Donald Trump live updates: President ‘named twice’ to FBI by Jeffrey Epstein accuser as he peddles Gabbard’s Obama conspiracy

Just days after the Wall Street Journal’s bombshell report accusing Trump of penning a bawdy 50th birthday card to Epstein, the president has again lashed out at the newspaper.

The Journal reported that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was the one who made the case to Trump against firing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

But the president has denied the reporting, claiming: “People don’t explain it to me, I explain to them!”

“The Wall Street Journal ran a typically untruthful story today by saying that Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, explained to me that firing Jerome “Too Late” Powell, the Worst Federal Reserve Chairman in History, would be bad for the Market,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday.

“Nobody had to explain that to me. I know better than anybody what’s good for the Market, and what’s good for the U.S.A. If it weren’t for me, the Market wouldn’t be at Record Highs right now, it probably would have CRASHED! So, get your information CORRECT. People don’t explain to me, I explain to them!”

Donald Trump’s political rivals seemed unshaken by his attempts to pin blame on them for the fallout over his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation this weekend.

As the president and his allies leveled allegations about the Biden Justice Department supposedly tampering with evidence to link Trump to the convicted pedophile, Democrats remained fixed on calling for the full release of the Justice Department’s cache of evidence and investigation.

Even as news broke this past week that Trump had instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to release grand jury testimony from the investigations into Epstein and his mistress, those same Democrats called the move an attempt to cover up the president’s involvement, given that it constituted less than full transparency.

Washington, D.C. correspondent John Bowden has more:

After years of peddling conspiracy theories about the Jeffrey Epstein files, President Donald Trump is now attempting to shift focus away from the case and his relationship with the convicted sex offender.

The Trump administration continues to face backlash after a Department of Justice and FBI memo released last week stated that there was no evidence that the disgraced financier, who socialised with royalty and celebrities and was accused of running a large network of underage girls for sex, had a “client list.”

Over the years, however, thousands of pages of records have been released through lawsuits, Epstein’s criminal dockets, public disclosures, and Freedom of Information Act requests.

While judges, court staff, and legal representatives are excluded, here are some of the names that do appear in the legal records connected to Epstein:

Donald Trump has posted a bizarre AI-generated video of former President Barack Obama being arrested and thrown in jail.

The president, still mired in controversy over his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, posted the clip on his Truth Social platform on Sunday, taken from TikTok, in which the Democrat is seen declaring in a rally speech that “no one is above the law.”

He is then seen being handcuffed by law enforcement during an Oval Office sitdown with a grinning Trump, created using real footage of the two men meeting at the White House in November 2016 when the Republican was president-elect and Obama was about to leave office.

The Democrat is then led away and subsequently seen wearing an orange jumpsuit in a federal prison, all of which is soundtracked by The Village People’s 1970s disco anthem YMCA, which has (bizarrely) become Trump’s unofficial anthem.

Donald Trump once hosted a party with “young women” where the disgraced late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein “was the only other guest,” according to a report.

The president is under pressure to release all files relating to the Epstein case, which he has so far refused to do despite a 2024 election promise.

The anecdote was part of a New York Times piece entitled “Inside the Long Friendship Between Trump and Epstein.”

It states that “For nearly 15 years, the two men socialized together in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Fla., before a falling out that preceded Mr. Epstein’s first arrest.”

The piece goes on to describe Trump hosting “a party at Mar-a-Lago for young women in a so-called calendar girl competition, Mr. Epstein was the only other guest.”

Tulsi Gabbard has openly accused the Obama administration of launching a “years-long coup” against President Donald Trump in an attempt to subvert his 2016 election win.

Gabbard released declassified emails Friday and claimed that they reveal a “treasonous conspiracy” committed by former President Barack Obama and his officials over the investigation surrounding Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Trump pushed the “conspiracy” over the weekend on Truth Social by sharing an interview Gabbard gave Fox News on the allegations. He also congratulated Gabbard in a separate post Saturday.

One of Jeffrey Epstein’s accusers claimed she met Donald Trump in the convicted pedophile’s New York office in what was described as a “troubling encounter,” according to a report.

Artist Maria Farmer said she urged the FBI to look into people in the disgraced financier’s social circle, including the president, after the alleged encounter in the 90s, she told The New York Times.

Farmer and her younger sister Annie, who testified at Ghislaine Maxwell’s 2021 sex trafficking trial, have spoken publicly about their ordeal with Epstein before. But her account now sheds light on how the Epstein files could contain material that is “embarrassing or politically problematic” to the president, the Times reports.

Farmer’s account is among “the clearest indications yet” of how Trump may appear in the Epstein files, the Times notes, though the White House disputed the alleged encounter.

Rhian Lubin has the full story: