Ghislaine Maxwell transcripts: Epstein associate says she ‘never’ saw Trump receive a massage – live

The transcripts are more than 300 pages, but here it goes …

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  Blanche said, on record, that their conversation wasn’t “promising to do anything” for Maxwell. But that anything she said couldn’t be used against her, unless she provided false statements or there was a retrial in her case.

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  According to Maxwell, Epstein didn’t have any video or photographic evidence of any high-profile individuals committing sexual offences. And to that point, Maxwell said she didn’t hear or witness any instances of Epstein blackmailing powerful people.

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  Maxwell recruited a number of masseuses for Epstein but “never checked their age or credentials”. She added that, throughout her time with Epstein, she never heard any examples of “sexually inappropriate contact” between Epstein’s guests and in-house masseuses.

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  Despite her claims that Epstein didn’t extort anyone, Maxwell does not believe that Epstein died by suicide. She chalked that up to “mismanagement” at the bureau of prisons.

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  In the interview Maxwell said she does believe that Epstein “did a lot of, not all, but some of what he’s accused of”. But she maintains that “he became that man over a period of time”.

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  Maxwell said that she “never” saw Donald Trump receive a massage. She also said that she “never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way,” adding that he was “a gentleman in all respects” whenever she saw the president.

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  Maxwell also didn’t recall former president Bill Clinton receiving a massage while travelling with Epstein.

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  One notable point is that Maxwell denied ever recruiting masseuses from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. “I’ve never recruited a masseuse from Mar-a-Lago for that, as far as I remember. I can’t ever recollect doing that,” she told Todd Blanche. A reminder that Trump claimed his falling out with Jeffrey Epstein stemmed from the convicted sex offender’s efforts to hire workers away from Trump’s Florida club.

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  Maxwell did not remember whether Trump submitted a letter for Epstein’s 50th birthday album, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. She also couldn’t remember asking Trump to contribute.

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In Ghislaine Maxwell’s first interview with deputy attorney general Todd Blanche, on 24 July, she said that she “may have met” Donald Trump in 1990, before meeting Jeffrey Epstein.

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Maxwell went on to describe the relationship between the president and Epstein as “friendly”, although she didn’t know how the two men met or how they became friends.

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She added that she “never” saw the president receive a massage:

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I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting. I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way. The president was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.

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Maxwell also contested Trump’s claims she recruited masseuses from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. “I’ve never recruited a masseuse from Mar-a-Lago for that, as far as I remember. I can’t ever recollect doing that,” she said in the interview with Blanche.

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A reminder that the president said in July that his falling out with Jeffrey Epstein stemmed from the convicted sex offender’s efforts to hire workers away from Trump’s Florida club. “People were taken out of the spa, hired by him, in other words, gone,” the president said.

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The Department of Justice has released the transcripts and audio recordings of the interviews between Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of child sex-offender Jefrrey Epstein, and the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche.

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The interviews between Blanche and Maxwell took place on 24 and 25 July 2025, with her legal representatives present. Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking.

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The justice department will also send the first tranche of records from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation to the House oversight committee, after receiving a subpoena for the files. Earlier this week, the committee chair, Representative James Comer, a Republican, said that his aim is to make the files public – while protecting the safety and identities of the victims.

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A court has ordered the release of Kilmar Ábrego García from criminal custody in Tennessee.

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On Friday, magistrate judge Barbara Holmes issued an order allowing the Maryland father of two to leave custody for the first time since his return to the US in June, after his wrongful deportation to El Salvador earlier this year.

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The 30-year-old was initially wrongfully deported by federal immigration officials in March. According to the Trump administration, Ábrego was affiliated with the MS-13 gang, a claim Ábrego and his family vehemently deny.

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During his detention at El Salvador’s so-called Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), Ábrego was physically and psychologically tortured, according to court documents filed by his lawyers in July.

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Following Ábrego’s wrongful deportation, the Trump administration faced widespread pressure to return him back to the US, including from a supreme court order that directed federal officials to “facilitate” his return.

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In June, the Trump administration returned Ábrego from El Salvador, only to hit him with a slew of human smuggling charges, which his lawyers have rejected as “preposterous”. His criminal trial is expected to begin in January.

