lawmakers

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers unhappy with Justice Department decisions to heavily redact or withhold documents from a legally mandated release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein threatened Saturday to launch impeachment proceedings against those responsible, including Pam Bondi, the U.S. attorney general.

Democrats and Republicans alike criticized the omissions, while Democrats also accused the Justice Department of intentionally scrubbing the release of at least one image of President Trump, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) suggesting it could portend “one of the biggest coverups in American history.”

Trump administration officials have said the release fully complied with the law, and that its redactions were crafted only to protect victims of Epstein, a disgraced financier and convicted sex offender accused of abusing hundreds of women and girls before his death in 2019.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), an author of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required the release of the investigative trove, blasted Bondi in a social media video, accusing her of denying the existence of many of the records for months, only to push out “an incomplete release with too many redactions” in response to — and in violation of — the new law.

Khanna said he and the bill’s co-sponsor, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), were “exploring all options” for responding and forcing more disclosures, including by pursuing “the impeachment of people at Justice,” asking courts to hold officials blocking the release in contempt, and “referring for prosecution those who are obstructing justice.”

“We will work with the survivors to demand the full release of these files,” Khanna said.

He later added in a CNN interview that he and Massie were drafting articles of impeachment against Bondi, though they had not decided whether to bring them forward.

Massie, in his own social media post, said Khanna was correct in rejecting the Friday release as insufficient, saying it “grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law.”

The lawmakers’ view that the Justice Department’s document dump failed to comply with the law echoed similar complaints across the political spectrum Saturday, as the full scope of redactions and other withholdings came into focus.

The frustration had already sharply escalated late Friday, after Fox News Digital reported that the names and identifiers of not just victims but of “politically exposed individuals and government officials” had been redacted from the records — which would violate the law, and which Justice Department officials denied.

Among the critics was Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who cited the Fox reporting in an exasperated post late Friday to X.

“The whole point was NOT to protect the ‘politically exposed individuals and government officials.’ That’s exactly what MAGA has always wanted, that’s what drain the swamp actually means. It means expose them all, the rich powerful elites who are corrupt and commit crimes, NOT redact their names and protect them,” Greene wrote.

Senior Justice Department officials later called in to Fox News to dispute the report. But the removal of a file published in the Friday evening release, capturing a desk in Epstein’s home with a drawer filled of photos of Trump, reinforced bipartisan concerns that references to the president had been illegally withheld.

In a release of documents from the Epstein family estate by the House Oversight Committee this fall, Trump’s name was featured over 1,000 times — more than any other public figure.

“If they’re taking this down, just imagine how much more they’re trying to hide,” Schumer wrote on X. “This could be one of the biggest coverups in American history.”

Several victims also said the release was insufficient. “It’s really kind of another slap in the face,” Alicia Arden, who went to the police to report that Epstein had abused her in 1997, told CNN. “I wanted all the files to come out, like they said that they were going to.”

Trump, who signed the act into law after having worked to block it from getting a vote, was conspicuously quiet on the matter. In a long speech in North Carolina on Friday night, he did not mention it.

However, White House officials and Justice Department leaders strongly pushed back against the notion that the release was somehow incomplete or out of compliance with the law, or that the names of politicians had been redacted.

“The only redactions being applied to the documents are those required by law — full stop,” said Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche. “Consistent with the statute and applicable laws, we are not redacting the names of individuals or politicians unless they are a victim.”

Other Republicans defended the administration. Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chair of the House Oversight Committee, said the administration “is delivering unprecedented transparency in the Epstein case and will continue releasing documents.”

Epstein died in a Manhattan jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. He’d been convicted in 2008 of procuring a child for prostitution in Florida, but served only 13 months in custody in what many condemned as a sweetheart plea deal for a well-connected and rich defendant.

Epstein’s crimes have attracted massive attention, including among many within Trump’s own political base, in part because of unanswered questions surrounding which of his many powerful friends may have also been implicated in crimes against children. Some of those questions have swirled around Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years before the two had what the president has described as a falling out.

Evidence has emerged in recent months that suggests Trump may have had knowledge of Epstein’s crimes during their friendship.

Epstein wrote in a 2019 email, released by the House Oversight Committee, that Trump “knew about the girls.” In a 2011 email to Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of conspiring with Epstein to help him sexually abuse girls, Epstein wrote that “the dog that hasn’t barked is trump. [Victim] spent hours at my house with him … he has never once been mentioned.”

Trump has ardently denied any wrongdoing.

The records released Friday contained few if any major new revelations, but did include a complaint against Epstein filed with the FBI back in 1996 — which the FBI did little with, substantiating longstanding fears among Epstein’s victims that his crimes could have been stopped years earlier.

