisted she had no reason to be concerned at the time.
“I did not know that this was occurring. I never saw anything inappropriate,” she said. “Everything to me — that I was doing, I feel like now, looking through a dirty lens, things look dirty. But at this time, I was unaware of anything that was going on.”
Groff said that since Epstein’s arrest in 2019, she has struggled to sleep and eat, been the target of harassment and death threats, and been “shunned” by many of her friends and acquaintances.
She was one of four women listed as potential co-conspirators in Epstein’s controversial non-prosecution agreement in 2007, which she said, “remains her scarlet letter.”
Construction at the future site of a helipad and ballroom on the South Lawn of the White House on July 3, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Finn Gomez/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — A federal appeals court has issued a ruling blocking the construction of President Donald Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom, concluding that congressional approval is needed for the project.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
