Oct. 18 (UPI) — Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has apologized for backing President Donald Trump possibly sending the National Guard to San Francisco, where the tech company is based.
Benioff had complained about crime problems outside the company’s annual Dreamforce conference in downtown San Francisco from Tuesday through Thursday, which drew about 45,000 attendees.
“We don’t have enough cops, so if they can be cops, I’m all for it,” Benioff told The New York Times on Tuesday, noting he had the pay for several hundred off-duty law enforcement to help patrol the Moscone Center.
On Friday, he changed his stance.
“Having listened closely to my fellow San Franciscans and our local officials, and after the largest and safest Dreamforce in our history, I do not believe the National Guard is needed to address safety in San Francisco,” Benioff wrote in a post on X in a post on X.
“My earlier comment came from an abundance of caution around the event, and I sincerely apologize for the concern it caused. It’s my firm belief that our city makes the most progress when we all work together in a spirit of partnership. I remain deeply grateful to Mayor [Daniel] Lurie, SFPD, and all our partners, and am fully committed to a safer, stronger San Francisco.”
The Trump administration already has deployed the National Guard to Portland, Ore.; Memphis, Tenn., and Chicago in a crackdown on illegal immigration and crime. Lower courts blocked the deployments of the troops.
On Tuesday, Trump told in the Oval Office that “we have great support in San Francisco” for sending troops to the city, apparently a reference to Benioff. He urged FBI Director Kash Patel to make San Francisco “next” for deployment.
Benioff’s suggestion was condemned by politicians, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, investors and those associated with the company.
Newsom, who was mayor of San Francisco, is a friend of Benioff and appeared at last year’s company convention.
More than 180 Salesforce workers, alumni and community members wrote an open letter on Friday that was published online. They said his comments have “revealed a troubling hypocrisy.”
“Salesforce was built on empowering communities — not deploying the National Guard into them,” they wrote. “Last week, that’s exactly what you endorsed.’
The letter added: “Walking back your words doesn’t undo the damage.”
Startup investor Ron Conway resigned from the board of the Salesforce Foundation on Thursday. Conway told Benioff in an email that their “values were no longer aligned,” according to the New York Times.
Conway donated around $500,000 to at least two funds tied to Kamala Harris’ unsuccessful 2024 presidential election campaign.
Benioff has donated to both political parties but has supported Harris, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for president. He attended a state dinner by King Charles for Trump at Windsor Castle in England on Sept. 15.
Benioff, who acquired Time magazine in 2018, has a net worth of $8.8 billion, ranking 381st in the world, according to Forbes.
Laurene Powell Jobs, a pre-eminent philanthropist, criticized Benioff for his remarks.
“When wealth becomes a substitute for participation, giving is reduced to performance art — proof of virtue, a way to appear magnanimous while still demanding ownership,” she wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “That’s the quiet corruption corroding modern philanthropy: the ability to give as a license to impose one’s will. It’s a kind of moral laundering, where so-called benevolence masks self-interest.”
Conservatives have rallied behind the Salesforce CEO.
Venture capitalist David Sacks, who is now Trump’s artificial intelligence and crypto czar, wrote on X : “Dear Marc @Benioff, if the Democrats don’t want you, we would be happy for you to join our team. “Cancel culture is over, and we are the inclusive party.”
Benioff has previously complained about crime in the city. In 2023, he threatened to relocate Dreamforce to Las Vegas over concerns about drug use, crime and homelessness.
Salesforce has attempted to get on the good side of the Trump administration as the company seeks regulatory approval for its proposed $8 billion acquisition of Informatica, an AI-powered cloud data management company.
Salesforce a few weeks ago announced a new line of business, Missionforce, for more revenue from defense, intelligence and aerospace agencies.
The New York Times also reported that Salesforce has offered its services to increase Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s capabilities.
Salesforce is a cloud-based software company founded in 1999 by Benioff, a former Oracle executive.
The company has a market capitalization of $238 billion with $38 billion in revenue in 2025 and 76,453 employees. The public company is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Compare that with Republicans, who not only believe in second chances but, more often than not, seem to prefer their presidential candidates recycled. Over the last half century, all but a few of the GOP’s nominees have had at least one failed White House bid on their resume.
Why the difference? It would take a psychologist or geneticist to determine if there’s something in the minds or molecular makeup of party faithful, which could explain their varied treatment of those humbled and vanquished.
The notable lack of self-blame has rankled other Democrats. Aside from some couldas and shouldas, Harris largely ascribes her defeat to insufficient time to make her case to voters — just 107 days, the title of her book — which hardly sits well with those who feel Harris squandered the time she did have.
More generally, some Democrats fault the former vice president for resurfacing, period, rather than slinking off and disappearing forever into some deep, dark hole. It’s a familiar gripe each time the party struggles to move past a presidential defeat; Hillary Clinton faced a similar backlash when she published her inside account after losing to Donald Trump in 2016.
That critique assumes great masses of voters devour campaign memoirs with the same voracious appetite as those who surrender their Sundays to the Beltway chat shows, or mainline political news like a continuous IV drip.
They do not.
Let the record show Democrats won the White House in 2020 even though Clinton bobbed back up in 2017 and, for a short while, thwarted the party’s fervent desire to “turn the page.”
But there are those avid consumers of campaigns and elections, and for the political fiends among us Harris offers plenty of fizz, much of it involving her party peers and prospective 2028 rivals.
Pete Buttigieg, the meteoric star of the 2020 campaign, was her heartfelt choice for vice president, but Harris said she feared the combination of a Black woman and gay running mate would exceed the load-bearing capacity of the electorate. (News to me, Buttigieg said after Harris revealed her thinking, and an underestimation of the American people.)
Harris implies Govs. JB Pritzker and Gretchen Whitmer of Illinois and Michigan, respectively, were insufficiently gung-ho after Biden stepped aside and she became the Democratic nominee-in-waiting.
In her book, Harris recounts the hours after Biden’s sudden withdrawal, when she began telephoning top Democrats around the country to lock in their support. In contrast to the enthusiasm many displayed, Newsom responded tersely with a text message: “Hiking. Will call back.”
He never did, Harris noted, pointedly, though Newsom did issue a full-throated endorsement within hours, which the former vice president failed to mention.
It’s small-bore stuff. But the fact Harris chose to include that anecdote speaks to the tetchiness underlying the warmth and fuzziness that California’s two most prominent Democrats put on public display.
Will the two face off in 2028?
Riding the promotional circuit, Harris has repeatedly sidestepped the inevitable questions about another presidential bid.
“That’s not my focus right now,” she told Rachel Maddow, in a standard-issue non-denial denial. For his part, Newsom is obviously running, though he won’t say so.
There would be something operatic, or at least soap-operatic, about the two longtime competitors openly vying for the country’s ultimate political prize — though it’s hard to see Democrats, with their persistent hunger for novelty, turning to Harris or her left-coast political doppelganger as their savior.
Meantime, the two are back on parallel tracks, though seemingly headed in opposite directions.
While Newsom is looking to build Democratic bridges, Harris is burning hers down.
Ghislaine Maxwell never saw President Donald Trump do anything illegal or inappropriate and said there is no list of powerful individuals made by Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide in 2019, according to Interview transcripts and audio recordings released on Friday. File Photo by Rick Bajornas/U.N./EPA-EFE
Aug. 22 (UPI) — Former Jeffrey Epstein girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell told federal investigators that she never saw President Donald Trump do anything illegal or improper.
Federal investigators recently interviewed Maxwell for two days to learn more about what she might know regarding illegal activities related to Epstein.
She dismissed claims that the files contain condemning information about Trump.
“I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting,” Maxwell told the DOJ investigators, as reported by The New York Times.
“I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way,” she said.
“President Trump was always very cordial and very kind to me,” Maxwell said. “I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the president now.”
Maxwell said she likes the president and always has, while she was being interviewed by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche last month in Florida.
The Justice Department released a redacted transcript and audio files of the two-day interview on Friday.
Maxwell also denied that Epstein maintained a list of powerful individuals or engaged in a blackmail campaign to obtain money or favors from them.
She said Epstein likely had no association with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Maxwell also told Blanche she does not believe Epstein committed suicide but said he was not killed to protect powerful individuals.
Epstein was a controversial financier and convicted sex offender who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking and child sex abuse charges in New York City.
Other files held by the Department of Justice and related to the federal investigations of Epstein and Maxwell also were released on Friday.
Maxwell is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence after her 2021 conviction for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minors over a 10-year period.
The DOJ was to begin sending some of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation files to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Friday.
The committee on Aug. 5 had subpoenaed the DOJ to gain access to the investigation files, which the DOJ agreed to begin sharing on Friday after redacting the names of alleged victims and child sex abuse materials, NPR reported.
Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., anticipated receipt of hundreds of Epstein file documents on Friday and has said at least some of them eventually will be made public.
“We’re going to be transparent,” Comer told media earlier this week. “We’re doing what we said we would do. We’re getting the documents.”
Comer submitted 11 subpoenas for federal investigation files regarding Epstein and his imprisoned accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, plus testimony from well-known witnesses.
The list of subpoenaed witnesses’ testimonies includes those by former President Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, former FBI Directors James Comey and Robert Mueller, and former Attorneys General Bill Barr and Merrick Garland.
Committee members are to consult with the DOJ to ensure any shared files will not affect ongoing investigations and criminal cases, Forbes reported.
Although the files have not been made public yet, at least one congressional Democrat claims the Trump administration employed a distraction tactic to divert attention away from the Epstein files.
The FBI on Friday raided the home of former Trump administration National Security Adviser John Bolton for unknown reasons.
“It looks political” and “an attempt to distract from the other big news of the day, which is the first production of the Epstein files,” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., told CNN on Friday, as reported by The Daily Beast.
He accused the Trump administration of wanting to “change the conversation repeatedly” and said such events will “happen every day because they don’t want people talking about the Epstein files or about their mismanagement of the economy.”
Bolton was President Donald Trump’s national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019 and has become a vocal critic of the president.
Trump said he was not briefed on the FBI’s raid, The Guardian reported.
Aug. 19 (UPI) — Some of the Jeffrey Epstein files will be made public after the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform receives them from the Justice Department.
The committee subpoenaed the Justice Department to obtain some of the files and will redact some information to protect alleged victims and other sensitive information, a committee spokesperson told CNN on Tuesday.
The panel anticipates receiving the first batch of Epstein files on Friday, but its members do not know when they might be made public.
“The committee intends to make the records public after a thorough review to ensure all victims’ identification and child sexual abuse material are redacted,” the unnamed committee spokesperson said.
“The committee will also consult with the DOJ to ensure any documents released do not negatively impact ongoing criminal cases and investigations.”
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Tenn., on Monday said the DOJ is cooperating with the committee’s subpoena, which came with an Aug. 19 deadline to comply, CBS News reported.
“There are many records in the DOJ’s custody,” Comer said in a prepared statement.
“It will take the department time to produce all of the records and ensure the identification of victims and any child sexual abuse material are redacted,” he added.
The Trump administration is committed to providing transparency regarding the Epstein files to inform the public, Comer said.
The committee also subpoenaed former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and several former attorneys general and FBI directors to obtain their testimonies.
Former Attorney General William Barr testified before the committee in a closed session on Monday.
Barr was the attorney general from 2018 to 2020 during Trump’s first term and from 1991 to 1993 during former President George H.W. Bush‘s administration.
Aug. 8 (UPI) — The Department of Justice asked New York judges to unseal more evidence in the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell criminal cases, but it still wants to shield “personal identifying information.”
In July, a Florida judge refused to unseal transcripts related to a criminal case brought against Epstein for sex charges in the early 2000s. That case was resolved in a controversial plea deal that saw the billionaire financier serve about a year in prison.
The latest request is about Epstein’s 2019 criminal case in New York, which was dropped after he died by suicide in his jail cell. It also asks to unseal grand jury evidence in Maxwell’s case, which ended in her conviction and sentence of 20 years in prison.
The request to shield personal identifying information could protect others from being tied to the case.
“Any effort to redact third party names smacks of a cover up,” victim Annie Farmer said through her lawyer in an Aug. 5 letter to the court. Farmer testified for the prosecution in Maxwell’s 2021 criminal trial.
“To the extent any of Epstein’s and Maxwell’s enablers and co-conspirators who have thus far evaded accountability are implicated by the grand jury transcripts, their identities should not be shielded from the public,” Farmer’s lawyer, Sigrid McCawley, added. She added that victims’ identifications should be redacted.
The new request comes after the judges handling the requests — Richard Berman for the Epstein case and Paul Engelmayer for the Maxwell case — told the department to specify their positions.
The department requested to have until Aug. 14 to notify everyone who’s name appears on the evidence and update the judges.
Usually, grand jury proceedings and evidence are kept secret.
Meanwhile, advocacy group Democracy Forward filed suit Fridy against the Justice Department and the FBI for records on their handling of the Epstein investigation. It wants records about senior administration officials’ communication about Epstein documents and any correspondence between Epstein and President Donald Trump.
The group says it submitted requests under the Freedom of Information Act for the records related to communications about the case in late July that have not yet been fulfilled.
“The court should intervene urgently to ensure the public has access to the information they need about this extraordinary situation,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of the group, said in a statement. The federal government often shields records on criminal investigations from public view.
Maxwell earlier this week opposed the Justice Department effort to unseal the grand jury testimony. She said it would compromise her privacy and her potential to appeal.
Also earlier this week, the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., subpoenaed the Department of Justice, former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and several others for documents and testimony about Epstein.
July 24 (UPI) — U.S. Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, are calling for a special counsel to investigate allegations against former President Barack Obama.
“For the good of the country, Senator @JohnCornyn and I urge Attorney General (Pam) Bondi to appoint a special counsel to investigate the extent to which former President Obama, his staff and administration officials manipulated the U.S. national security apparatus for a political outcome,” Graham posted on X.
A special counsel is someone brought from outside to investigate independently.
“As we have supported in the past, appointing an independent special counsel would do the country a tremendous service in this case,” Fox News reported Graham and Cornyn said.
This call comes one day after Director of Homeland Security Tulsi Gabbard released a second formerly classified document alleging wrongdoing by Obama. The Department of Justice created a “strike force” to investigate the evidence.
The document cast doubts on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s desire to help Trump beat Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. It backed up the argument that Russia wanted to interfere in the election.
It was part of a House Intelligence Committee report from Sept. 18, 2020, when Republicans controlled the House. Though it doesn’t dispute that Moscow interfered in the election, it shows the Obama administration’s handling of Russian activity.
“Nothing in that document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes,” Obama spokesman Patrick Rodenbush said in a prepared statement on Tuesday.
“These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio.”
“With every piece of information that gets released, it becomes more evident that the entire Russia collusion hoax was created by the Obama administration to subvert the will of the American people,” Graham and Cornyn said.
July 23 (UPI) — The U.S. House Oversight Committee on Wednesday subpoenaed Ghislaine Maxwell as a subcommittee sought subpoenas for President Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and the Justice Department.
A House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee also approved subpoenas to obtain Department of Justice records related to the Epstein files and deposing former President Bill Clinton and other Democrats.
Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., introduced the motion to subpoena the DOJ’s “full, complete [and] unredacted” Epstein files, which passed with an 8-2 vote.
Republican Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Brian Jack of Georgia and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania joined Democrats in voting in favor of the subpoena motion.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said he will sign the DOJ subpoena for the Epstein files, ABC News reported.
The subcommittee also seeks former President Clinton’s and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s depositions.
The Oversight Committee wants to depose Maxwell on Aug. 11 at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, Fla.
Maxwell, 63, was an associate of former financier and convicted sex offender Epstein, who killed himself while jailed in New York City and awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges that included minors in 2019.
She also is the daughter of former British media mogul Robert Maxwell and is serving a 20-year prison sentence in Florida after a jury found her guilty of sex trafficking in 2021.
“The facts and circumstances surrounding both your and Mr. Epstein’s cases have received immense public interest and scrutiny,” Comer said in the subpoena.
Comer said the Justice Department also is undertaking “efforts to uncover and publicly disclose additional information related to your and Mr. Epstein’s cases.”
“It is imperative that Congress conduct oversight of the federal government’s enforcement of sex trafficking laws generally,” he added, “and specifically its handling of the investigation and prosecution of you and Mr. Epstein.”
Comer submitted the subpoena a day after a House Oversight subcommittee approved a motion that directed him to seek Maxwell’s testimony before the Oversight Committee.
The Justice Department on Tuesday also announced it will interview Maxwell soon to provide greater transparency in the case against Epstein.
“Could she be counted on to tell the truth?” Johnson asked reporters. “Is she a credible witness?”
He called Maxwell “a person who’s been sentenced to many, many years in prison for terrible, unspeakable conspiratorial acts and acts against innocent young people.”
Federal judge denies Epstein grand jury files access
A federal judge on Wednesday denied one of three DOJ requests to release grand jury records from Epstein’s case there.
U.S. District of Southern Florida Judge Robin Rosenberg refused to unseal the grand jury testimony and records from cases against Epstein in 2005 and 2007.
Rosenberg said the Justice Department did not sufficiently outline arguments to unseal the court records.
She also denied a request to transfer the matter to the U.S. District Court for Southern New York.
Two federal judges there similarly are considering DOJ motions to unseal grand jury files from the former Epstein cases.
Bondi said Trump’s name is in the files
While those rulings are pending, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump his name appears in the Epstein files, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
Bondi did not state the context in which Trump is mentioned, and White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said Trump did not engage in any wrongdoing.
Instead, Trump expelled Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club because the president thought Epstein was a “creep,” Cheung added.
Bondi earlier suggested she would release files related to the Epstein case, but recently said they don’t contain anything noteworthy.
Her announcement regarding the files triggered controversy, including among Republican congressional members.
Johnson canceled Thursday’s House session and said the chamber will recess until Sept. 2.
Donald Trump has now thoroughly sullied the office of the presidency.
I’m not talking about the Oval Office, with its new, gaudy gilt trappings that seem to spread by the day, as if the famously nocturnal president multitasks there while others sleep, tapping out his nasty late-night social media screeds between applying more layers of the gold leaf fit for a king. Those golden geegaws are simply Trump’s literal stain on the Oval Office.
I’m talking about the figurative taint: What Trump does and says there by day, in full view of the media cameras, reporters and fawning retainers invited for his performances. With that behavior he besmirches not just the actual Oval Office but the very idea of the office of the president of the United States.
Who can forget, as much as one would like to, Trump’s bullying humiliation of Ukraine’s war-hero President Volodymyr Zelensky in February, and, in May, his premeditated attack on President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, with false claims of that nation’s genocide against white Afrikaner farmers?
But Trump’s performative power play on Tuesday arguably tops them all for shame. Alas, this time his target — President Obama — wasn’t present to push back. The bully wouldn’t dare get in Obama’s face, knowing his predecessor’s counterpunch against the lies could be a knockout. (In Obama’s presence, in fact, Trump is all cringey banter and bonhomie, as at Jimmy Carter’s funeral earlier this year, when the other former presidents snubbed him.)
The word “unprecedented” is used a lot, justifiably, to describe Trump’s actions, but never was it more apt: The sitting president baselessly alleged that the former president was “treasonous” — a crime punishable by death — and all but ordered his law-enforcement minions to arrest, prosecute and imprison the man.
(Apparently Trump, convicted fraudster and adjudicated sexual abuser, forgot that last year — to avoid pre-election trials tied to his alleged crimes involving Jan. 6 and classified documents — he’d persuaded a deferential Supreme Court to give presidents virtual immunity from criminal prosecution. Narcissist that he is, perhaps Trump thinks the egregious ruling only applied to him, not to Obama and every other president past and future.)
“He’s guilty. This was treason,” Trump pronounced of Obama, falsely reviving conspiracies that the then-president and his inner circle lied about Russia’s pro-Trump meddling in the 2016 campaign as a way of undermining Trump’s legitimacy. But for eight years, Vladimir Putin’s 2016 election interference has been a well-established fact, documented by multiple investigations, including one led by then-Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican who’s now Trump’s secretary of State.