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), one of the president’s most consistent critics, wrote on X that Bondi should appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee to explain under oath the extensive redactions and omissions, which he called a “willful violation of the law.”

“The Trump Justice Department has had months to keep their promise to release all of the Epstein Files,” Schiff wrote. “Epstein’s survivors and the American people need answers now.”

WASHINGTON — Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith told lawmakers in a closed-door interview on Wednesday that his team of investigators “developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that President Donald Trump had criminally conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to portions of his opening statement obtained by The Associated Press.

He also said investigators had accrued “powerful evidence” that Trump broke the law by hoarding classified documents from his first term as president at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, and by obstructing government efforts to recover the records.

“I made my decisions in the investigation without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 election,” Smith said. “We took actions based on what the facts and the law required — the very lesson I learned early in my career as a prosecutor.”

He said that if asked whether he would “prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether the president was a Republican or Democrat.”

The private deposition before the House Judiciary Committee gives Smith his first chance to face questions, albeit behind closed doors, about a pair of investigations into Trump that resulted in since-abandoned criminal charges between the Republican president’s first and second terms in office. Smith was subpoenaed earlier this month to provide both testimony and documents as part of a Republican investigation into the Trump probes during the Biden administration.

The former special counsel cooperated with the congressional demand despite having volunteered more than a month earlier to answer questions publicly before the committee, an overture his lawyers say was rebuffed by Republicans.

“Testifying before this committee, Jack is showing tremendous courage in light of the remarkable and unprecedented retribution campaign against him by this administration and this White House,” one of Smith’s lawyers, Lanny Breuer, told reporters Wednesday. “Let’s be clear: Jack Smith is a career prosecutor, who conducted this investigation based on the facts and based on the law and nothing more.”

Trump told reporters at the White House that he supported the idea of an open hearing, saying: “I’d rather see him testify publicly. There’s no way he can answer the questions.”

Smith is expected to discuss both of his investigations of Trump but will not answer questions that call for grand jury materials, which are restricted by law, according to a person familiar with the investigation who insisted on anonymity to discuss the interview. He is also expected to correct what he regards as mischaracterizations from Republicans about his work, including about his team’s use of cellphone records belonging to certain GOP lawmakers, the person said.

Smith was appointed in 2022 to oversee the Justice Department investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden and his hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Smith’s team filed charges in both investigations.

Smith abandoned the cases after Trump was elected to the White House again last year, citing Justice Department legal opinions that say a sitting president cannot be indicted.

Republicans who control Congress have sought interviews with at least some individual members of Smith’s team.

In recent weeks they have seized on revelations that the team, as part of its investigation, had analyzed the phone records of select GOP lawmakers from on and around Jan. 6, 2021, when pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to halt the certification of Trump’s election loss to Biden. The phone records reviewed by prosecutors included details only about the incoming and outgoing phone numbers and the length of the call but not the contents of the conversation.

Tucker and Mascaro write for the Associated Press.

Washington, DC – American journalist Dylan Collins wants to know “who pulled the trigger” in the 2023 Israeli double-tap strike in south Lebanon that injured him and killed Reuters video reporter Issam Abdallah.

Collins and his supporters are also seeking information about the military orders that led to the deadly attack. But more than two years later, Israel has not provided adequate answers on why it targeted the clearly identifiable reporters.

Press freedom advocates and three United States legislators joined Collins, an AFP and former Al Jazeera journalist, outside the US Capitol on Thursday to renew calls for accountability in this case and for the more than 250 other killings of journalists by Israel.

“I want to know who pulled the trigger; I want to know what command structure approved it, and I want to know why it’s gone unaddressed until today – on our strike and all the others targeted,” Collins said.

Senator Peter Welch and Congresswoman Becca Balint, who represent Collins’s home state of Vermont, and Senator Chris Van Hollen stressed on Thursday that they will continue to push for accountability in the strike, which wounded six journalists.

“We’re not letting it go. It doesn’t matter how long they stonewall us. We’re not letting it go,” Balint told reporters.

The attack

Welch said he was sending his seventh letter to the US Department of State demanding answers, accusing Israel of obfuscation.

Israeli authorities, he said, claim they investigated the attack and ruled the shooting unintentional, but they provided no evidence that they questioned soldiers. Israel also never contacted the key witnesses – namely, Colins and other survivors of the strike.

In October, the Israeli army told the AFP news agency that the attack was still “under review” in an apparent contradiction of what Welch had been told.

