US president’s controversial deployment of soldiers to US cities has raised alarm and a series of legal challenges.
Published On 21 Nov 202521 Nov 2025
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A United States federal judge has said the Trump administration must pause its deployment of National Guard troops to Washington, DC, a setback for the president’s push to send the military into cities across the country.
US District Judge Jia Cobb temporarily suspended the deployment in a ruling on Thursday, responding to a lawsuit filed by city officials who said Trump had usurped policing powers and was using the military for domestic law enforcement.
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The federal government has unique powers in Washington, DC. But the Trump administration has taken the controversial step to deploy soldiers in a growing list of Democrat-led cities, despite frequent protests from state and local officials and a lack of any emergency conditions.
Cobb, who said in her decision that the president cannot deploy soldiers for “whatever reason” he wants, gave the Trump administration 21 days to appeal the order before it goes into effect.
Lawyers for the government slammed the lawsuit that challenged the military deployment as a “frivolous stunt”.
“There is no sensible reason for an injunction unwinding this arrangement now, particularly since the District’s claims have no merit,” Department of Justice lawyers wrote.
Trump has also deployed troops to cities such as Los Angeles, California; Portland, Oregon; and Chicago, Illinois, in what he depicts as an effort to tackle crime and round up undocumented immigrants.
Residents and civil liberties groups have documented aggressive raids and what they say are widespread rights violations and racial profiling by federal agents during those crackdowns, in which US citizens have sometimes been swept up.
Trump has threatened to imprison local and state officials who criticise his deployment of the military.
A legal challenge filed in September by Washington, DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb said that US democracy would “never be the same if these occupations are permitted to stand”.
Trump ordered the first deployment in August, involving about 2,300 National Guard members from various states and hundreds of federal agents from various agencies.
United States President Donald Trump has distanced himself from disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, saying the former friends had severed ties more than a decade before his 2019 arrest on federal sex trafficking charges.
But one Democrat is using newly released documents from Epstein’s estate to assert that the two remained friends after Trump first became president in 2016.
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Representative Sean Casten, a Democrat from Illinois, highlighted one email exchange and said in a November 12 post on X: “Trump spent his first Thanksgiving after getting elected President with Jeffrey Epstein. 2017.”
Trump spent his first Thanksgiving after getting elected President with Jeffrey Epstein. 2017. pic.twitter.com/1CU51k8yl4
He attached an image of emails dated November 23, 2017 – Thanksgiving Day – between Epstein and NEXT Management Cofounder Faith Kates, which read:
Epstein: hope today is fun for you.
Kates: Fun!!! When are you back in NYC?
Epstein: all next week
Kates: Ok dylan will want to see you I always want to see you. Where are you having thanksgiving?
Epstein: eva
Faith Kates: That means glenn check out his red hair!!!
Epstein: berries color for holiday
Kates: He’s such a snooze who else is down there?
Epstein: david fizel. hanson. trump
Kates: Have fun!!!
Casten has not responded to a request for comment. “Those emails prove literally nothing,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in an email.
News reports, photos, videos and White House releases show Trump spent that 2017 Thanksgiving in Mar-a-Lago. PolitiFact, however, did not find any proof that he met Epstein that day.
There are different accounts of when Trump and Epstein had their falling out, with periods ranging from 2004 to 2007. The Miami Herald reported that Trump barred Epstein from Mar-a-Lago in October 2007, a decade before the Thanksgiving Day in question.
In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges of soliciting prostitution and soliciting prostitution from a minor.
Two of the three people Epstein mentioned in his 2017 email as being “down there” are people who had property in South Florida at the time. It is unclear who he was referring to when he mentioned “Hanson”. It is possible Epstein was not foretelling a specific Thanksgiving Day plan but answering another New Yorker’s question about who among the people in their social circle would also be in the Florida area during that period.
Trump arrived in West Palm Beach, Florida, on November 21, 2017, and stayed there for several days, according to the president’s public schedules documented in Roll Call’s FactBase.
On Thanksgiving morning, he spoke to members of the military via video conference and visited coastguard members at the Lake Worth Inlet Station in Riviera Beach, Florida. The White House published transcripts of Trump’s remarks to both groups. Trump also issued a Thanksgiving message to the country and went to the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.
Photographers for The Associated Press news agency, The Palm Beach Post and Getty Images, among others, captured photos of Trump’s activities.
A CNN report said Trump held an “opulent” dinner at the Mar-a-Lago members-only club. PolitiFact did not find reports listing who was in attendance, but the White House told CNN the first family would be having “a nice Thanksgiving dinner with all the family”.
Trump was also active on social media. In a November 22, 2017, post on X, then known as Twitter, he said he “will be having meetings and working the phones from the Winter White House in Florida [Mar-a-Lago]”. He did not specify whom he would be meeting. On Thanksgiving morning, he said in part: “HAPPY THANKSGIVING, your Country is starting to do really well.”
HAPPY THANKSGIVING, your Country is starting to do really well. Jobs coming back, highest Stock Market EVER, Military getting really strong, we will build the WALL, V.A. taking care of our Vets, great Supreme Court Justice, RECORD CUT IN REGS, lowest unemployment in 17 years….!
United States President Donald Trump has announced that he has signed a bill ordering the full release of files related to the late sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump made the announcement on social media late on Wednesday.
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“Perhaps the truth about these Democrats, and their associations with Jeffrey Epstein, will soon be revealed, because I HAVE JUST SIGNED THE BILL TO RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The legislation compels the US Justice Department to release all documents related to Epstein, who died in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while facing sex trafficking charges, within 30 days.
US Attorney General Pam Bondi had earlier told a news conference that the administration would “follow the law and encourage maximum transparency” in the case.
The United States Department of Justice has acknowledged that the grand jury reviewing the case against James Comey, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), did not receive a copy of the final indictment against him.
That revelation on Wednesday came as lawyers for Comey sought to have the indictment thrown out of court.
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At a 90-minute hearing in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, Comey’s lawyers argued that the case should be dismissed outright, not only for the prosecutorial missteps but also due to the interventions of President Donald Trump.
Comey is one of three prominent Trump critics to be indicted between late September and mid-October.
The hearing took place before US District Judge Michael Nachmanoff, and Comey’s defence team alleged that Trump was using the legal system as a tool for political retribution.
“This is an extraordinary case and it merits an extraordinary remedy,” defence lawyer Michael Dreeben said, calling the indictment “a blatant use of criminal justice to achieve political ends”.
The Justice Department, represented by prosecutor Tyler Lemons, maintained that the indictment met the legal threshold to be heard at trial.
But Lemons did admit, under questioning, that the grand jury that approved the indictment had not seen its final draft.
When Judge Nachmanoff asked Lemons if the grand jury had never seen the final version, the prosecutor conceded, “That is my understanding.”
It was the latest stumble in the Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute Comey for allegedly obstructing a congressional investigation and lying to senators while under oath.
Comey has pleaded not guilty to the two charges, and his defence team has led a multipronged effort to see the case nixed over its multiple irregularities.
Scrutiny over grand jury proceedings
Questions over the indictment — and what the grand jury had or had not seen — had been brewing since last week.
On November 13, US District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie raised questions about a span of time when it appeared that there appeared to be “no court reporter present” during the grand jury proceedings.
