Epstein, Epstein, Epstein (Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!)
Roger Sollenberger catches what seems like a very big fish to me
The document, which was re-posted after I reported the removal, shows Maxwell’s lawyers possess three FBI interviews with an underage Trump accuser that haven’t been released to the public.
On Wednesday, I reported that the Justice Department had removed from its Epstein file database a key document about a woman who told the FBI that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her when she was a child. By Thursday evening, it was once again live.
It’s unclear why the DOJ deleted the document in the first place. ((Here’s proof the document had been taken down.) It’s also unclear why they put it back up after my reporting, which included a screenshot of the relevant information and a link to an internet archive of the full record. The information in the document pertaining to the Trump accuser — whom the DOJ identifies as a victim of Jeffrey Epstein in the early-mid 1980s — doesn’t appear altered in any way. (Compare the record on the DOJ site today with the version they removed.)
However, the existence of this record — more specifically, the public’s knowledge of its existence — carries significant implications when it comes to the president and his DOJ’s posture against Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.
That’s because this document shows the FBI conducted not just one but four interviews with Trump’s accuser. And, as I reported Wednesday, while the government gave all four of those interviews to Maxwell’s legal team ahead of her trial, the government gave only one of those four interviews to us in the Epstein files.
In other words, this document shows that, in choosing to withhold three of the four interviews from the Epstein files, the DOJ has granted Maxwell potential blackmail on the sitting president of the United States. (That depends, of course, on what the victim said in those interviews, but it doesn’t look good for Trump. However, if the victim “exonerated” him, the public needs to know that as well, and you’d think he’d see common ground there.)
Maxwell has held this leverage over Trump since her team received the files in batches from DOJ prosecutors as a standard part of her trial prep in 2021, in April, July, and October, the record shows. (The victim was suing Epstein’s estate at the time, settling with a reported payout in December 2021.) But if DOJ had released those interviews with the Epstein files, as it appears the law absolutely requires, any leverage Maxwell had there would be gone. Instead, Trump’s DOJ — starring Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche, and Kash Patel — let her keep it.
What’s more, the American people still wouldn’t even know that Maxwell could potentially be blackmailing the president with these sworn victim statements if it weren’t for the existence of precisely this document — the document I caught DOJ removing from its public database.
Notably, you can ascertain the existence of the three missing FBI interviews without this document — that’s not why this document is special.
The record that disappeared — and is now back online — is an evidence catalog showing that those interviews were among the “non-witness material” that DOJ prosecutors produced for Maxwell’s defense team. In other words, this document is proof that Maxwell’s attorneys have those three interviews. It’s also proof that all four of those interviews — part of DOJ’s Maxwell trial evidence — should in fact have been released to the public in the Epstein files.
Why didn’t Trump’s DOJ release all of the victim’s FBI interviews? Why would the DOJ be fine with Maxwell’s attorneys holding these records while apparently denying them to the American public in defiance of the law? The DOJ should release those interviews to the public, an act that would, coincidentally, considerably weaken the hand that we now know Maxwell — perhaps uniquely — holds over the president.
Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking children with Epstein in 2022, sat for a proffer session with Deputy Attorney General and former Trump criminal defense lawyer Todd Blanche in July (despite a previous proffer session via her lawyers before her trial), then got relocated without explanation to a minimum-security facility this summer.
Trump has said multiple times in recent months that he would consider clemency for Maxwell. Earlier this month, she took the fifth in closed-door congressional testimony, though she used the opportunity to inveigle Trump for a pardon.
Maxwell’s lead counsel, David Oscar Markus, said in a statement to the House Oversight Committee at the time that his client “is prepared to speak fully and honestly if granted clemency by President Trump.”
The statement also said that Trump and former President Bill Clinton “are innocent of any wrongdoing.” However, Markus said, “Ms. Maxwell alone can explain why, and the public is entitled to that explanation.”
Not turning out to be a great news day for the orange guy who occupies the White House. So sad!
Epstein, Epstein, Epstein (Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!)Post + Comments (62)
Tariffs Struck Down
The Supreme Court struck down Trump’s stupid tariffs!
The Supreme Court cast aside the bulk of President Trump’s sweeping tariffs Friday, obliterating a canon of his economic strategy in ruling that his use of an emergency statute to remake global trade was unlawful.
The decision invalidates what the Trump administration called the president’s most significant economic and foreign policy initiative of his second term, a result Trump has warned could foist financial ruin upon the United States.
You know he’s going to shit a cat. Ms. Wiles will have to surge housekeeping assets to the TV room to sponge the ketchup off the walls. Also, he’ll use this ruling as a lame excuse for the economic havoc he has personally wreaked on this country.