“The investigation, non-investigation – there’s nothing there,” Welch said. “You’re basically getting the run-around, and you’re getting stonewalled. That’s the bottom line.”

Israel received more than $21bn in US military aid during the two years of its genocidal war on Gaza.

Throughout the war, Israel has stepped up its attacks on the press. But the country has a long history of killing journalists without accountability.

The October 13, 2023, strike, which wounded Al Jazeera’s Carmen Joukhadar and Elie Brakhia and left AFP’s Christina Assi with life-altering injuries, was well-documented in part because the journalists were livestreaming their reporting.

The correspondents, who had set up their equipment on a hilltop near the Lebanese-Israeli border to cover the escalation on the front, were in clearly marked press gear and vehicles.

Israeli drones had also circled above the journalists before the attack.

“We thought the fact that we could be seen was a good thing, that it would protect us. But after a little less than an hour at the site, we were hit twice by tank fire, two shells on the same target, 37 seconds apart,” Collins said at a news conference on Thursday.

“The first strike killed Issam instantly and nearly blew Christina’s legs off her body. As I rushed to put a tourniquet on her, we were hit the second time, and I sustained multiple shrapnel wounds.”

The AFP journalist added that the attack seemed “unfathomable in its brutality” at that time, but “we have since seen the same type of attack repeated dozens of times.”

Israel has been regularly employing such double-tap attacks, including in other strikes on journalists in Gaza.

“This is not an incident in the fog of war. It was a war crime carried out in broad daylight and broadcast on live television,” Collins said.

Earlier this year, UN rapporteur Morris Tidball-Binz called the 2023 strike “a premeditated, targeted and double-tapped attack from the Israeli forces, a clear violation, in my opinion, of IHL (international humanitarian law), a war crime”.

US response

Despite the wounding of a US citizen in the strike, the administration of then-President Joe Biden – which claimed to champion freedom of the press and the “rules-based order” – did next to nothing to hold Israel to account.

Biden’s successor, Donald Trump, also pushed on with unconditional US support for Israel.

On Thursday, Collins decried the lack of action from the US government, saying that he reached out to officials in Washington, DC, and showed them footage of the strike.

“I thought that when an American citizen is wounded in an attack carried out by the US’s greatest ally in the Middle East that we would be able to get some answers. But for two years, I’ve been met by deafening silence,” he told reporters.

“In fact, neither the Biden nor the Trump administrations have ever publicly acknowledged that a US citizen was wounded in this attack.”

Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 10 US citizens, including Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh, over the past decade.

Senator Van Hollen said accountability in the October 13, 2023, attack is important for journalists and US citizens across the world.

“We have not seen accountability or justice in this case, and the State Department – our own government – has not done much of anything really to pursue justice in this case,” Van Hollen told reporters.

“It is part of a broader pattern of impunity for attacks on Americans and on journalists by the government of Israel.”

He called the US approach a “dereliction of duty” by the Trump and Biden administrations.

Israeli ‘investigation’

Amelia Evans, advocacy director at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), said Senator Welch’s description of the Israeli probe shows that the country’s “purported investigative bodies are not functioning to deliver justice but to shield Israeli forces from accountability”.

Evans urged the Trump administration to “take action” and demand the completion of probes into the killing of Abu Akleh in 2022 and the 2023 attack on journalists in Lebanon.

“It must demand Israel name all the military officials throughout the command chain who were involved in both cases,” she said.

“But as Israel’s key strategic ally, the United States must do much more than that. It must publicly recognise Israel’s failure to properly investigate the war crimes committed by its military.”

Israel often uses claims of investigation in response to abuses.

Former State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, who spent almost two years defending Israeli war crimes and justifying Washington’s unflinching support for its Middle East ally, acknowledged that tactic recently.

“We do know that Israel has opened investigations,” Miller, who incessantly invoked alleged Israeli probes from the State Department podium, said in June.

“But, look, we are many months into those investigations. And we’re not seeing Israeli soldiers held accountable.”

‘Chilling effect’

Amid the push for justice, Collins paid tribute to his colleague Abdallah, who was killed in the 2023 Israeli attack.

“Losing Issam was tough on everyone,” he told Al Jazeera. “He was like the dynamo of the press scene in Lebanon. He knew everyone. He was always the first person to help you out if you’re in a jam. He had a larger-than-life personality.”

The killing of Abdullah, Collins added, had a “chilling effect” on the coverage of that conflict, which escalated into a full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah in September 2024.

The violence saw Israel all but wipe out nearly all the border towns in Lebanon.

Even after a ceasefire was reached in November of last year, the Israeli military continues to prevent reconstruction in the devastated villages as it carries out near-daily attacks across the country.