Then, on Tuesday, Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick took the extraordinary step of calling for the grand jury materials to be released to the Comey defence team, citing “a disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps”.
They included misleading statements from prosecutors, the use of search warrants pertaining to a separate case, and the fact that the grand jury likely did not review the final indictment in full.
Separately, in Wednesday’s hearing, Judge Nachmanoff pressed acting US Attorney Lindsey Halligan about who saw the final indictment.
After repeated questions, she, too, admitted that only the foreperson of the grand jury and a second grand juror were present for the returning of the indictment.
Halligan oversaw the three indictments against the Trump critics: Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James and former National Security Adviser John Bolton.
All three have denied wrongdoing, and all three have argued that their prosecution is part of a campaign of political vengeance.
Spotlight on Trump-Comey feud
Wednesday’s hearing focused primarily on establishing that argument, with Comey’s lawyers pointing to statements Trump made pushing for the indictments.
Comey’s defence team pointed to the tense relationship between their client and Trump, stretching back to the president’s decision to fire Comey from his job as FBI director in 2017.
Comey had faced bipartisan criticism for FBI investigations into the 2016 election, which Trump ultimately won.
Trump, for example, accused the ex-FBI leader of going easy on his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, calling him a “slime ball”, a “phony” and “a real nut job”.
“FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds,” Trump wrote on social media in May 2017.
Comey, meanwhile, quickly established himself as a prominent critic of the Trump administration.
“I don’t think he’s medically unfit to be president. I think he’s morally unfit to be president,” Comey told ABC News in 2018.
He added that a president must “embody respect” and adhere to basic values like truth-telling. “This president is not able to do that,” Comey said.
In Wednesday’s hearing, Comey’s defence also pointed to the series of events leading up to the former FBI director’s indictment.
Last September, Trump posted on social media a message to Attorney General Pam Bondi, calling Comey and James “guilty as hell” and encouraging her not to “delay any longer” in seeking their indictments.
That message was “effectively an admission that this is a political prosecution”, according to Dreeben, Comey’s lawyer.
Shortly after the message was posted online, Halligan was appointed as acting US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia
She replaced a prosecutor, Erik Siebert, who had reportedly declined to indict Comey and others for lack of evidence. Trump had denounced him as a “woke RINO”, an acronym that stands for “Republican in name only”.
Dreeben argued that switcheroo also signalled Trump’s vindictive intent and his spearheading of the Comey indictment.
But Lemons, representing the Justice Department, told Judge Nachmanoff that Comey “was not indicted at the direction of the president of the United States or any other government official”.
Award-winning rapper Nicki Minaj has publicly backed President Donald Trump’s allegations that Christians face persecution in Nigeria.
“In Nigeria, Christians are being targeted,” Minaj said on Tuesday at an event organised by the US, adding: “Churches have been burned, families have been torn apart… simply because of how they pray.”
Analysts say that jihadists and other armed groups have waged campaigns of violence that affect all communities in the West African nation, regardless of background or belief.
This week alone, two people were killed in an attack on a church, while a group of 25 girls, who the BBC has been told are Muslim, were abducted from a school.
Two of the girls later managed to escape from their abductors. A teacher and a security guard – both Muslim – were also killed in the attack on the secondary school in the north-western Kebbi state.
Earlier this month, Trump said he would send troops into Nigeria “guns a-blazing” if its government “continues to allow the killing of Christians”.
Minaj, whose real name is Onika Tanya Maraj-Petty, told an event organised by the US embassy to the UN in New York that calling for the protection of Christians in Nigeria was “not about taking sides or dividing people… but about uniting humanity”.
“This is about standing up in the face of injustice. It’s about what I’ve always stood for,” she added.
The 42-year-old rapper, who has previously spoken of her Christian faith, thanked Trump for “prioritising this issue and for his leadership”.
The Nigerian government has pushed back on these claims, describing them as “a gross misrepresentation of reality”.
An official said that “terrorists attack all who reject their murderous ideology – Muslims, Christians and those of no faith alike”.
Other groups monitoring political violence in Nigeria say most victims of the jihadist groups are Muslims.
The country’s 220 million people are roughly evenly split between followers of the two religions, with Muslims in the majority in the north, where most attacks take place.
On Wednesday, Nigeria police in the south-western Kwara state confirmed a deadly attack on a church in the town of Eruku, where gunmen opened fire on worshipers the previous day, killing two people and abducting several others.
Local media say armed men, identified by residents as bandits, stormed the Christ Apostolic Church during an evening programme on Tuesday evening, shooting the pastor and rounding up worshipers at gunpoint.
Images and short video clips – believed to be from the church’s CCTV cameras – have circulated widely online, showing terrified worshippers scrambling for safety, including an elderly woman seen desperately trying to escape the gunmen.
On Tuesday, President Bola Tinubu confirmed that jihadist forces had killed a senior army officer, after he had been captured in an ambush.
The Islamic State West Africa Province (Iswap) said on Monday its fighters had killed Brigadier General Musa Uba in the north-eastern state of Borno.
The Nigerian army had earlier denied that the officer had been abducted and killed.
The latest attacks have triggered frustration and anger across Nigeria, with many lamenting what they see as an unending wave of insecurity affecting rural communities, churches, schools and major transport routes.
Minaj described Nigeria as “a beautiful nation with deep faith traditions” and even acknowledged the “beautiful Barbz” – her fans – in the West African country.
The US ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, thanked the rapper for “leveraging her massive platform to spotlight the atrocities against Christians in Nigeria”.
For months, right-wing campaigners and politicians in Washington have been alleging that Islamist militants were systematically targeting Christians in Nigeria.
In recent days, as the United States House of Representatives approached a potential vote about releasing the Epstein files, President Donald Trump pivoted on the hot-button topic.
Trump and members of his administration had sought to undermine efforts to release the files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. And Trump has been dismissive of the push to make the files public, calling the case “pretty boring stuff” in July and repeatedly referring to it as a Democratic “hoax.”
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Then, on November 16, he told House Republicans to vote in favour of the release.
His shift came after lawmakers cleared a significant hurdle on November 12, netting 218 signatures on a petition to force a vote on a bill to release the files within 30 days. The House is expected to vote on that bill this week. Previously, it was considered unlikely the legislation would pass in the Senate; it remains to be seen whether Trump’s latest statement will cause senators to reconsider.
Epstein moved in the same social circles as Trump in the 1990s, including attending parties at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private Palm Beach, Florida, club. The two were photographed together in social settings multiple times. They later had a falling out, a rift that some reporters dated to late 2007.
Palm Beach County prosecutors investigated Epstein after reports that a 14-year-old girl was molested at his mansion. In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges related to soliciting prostitution from someone under 18. He received preferential treatment during the criminal investigation and served about a year in jail, largely on work release.
In 2018, The Miami Herald published an extensive investigation into the case, and the next year, Epstein was arrested on federal charges for recruiting dozens of underage girls to his New York City mansion and Palm Beach estate from 2002 to 2005 to engage in sex acts for money. He was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell on August 10, 2019, and investigators concluded he died by suicide.
We asked the White House why Trump changed his stance on releasing the files. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement, “President Trump has been consistently calling for transparency related to the Epstein files for years – by releasing tens of thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena request” and calling for investigations into “Epstein’s Democrat friends”.