As Trump fulminated against Obama, seated beside him in the Oval Office’s familiar wingback chairs was yet another foreign dignitary, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., making him just the latest witness to how fully Trump has extinguished the United States’ beacon as a global exemplar of democratic norms and peaceful transfers of power.
Yes, Trump’s rant against Obama as well as Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats was yet another of his manic attempts over the past three weeks to distract from the morass of his handling of what’s known as the Jeffrey Epstein files — files in which his name appears, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The administration’s refusal to release federal records of the pedophilia and sex-trafficking investigation of the late billionaire and Trump friend — despite past promises from Trump, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and Patel deputy Dan Bongino — is a mess of their own making, and the first to draw condemnation from Trump’s otherwise loyal base. That’s what’s so unnerved the president.
And yes, we should avoid taking the bait of Trump’s distractions.
But… For a president in power to falsely allege that a former president is a traitor, and to suggest that his lickspittles at the Justice Department and FBI should act against that former president, is a distraction that must command Americans’ attention.
Certainly Obama, who’s long frustrated Democrats by his reticence about criticizing Trump, thinks so. On Tuesday he had a spokesman issue a stinger of a statement.
“Out of respect for the office of the presidency,” it began, “our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one.” It pointedly alluded to Rubio’s supportive and bipartisan 2020 report to mock the “bizarre allegations” Trump is lodging.
The basis of Trump’s claims of Obama’s treason is a report released Friday by his Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the conspiracy-minded former Democratic congresswoman. Not coincidentally, Gabbard lately has been desperate to get back in Trump’s good graces, having fallen from favor in recent months. Her report, along with her criminal referral to the Justice Department against Obama and others, seems to have done the trick, at least for now. Trump is singing her praises.
Gabbard outlined what she calls a “treasonous conspiracy” by Obama and Democrats to bury findings that Russia did nothing to alter the 2016 result — Trump’s victory — and to promote the “hoax” that Trump owed his election to Russia. But Obama and his aides repeatedly assured Americans that Russia did not manipulate the actual 2016 vote by hacking election machinery. Instead, Obama and his team consistently held, along with subsequent investigators, that Russia’s interference was limited to an internet-based campaign of trolls and bots promoting Trump and denigrating Clinton to U.S. voters. They never claimed that meddling determined the election outcome.
Here’s the irony: Trump is building a false case against Obama to distract his restive base from the very real case involving his pal and fellow playboy Epstein, one in which he may or may not be implicated in wrongdoing, and from his failure to bring Epstein’s elite accomplices to justice. Yet by doing so, Trump is again setting up his followers for disappointment and disillusionment. Because there is no Obama case, and so no “justice” for the salivating base.
It’s a sordid quandary that Trump deserves. Too bad he’s brought it into the presidency.
These are salad days for the likes of Joseph Uscinski, who spends his time peering down rabbit holes and poking in the dark spaces where weird and woolly things grow.
There are loads of conspiracy theories out there, the granddaddy of them all being the conjecture surrounding John F. Kennedy’s assassination. But most tend to fade and be forgotten, said Uscinski, who teaches political science at the University of Miami, where he studies public opinion and mass media, with a focus on conspiracies.
“Only a select few will attract a large number of believers, have movies made… get talked about by politicians,” Uscinski said.
The Jeffrey Epstein saga has all the elements of one of those top-shelf intrigues, with an added Shakespearean twist — a president whose political rise has been fueled by outlandish conspiracy theories and now faces a backlash from some of his most faithful devotees, as he tries to wriggle free from a deceitful web of his own design.
Delicious, especially if you enjoy your schadenfreude served piping hot.
The known facts are these:
Epstein was an eye-poppingly wealthy financier, luxe man-about-Manhattan and convicted sex offender who sexually trafficked women and girls. In 2008, he agreed to an exceedingly lenient plea deal with federal prosecutors that resulted in a 13-month prison sentence, with freedom granted 12 hours a day, six days a week, under a work-release program.
A decade later, an investigative reporter at the Miami Herald identified scores of alleged survivors of sexual abuse by Epstein and some of his associates. In 2019, a new federal criminal case was brought against him. About a month after being arrested, Epstein was found dead in his cell at a jail in New York City. Investigators ruled Epstein’s death a suicide.
An A-list fixture of the upper-crust social scene, Epstein has been linked in court documents with a galaxy of celebrities from the worlds of Hollywood, business and politics. It’s an article of faith among some true believers — particularly within the MAGA movement — that a secret list of those serviced by Epstein’s sexual enterprise exists somewhere in the bowels of the federal government, hidden by agents of the hated, anti-Trump “deep state.”
In a Fox News interview in February, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said a list of Epstein’s clients was “sitting on my desk right now to review,” with its public release seemingly just a matter of time.
A piqued president urged everyone to move on and forget about Epstein. “Somebody that nobody cares about,” sniffed Trump, who moved in many of the same social circles as Epstein but now downplays their yearslong friendship.
All in all, conspiratorial catnip.