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Ábrego García.”,”caption”:”Kilmar Ábrego García.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Abrego Garcia Family/Reuters”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1755887645000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”19.34 BST”,”blockLastUpdated”:1755888276000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”19.44 BST”,”blockFirstPublished”:1755887899000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”19.38 BST”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”19.38″,”title”:”US court orders release of Kilmar Ábrego García from criminal custody”,”contributors”:[{“name”:”Maya Yang”}],”primaryDateLine”:”Fri 22 Aug 2025 22.54 BST”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Fri 22 Aug 2025 10.55 BST”},{“id”:”68a8ab348f080a6a4fa58f23″,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

The president just confirmed that he has spoken with the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the Senate majority leader, John Thune, about a plan to raise $2bn from Congress to help fund his ‘beautification’ plans for DC.

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“I think it’s going to be very easy to get it’s going to be not a lot of money. I wouldn’t even know where to spend the number that you mentioned, but it’s going to be money to beautify the city,” he said in response to a reporter’s question in the Oval Office.

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“I’m not a fan of John Bolton. I thought it was a sleazebag, actually, and he suffers major Trump derangement syndrome,” the president said, speaking about the raid on his former national security adviser’s home.

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Trump repeated that he tries to “stay out of that stuff”, and that when it came to the search of Bolton’s home, he “purposefully” didn’t want to get involved. “I saw that just like everybody else,” he added.

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The president then spent time talking about how he too was subjected to a raid, referring to the FBI search of the his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022 during an investigation into the handling of presidential and classified documents.

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“They went through everything you can imagine,” Trump said.

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The president just shared a picture of himself and Vladimir Putin at their summit last week in Alaska. Trump even hinted that Putin may attend the 2026 World Cup in the US.

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“I believe he will be coming, depending on what happens, he may be coming and he may not, depending on what happens,” he said.

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In between repeating baseless claims that DC crime data is “phoney”, and touting the work of the National Guard in the nation’s capital, the president says that he’s willing to bring in the “regular military” to the nation’s capital if needed.

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He also repeated his threats to send the military to cities in blue states, singling out Chicago today:

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n

Chicago is a mess. You have an incompetent mayor, grossly incompetent, and we’ll straighten that one out probably next. That’ll be our next one after this, and it won’t even be tough.

n

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The president is now speaking in the Oval Office, joined by JD Vance.

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He says that the 2026 World Cup draw will take place at the Kennedy Center on 5 December, which will determine the match schedule. The US is one of three host countries for the tournament.

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“This will drive more than $30bn in US economy and create 185,000 American jobs. No sporting event attracts more attention, or more fans, or anything else. I just look forward to the draw,” Trump said.

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The vice-president, JD Vance, has said that the FBI raid and investigation into former national security adviser John Bolton is not because he’s a critic of the president, according to an interview with NBC News.

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“We don’t think that we should throw people – even if they disagree with us politically, maybe especially if they disagree with us politically – you shouldn’t throw people willy-nilly in prison. You should let the law drive these determinations, and that’s what we’re doing,” Vance told NBC anchor Kristen Welker.

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  The FBI raided the home of Donald Trump’s former national security adviser turned critic John Bolton on Friday morning. A government source confirmed the raid to the Guardian, but didn’t provide additional details. The search of Bolton’s house in Maryland was part of an investigation involving the handling of classified documents, according to various reports. Bolton was not at home during the raid, and said he did not know it was happening, according to CNN. Agents later began a search of his DC office, a source told the outlet.

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  For his part, the president said that he wasn’t briefed on the raid when speaking to reporters earlier. He added that he expects more details to come from the justice department. “I’m not a fan of John Bolton. He’s a real sort of a lowlife,” Trump said of his one-time cabinet official turned adversary. “He’s not a smart guy. But he could be a very unpatriotic. I’m going to find out.”

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  The president also spent time extolling the fact there have been no murders in the nation’s capital in the last week.“That’s the first time in anybody’s memory that you haven’t had a murder in a week,” he said. However, the city last experienced no homicides (over a seven-day period) as recently as July this year, according to DC police data.