Here’s what Trump has said in 2024 and 2025 about releasing the Epstein files.
While campaigning in 2024, Trump said he would release the files
In June 2024, Fox and Friends co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy asked Trump if he would declassify various files, including those related to 9/11 and former President John F Kennedy.
“Would you declassify the Epstein files?” Campos-Duffy said.
“Yeah, yeah, I would,” Trump said.
The clip spread on social media, and Trump’s campaign account also shared it.
🚨 President Trump says he will DECLASSIFY the 9/11 Files, JFK Files, and Epstein Files pic.twitter.com/JalLWFkRDZ
During the same interview, Trump also said, “I guess I would.” He added, “You don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phoney stuff in there because there is a lot of phoney stuff with that whole world, but I think I would.”
On a September 2024 episode of the Lex Fridman podcast, during a discussion about releasing some of the Epstein documents, Trump said, “Yeah, I’d certainly take a look at it.” He added that he’d be “inclined” to do it and said, “I’d have no problem with it.”
In 2025, Trump was dismissive of the Epstein files
Early in the second Trump administration, Trump officials – including Attorney General Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, who became the FBI director – said they supported releasing the files.
In late February at a White House event, Bondi released what she called the “first phase” of “declassified Epstein files” to conservative influencers. It largely consisted of documents that had already been made public.
In a July 12 Truth Social post, Trump expressed frustration about the Epstein files. Speaking to reporters on July 15 on the White House lawn, Trump said the files “were made up by Comey. They were made up by Obama. They were made up by Biden.” We rated that claim Pants on Fire.
Trump said the FBI should focus on investigating other issues, such as voter fraud, and that his administration should “not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about”.
In a July 16 interview with Real America’s Voice, a conservative outlet, Trump said, “I think in the case of Epstein, they’ve already looked at it and they are looking at it and I think all they have to do is put out anything credible. But you know, that was run by the Biden administration for four years.”
On August 22, a reporter asked Trump if he was in favour of releasing the files.
“I’m in support of keeping it open,” he said. “Innocent people shouldn’t be hurt, but I’m in support of keeping it totally open. I couldn’t care less. You got a lot of people that could be mentioned in those files that don’t deserve to be, people – because he knew everybody in Palm Beach. I don’t know anything about that, but I have said to Pam (Bondi) and everybody else, give them everything you can give them because it’s a Democrat hoax.”
On September 3, a reporter asked Trump a question about efforts to release the Epstein files and if the Justice Department was protecting any friends or donors.
Trump said it was a “Democrat hoax that never ends” and “we’ve given thousands of pages of files”.
This month, Trump called for releasing the files
Trump came out in support of releasing the files after it became clear the House was headed in that direction.
The House Oversight Committee, on November 12, released about 20,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate.
Trump directed prosecutors to investigate Democrats and told Republicans to vote in favour of releasing the files.
Trump has often noted Epstein’s ties to former President Bill Clinton. In a November 14 Truth Social post, Trump asked the Justice Department to investigate Epstein’s involvement with Clinton.
Typically, prosecutors do not release files during an ongoing investigation, so Trump’s announcement raised questions about whether the Justice Department will withhold certain files even if Congress votes to release them.
When a reporter asked Trump on November 14 about releasing the files, he said, “I don’t care about it, released or not.”
Two days later, in a November 16 post, Trump said, “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party, including our recent Victory on the Democrat ‘Shutdown.’’
Summers says he will be taking a step back from engagements after his emails discussing personal and political matters with Epstein made public.
Former Harvard president Larry Summers has apologised and says he will be stepping back from public life after his email exchanges with the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were made public.
“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognise the pain they have caused. I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein,” Summers said in a statement published by CBS News on Monday.
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“While continuing to fulfil my teaching obligations, I will be stepping back from public commitments as one part of my broader effort to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me,” he said.
The emails were among the 20,000 pages of documents obtained from Epstein’s estate and released last week by the United States House Committee on Oversight amid ongoing questions about the ex-financier’s relationship with President Donald Trump.
Epstein died by suicide in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. He was previously convicted in 2008 for soliciting prostitution and soliciting prostitution from a minor, but he served a light 13-month sentence. Before his downfall in 2019, Epstein was in constant contact with world leaders, celebrities, and high-profile figures like Summers.
The emails between Epstein and Summers span from at least 2017 to 2019 and cover a range of topics, including US foreign policy to Trump’s first presidency, as well as personal matters.
In one email from 2017, Summers advises Epstein that his “pal”, billionaire Thomas Barrack Jr, should stay out of the press following a Washington Post story about Barrack Jr’s relationship with both Trump and political lobbyist Paul Manafort.
“Public link to manafort will be a disaster,” he wrote. “This is a staggering [expletive] show.”
In another December 2018 email, Summers asks Epstein for help securing an invitation to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which Epstein appears to turn down.
Summers previously served as Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and as an adviser to President Barack Obama. He also served as the president of Harvard from 2001 to 2006, when he was forced to resign over remarks suggesting that women were less adept at maths and science than men due to biological differences.
His recent posts include board member at OpenAI and distinguished senior fellow at the Centre for American Progress, according to NBC News. He remained a tenured professor at Harvard after stepping down.
In his emails with Epstein, Summers appears to have held on to his beliefs about women more than 10 years later. In one October 2017 email to Epstein about an event that included “lots of slathering to Saudis”, he wrote that he “yipped about inclusion”.
“I observed that half the IQ in world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of the population …,” he wrote in the email to Epstein.
In another email the same month, written at the height of the #MeToo movement, Summers appeared disenchanted with the wave of resignations over sexual and personal misconduct by US public figures.
“I’m trying to figure why American elite think if u murder your baby by beating and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard, but hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank,” he said in the email to Epstein.
In another email exchange between late November and early December 2018, he and Epstein discuss his relationship with a female colleague at length and how Summers – who was then in his mid-60s – should handle the situation.
“Think for now I’m going nowhere with her except economics mentor. I think I’m right now in the seen very warmly in rearview mirror category. She did not want to have a drink cuz she was ‘tired.’ I left the hotel lobby somewhat abruptly. When I’m reflective, I think I’m dodging a bullet,” Summers wrote to Epstein.
“Smart. Assertive and clear. Gorgeous. I’m [ expletive],” Summers wrote in a follow-up email describing the woman, before later concluding a “cooling off” period was needed.
US president defends economic policies as polls show growing angst among voters over prices.
Published On 18 Nov 202518 Nov 2025
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United States President Donald Trump has defended his administration’s record on lowering prices as he faces growing discontent from Americans over the cost of living.
In a speech to McDonald’s franchise owners and suppliers on Monday, Trump claimed credit for bringing inflation back to “normal” levels while pledging to bring price growth lower still.
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“We have it down to a low level, but we’re going to get it a little bit lower,” Trump said.
“We want perfection.”
Returning to his regular talking point that Democrats had mismanaged the economy, the Republican president blamed cost pressures on former US President Joe Biden and insisted Americans were “so damn lucky” he won the 2024 election.
“Nobody has done what we’ve done in terms of pricing. We took over a mess,” Trump said.
Trump, whose 2024 presidential campaign focused heavily on the cost of living, has struggled to win over Americans with his protectionist economic message amid persistent affordability concerns.
In an NBC News poll released this month, 66 percent of respondents said Trump had fallen short of their expectations on affordability, while 63 percent answered the same for the economy in general.
Voter angst over prices has been widely identified as a key reason Republicans suffered a shellacking in off-year elections held early this month in multiple states, including New Jersey and Virginia.
Despite repeatedly playing down the effects of his tariffs on prices, Trump on Friday signed an executive order lowering duties on 200 food products, including beef, bananas, coffee and orange juice.
Trump has also floated tariff-funded $2,000 rebate cheques and the introduction of 50-year mortgages as part of a push to address affordability concerns.
While inflation has markedly declined since hitting a four-decade high of 9.1 percent under Biden, it remains significantly above the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target.
The inflation rate rose to 3 percent in October, the first time it hit the 3 percent mark since January, although many analysts had expected a higher figure due to Trump’s trade salvoes.
Trump, who is well known for his love of McDonald’s, spent a considerable portion of Monday’s speech praising the fast-food chain and casting the company as emblematic of his economic agenda.
“Together we are fighting for an economy where everybody can win, from the cashier starting her first job to a franchisee opening their first location to the young family in a drive-through line,” he said.
Trump also offered “special thanks” to the fast-food giant for rolling out more affordable menu options, including the reintroduction of extra value meals, which were phased out in 2018 and are priced at $5 or $8.
“We’re getting prices down for this country, and there’s no better leader or advocate than McDonald’s,” he said.
A magistrate judge in the United States has issued a stern rebuke to the administration of President Donald Trump, criticising its handling of the indictment against a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), James Comey.
On Monday, Judge William Fitzpatrick of Alexandria, Virginia, made the unusual decision to order the release of all grand jury materials related to the indictment.
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Normally, grand jury materials are kept secret to protect witnesses, defendants and jurors in cases of grave federal crimes.
But in Comey’s case, Fitzpatrick ruled there was “a reasonable basis to question whether the government’s conduct was willful or in reckless disregard of the law”, and that greater transparency was therefore required.
He cited several irregularities in the case, ranging from how evidence was obtained to alleged misstatements from prosecutors that could have swayed the grand jury.
“The procedural and substantive irregularities that occurred before the grand jury, and the manner in which evidence presented to the grand jury was collected and used, may rise to the level of government misconduct,” Fitzpatrick wrote in his 24-page decision.
Fitzpatrick clarified that his decision does not render the grand jury materials public. But they will be provided to Comey’s defence team, as the former FBI director seeks to have the indictment tossed.
“The Court recognizes that the relief sought by the defense is rarely granted,” Fitzpatrick wrote, underscoring the unusual nature of the proceedings.
“However, the record points to a disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps.”
Scrutiny of US Attorney Halligan
The decision is the latest stumble for interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan, a former personal lawyer to Trump whom he then appointed as a top federal prosecutor.
A specialist in insurance law with no prosecutorial background, Halligan was tapped earlier this year to replace acting US Attorney Erik Siebert in the Eastern District of Virginia.
Trump has indicated he fired Siebert over disagreements about Justice Department investigations.
According to media reports, Siebert had refrained from seeking indictments against prominent Trump critics, such as Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, citing insufficient evidence.
But that appears to have frustrated the president. Trump went so far as to call for Comey’s and James’s prosecutions on social media, as well as that of Democratic Senator Adam Schiff.
“They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done,” Trump wrote in a post addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility.”
Halligan took up her post as acting US attorney on September 22. By September 25, she had filed her first major indictment, against Comey.
It charged Comey with making a “false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement” to the US Senate, thereby obstructing a congressional inquiry.
A second indictment, against James, was issued on October 9. And a third came on October 16, targeting former national security adviser John Bolton, another prominent Trump critic.
All three individuals have denied wrongdoing and have sought to have their cases dismissed. Each has also accused President Trump of using the legal system for political retribution against perceived adversaries.
Monday’s court ruling is not the first time Halligan’s indictments have come under scrutiny, though.
Just last week, US District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie heard petitions from James and Comey questioning whether Halligan’s appointment as US attorney was legal.
As she weighed the petitions last Thursday, she questioned why there was a gap in the grand jury record for Comey’s indictment, where no court reporter appeared to be present.
Inside Fitzpatrick’s ruling
Fitzpatrick raised the same issue in his ruling on Monday. He questioned whether the transcript and audio recording of the grand jury deliberations were, in fact, complete.
He pointed out that the grand jury in Comey’s case was originally presented with a three-count indictment, which it rejected. Those deliberations started at about 4:28pm local time.
But by 6:40pm, the grand jury had allegedly weighed a second indictment and found that there was probable cause for two of the three counts.
Fitzpatrick said that the span of time between those two points was not “sufficient” to “draft the second indictment, sign the second indictment, present it to the grand jury, provide legal instructions to the grand jury, and give them an opportunity to deliberate”.
Either the court record was incomplete, Fitzpatrick said, or the grand jury weighed an indictment that had not been fully presented in court.
The judge also acknowledged questions about how evidence had been obtained in the Comey case.
The Trump administration was facing a five-year statute of limitations in the Comey case, expiring on September 30. The indictment pertains to statements Comey made before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020.
To quickly find evidence for the indictment, Fitzpatrick said that federal prosecutors appear to have used warrants that were issued for a different case.
Those warrants, however, were limited to an investigation into Daniel Richman, an associate of Comey who was probed for the alleged theft of government property and the unlawful gathering of national security information.
No charges were filed in the Richman case, and the investigation was closed in 2021.
“The Richman materials sat dormant with the FBI until the summer of 2025, when the Bureau chose to rummage through them again,” Fitzpatrick said.
He said the federal government’s use of the warrants could violate the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, which prohibits the unreasonable search and seizure of evidence. He described the Justice Department’s actions as “cavalier” and asserted that no precautions were taken to protect privileged information.
“Inexplicably, the government elected not to seek a new warrant for the 2025 search, even though the 2025 investigation was focused on a different person, was exploring a fundamentally different legal theory, and was predicated on an entirely different set of criminal offenses,” Fitzpatrick wrote.
He speculated that prosecutors may not have sought a new warrant because the delay would have allowed the statute of limitations to expire on the Comey case.
“The Court recognizes that a failure to seek a new warrant under these circumstances is highly unusual,” he said.
Fitzpatrick also raised concerns that statements federal prosecutors made to the grand jury may have been misleading.
Many of those statements were redacted in Fitzpatrick’s ruling. But he described them as “fundamental misstatements of the law that could compromise the grand jury process”.
One statement, he said, “may have reasonably set an expectation in the minds of the grand jury that rather than the government bear the burden to prove Mr. Comey’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt at trial, the burden shifts to Mr. Comey to explain away the government’s evidence”.
Another appeared to suggest that the grand jury “did not have to rely only on the record before them to determine probable cause” — and that more evidence would be presented later on.
Calling for the release of the grand jury records on Monday was an “extraordinary remedy” for these issues, Fitzpatrick conceded.
But it was necessary, given “the prospect that government misconduct may have tainted the grand jury proceedings”, he ultimately decided.
Richardson is the second interim official US President Donald Trump has appointed to lead FEMA since the start of his second term.