Maybe I am overinterpreting things, as is my wont, but I think this is another sign of Trump’s power crumbling. The court’s Republican majority granted Trump monarchical powers, and now some of them are peeling off and saying he can’t tax us according to his whims? Okay then.
Open thread.
TGIFriday Morning Open Thread
Morning respite:
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A federal judge has accused the Trump administration of terrorizing immigrants and recklessly violating the law in its efforts to deport millions of people living in the country illegally.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) February 19, 2026 at 7:30 PM
… Citing the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota, the judge said that the White House had also “extended its violence on its own citizens.”
“The threats posed by the executive branch cannot be viewed in isolation,” U.S. District Judge Sunshine Sykes in Riverside, California said in a scathing decision issued late Wednesday.
Sykes said the administration had violated her December ruling that found it was illegally denying many detained immigrants a chance for release. She ordered the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to provide them with notice that they may be eligible for bond and then give them access to a phone to call an attorney within an hour.
She also threw out a September ruling by an immigration court that the administration had cited for continuing its mandatory detention policy…
Under past administrations, people with no criminal record could generally request a bond hearing before an immigration judge while their cases wound through immigration court unless they were stopped at the border. President Donald Trump ’s White House reversed that practice.
With access to bond hearings cut off, immigrants by the thousands filed separate petitions in federal court seeking their release. More than 20,000 habeas corpus cases have been filed since Trump’s inauguration, according to federal court records analyzed by the AP.
Judges have granted many of those petitions, but then later found the administration was violating their orders to release people or provide them with other relief.
A federal judge in Minnesota took the rare step Wednesday of finding a Trump administration lawyer in contempt of court over the government’s failure to comply with an order to return identification documents to an immigrant the judge had ordered released.
A federal judge in New Jersey this week ordered the administration to explain what procedures are in place to ensure court orders in his district are followed consistently and on time. U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said Tuesday that Trump officials failed to meet court ordered deadlines for bond hearings in immigration court in 12 of roughly 550 cases since December 5…
Matt Adams, an attorney for plaintiffs in the lawsuit before Sykes, said he was hopeful her latest ruling would do away with mandatory detention.
“Certainly in the normal course of things, the immigration judges would return to granting bond hearings,” he said.
INBOX: Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia will deliver the response to President Donald Trump's State of the Union address on Tuesday.
She is the second of "The Badasses," the national security Democratic women who won seats in 2018, to deliver the response. Elissa Slotkin did last year— Eric Michael Garcia (@ericmgarcia.bsky.social) February 19, 2026 at 2:17 PM
On The Road – frosty – New Orleans
frosty
Part 2 because the wifi is buggy and B-J timed out when I tried to send 10 at one time.
Street musicians. Yeah, they were every bit as good as you would expect.
Late Night Open Thread: Highly Mockable, But…
The Republican Party Is So Tacky Now – Esquire apple.news/ATQOhFKxrTuO…
— bishopcharles.bsky.social (@bishopcharles.bsky.social) February 19, 2026 at 10:33 PM
Dave Holmes, at Esquire:
As you know by now, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got together with Woodstock ’99 standout Kid Rock to produce a short video promoting nutrition, exercise, and bathing with your pants on. The “Rock Out WORK OUT” video was filmed at Kid Rock’s home gym and sauna, and it is scored to his 1998 single “Bawitdaba,” so just when you start to realize that your tax dollars funded this video, you have to face the fact that some of your tax dollars have gone directly to Kid Rock, which is a lot to sit with…
[Video here, if your eyes haven’t been assaulted yet.]The video opens with Kennedy and Kid, shirtless and flexing, in front of the taxidermic bear you were already sure existed in Kid Rock’s home gym. A quick camera pan reveals that this bear is wearing a checkered fedora, suggesting that it was shot while onstage with its ska band, which hardly seems sporting. From there is a montage that includes an American flag, a shark, a fighter jet, a bald eagle, and an explosion, so what we know right off the bat is two things: One, they’re going to be throwing everything at the wall here, and two, NFTs must really be over, because this would be the perfect place to slide one in…
A singles pickleball match ensues, and it’s hard to know who wins or if either of them is any good or whether this is happening in real time and they lost interest in two and a half seconds, the way most of us did with pickleball. Pickleball, the choice of humorlessly competitive retirees all over the country. Catch the fever. (Seriously, catch it. There’s penicillin and Pedialyte in the Monster Energy mini fridge.)