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  In that same impromptu press conference, Trump also said that he will fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook if she doesn’t resign, intensifying his effort to gain influence over the US central bank. At the same time, the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, nodded to a possible rate cut at the central bank’s September meeting. However, Powell stopped short of committing to cutting rates next month during a speech to policymakers and economists at the Fed’s annual Jackson Hole conference.

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  Meanwhile, beyond DC, the Texas senate has begun final deliberations to pass its redrawn congressional map. The plan, which is expected to pass this afternoon, could net five congressional seats for Republicans in 2026.

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The Texas senate has begun final deliberations to pass its redrawn congressional map. The plan, which is expected to pass this afternoon, would add as many as five congressional seats.

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The Texas house of representatives passed the measure earlier this week. Republicans currently represent 25 of Texas’s 38 congressional seats. They could win as many as 30 seats under the new plan.

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Speaking to reporters during a museum visit in Washington DC earlier this morning, Donald Trump said that he will fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook if she doesn’t resign, intensifying his effort to gain influence over the US central bank.

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What she did was bad. So I’ll fire her if she doesn’t resign.

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Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the Fed board, has said she had “no intention of being bullied to step down” after Trump on Wednesday called for her resignation on the basis of allegations about mortgages she holds in Michigan and Georgia.

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The Department of Justice is reported to have indicated it is investigating the allegations, with a top Trump official telling the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, that the case “requires further examination” – and calling on him to remove Cook from the board.

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“At this time, I encourage you to remove Ms Cook from your Board,” Ed Martin, the official, wrote in a letter, according to Bloomberg News. “Do it today before it is too late! After all, no American thinks it is appropriate that she serve during this time with a cloud hanging over her.”

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Cook is among three Fed governors appointed by former president Joe Biden whose terms extend beyond Trump’s time in office, complicating the president’s efforts to gain more control by appointing a majority of the seven-member board of governors.

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Two of the remaining six board members were appointed by Trump – governor Christopher Waller and vice-chair for supervision Michelle Bowman.

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The US deputy treasury secretary, Michael Faulkender, is leaving the Trump administration less than five months after being confirmed by the Senate, the treasury department said.

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Faulkender is the second Senate-confirmed official to leave the department this month, after the departure of IRS commissioner Billy Long, who said he was being tapped as ambassador to Iceland.

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The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, thanked Faulkender for his work at the department but gave no reason for his departure.

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Trump nominated Faulkender, a University of Maryland finance professor, in December to serve as the No 2 official at the treasury, where he had been assistant secretary of economic policy during Trump’s first term. He was confirmed by the Senate for the role on 26 March.

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At the end of the first Trump administration, Faulkender had returned to the University of Maryland’s Robert H Smith School of Business, where he has been a finance professor since 2008.

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He had also served as the chief economist for two years at the America First Policy Institute, a conservative thinktank that has helped shape Trump’s policy agenda.

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The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has repeatedly endorsed the Reformation Red Pill podcast, and has appeared on four episodes. But the former pastor who hosts the show, and who attends Hegseth’s theocratic church, has voiced a range of extreme positions in recent months on issues including Ice raids, capital punishment, the racist “great replacement” theory, adultery and neo-Nazism.

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The revelations come on top of recent media reports focused on Hegseth also boosting a video of Douglas Wilson and other Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC) pastors arguing that women should lose the vote in the United States. They also follow previous revelations about Hegseth’s links to or apparent sympathies for Christian nationalist positions.

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Joshua Haymes is a member of the CREC-aligned Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship (PHRF), and his podcasts advocate for the CREC’s moral and theological positions. As the Guardian previously reported, he once served as a pastoral intern at the church. Online he has claimed that liberalism is a greater threat to the US than neo-Nazism, and that the Bible is “pro-Ice raids”. On X, he has also advocated for capital punishment for adultery and abortion, and appeared to call for the drowning of LGBTQ+ Pride marchers.

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Despite distancing himself from the PHRF, Haymes regularly hosts Brooks Potteiger, the congregation’s pastor and Hegseth’s closest spiritual adviser. Potteiger’s most recent appearance was just over a week ago. Pottiger appears alongside Haymes in the profile image for the podcast’s channel on YouTube, whose description reads: “We created this podcast as a resource to serve you in your reformation red pill journey.”