Published On 17 Nov 202517 Nov 2025
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David Richardson, the acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), is stepping down, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Monday’s announcement ends a troubled tenure. It comes just six months after Richardson took the job and while the Atlantic hurricane season is still under way.
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Richardson, a former Marine Corps officer, is the second FEMA head to leave or be fired since May. He departs amid criticism that he kept a low profile during the deadly Texas floods in July that killed 130 people and baffled staff in June when he said he was unaware the country had a hurricane season.
A DHS spokesperson gave no reasons for why the FEMA chief was departing. The Washington Post was the first to report that Richardson was leaving.
The DHS spokesperson said in a statement that FEMA chief of staff Karen Evans will replace Richardson, and that FEMA and DHS appreciate Richardson’s service.
Richardson’s predecessor, Cameron Hamilton, was fired in May, after pushing back against efforts under President Donald Trump to dismantle the agency.
President Trump has said he wants to greatly reduce the size of FEMA — the federal agency responsible for preparing for and responding to natural disasters — saying state governments can handle many of its functions.
FEMA plays a central role in the US response to major disasters, including hurricanes. The Atlantic hurricane season is due to end this month.
Richardson kept a low public profile compared with FEMA leaders under previous presidents, appearing rarely in public. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has served as the face of the administration’s response to natural disasters during Trump’s second term.
Richardson’s abrupt departure is an ignominious end for an official who told staff when he first arrived in May that he would “run right over” anyone who resists changes and that all decisions must now go through him.
“I, and I alone in FEMA, speak for FEMA,” he said at the time.
FEMA has lost about 2,500 employees since January through buyouts, firings and other incentives for staff to quit, reducing its overall size to about 23,350, according to a September Government Accountability Office report.
The cuts are part of Trump’s broader push to cut the cost and size of the federal civilian workforce.
Agents from ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and Department of Homeland Security have been deployed as part of Trump’s latest anti-immigration operation.
Published On 15 Nov 202515 Nov 2025
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United States federal officials have confirmed that an immigration crackdown – the latest by President Donald Trump’s administration – is under way in North Carolina’s largest city, Charlotte, as agents were seen making arrests in multiple locations.
“Americans should be able to live without fear of violent criminal illegal aliens hurting them, their families, or their neighbors,” Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement on Saturday, according to The Associated Press news agency. “We are surging DHS [Department of Homeland Security] law enforcement to Charlotte to ensure Americans are safe and public safety threats are removed.”
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Local officials, including Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles, criticised such actions, saying in a statement they “are causing unnecessary fear and uncertainty”.
“We want people in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County to know we stand with all residents who simply want to go about their lives,” said the statement, which was also signed by County Commissioner Mark Jerrell and Stephanie Sneed of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg education board.
Charlotte is a racially diverse city of more than 900,000 residents, including more than 150,000 who are foreign-born, according to local officials.
The federal government hadn’t previously announced the push. But Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden said earlier this week that two federal officials had told him that customs agents would be arriving soon.
Paola Garcia, a spokesperson with Camino – a bilingual nonprofit serving families in Charlotte – said she and her colleagues have observed an increase in Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents pulling people over since Friday.
“Basically, what we’re seeing is that there have been lots of people being pulled over,” Garcia said. “I even saw a few people being pulled over on the way to work yesterday, and then just from community members seeing an increase in ICE and Border Patrol agents in the city of Charlotte.”
Local organisations responded by holding trainings, trying to inform immigrants of their rights, and considering peaceful protests.
Trump’s administration has defended federal enforcement crackdowns in cities like Los Angeles and Chicago as necessary for fighting crime and enforcing immigration laws.
Trump’s drive to deport millions of immigrants has prompted allegations of rights abuses and myriad lawsuits.
But Governor Josh Stein, a Democrat with a Republican-majority legislature, said Friday that the vast majority of those detained in these operations have no criminal convictions, and some are American citizens.
He urged people to record any “inappropriate behavior” they see and notify local law enforcement about it.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department had emphasised ahead of time that it isn’t involved in federal immigration enforcement.
Suzanne Ellen Kaye was convicted for threatening to shoot FBI agents, and Daniel Edwin Wilson for conspiring to impede or injure police offers and illegal firearm possession.
White House officials said on Saturday that one pardon was given to a woman convicted of threatening to shoot FBI agents who were investigating a tip that she may have been at the US Capitol. Trump issued the second pardon for a defendant who had remained behind bars despite the sweeping grant of clemency for Capitol rioters because of a separate conviction for illegally possessing firearms.
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These pardons are the latest example of Trump’s willingness to use his constitutional authority to help supporters who were scrutinised as part of the massive January 6 investigation that was conducted by the administration of former US President Joe Biden and that led to charges against more than 1,500 defendants.
With a stroke of his pen and within hours of being sworn in for his second term in January of this year, Trump upended the largest prosecution in the history of the US Department of Justice.
He freed from prison people caught on camera viciously attacking police as well as leaders of far-right groups convicted of orchestrating violent plots to stop the peaceful transfer of power after Trump’s 2020 election loss.
Suzanne Ellen Kaye, of Florida, was released last year after serving an 18-month sentence. After the FBI contacted her in 2021 about a tip indicating she may have been at the Capitol on January 6, she posted a video on social media citing her right under the US Constitution’s Second Amendment to carry a gun, and threatened to shoot agents if they came to her house.
Kaye testified at trial that she didn’t own any guns and didn’t intend to threaten the FBI, according to court papers. She told authorities she was not at the Capitol on January 6 and wasn’t charged with any Capitol riot-related crimes.
Trump also pardoned Daniel Edwin Wilson of Kentucky, who was under investigation for his role in the riot when authorities found six guns and roughly 4,800 rounds of ammunition in his home.
Wilson, who had been scheduled to remain in prison until 2028, was released Friday evening following the pardon, his lawyer said on Saturday.
A White House official said on Saturday that “because the search of Mr. Wilson’s home was due to the events of January 6, and they should have never been there in the first place, President Trump is pardoning Mr. Wilson for the firearm issues”.
Wilson had been sentenced in 2024 to five years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to impede or injure police officers and illegally possessing firearms at his home.
Trump has said he would likely sue the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) next week for as much as $5bn after the British media company admitted it wrongly edited a video of a January 6, 2021 speech he gave, but insisted there was no legal basis for his claim.
The controversy centres on the BBC’s edit of Trump’s remarks on the day his supporters stormed the US Capitol.
The BBC is in turmoil. A leaked dossier exposing a misedited speech of United States President Donald Trump and other editorial concerns has triggered resignations at the top – and a $1bn lawsuit threat from the US leader. Why the leak surfaced now, and who steps in next, are still open questions. Most importantly, will the BBC be able to recover from this moment?
Contributors: Ben de Pear – Former editor, Channel 4 News Jane Martinson – Professor, University of London Karishma Patel – Former newsreader, BBC Tom Mills – Author, The BBC: Myth of a Public Service
On our radar
This week, Ahmed al-Sharaa became the first Syrian president ever to set foot in the White House. A landmark diplomatic trip filled with photo ops and political theatre, marking his transition from a US-designated terrorist to an ally. Meenakshi Ravi reports.
AI slop tsunami: Is the internet now a junkyard?