“Saying there are files and then saying there aren’t files… setting up some expectation for revelations and then insisting that actually there’s nothing there” has only deepened the well of suspicion, said Kathryn Olmsted, a UC Davis conspiracy expert who’s studied past instances of government deflection and deception involving the CIA and FBI, among others.
Unlike some of the crackpot stuff she’s heard — like Bill and Hillary Clinton murdering Joan Rivers to cover up Michelle Obama’s transgender identity — the conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein have at least some grounding in reality.
“He was very rich and powerful and he associated with some of the most powerful and richest people in the world, including members of both the Democratic and Republican parties,” Olmsted said. “And he was trafficking girls. There’s an actual crime at the heart of this. It’s not just something that people have made up out of thin air.”
That’s the thing that gives the Epstein conspiracy theories their distinctly frothy frisson: a blending of vital ingredients, one very old and the other comparatively new.
False allegations of child abuse date back to the blood libel of the Middle Ages and the assertion that Jews tortured and murdered Christian children as part of their ceremonial worship. From there, a through line can be traced all the way to the 2016 “Pizzagate” conspiracy, which claimed that Hillary Clinton and her top aides were running a child-trafficking ring out of a Washington pizza parlor.
Truly vile stuff.
Take that ancient trope and marry it to a modern lack of faith in the federal government and its institutions and you’re gifted with an endless source of lurid speculation.
“The number of threads that you can pull out of [the Epstein] fabric are many,” said retired University of Utah historian Robert Goldberg, another conspiracy expert. “And they’re going to be long.”
Democrats, for their part, are eagerly fanning the controversy, as a way to undermine Trump and drive a wedge in his granite-firm base.
“He said he was going to release [the complete Epstein files] and now he’s saying there’s nothing to see here and appears to be wanting to sweep the whole thing under the rug,” Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, who played a prominent role in the Jan. 6 congressional hearings, taunted on MSNBC. “There is overwhelming bipartisan, popular demand, congressional demand, to release all of this stuff.”
“He built a coalition of people who have these beliefs,” said the University of Miami’s Uscinski. “And I think he’s learned that once you build a coalition of conspiracy theorists, you can’t get them to [stop believing]. They came to him because he was telling them what they want. He can’t turn around and do the opposite now.”
July 19 (UPI) — The Obama administration should be investigated for abuse of power to smear President Donald Trump in 2016, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard said on Friday.
“There was a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of government,” Gabbard said in a news release on Friday.
“Their goal was to subvert the will of the American people and enact what was essentially a years-long coup with the objective of trying to usurp the president from fulfilling the mandate bestowed upon him by the American people,” Gabbard said.
She accused the Obama administration of an “egregious abuse of power and blatant rejection of our Constitution” that “threatens the very foundation and integrity of our democratic republic.”
President Barack Obama and his national security cabinet members “manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork” for falsifying claims that Russia acted to influence the election in Trump’s favor and to impeach the president, according to the DNI release.
Gabbard in 2019 was a member of the Democratic Party and a representative from Hawaii who said, “I could not in good conscience vote either yes or no,” during the Dec. 18, 2019, House vote to impeach Trump, according to Politico.
The DNI release says the U.S. intelligence community consistently concluded Russia likely was not trying to influence the 2016 election, and then-DNI Director James Clapper on Dec. 7, 2016, concluded “foreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks” to alter the election results.
Despite evidence to the contrary, Gabbard says Obama and others tasked Clapper with creating a new intelligence community assessment that claimed Russia acted to influence the election.
Obama officials then leaked false statements claiming Russia tried to influence the election’s outcome and produced a new assessment on Jan. 6, 2017, that contradicted prior assessments on the matter, according to the DNI.
Gabbard said she is forwarding relevant materials to the Department of Justice for possible legal action.
Some congressional Democrats have challenged Gabbard’s announcement.
“The unanimous, bipartisan conclusion was that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Donald Trump,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., told CNN on Friday.
“This is just another example of the DNI trying to cook the books, rewrite history and erode trust in the intelligence agencies she’s supposed to be leading,” Warner added.
Warner is vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Ranking Member Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., said “every legitimate investigation” into the matter affirmed the findings of the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment, CNN reported.
July 1 (UPI) — The Justice Department is appealing a federal judge’s order striking down a President Donald Trump executive order targeting the law firm of former political opponent Hillary Clinton.
Since returning to the White House, Trump has used his executive orders to attack more than a half-dozen premier law firms, suspending their security clearances, revoking federal contracts and even restricting their access to federal buildings for being associated or linked to people and supporting interests that do not align with the president or his policies.
Several law firms made deals, including preemptive agreements, worth a combined nearly $1 billion in pro bono commitments, while others, including Perkins Coie, have fought back. Critics have accused Trump of using his presidential authority to attack his perceived political opponents and as part of a larger attack on the U.S. justice system.
In March, Trump terminated government contracts and revoked security clearances for Perkins Coie via an executive order that cited the firm’s work for Clinton during the 2016 presidential election — when she ran against him and lost — as the reason for the punitive measure.
In early May, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell struck down the executive order, which she said was unlike any that an American president had issued before.
“Using the powers of the federal government to target lawyers for their representation of clients and avowed progressive employment policies in an overt attempt to suppress and punish certain viewpoints, however, is contrary to the Constitution,” she said.