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These materials, mostly published since Hegseth was confirmed as secretary of defense, underline the extreme Christian nationalist positions at Pilgrim Hill, in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, the community within which Hegseth acquired an 8,800 sq ft, $3.4m mansion in 2022.

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The Guardian repeatedly sent requests for comment to Hegseth via the Pentagon’s centralized communications office. A Pentagon spokesman offered a link to a transcript of a 14 August press conference in which Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson told reporters Hegseth “is a proud member of a church that is affiliated with the Congregation of Reformed Evangelical Churches which was founded by Pastor Doug Wilson. He is a very proud Christian and has those traditional Christian viewpoints.”

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The FBI is now reportedly searching John Bolton’s DC office, a source tells CNN.

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This comes after our earlier post about Bolton speaking with agents in the lobby of the office building, according to the Associated Press.

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Speaking to reporters earlier, the president praised the fact there have been no murders in the nation’s capital in the last week.

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“DC was a hellhole, and now it’s safe,” Trump said. “That’s the first time in anybody’s memory that you haven’t had a murder in a week.”

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However, DC police data shows that the city last experienced no homicides (over a seven-day period) as recently as July this year. Specifically between 12 and 19 of July.

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There have been several similar stretches earlier this year, lasting a week or more, without murders in DC. The president has routinely claimed, without evidence, that DC officials have manipulated crime data.

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Signalling that the Federal Reserve could restart interest rate cuts, the central bank’s chair, Jerome Powell, said the US economy had “faced new challenges” over the past year.

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Focusing on inflation, Powell said Trump’s tariffs had “begun to push up prices in some categories of goods”.

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He added he expected the effects of tariffs to “accumulate over the coming months, with high uncertainty about timing and amounts”.

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Powell also said: “Tighter immigration policy has led to an abrupt slowdown in labour force growth.”

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Some of the changes to tax, spending and regulatory policies brought in by the Trump White House could also have “important implications for economic growth and productivity”, he said.

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n

Changes in trade and immigration policies are affecting both demand and supply. In this environment, distinguishing cyclical developments from trend, or structural, developments is difficult.

n

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Powell’s speech did not mention the political pressure he, and the Fed, have been under in recent months, after Trump repeatedly threatened to fire him, which has raised questions over the independence of the central bank.

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Instead, he repeatedly mentioned the Federal Reserve’s mandate “to foster maximum employment and stable prices for the American people” and said the central bank remained “fully committed to fulfilling our statutory mandate”.

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The president said he wasn’t briefed on the raid on John Bolton’s home, while making an impromptu visit to the People’s House exhibit near the White House. Sporting a “Trump was right about everything” hat, the president said that he saw the news of the raid on television earlier.

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“I’m not a fan of John Bolton. He’s a real sort of a lowlife,” Trump said. “He’s not a smart guy. But he could be a very unpatriotic. I’m going to find out.”

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The president added that he expects to find out details of the search from the justice department later. “I tell the group I don’t want to know, but just you have to do what you have to do. I don’t want to know about it.”

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Bolton in the Oval Office with Trump in 2018.”,”caption”:”John Bolton in the Oval Office with Trump in 2018.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1755872492000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”15.21 BST”,”blockLastUpdated”:1755876906000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”16.35 BST”,”blockFirstPublished”:1755872902000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”15.28 BST”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”15.28″,”title”:”Trump says he wasn’t briefed on FBI raid on John Bolton’s home”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Fri 22 Aug 2025 22.54 BST”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Fri 22 Aug 2025 10.55 BST”},{“id”:”68a876338f088233182d4339″,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, said that there have been 719 arrests in DC since the federal law enforcement surge in the nation’s capital began on 7 August.

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She added that 91 illegal firearms have been seized by federal agents in the same period.

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Bondi said that on Thursday 21 August, federal law enforcement made 76 arrests, which included 36 by Ice agents.

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The FBI search at John Bolton’s home in Bethesda is over whether the former national security adviser, and noted Trump adversary, kept or disclosed classified information, the New York Times is reporting.