Elettra Scrivo explores how social media platforms are rapidly changing with the surge of AI content. Low-quality, mass-produced, artificially generated content, otherwise known as AI slop, is designed to trigger the algorithms and generate revenue for Big Tech companies.
Featuring: Drew Harwell – Technology reporter, The Washington Post Mark Lawrence Garilao – AI video content creator Myojung Chung – Associate professor, Northeastern University
United States President Donald Trump has said he is withdrawing his support for Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, calling the lawmaker a “lunatic” and accusing her of going “far left”.
In a post on his Truth Social platform late on Friday, Trump said, “I am withdrawing my support and endorsement of ‘Congresswoman’ Marjorie Taylor Greene, of the great state of Georgia.”
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The US leader, labelling Greene “wacky”, said all the lawmaker did was “COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN”, despite his “record achievements” in office.
Greene, a member of the House of Representatives, has long been a reliable ally and fierce defender of Trump, even sporting a Make America Great Again (MAGA) baseball hat at President Joe Biden’s 2024 State of the Union address.
But in recent months, she has taken positions at odds with the White House and her fellow Republicans, including criticising them during the just-ended federal government shutdown, saying the Trump administration needed a plan to help people set to lose health insurance subsidies as part of planned cuts.
More notably, Greene has also become a vocal campaigner for transparency and the full release of files related to late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein – a recurrent scandal that continues to engulf President Trump.
Greene responded to Trump’s announcement on Friday with screenshots of a text message she sent the president about the Epstein case, claiming it “sent him over the edge”.
“It’s astonishing really how hard he’s fighting to stop the Epstein files from coming out that he actually goes to this level,” she wrote on X.
“Most Americans wish he would fight this hard to help the forgotten men and women of America who are fed up with foreign wars and foreign causes, are going broke trying to feed their families, and are losing hope of ever achieving the American dream,” she said.
Greene also claimed Trump is going after her “hard to make an example to scare all the other Republicans before next week’s vote to release the Epstein files”.
President Trump just attacked me and lied about me. I haven’t called him at all, but I did send these text messages today. Apparently this is what sent him over the edge.
The Epstein files.
And of course he’s coming after me hard to make an example to scare all the other… pic.twitter.com/EcUzaohZZs
On Wednesday, House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson said the body will hold a vote next week on whether to force the Department of Justice to disclose all files related to Epstein – who died by suicide in prison in 2019.
It came as a result of the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act – a discharge petition allowing a majority of lawmakers to bypass the House leadership and force a vote on the issue – which was signed by Greene and three other House Republicans.
If backed, the measure would force the release of flight logs and travel records, individuals named or referenced in connection with the Epstein investigation, and materials related to Epstein’s former girlfriend and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.
How well did Trump know Epstein and Maxwell?
Trump has faced growing scrutiny over his alleged ties to the disgraced financier, most recently on Wednesday, when Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released new emails appearing to further link the pair.
In one email, Epstein told Maxwell that Trump had “spent hours” at his house with one abuse victim. The White House claimed the communications “prove nothing”.
Trump has repeatedly urged his supporters to move on from the scandal, labelling suggestions that there is an Epstein client list with his name on it a “hoax” pushed by his Democratic opponents.
In an interview on Friday, Greene labelled Trump’s resistance to releasing the files a “huge miscalculation”, adding that she does not believe he has anything to hide.
Trump made no mention of the Epstein issue in his post disowning Greene, claiming the schism between the pair began when he discouraged her from running for senator or governor due to low polling numbers.
“She has told many people that she is upset that I don’t return her phone calls any more, but with 219 Congressmen/women, 53 US Senators, 24 Cabinet Members, almost 200 Countries, and an otherwise normal life to lead, I can’t take a ranting Lunatic ‘s call every day,” Trump said.
Trump continued that Republicans in Georgia are “fed up with her and her antics” and should they find an alternative to run at the next midterms, that candidate will have his “complete and unyielding support”.
When Donald Trump apologized for saying in 2005 that he could grope women because of his celebrity, he immediately pointed to Bill Clinton as having done worse. Trump appeared before a debate alongside Clinton’s accusers and again mentioned the former president’s past while onstage with Hillary Clinton. But Trump’s argument was undercut when more women publicly came forward with allegations that he had groped or kissed them without consent.
Here’s a look at the pasts of both Trump and Bill Clinton and accusations against them.
Donald Trump
In a screen grab of a 2005 “Access Hollywood” video, Donald Trump prepares for his cameo on “Days of Our Lives” with actress Arianne Zucker and Billy Bush, right, then “Access” co-host. (Getty)
(Getty)
1977, 31-year-old Trump
Trump marries his first wife, Ivana Trump
Donald Trump Jr. is born
Early-1980s, 30-something Donald Trump
Allegation: While Trump was seated next to her on a plane, businesswoman Jessica Leeds said, he lifted her armrest and touched her inappropriately.
“He was like an octopus,” Leeds, now 74, told the New York Times. “His hands were everywhere.”
Response: Trump called it a “ridiculous tale.” At a rally in North Carolina, he said, “She would not be my first choice.”
Allegation: Ivana Trump used the word “rape” in a 1992 deposition during their divorce to describe an encounter with Trump when they were married in 1989. In 2015, after the allegation resurfaced, she said it was “without merit” and that she had made it “at a time of very high tension during my divorce from Donald.”
Response: After the allegation resurfaced last summer, Michael Cohen, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, incorrectly said that a man cannot legally rape his wife. Many states have laws outlawing marital rape. Trump distanced himself from that statement.
Early 1990s, 40-something Trump
Allegation: Kristin Anderson told the Washington Post that when she was at a Manhattan nightclub, someone sitting next to her “touched her vagina through her underwear.” Anderson said she fled the couch and only then realized it was Trump.
Response: “Mr. Trump strongly denies this phony allegation by someone looking to get some free publicity. It is totally ridiculous,” Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said to the Post.
1991, 44-year-old Trump
Ivana Trump files for divorce.
1992, 45-year-old Trump
Accusation: Donald Trump reportedly talked about dating young girls once they reached maturity. A 1992 wire service report said he joked to 14-year-old girls that he’d be dating them “in a few years.” In CBS footage from around the same time, he says of a 10-year-old girl that he’d be “dating her in 10 years.”
Response: Trump has not commented specifically on those allegations.
Accusation: Jill Harth filed a sexual assault lawsuit against Trump, alleging that while working on a beauty competition with him, he harassed her to the point of what she called “attempted rape.”
“He pushed me up against the wall, and had his hands all over me and tried to get up my dress again,” she told the Guardian. “And I had to physically say: ‘What are you doing? Stop it.’”
Response: In an interview with CNN on Friday, Trump said he was the victim of a political smear campaign.
1993, 46-year-old Trump
Tiffany Trump is born.
Trump marries Marla Maples.
1997, 50-year-old Trump
Trump and Marla Maples separate.
Accusation: Temple Taggart told the New York Times that when she was Miss Utah, Trump kissed her on the lips without consent.
Response: Trump has denied the allegations.
1998, 51-year-old Trump
Accusation: During a press conference with Gloria Allred on Thursday, Karena Virginia said Trump approached her after the 1998 U.S. Open tennis tournament in Flushing, N.Y. He then grabbed her arm and touched her breast.
“Don’t you know who I am?” Virginia said Trump asked her when she flinched.