“If the intention was to stop people from covering the war, then it has worked to some degree,” said Collins.

Rights group Amnesty says ban, which will affect around 12,000 girls, will ‘add to racist climate towards Muslims’.

Austria’s lower house of parliament has passed a ban on Muslim headscarves in schools after a previous ban was overturned on the grounds that it was discriminatory.

Lawmakers passed the new legislation on Thursday by a large majority, meaning that girls younger than 14 will not be permitted to wear headscarves that “cover the head in accordance with Islamic traditions” in all schools, with non-compliance fines ranging from 150 to 800 euros ($175-930).

In 2019, the country introduced a ban on headscarves for under-10s in primary schools, but the Constitutional Court struck it down the following year, ruling that it was illegal because it discriminated against Muslims, going against the state’s duty to be religiously neutral.

The Austrian government says it has “done [its] best” to see that this law will hold up in the courts.

The new law, which was proposed by the governing coalition of three centrist parties at a time of rising anti-immigration and Islamophobic sentiment, was also backed by the far-right Freedom Party, which wanted it to go even further so it would apply to all students and staff. The Greens were the only party to oppose it.

Integration Minister Claudia Plakolm, of the conservative People’s Party, which leads the governing coalition, called headscarves for minors “a symbol of oppression”.

Yannick Shetty, the parliamentary leader of the liberal Neos, the most junior party in the governing coalition, told the lower house that the headscarf “sexualises” girls, saying it served “to shield girls from the male gaze”.

Rights groups have criticised the plan. Amnesty International said it would “add to the current racist climate towards Muslims”.

IGGOe, the body officially recognised as representing the country’s Muslim communities, said the ban “jeopardises social cohesion”, saying that “instead of empowering children, they are stigmatised and marginalised”.

Angelika Atzinger, managing director of the Amazone women’s rights association, said a headscarf ban would send girls “the message that decisions are being made about their bodies and that this is legitimate”.

Education Minister Christoph Wiederkehr of the Neos said young girls were coming under increasing pressure from their families, and also from unrelated young boys, who tell them what to wear for “religious reasons”.

The Greens’ deputy parliamentary leader, Sigrid Maurer, agreed that this was a problem, and suggested interdisciplinary teams, including representatives of the Muslim community, be set up to intervene in schools when “cultural tensions” flare.

Under the ban, which comes into effect in February, an initial period would be launched during which the new rules would be explained to educators, parents and children with no penalties for breaking them.

After this phase, parents will face fines for repeated non-compliance.

The government said that about 12,000 girls would be affected by the new law.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy admiral who is retiring early from command of the campaign to destroy vessels allegedly carrying drugs near Venezuela spoke to key lawmakers Tuesday as Congress seeks more answers on President Trump’s mission, which, in one instance, killed two survivors clinging to the wreckage of an initial strike.

The classified video call between Adm. Alvin Holsey, who will be retiring from U.S. South Command in the coming days, and the GOP chairs and ranking Democrats of the Senate Armed Services Committee represented another determined step by lawmakers to demand an accounting from the Department of Defense on the threats against Venezuela and the strikes, especially after a report that two survivors were killed during one operation in September.

Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the Republican chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, declined to discuss the specifics of the call but described Holsey as a “great public servant.”

Congress is also demanding that the Pentagon turn over unedited video of the strikes, as well as the orders authorizing the attacks, as part of its annual defense authorization bill. Wicker said that the Pentagon is weighing whether the video had “classified sections.”

The demands were evidence of the intense scrutiny being placed on the Sept. 2 strike, which legal experts say may have violated the laws governing how the U.S. military uses deadly force. Congressional leaders will also receive a wider foreign policy and national security briefing from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday afternoon.

“They are using expensive, exquisite American military capabilities to kill people who are the equivalent of corner dealers and not making progress interdicting the trafficking by the cartels,” said Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat.

Congress presses for more information

What lawmakers learn from Holsey could shed new light on the purpose and parameters of Trump’s campaign, which has struck 22 boats and killed at least 87 people since it started in September. Trump has also been making threats against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, sending a fleet of warships near the South American country, including the largest U.S. aircraft carrier.

Holsey became the leader of U.S. Southern Command just over one year ago, but in October, Hegseth announced that Holsey would be retiring early from his post. As commander of U.S. forces in the region, Holsey oversaw a command structure that has in recent years been mostly focused on building stability and cooperation across much of Latin America.