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As we bring you more information about the reported FBI raid on John Bolton’s Maryland home, it’s worth pointing out that Bolton was stripped of his security clearance when Trump started his second term in office. The president also got rid of Bolton’s government detail, despite being the target of an assassination plot due to Bolton’s criticism of the Iranian regime.

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Bolton served as Trump’s third national security adviser in his first term in office, but has since become a vocal critic of the president. Less than an hour ago, a post from Bolton’s X account critiqued the state of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. “Russia has not changed its goal: drag Ukraine into a new Russian Empire,” he wrote. “Meanwhile, meetings will continue because Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize, but I don’t see these talks making any progress.”

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Bolton also published a memoir, ‘The Room Where it Happened’, detailing his time in Trump’s White House. He ultimately concluded that the president was not “fit for office”.

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A reminder that the Trump administration actually sued Bolton over his book back in 2020 – alleging that he didn’t follow the correct protocol to have it reviewed for classified information. However, in 2021, the justice department under Joe Biden closed the investigation, and Bolton was ultimately given a federal judge’s go-ahead to publish his book.

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The FBI raided the home of Donald Trump’s former national security adviser turned critic John Bolton on Friday morning, according to reports.

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The federal search of Bolton’s house in the Washington DC area was as part of an investigation involving the handling of classified documents, the Associated Press reported, citing an unnamed source.

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The FBI director, Kash Patel, posted a cryptic message on X on Friday morning, saying: “NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission.”

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The raid began around 7am ET and was first reported by the New York Post.

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More to follow as we get it.

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The Trump administration has unilaterally stripped hundreds of thousands of federal workers of their union contracts after a federal appeals court overruled an injunction which halted the plans. It is just getting started, according to the White House.

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An executive order issued in March sought to cancel all collective bargaining agreements for most federal employees, citing national security concerns – and remove collective bargaining rights from more than a million workers.

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While unions including the American Federation of Government Employees launched legal action as they challenged the move, obtaining an injunction, this was in effect overruled earlier this month.

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Union contracts at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Agriculture have since been terminated. An estimated 400,000 have been affected, about 2.6% of unionized workers in the US.

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“I think that what this administration is doing is trying us as a test bed. If they are successful, I do believe that they’ll be coming after every labor organization in the US,” Everett Kelley, president of the AFGE, the largest federal labor union in the US, told the Guardian. “This is a fight for the very democracy of this country. This is a fight for every worker in America.

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“If Trump is successful in dismantling AFGE, there’s nothing to stop him from coming after every labor organization in the country, and we believe he will.”

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Environmental groups have welcomed the ordered closure of the Trump administration’s notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration jail within 60 days.

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In her 82-page order, published in the US district court’s southern district of Florida on Friday, judge Kathleen Williams determined the facility was causing severe and irreparable damage to the fragile Florida Everglades.

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The shock ruling by district court judge Kathleen Williams builds on a temporary restraining order she issued two weeks ago halting further construction work at the remote tented camp, which has attracted waves of criticism for harsh conditions, abuse of detainees and denial of due process as they await deportation.

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“This is a landmark victory for the Everglades and countless Americans who believe this imperilled wilderness should be protected, not exploited,” said Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, which mounted the legal challenge.

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“It sends a clear message that environmental laws must be respected by leaders at the highest levels of our government – and there are consequences for ignoring them”.

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Judge Williams also ruled that no more detainees were to be brought to the facility while it was being wound down.

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She also noted that a plan to develop the site on which the jail was built into a massive tourist airport was rejected in the 1960s because of the harm it would have caused the the land and delicate ecosystem.

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“Since that time, every Florida governor, every Florida senator, and countless local and national political figures, including presidents, have publicly pledged their unequivocal support for the restoration, conservation, and protection of the Everglades,” she wrote.

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“This order does nothing more than uphold the basic requirements of legislation designed to fulfill those promises.”

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No further construction at the site can take place, she ruled, and there must be no further increase in the number of detainees currently held there, estimated to be about 700. After the 60-day period, all construction materials, fencing, generators and fixtures that made the site a detention camp must be removed.