Response: “Gloria Allred, in another coordinated, publicity seeking attack with the Clinton campaign, will stop at nothing to smear Mr. Trump,” Trump spokeswoman Jessica Ditto said. “Give me a break. Voters are tired of these circus-like antics and reject these fictional stories and the clear efforts to benefit Hillary Clinton.”
1999, 52-year-old Trump
Trump and Marla Maples divorce
2003, 56-year-old Trump
Accusation:Mindy McGillivray says Trump groped her at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida while she was working with a photographer at the site. She was 23.
Response: Trump has denied the allegations.
2005, 58-year-old Trump
Trump marries Melania Trump
Allegation: Trump makes lewd comments about groping women.
Response: Apologized, calling it “locker room talk,” while dismissing it as a distraction.
Accusation: Rachel Crooks says Trump kissed her without permission outside an elevator bank at Trump Tower in Manhattan when she was 22.
Response: Trump denied the allegations. When questioned by a New York Times reporter, he told the journalist, “You are a disgusting human being.”
2006, 59-year-old Trump
Barron Trump is born.
Allegation: During a Saturday press conference with Gloria Allred, adult film star Jessica Drake said she met Trump in 2006 at a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe where she said he made sexual advances toward her and two friends.
“When we entered the room he grabbed each of us tightly in a hug and kissed each one of us without asking permission,” Drake said, releasing a posed photo she took with Trump at the event.
Drake said that later, Trump or a “male speaking on his behalf” offered her $10,000 and use of his private jet for sex. She said she declined.
Response: “This story is totally false and ridiculous. The picture is one of thousands taken out of respect for people asking to have their picture taken with Mr. Trump,” Trump’s campaign said in a statement. “Mr. Trump does not know this person, does not remember this person and would have no interest in ever knowing her.”
2007, 60-year-old Trump
Accusation: Former “Apprentice” contestant Summer Zervos says Trump invited her into his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel and proceeded to kiss her against her will, groped her and shoved his genitals towards her.
Response: “To be clear, I never met her at a hotel or greeted her inappropriately a decade ago. That is not who I am as a person, and it is not how I’ve conducted my life,” Trump said in a statement.
Bill Clinton
President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
(Getty Images)
1975, 29-year-old Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton marries Hillary Rodham.
Mid-1970s to 1992, 30- to 40-something Clinton
Allegation:Dolly Kyle Browning, a high school friend of Clinton’s, said she had an occasional sexual relationship with him over about 15 years.
Response: Clinton has not publicly responded.
1978, 32-year-old Clinton
Allegation:Juanita Broaddrick said in 1999 that when Clinton was Arkansas governor, he invited her to a hotel room where she said he kissed, then raped her.
Response: Clinton denied the allegations.
1980, 34-year-old Clinton
Chelsea Clinton is born.
1982, 36-year-old Clinton
Allegation: In 1998, Elizabeth Ward Gracen said she had had a consensual one-night stand with Clinton when he was Arkansas governor in 1982. It was the same year she won the title of Miss America.
Response: Clinton denied the allegations.
1983, 37-year-old Clinton
Allegation: In 1994, 1958’s Miss Arkansas, Sally Perdue, said she had an affair with Clinton the previous year. She claimed that a Democratic staffer told her not to reveal any information, and was warned “they knew that I went jogging by myself and he couldn’t guarantee what would happen to my pretty little legs.”
Response: He has not publicly responded to the allegation.
1991, 44-year-old Clinton
Allegation: Paula Jones said a state trooper asked her to meet then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton in his hotel room. Jones said that Clinton dropped his pants and underwear and told her to “kiss it.” She refused.
Jones sued Clinton for sexual harassment in 1998, prompting the investigation that culminated in the revelation of Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Response: Clinton settled a sexual harassment suit with Jones with no apology or admission of guilt.
1980-1992, 45-year-old Clinton
Allegation: During Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992, Gennifer Flowers said she had had a 12-year sexual relationship with him.
Response: Clinton admitted to a sexual affair with Flowers while under oath in 1998.
1993, 46-year-old Bill Clinton
Allegation: In 1998, Kathleen Willey alleged Clinton groped her without permission in the Oval Office.
Response: Clinton denied the encounter while under oath in 1998.
1995-1996, 49-year-old Bill Clinton
Allegation:Monica Lewinsky’s affair with Bill Clinton surfaced in 1998, when Lewinsky’s friend Linda Tripp learned that she had signed an affidavit in the Paula Jones case denying her relationship with Clinton. Tripp handed secret recordings of Lewinsky’s account of the affair to investigator Kenneth Starr.
Response: Clinton initially denied the allegations.
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” he said famously.
Clinton later admitted to the affair, and the House of Representatives voted to impeach him.
Updated at 11:10 a.m. on Oct. 24, 2016: This story was updated with Jessica Drake’s statements.
Updated at 1:20 p.m. on Oct. 20, 2016: This story was updated with Karena Virginia’s statements.
This article was originally published at 3:35 p.m. on Oct. 19, 2016.
Three days after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened it with a $1 billion defamation lawsuit over misleading editing of a speech he gave on Jan. 6, Britain’s BBC issued a retraction but refused to pay compensation. Photo by Andy Rain/EPA
Nov. 14 (UPI) — The BBC issued a retraction and a formal apology to U.S. President Donald Trump for edits to a speech he gave ahead of the Jan. 6 riots on Capitol Hill that made it appear as if he was inciting his supporters to violence.
The British public service broadcaster apologized Thursday night via the corrections page on its website, with the apology the lead story across all of its news platforms on television, radio and online during the evening and first thing Friday morning.
BBC Chairman Samir Shah also penned a personal written apology to the White House, however, the BBC indicated it would not be paying compensation, as demanded by Trump.
The retraction said an edition of Panorama titled Trump: A Second Chance, broadcast on Oct. 28, 2024, used excerpts lifted from different parts of Trump’s speech in a way that inadvertently made it appear they were contiguous.
The BBC’s version had Trump saying, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell,” when his actual words were, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”
The BBC said it accepted that this “gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action.”
“The BBC would like to apologize to President Trump for that error of judgment.”
However, the notice made no mention of compensation, one of President Trump’s key demands in his letter threatening the BBC with a $1 billion lawsuit alleging the program had defamed him and giving it until 5 p.m. EST on Friday to respond.
A BBC spokesman said the corporation strongly disagreed “there is a basis for a defamation claim.”
There was no immediate response from either the White House or Trump’s legal counsel.
The Panorama program was not an isolated incident, according to The Telegraph, which said the BBC’s Newsnight program did something very similar with the same speech in a broadcast in 2022.
A spokesman for Trump’s legal team said that from the latest revelation it was “now clear that the BBC engaged in a pattern of defamation against President Trump” and accused it of attempting to try to influence the outcome of the 2024 election.
The debacle has sparked a furious debate about editorial impartiality at the BBC, which is funded by a $229 annual license that every household with a TV must pay, prompting calls for an overhaul of internal processes and procedures.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy acknowledged the BBC’s editorial rules were “in some cases not robust enough and in other cases not consistently applied,” and appeared to suggest the replacement for director-general Tim Davie, who quit Sunday, must be from a journalism background.
Davie spent the first half of his career as a senior marketing executive at PepsiCo before joining the BBC’s marketing division.
