Robert Mueller

Oct. 24 (UPI) — Former special counsel Jack Smith wants to testify in open hearings before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees about his investigations of President Donald Trump.

On Thursday, Smith’s lawyers sent letters to Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who lead the chambers’ panels. Trump was indicted in two cases: attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and possession of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.

On Oct. 14, Jordan demanded that he testify behind closed doors with a transcript available, writing “your testimony is necessary to understand the full extent to which the Biden-Harris Justice Department weaponized federal law enforcement.” Jordan accused him of prosecutorial overreach and evidence manipulation.

But Smith, who resigned from his position before Trump returned to office in January, wants the hearings in public.

“Given the many mischaracterizations of Mr. Smith’s investigation into President Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents and role in attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, Mr. Smith respectfully requests the opportunity to testify in open hearings before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees,” his attorneys, Lanny Breuer and Peter Koski, wrote.

Smith will need approval from the Justice Department, where he was employed when Joe Biden was president.

Smith’s attorneys said he will need guidance so he won’t violate rules to guard jury testimony.

“He is prepared to answer questions about the Special Counsel’s investigation and prosecution, but requires assurance from the Department of Justice that he will not be punished for doing so,” the letter said.

Smith’s lawyers also asked for “access to the Special Counsel files, which he no longer has the ability to access.”

“Jack Smith certainly has a lot of answering to do, but first, Congress needs to have all the facts at its disposal,” Grassley told CNN in a statement. “Hearings should follow once the investigative foundation has been firmly set, which is why I’m actively working with the DOJ and FBI to collect all relevant records that Mr. Smith had years to become familiar with.”

Smith issued reports on both cases but the one on Trump’s handling of sensitive documents found at Mar-a-Lago hasn’t been released. Attorney General Merrick Garland, before leaving office, said he wouldn’t release the report because of a criminal case involving two of Trump’s co-defendants was ongoing. But when Trump was elected president again, both cases were dropped.

The president and Republicans in Congress have accused Smith of pursuing politically motivated cases against Trump in an effort to undermine his candidacy for a second term.

But Smith “steadfastly adhered to established legal standards and Department of Justice guidelines, consistent with his approach throughout his career as a dedicated public servant,” while leading the investigations, the letter said.

Rep. Jamie Raskkin, a Democrat serving a district in Maryland, told The Hill that Smith’s offer should be accepted.

“Mr. Smith has made clear that he is prepared to address those allegations publicly, and I can think of no reason to deny the American people the opportunity to hear his testimony, under oath and with questioning from Members of both parties, and to let all Americans judge for themselves the integrity of Mr. Smith’s investigations,” Raskin wrote Thursday.

“There is no reason his appearance should be in the shadows of a backroom and subject to the usual tiresome partisan tactics of leak-and-distort.”

This week, it was reported Trump is pressing for his Justice Department to pay roughly $230 million as a settlement for two investigations. One involved the documents case and the other was ties of his 2016 campaign to the Russian government, which was investigated by another special counsel, Robert Mueller. No charges in the latter were made because of the ability to indict a sitting president.

Smith hadn’t spoken much publicly about his office’s investigations or through case failings.

On Oct. 8, he was interviewed by Andrew Weissman at University College London. Weissman was part of Mueller’s investigations and is now an MSNBC analyst.

“The idea that politics played a role in who worked on that case, or who got chosen, is ludicrous,” Smith told Weissmann.

“The people on my team were similar to what I saw throughout the [Department of Justice] throughout my career,” he said. “Apolitical people who wanted to do the right thing and do public service.”

On Monday, NASA (Florida’s Kennedy Space Center seen in April) said its annual public Lunabotic challenge is one of several student challenges related to Artemis, and that next year’s seeks mechanical robots with an ability to construct berms out of lunar regolith on the Moon’s surface. File Photo by Joe Marino/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 8 (UPI) — NASA on Monday announced its 2026 Lunabotics challenge that seeks a team or person to create a robot able to move about and build things on the moon’s surface.

The challenge comes as the space agency gears up for future lunar activity as part of its Artemis program.

NASA officials said its annual challenge — held since 2010 — is one of several student challenges associated with Artemis, and that next year’s event seeks mechanical robots with an ability to construct berms out of lunar regolith by using loose, fragmental material found on the moon’s surface.

“We are excited to continue the Lunabotics competition for universities as NASA develops new moon-to-Mars technologies for the Artemis program,” Robert Mueller, senior technologist at NASA, said in a statement.

Officials at America’s space agency said berms will be critical during lunar missions as blast protection during landings and launches. They added that, among other uses, berms also will play a role in shading for cryogenic propellant tank farms and radiation shielding around nuclear power plants.

“Excavating and moving regolith is a fundamental need to build infrastructure on the moon and Mars, and this competition creates 21st century skills in the future workforce,” said Mueller, also co-founder and chief judge of the Lunabotics competition.

NASA said the competition will provide hands-on experiences in computer coding, engineering, manufacturing, fabricating and other crucial tech skills.

Officials will notify selected teams to begin the challenge, the top 10 teams will be invited to bring their robot creations to the final competition in Florida in May at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex’s Artemis Arena.

The team scoring the most points will receive the Lunabotics Grand Prize and participate in an exhibition-style event at NASA Kennedy.

An in-person qualifying event will be held May 12-17 at the University of Central Florida’s Space Institute’s Lab in Orlando.

The NASA challenge launched Monday comes after last week’s announcement that a separate NASA competition is seeking a special space wheel in a design by an American inventor or team.

Meanwhile, interested participants can submit applications via NASA’s portal starting Monday and find other information in the challenge guidebook.

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.