Other, similar rulings have followed, giving victories to Jenner & Block, WilmerHale and Susman Godfrey, for a total of four executive orders naming specific law firms being turned aside.
The appeal filed Monday by the Justice Department suggests it will continue to fight for Trump’s executive orders.
“We look forward to presenting our case to the D.C. Circuit and remain committed to ensuring that the unconstitutional Executive Order targeting our firm is never enforced,” Perkins Coie said in a statement.
“In the meantime, we will continue to practice law, as we have for over a century, and remain guided by the same commitments that first compelled us to bring this challenge: to protect our firm, safeguard the interests of our clients and uphold the rule of law.”
Reporting from San Francisco — When Hillary Clinton parachuted into Los Angeles recently, some of the well-heeled donors who swarmed her brought unsolicited campaign advice, while others brought ambitions of White House appointments. Susie Tompkins Buell brought a bag of dry-roasted chickpeas.
It was fitting that Buell, a wealthy San Franciscan who ranks near the top of the sprawling national network of Clinton benefactors, was obsessing about the candidate’s nourishment. Few people in the orbit of the Clintons have done more for their care and feeding than this 73-year-old fixture of Bay Area philanthropy and salon society who wanted nothing to do with politics — she didn’t even vote — until a chance meeting with Bill Clinton well into her adult life.
Buell not only has become a fundraising powerhouse since then. She has also become Hillary Clinton’s soul mate. Theirs is among a handful of friendships that have been key to fueling the candidate’s ambitions, providing emotional and financial sustenance. It reflects the uncanny Clinton ability to build and maintain unyielding loyalty from the people positioned to help them the most – even people, like Buell, who have no business interests or political aspirations the couple might advance. In many cases, the bonds have only solidified through the stresses of scandal, electoral disappointment and Democratic Party rivalries that the Clintons have powered through.
The network has been most valuable in California, where Hillary Clinton is raising more cash than anyplace else. How Susie Tompkins Buell became a hub of that operation is a uniquely California story.
Buell never thought she would be rich. She was but a 21-year-old who had chosen work as a keno runner in Tahoe over college when she randomly stopped by the roadside to pick up Doug Tompkins, a hitchhiking beach bum who, like Buell, had an unexpected mastery of entrepreneurship and getting in front of trends. The two eventually married and together built a fortune and a cultish following around the clothing lines they created: North Face and Esprit.
But it wasn’t until they divorced and Buell found herself at a retreat at the Esalen Institute that she got curious about the Clintons. Buzz about Bill Clinton at that Big Sur haven of mindfulness intrigued Buell. It was 1991, and the fledgling presidential candidate had inspired one of the speakers at the event, New Urbanist architect and thinker Peter Calthorpe, with his ideas on building and strengthening community, a topic of interest to Buell.
Susie Tompkins Buell, poses with a poster she designed supporting Hillary Clinton for president at her penthouse apartment.
(David Butow / For the Times )
So on a whim, and with a stroke of luck in timing, she dropped in at an event for Clinton while passing through Sacramento on her way home from Tahoe.
She quickly found herself at the head table. The conversation was memorable.
“I told him I was getting divorced and how I had worked with my husband all these years,” Buell said. “He really wanted to know what it was like, and he started talking about Hillary and how she was nervous that night because she was giving a speech at Wellesley,” her alma mater. They talked about the crushing poverty Clinton had seen on the campaign trail, Buell recalled, “and how much people were relying on government. I really wanted a president who would look out for them.”
She decided at that moment it should be Clinton. The next day, she wrote him a $100,000 check.
But the Clinton campaign was confused. Such large gifts usually come with requests for face time with the candidate or, at the very least, donor perks like ticket packages to the party convention and star-studded fundraising events.
“They asked me what I wanted,” she said. “I remember saying, ‘I want him to be president.’ I had no idea about how the money part of this worked.” Indeed, the only candidate who had ever received a cent from her before then was Mark Buell, the man who is now her husband and who long ago unsuccessfully ran for county supervisor. He got $500.
The donation to Clinton might have been a one-off but for the relationship that bloomed when Hillary Clinton approached Buell to personally thank her. The women clicked immediately, and Buell grew more enamored when she saw Clinton deliver an impassioned Mother’s Day address at Glide Memorial Church, a hotbed of leftist activism in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.
“I was attracted to Bill Clinton, but as soon as I met Hillary, it was much deeper for me,” she said.
Buell hasn’t stopped giving to the Clintons since. More than $15 million has made its way from Buell’s bank account to the campaigns and causes of the Clintons. Untold millions more have been raised by her, often at her gorgeous Pacific Heights penthouse apartment, a mandatory stop on the fundraising circuit for prominent liberals. The menu that iconic chef Alice Waters prepared when Bill Clinton dropped by in March 1996 is framed in the kitchen.
“I can’t even count the number of events I have been to at the house,” said Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who first got to know Buell years ago, when he ran a wine shop and was good friends with her daughter. “It is a perfect venue overlooking the bay. There is an austerity to it. It is an opulent building, an opulent view. But the space itself is austere.” The rooms are sparsely but carefully appointed. Pieces worth more than a small condominium share rooms with stylish items plucked from far-flung flea markets. Every window has a panoramic view.