Trump’s drug boat campaign, however, has added a new, deadly dynamic to its mission. Rather than trying to interdict drug vessels, as forces such as the U.S. Coast Guard have traditionally done, the Trump administration asserts that the drugs and drug smugglers are posing a direct threat to American lives. Officials say they are applying the same rules as the global war on terrorism to kill drug smugglers.

Lawmakers are also questioning what intelligence the military is using to determine whether the boats’ cargo is headed for the U.S. As they have looked closer at the Sept. 2 strike, lawmakers learned that the destroyed boat was heading south at the time of the attack and that military intelligence showed it was headed toward another vessel that was bound for Suriname.

Still, it remains to be seen whether the Republican-controlled Congress will push back on the Trump administration’s campaign.

“I want a full set of data to draw my conclusions from,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who had demanded accountability after it was revealed that two survivors had been killed.

Trump this week justified the strike by claiming that the two suspected drug smugglers were trying to right part of the boat after it had capsized in the initial attack. However, Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, the special operations commander who ordered the second strike, told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing last week that he ordered the second strike to ensure that the cocaine in the boat could not be picked up later by cartel members.

Groves and Mascaro write for the Associated Press.

Lawmakers in the United States have urged the release of a video of a controversial double-tap strike on a vessel in the Caribbean amid growing scrutiny of the legality of Washington’s militarised anti-drug trafficking campaign.

The bipartisan calls on Sunday came amid mounting controversy over revelations that military officials ordered a follow-up strike in the September 2 operation targeting a suspected drug-smuggling vessel, killing two survivors of the initial attack.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers watched footage of the strikes last week in a closed-door briefing with military officials, but emerged from the screening with substantially different accounts of what happened.

Reactions to the footage split along partisan lines, with Democrats expressing deep concerns about the legality of the strikes and Republicans insisting they were justified.

Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives’s armed services committee, said the targeted vessel had been “clearly incapacitated” in the initial strike, and the survivors were unarmed and without any means of communication.

“They ought to release the video. If they release the video, then everything that the Republicans are saying will clearly be portrayed to be completely false, and people will get a look at it, and they will see,” Smith said in an interview with the ABC News programme This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

“It seems pretty clear they don’t want to release this video because they don’t want people to see it because it’s very, very difficult to justify,” Smith added.

Jim Himes, who leads the Democrats on the House’s intelligence committee, said the American public should have the chance to judge the video for themselves.

“Look, there’s a certain amount of sympathy out there for going after drug runners, but I think it’s really important that people see what it looks like when the full force the United States military is turned on two guys who are clinging to a piece of wood and about to go under just so that they have sort of a visceral feel for what it is that we’re doing,” Himes told CBS News’s Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.

Several Republicans said they would support the release of the video, even as they defended the strikes.

Senator Tom Cotton, whose account of the survivors trying to “flip” the boat and continue their voyage has been disputed by Democrats, said he would not object to the video’s release, but would defer to the judgement of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon.

“I didn’t find it distressing or disturbing. It looks like any number of dozens of strikes we’ve seen on Jeeps and pickup trucks in the Middle East over the years,” Cotton, who chairs the intelligence committee in the Senate, told NBC News’s Meet the Press.

John Curtis, a Republican senator from Utah, also suggested that he would support the video’s release, saying officials should “err on the side of transparency”.

“The American people, they like to make decisions too based on facts, not just on what we tell them,” Curtis told CNN’s State of the Union.

President Donald Trump, whose administration has carried out at least 22 strikes against alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific, said last week he would have “no problem” with releasing the footage.

Hegseth on Saturday struck a more cautious note during an appearance at a defence forum in California, telling a Q&A that officials were reviewing the possibility, but needed to make a “responsible” decision.

Scrutiny of the strikes has mounted since The Washington Post reported last month that US military officials carried out a second attack on two people clinging to the vessel’s wreckage after Hegseth directed commanders to leave no survivors.

Hegseth has repeatedly denied the report, which cited two unnamed sources, labelling it “fake news”, “fabricated” and “inflammatory”.

Legal scholars have argued that both the double-tap strike and the Trump administration’s military campaign against suspected drug traffickers more generally are illegal.

“The United States is not currently operating in a context of armed conflict in its strikes in the Caribbean. For that reason, this is not a context in which war crimes apply,” Tom Dannenbaum, an expert in the laws of war at Stanford University, told Al Jazeera.

“Instead, all of the strikes qualify as murder in violation of domestic criminal law, and extrajudicial killings in violation of international human rights law.”

At least 87 people have been killed in the strikes, which the Trump administration began in September.

The Trump administration has yet to make public any evidence to back its claims that the boats were carrying narcotics, were headed to the US, or that they were being commandeered by members of proscribed cartels.