Then it’s back to the hot-tub room. Kennedy jumps in, still in those rancid dungarees, and Kid says some silent sentence that ends with the word fuck, because this is a guy who says fuck and doesn’t care who knows it. Then they are both in the hot tub, drinking glasses of what a luridly dripping chyron informs us is WHOLE MILK. It is very bad ass, all this whole-milk drinking in the hot-tub room…
As aspirationally old-guy jacked as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is, this video in which he drinks milk shirtless in a hot tub with another dude is not remotely sexy. It will play well on the conversion-therapy circuit. It is homo-eNOTic…
Late Night Open Thread: Highly Mockable, But…Post + Comments (74)
War for Ukraine Day 1,456: A Very Brief Update
I’m at the emergency vets. Rosie has had some sort of neurological incident, they won’t know for sure until we can get her in to see the neurology vet tomorrow. The vet doesn’t think she’s in any immediate danger, but she is 15 and four months. However, that means I’m just going to do a very minimalist update tonight. Just President Zelenskyy’s daily’s address. Video followed by the transcript.
We Must Use the Full Real Experience of Our Ukrainian Communities to Make Nationwide Decisions More Effective – Address by the President
19 February 2026 – 20:51
I wish you health, fellow Ukrainians!
Briefly about today. First – today we launched new work with the regions, with regional authorities, and with our communities. We must use the full real experience of our Ukrainian communities to make nationwide decisions more effective. Every community that is getting through this winter with better protection for people, with more effective and faster recovery after strikes, and with more successful projects to protect critical infrastructure – all such experience will be scaled up. Today I discussed this in detail with Prime Minister of Ukraine Yuliia Svyrydenko – the Government will establish an appropriate coordination center. All necessary government officials will be involved in the Center’s work, and the Office of the President of Ukraine and strong regional leaders will also assist. Today we spoke about this in particular with Ivan Fedorov, Head of the Zaporizhzhia Administration. We will all work together with other regional, city, and community leaders – everyone whose experience deserves attention.
Second. Today, all members of our negotiating team will already be in Ukraine, and I have scheduled a special meeting with them for tomorrow regarding our next steps and decisions. They will deliver a report on those aspects of the negotiations that should not be discussed over the phone. We will also define the further framework of our dialogue with our partners – with the American side, with the Europeans, and with the Russian side. It is important that the Europeans were present in Switzerland. This is exactly how we intend to work going forward – to ensure that Europe’s positions are taken into account. I also want to thank all members of our delegation for strictly adhering to the directives during the negotiations. It is very important that Ukraine speaks confidently, strongly, and in a coordinated manner. Ukrainian unity always delivers the greatest results.
One more point.
Today I want to thank the National Police. Minister Ihor Klymenko reported on one of the largest operations against crime. The police carried out more than 500 searches, detained nearly one hundred individuals, eliminated 34 drug laboratories and 70 storage facilities. It was a strong operation, and I am grateful to the National Police of Ukraine, all our institutions and services that helped – the Security Service of Ukraine, the Prosecutor’s Office, and other state bodies, as well as our international partners who were involved.
I would also like to recognize today the National Guardsmen who, together with all our warriors, defend our state and Ukrainian independence on the frontline. Warriors of the Omega Special Forces Center of the National Guard of Ukraine – thank you for your courage and coordinated actions. The guys carry out missions on key sectors of the front, including the Pokrovsk sector, and these are not only defensive, but also active strike-and-search operations. Thank you!
And also police officers who, in our various communities and cities, are the first to arrive at the scene after Russian strikes and, together with first responders, protect lives, help people, and have distinguished themselves especially in these recent days and weeks. Kyiv: Captain Valerii Katiukha, Corporal Petro Lohvyniuk, as well as senior psychologists Vladyslav Kutsevol, Olha Tkachenko, and Kateryna Zubakova. Kharkiv: Senior Lieutenants Denys Danylenko, Serhii Tumanov, and Pylyp Syrovatka. Chernihiv: Police Majors Roman Ovcharenko and Volodymyr Ananko. Konotop: Senior Sergeant Oleh Obramenko. Zaporizhzhia: Police Captain Yevhenii Rohul, Major Iryna Kiryanova, Senior Sergeant Oleksandr Kushch, and psychologist Yuliia Naumetska. Dnipro: Police Major Mykhailo Horobtsov, Senior Lieutenant Vladyslav Fedash. Kryvyi Rih: Senior Lieutenant Viktoriia Demydenko. Kramatorsk: Police Sergeant Denys Pryimak. Kostiantynivka: Senior Lieutenant Maksym Panchenko. Mykolaiv region: Police Captain Alina Shepel. Odesa: Senior Lieutenant Maryna Bondarenko, Lieutenant Mykola Zhurakivskyi, Senior Psychologist Anastasiia Yatsyshyna. Thank you and all your colleagues! Thank you to everyone who is in Ukraine and with Ukraine, who defends our state, our positions, and our people.
Glory to Ukraine!
I’ll update everyone on what’s going on with Rosie once I have more information.
Open thread!
War for Ukraine Day 1,456: A Very Brief UpdatePost + Comments (40)