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Read my colleague Richard Luscombe’s latest report here:

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Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.

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We start with news that the Trump administration has been accused of wanting to “proactively conduct reviews of social media posts and revoke visas based not on conduct but speech”.

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It comes as the state department said it was reviewing the records of more than 55 million US visa holders for potential revocation or deportable violations of immigration rules, in a significant expansion of Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

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David J Bier, the director of immigration policy at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in DC, told the Washington Post:

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n

I doubt that’s feasible for everyone, but I suspect that these reviews will be done in a discriminatory manner targeting immigrants with certain backgrounds and in certain visa categories or specific people they want an excuse to revoke.

n

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In a move first reported by the Associated Press, the state department said that all of the foreigners who currently hold valid US visas are subject to “continuous vetting” for any indication that they could be ineligible for the document, including those already admitted into the country.

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Should such evidence come to light, the visa would be revoked and, if the visa holder were in the United States, they would be subject to deportation.

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“We are gathering more information than ever,” a senior state department official told the Washington Post, admitting it was likely that social media vetting would add more time to the review process.

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It follows an announcement by the Trump administration on Tuesday that it will look for “anti-American” views, including on social media, when assessing the applications of people wanting to live in the United States.

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US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which handles requests to stay in the US or become a citizen, said it would expand vetting of the social media postings of applicants and that “reviews for anti-American activity will be added to that vetting”.

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Read our latest report here:

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In other developments:

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n
• n

  California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, signed a law to hold a special election in November in which voters will be asked to approve a new congressional map, tilted in favor of Democrats, for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections, if Texas goes ahead with a plan to do the same for Republicans.

n

• n

  Donald Trump ventured from the White House in his motorcade through the not all that mean streets of Washington DC to deliver pizza and hamburgers to law enforcement officers and National Guard troops, and regale them with his plans to upgrade the grass in the district to make it look more like one of his golf courses. “I know more about grass than any human being I think anywhere in the world”, the commander-in-chief told the officers.

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• n

  A federal judge ruled that Trump’s former lawyer and campaign surrogate, Alina Habba, has been unlawfully serving as the the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey.

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• n

  A New York state appeals court tossed out a half-billion-dollar penalty that Trump had been ordered to pay after a judge found the president fraudulently overstated the value of his properties and other assets to bolster his family business. Despite the president falsely claiming the ruling to be a “total victory”, the five-judge panel let the lower court’s fraud verdict stand, which paves the way for New York attorney general Letitia James to appeal the decision to the state’s highest court.

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• n

  The Trump administration ratcheted up pressure on the Federal Reserve to remove governor Lisa Cook, after the economist declared she had “no intention of being bullied” into stepping down.

n

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Key events

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The Internal Revenue Service has halted planned layoffs and is offering jobs back to some employees who previously took the so-called “fork in the road” that encouraged staffers to take a buyout as the agency scrambles to boost staffing ahead of tax season, Axios reports.

The Department of Government Efficiency’s (Doge) early days made headlines for targeting masses of government workers with layoffs and pushing others to resign.

But the IRS is now reversing course, joining other federal agencies, either rehiring terminated workers or pulling back on “reduction in force” plans.

In February, the IRS laid off roughly 7,000 workers in Washington and around the country.

Donald Trump announced that he named Sergio Gor to be the next US ambassador to India and special envoy for South and Central Asian affairs, according to a post on Truth Social.

Gor is currently the director of the White House presidential personnel office, and is slated to remain in that position until his confirmation.

“For the most populous Region in the World, it is important that I have someone I can fully trust to deliver on my Agenda and help us, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” Trump wrote on Friday.

Sam Levine

Carol Alvarado, a Texas Democratic senator from Houston, says she intends to filibuster tonight in the Texas senate to delay Republicans from passing a redrawn congressional map.

“Republicans think they can walk all over us. Today I’m going to kick back.

I’ve submitted my intention to filibuster the new congressional maps. Going to be a long night,” she wrote in a post on X, accompanied by a picture of sneakers.

Democrats have gone back and forth with Phil King, the bill’s GOP sponsor, since this morning, trying to get him to admit that he considered race in drawing the maps.