The opposition Conservative’s Shadow Culture Secretary, Nigel Huddleston, said he was waiting to see if Trump accepted the BBC’s response to be the “fulsome apology” he was entitled to receive.
“I do not want the British license fee payer or the rest of the BBC to pay the price for poor editorial decisions made by BBC journalists, he said in a post on X.
“However, we would all be in a better position if the BBC had never made these errors in the first place. The BBC needs a fundamental review of processes and procedures to ensure that such failures in impartiality never happen again.”
President Donald Trump signs the funding package to reopen the federal government in the Oval Office of the White House on Wednesday. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
The poll also shows 44 percent of Democrats were ‘very enthusiastic’ about voting in the 2026 midterm elections.
Published On 13 Nov 202513 Nov 2025
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The approval rating for United States President Donald Trump remains at its lowest level since he began his second term in January, according to a new poll.
But Thursday’s survey, conducted by the news agency Reuters and the research firm Ipsos, found a jump in the share of respondents who said they disapproved of his performance.
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His disapproval rating increased from 52 percent in mid-May to 58 percent in November. His approval rating, meanwhile, stayed at approximately 40 percent, roughly the same as it was in May.
The online poll, conducted over six days this month, surveyed 1,200 US adults nationwide about their opinions on top political figures and who they planned to vote for in the upcoming 2026 midterm elections.
It found that Democrats appeared to be more enthusiastic about next year’s midterms than their Republican counterparts, a result perhaps influenced by key Democratic victories this month.
Approximately 44 percent of registered voters who called themselves Democrats said they were “very enthusiastic” about voting in the 2026 elections, compared with 26 percent of Republicans.
Some 79 percent of Democrats said they would regret it if they did not vote in the midterm races, compared with 68 percent of Republicans.
All 435 seats in the House of Representatives will be up for grabs next year, as will 35 seats in the 100-member Senate. Republicans currently control both chambers of Congress.
But Democrats have recently been buoyed by wins on November 4, during the off-year elections.
The party won resounding victories in governor’s races for Virginia and New Jersey, and in New York City, a closely watched race mayoral race saw Zohran Mamdani sweep to victory over his centrist and right-wing competitors.
Voters in California also passed a ballot measure that will redraw its congressional districts to favour the Democrats, in response to Trump-inspired gerrymandering in Republican states.
The Reuters-Ipsos poll closed on Wednesday, just before Congress voted to end the longest government shutdown in US history.
The new spending bill, which extends federal funding until January 30, passed in the House of Representatives by a margin of 222 to 209, with six Democrats joining the Republican majority to reopen the government.
Trump signed a federal government spending bill late on Wednesday, ending the 43-day shutdown, which caused tumult for federal workers, families in need and air travel.
The bill had previously passed the Senate on Monday, after seven Democrats and one independent agreed to support it.
While Democrats appeared more “enthusiastic” than Republicans in the Reuters-Ipsos poll, the survey noted that the two parties appeared to be evenly matched in voter intention moving forward.
When poll respondents were asked whom they would vote for if congressional elections were held today, 41 percent of registered voters said they’d pick the Democratic candidate, while 40 percent chose the Republican candidate.
The narrow difference in those results fell well within the poll’s 3-percentage-point margin of error.
The Trump administration is pushing an Israeli-crafted resolution at the UN Security Council (UNSC) this week aimed at eliminating the possibility of a State of Palestine. The resolution does three things. It establishes US political control over the Gaza Strip. It separates Gaza from the rest of Palestine. And it allows the US, and therefore Israel, to determine the timeline for Israel’s supposed withdrawal from Gaza, which would mean never.
This is imperialism masquerading as a peace process. In and of itself, it is no surprise. Israel runs US foreign policy in the Middle East. What is a surprise is that the US and Israel might just get away with this travesty unless the world speaks up with urgency and indignation.
The draft UNSC resolution would establish a US-UK-dominated Board of Peace, chaired by none other than President Donald Trump himself, and endowed with sweeping powers over Gaza’s governance, borders, reconstruction, and security. This resolution would sideline the State of Palestine and condition any transfer of authority to the Palestinians on the indulgence of the Board of Peace.
This would be an overt return to the British mandate of 100 years ago, with the only change being that the US would hold the mandate rather than the United Kingdom. If it were not so utterly tragic, it would be laughable. As Marx said, history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. Yes, the proposal is a farce, yet Israel’s genocide is not. It is a tragedy of the first order.
Incredibly, according to the draft resolution, the Board of Peace would be granted sovereign powers in Gaza. Palestinian sovereignty is left to the discretion of the board, which alone would decide when Palestinians are “ready” to govern themselves – perhaps in another 100 years? Even military security is subordinated to the board, and the envisioned forces would answer not to the UNSC or to the Palestinian people, but to the board’s “strategic guidance”.
The US-Israel resolution is being put forward precisely because the rest of the world – other than Israel and the US – has woken up to two facts. First, Israel is committing genocide, a reality witnessed every day in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, where innocent Palestinians are murdered to the satisfaction of the Israeli military and illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Second, Palestine is a state, albeit one whose sovereignty remains obstructed by the US, which uses its veto in the UNSC to block Palestine’s permanent UN membership. At the UN this past July and then again in September, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly for Palestine’s statehood, a fact that put the Israel-US Zionist lobby into overdrive, resulting in the current draft resolution.
For Israel to accomplish its goal of Greater Israel, the US is pursuing a classic divide-and-conquer strategy, squeezing Arab and Islamic states with threats and inducements. When other countries resist the US-Israel demands, they are cut off from critical technologies, lose access to World Bank and IMF financing, and suffer Israeli bombing, even in countries with US military bases present. The US offers no real protection; rather, it orchestrates a protection racket, extracting concessions from countries wherever US leverage exists. This extortion will continue until the global community stands up to such tactics and insists upon genuine Palestinian sovereignty and US and Israeli adherence to international law.
Palestine remains the endless victim of US and Israeli manoeuvres. The results are not just devastating for Palestine, which has suffered an outright genocide, but for the Arab world and beyond. Israel and the US are currently at war, overtly or covertly, across the Horn of Africa (Libya, Sudan, Somalia), the eastern Mediterranean (Lebanon, Syria), the Gulf region (Yemen), and Western Asia (Iraq, Iran).
If the UNSC is to provide true security according to the UN Charter, it must not yield to US pressures and instead act decisively in line with international law. A resolution truly for peace should include four vital points. First, it should welcome the State of Palestine as a sovereign UN member state, with the US lifting its veto. Second, it should safeguard the territorial integrity of the State of Palestine and Israel, according to the 1967 borders. Third, it should establish a UNSC-mandated protection force drawn up from Muslim-majority states. Fourth, it should include the defunding and disarmament of all belligerent non-state entities, and it should ensure the mutual security of Israel and Palestine.
The two-state solution is about true peace, not about the politicide and genocide of Palestine, or the continued attacks by militants on Israel. It is time for both Palestinians and Israelis to be safe, and for the US and Israel to give up the cruel delusion of permanently ruling over the Palestinian people.
The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
US President Donald Trump signed a funding bill in Washington DC to end a 43-day government shutdown, the longest on record. The deal followed a partisan standoff over healthcare that left nearly a million workers unpaid.