“It is a perfect backdrop to focus less on the surroundings and more on the occasion,” Newsom said.
The occasion is almost always political activism.
“The environment, women’s rights, children’s rights, equality, all of this,” said Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, ticking off in an interview the causes she has been involved in with Buell. “Susie comes through. She doesn’t say, ‘Put my name down,’ and take a back seat.”
As Buell got entrenched in politics, her relationship with Hillary Clinton began to move beyond it. Clinton writes in one of her books about a conversation between the two while the then-first lady was under siege by Congress amid its investigation into her Whitewater real estate investment. “My free-spirited friend Susie Buell said she didn’t follow all the dramas going on back in Washington, but she did have something to say to me: ‘Bless your heart.’ That was all I needed to hear,” Clinton wrote.
Much later, Clinton showed up at Buell’s apartment to meet her dying brother, a prominent surgeon who was staying with Buell while undergoing painful cancer treatments. “Most people would say, ‘I am sorry I never met your brother,’ or send their best. She just goes right into it,” Buell said. “She wasn’t taking advantage of him. They laughed. It was just sweet. It was one of the tenderest times in my life. … Her comfort with the situation was very moving.”
Buell said she regrets how few people see that side of Clinton.
“I remember once saying to her: ‘Can’t you just be yourself, Hillary?’ ” Buell said. “When there are not cameras around, she really lets it fly. She said, ‘You know what happens? They will get a moment of me expressing something and then say, “There she goes again, the crazy.” ’ Experience has trained her to be so cautious.”
But Clinton also sees a side of Buell that many candidates never get to see: the one that doesn’t talk politics.
“I don’t want to be one more thing she has to think about,” Buell said. “She knows who I am, she knows how I feel. We don’t talk shop. … She doesn’t need one more person to say, ‘What do you think about the Benghazi report?’ ”
This is the same donor who showed up at a high-stakes fundraiser for President Obama near the end of his first term and told him to knock off the small talk when he began to genuflect. Then she launched into a scold about his failure to get a landmark climate change bill through Congress.
“We don’t talk shop,” Susie Tompkins Buell says of her friendship with Hillary Clinton.
(David Butow / For the Times )
Newsom, who says Buell “holds your feet to the fire” when candidates get her support, let out a knowing chuckle when asked about her reluctance to push Clinton. As Buell and other climate activists fought for years to kill the Keystone XL pipeline, candidates who did not stand with them were getting an earful from her. Except Clinton, who stayed neutral through most of the battle.
“They have a deep friendship, and that transcends politics in many respects,” he said. “She has a loyalty to the Clintons that is extraordinary, and it is unbreakable.”
It’s not that Buell is star-struck. She is constantly in the company of celebrity. Meryl Streep gushed in an email about Buell’s “open, welcoming mien.” Waters happened to text while Buell was talking with a displaced former California reporter, and at Buell’s behest, recommended where in Washington to dine.
Bill Clinton emailed to say, “Susie has been my friend for almost 25 years,” and express gratitude “for her constant love and support for Hillary.”
And Gloria Steinem has also been Buell’s friend for years. She recalled in an interview coming to speak about feminism to Esprit employees in the 1980s, long before it was fashionable for big companies to try to raise the consciousness of their workforce. Buell’s then-husband vetoed her plans to advertise in the fledgling Ms. magazine, so Buell sidestepped him by writing a check to subsidize subscriptions for universities.
“She is a self-educated person in the best sense,” Steinem said.
Buell stopped selling clothing long ago, but she never stopped marketing her brand. Lately, she has been working on her “Badass for President” project, a more hipster-oriented line of Clinton campaign memorabilia than the less-daring goods sold in the campaign store. A mock-up poster in her office has the logo emblazoned over a black-and-white photo of young Hillary Clinton in stylish ’60s attire and a coffeehouse conversation pose.
The fundraising events she holds are among the fastest-selling tickets in the city — especially when they are at her apartment in the penthouse of a landmark red-tile-roof building on a Pacific Heights hilltop where the views are dreamlike and the history is rich.
Buell says she was one of the lonely Democrats in the old-money-heavy building when she held her first fundraiser for Bill Clinton there. She had to quickly patch together a bunch of linens to cover the picture windows that the president’s detail warned would be a security risk. Clinton joked that it was better to be looking at the linens than shattered glass. The Secret Service once got stuck in the utility elevator there for an hour after too many of the agents piled in.
They know their way around better now. There are at least three other big Democratic donors in the building now, and sometimes they team up to hold multifloor events. Obama once joked that he had been through so many times he was starting to feel like a resident. Buell expects that she and her neighbors soon will be holding another multitiered event in the building for Hillary Clinton soon. The haul from such events is in the millions of dollars.
“It works great,” she said. “As long as the Secret Service is clear that they can’t all pile into the utility elevator at once.”
And what’s next for Buell if Clinton wins? Probably more of the same, she said.
“I am absolutely not interested in getting appointed to something,” she said. “I have the perfect life.”