The local television station KVUE has more on the rules Alvarado will have to follow as she filibusters the new congressional map.

Alvarado will not be able to eat or drink and must stand at her desk the whole time without breaks for the bathroom, the outlet reported.

The national guard personnel deployed on the streets of Washington DC will now be armed, a defense official confirmed to The Guardian.

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth authorized the nearly 2,000 of the national guard members to carry “service-issued weapons,” the official said.

“The Interim Commanding General of the D.C. National Guard retains the authority to make any necessary force posture adjustments in coordination with the D.C. Metropolitan Police and Federal law enforcement partners,” said the defense official.

The Pentagon and the US army had said last week that troops would not carry weapons.

In a Truth Social post, President Donald Trump announced that his administration is undergoing a “major tariff investigation” into imported furniture and is expected to release its findings within 50 days.

Trump said the US will impose tariffs (at a rate still to be determined) on foreign-made furniture, in efforts to revive the industry in states including North Carolina, South Carolina, and Michigan.

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth fired ​​Lt Gen Jeffrey A Kruse​, the military’s top intelligence officer. The Washington Post first reported the story.

Kruse, who served as Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) director, is the second senior Air Force general in a week to be forced out or retire unexpectedly. On Monday, Air Force chief of staff Gen David Allvin announced he was stepping down after just two years in the role, a position typically held for four years.

A spokesperson for the DIA told CBS News that deputy director Christine Bordine will assume the role of acting director “effective immediately.”

“The firing of yet another senior national security official underscores the Trump administration’s dangerous habit of treating intelligence as a loyalty test rather than a safeguard for our country,” said senator Mark Warner, vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, in a statement.

The firing comes a few months after details of the agency’s preliminary assessment of damage to Iranian nuclear sites from US strikes leaked to the media. It found that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months by the US strikes, contradicting assertions from Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Initial takeaways of Ghislaine Maxwell’s interview transcripts

The transcripts are more than 300 pages, but here it goes …

• Blanche said, on record, that their conversation wasn’t “promising to do anything” for Maxwell. But that anything she said couldn’t be used against her, unless she provided false statements or there was a retrial in her case.

• According to Maxwell, Epstein didn’t have any video or photographic evidence of any high-profile individuals committing sexual offences. And to that point, Maxwell said she didn’t hear or witness any instances of Epstein blackmailing powerful people.

• Maxwell recruited a number of masseuses for Epstein but “never checked their age or credentials”. She added that, throughout her time with Epstein, she never heard any examples of “sexually inappropriate contact” between Epstein’s guests and in-house masseuses.

• Despite her claims that Epstein didn’t extort anyone, Maxwell does not believe that Epstein died by suicide. She chalked that up to “mismanagement” at the bureau of prisons.

• In the interview Maxwell said she does believe that Epstein “did a lot of, not all, but some of what he’s accused of”. But she maintains that “he became that man over a period of time”.

• Maxwell said that she “never” saw Donald Trump receive a massage. She also said that she “never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way,” adding that he was “a gentleman in all respects” whenever she saw the president.

• Maxwell also didn’t recall former president Bill Clinton receiving a massage while travelling with Epstein.

• One notable point is that Maxwell denied ever recruiting masseuses from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. “I’ve never recruited a masseuse from Mar-a-Lago for that, as far as I remember. I can’t ever recollect doing that,” she told Todd Blanche. A reminder that Trump claimed his falling out with Jeffrey Epstein stemmed from the convicted sex offender’s efforts to hire workers away from Trump’s Florida club.

• Maxwell did not remember whether Trump submitted a letter for Epstein’s 50th birthday album, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. She also couldn’t remember asking Trump to contribute.

Ghislaine Maxwell says Trump and Epstein seemed ‘friendly’ but she ‘never’ saw president receive a massage

In Ghislaine Maxwell’s first interview with deputy attorney general Todd Blanche, on 24 July, she said that she “may have met” Donald Trump in 1990, before meeting Jeffrey Epstein.

Maxwell went on to describe the relationship between the president and Epstein as “friendly”, although she didn’t know how the two men met or how they became friends.

She added that she “never” saw the president receive a massage:

I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting. I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way. The president was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.

