Overview
- President Trump sued the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones and Rupert Murdoch for at least $10 billion in defamation over a WSJ report that he sent a 2003 birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein containing a lewd sketch.
- Justice Minister Pam Bondi has formally requested a judge to unseal key grand jury transcripts from the 2019 Epstein indictment, with redactions of victim and personal identifying details expected.
- An internal FBI review reportedly shifted into “absolute panic mode,” assigning roughly 1,000 agents to log every mention of President Trump across about 100,000 Epstein-related files.
- A former Epstein staffer told the FBI that Trump harassed her in a 1995 Mar-a-Lago elevator incident and suggested she was underage, heightening questions about what the sealed transcripts may disclose.
- The White House barred the Wall Street Journal from Trump’s upcoming Scotland trip and the president circulated a deepfake video of Barack Obama’s arrest, moves critics say are meant to divert attention from the Epstein records battle.