Maxwell also contested Trump’s claims she recruited masseuses from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. “I’ve never recruited a masseuse from Mar-a-Lago for that, as far as I remember. I can’t ever recollect doing that,” she said in the interview with Blanche.

A reminder that the president said in July that his falling out with Jeffrey Epstein stemmed from the convicted sex offender’s efforts to hire workers away from Trump’s Florida club. “People were taken out of the spa, hired by him, in other words, gone,” the president said.

Justice department releases transcripts of Ghislaine Maxwell interview with deputy attorney general

The Department of Justice has released the transcripts and audio recordings of the interviews between Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of child sex-offender Jefrrey Epstein, and the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche.

The interviews between Blanche and Maxwell took place on 24 and 25 July 2025, with her legal representatives present. Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking.

The justice department will also send the first tranche of records from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation to the House oversight committee, after receiving a subpoena for the files. Earlier this week, the committee chair, Representative James Comer, a Republican, said that his aim is to make the files public – while protecting the safety and identities of the victims.

US court orders release of Kilmar Ábrego García from criminal custody

Maya Yang

A court has ordered the release of Kilmar Ábrego García from criminal custody in Tennessee.

On Friday, magistrate judge Barbara Holmes issued an order allowing the Maryland father of two to leave custody for the first time since his return to the US in June, after his wrongful deportation to El Salvador earlier this year.

The 30-year-old was initially wrongfully deported by federal immigration officials in March. According to the Trump administration, Ábrego was affiliated with the MS-13 gang, a claim Ábrego and his family vehemently deny.

During his detention at El Salvador’s so-called Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), Ábrego was physically and psychologically tortured, according to court documents filed by his lawyers in July.

Following Ábrego’s wrongful deportation, the Trump administration faced widespread pressure to return him back to the US, including from a supreme court order that directed federal officials to “facilitate” his return.

In June, the Trump administration returned Ábrego from El Salvador, only to hit him with a slew of human smuggling charges, which his lawyers have rejected as “preposterous”. His criminal trial is expected to begin in January.

Sam Levine

An update from the Texas senate, where Molly Cook, a Democratic lawmaker from Houston, is now questioning Phil King about the new Texas map.

Her line of questioning appears designed to highlight that the senator is not completely blind to race in Texas. She points out that he’s likely done polling in his own races that breaks down results by race and has analysed other statewide racial data as part of his job as a legislator.

“I have not drilled into racial data with regard to redistricting,” King says.

When asked about the ongoing discussions about a possible bilateral meeting between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president said it will be “interesting to see” whether that goes ahead.

Earlier he explained his decision to let the two leaders have a meeting together: “I could have been at the meeting, but a lot of people think that nothing’s going to come out of that meeting.”

Trump went on to say that he’ll know “one way or the other” about his next steps in two weeks. “It’s going to be a very important decision. And that’s whether or not it’s massive sanctions or massive tariffs, or both, or do we do nothing and say ‘it’s your fight,’” he said.

Earlier the president said he was “not happy” when asked about a US factory being hit during a Russian strike in Ukraine.

Trump confirms funding request to Congress for DC ‘beautification’

The president just confirmed that he has spoken with the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the Senate majority leader, John Thune, about a plan to raise $2bn from Congress to help fund his ‘beautification’ plans for DC.

“I think it’s going to be very easy to get it’s going to be not a lot of money. I wouldn’t even know where to spend the number that you mentioned, but it’s going to be money to beautify the city,” he said in response to a reporter’s question in the Oval Office.

President says he ‘purposefully’ didn’t get involved in Bolton raid

“I’m not a fan of John Bolton. I thought it was a sleazebag, actually, and he suffers major Trump derangement syndrome,” the president said, speaking about the raid on his former national security adviser’s home.

Trump repeated that he tries to “stay out of that stuff”, and that when it came to the search of Bolton’s home, he “purposefully” didn’t want to get involved. “I saw that just like everybody else,” he added.

The president then spent time talking about how he too was subjected to a raid, referring to the FBI search of the his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022 during an investigation into the handling of presidential and classified documents.

“They went through everything you can imagine,” Trump said.