#TFG #Pardons #Crime

He helped these fine people out, but the homeless guy? He gotta GO.

So, now they've dehumanized the drag queens, the trans people, partially the gay people, the brown people, the immigrant people and now the homeless.

Each one of these groups are small groups that they have demonized and made "less that, worse than' the rest of us.

NYT article about Changpeng Zhao’s quest for a presidential pardon. Worth remembering that Trump’s World Liberty Financial has already launched its #stablecoin #USD1 mostly on the Binance blockchain (BNB) and USD1’s usage in decentralized finance is 99% happening on Binance fake decentralized exchanges (PancakeSwap).

Zhao pleaded guilty to laundering money for upstanding groups like terrorists and sellers of child pornography just a few years ago.

* NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/09/us/politics/changpeng-zhao-pardon-trump.html
* Chart of USD1 DEX usage: https://x.com/Cryptadamist/status/1953550895268212945

#CZ #Binance #BNB #BNBChain #WLFI #worldlibertyfinancial #trump #uspol #uspolitics #pardon #corruption #pardons #stablecoins #crypto #cryptocurrency

trump's DOJ just dropped all charges against a #florida GOP state rep who had been accused of covid relief fraud, Carolina Amesty.

totally coincidentally she just so happened to hire Pam Bondi's brother as her attorney. either that, or maybe americans now live in a country where being friends with the king means you have free reign to commit crimes.

from the orlando sentinel:

> "The #FBI and other investigators concluded the federal money provided to the foundation and the business was used for Amesty’s personal expenses, including furniture and credit card bills"

(and of course she’s included a bible verse in her announcement)

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2025/08/06/prosecutors-no-longer-seeking-indictment-against-amesty-her-attorney-says/

#GOP #MAGA #PamBondi #BradBondi #FBI #DOJ #Trump #uspol #uspolitics #flpol #floridapol #CarolinaAmesty #corruption #pardon #pardons

Trump Now “Seriously Considering” Pardon For Sean Combs Ahead Of Sentencing; White House Officially Says Nothing
#Legal #News #Politics #Curtis50CentJackson #Diddy #DonaldTrump #JeffreyEpstein #JoeRogan #MegynKelly #Pardons #SeanCombs #SeanDiddyCombs

https://deadline.com/2025/07/combs-pardon-trump-seriously-considering-1236468313/

Lazy Caturday Reads: Will The Epstein Scandal Be Trump’s Watergate?

Good Morning!!

The Caturday illustrations today come from a children’s book: Space Cat and the Kittens, by Ruthven Todd. The illustrator is Paul Galdone. I know it’s a little incongruous to include cute kitten pictures in a depressing political post, but perhaps they will provide a bit of relief from the ongoing evil deeds of Donald Trump and his gang.

Here is the summary of the book from Amazon:

Flyball, the famous Space Cat, is a father now! He and Moofa, the last of the Martian fishing cats, are the proud parents of a pair of mischievous, fun-loving kittens, Marty and Tailspin. The whole family joins Colonel Fred Stone and a new friend, Bill, on a mission to Alpha Centauri to seek out places where humans can live. Along the way, the crew makes an amazing discovery — a planet abounding in iguanodons, pterodactyls, tyrannosauri, and a host of other prehistoric creatures.

Now for today’s news. I admit it. I’m obsessed with the Jeffrey Epstein/Ghislaine Maxwell story. And so is Donald Trump. He’s living in fear of the gory details of his close relationships with Epstein and Maxwell seeing the light of day. He ran away to play golf and open a new golf course in Scotland yesterday, but he can’t completely escape drip drip drip of revelations. Could this be the scandal that really damages him?

Jeff Zeleny and Adam Liptak at CNN: Trump flees Washington controversies for golf-heavy trip to Scotland.

Fleeing Washington’s oppressive humidity and nonstop questions over heated controversies, President Donald Trump is once again taking weekend refuge at his golf clubs — this time more than 3,000 miles away in Scotland.

While the White House has called his five-day trip a “working visit,” it’s fairly light on the formal itinerary. Trump is poised to hold trade talks Sunday with the chief of the European Union and is scheduled to meet with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday.

But he’s expected to spend most of his trip out of public view at two of his golf resorts – Trump Turnberry in the west and Trump International about 200 miles away in the north, near his mother’s ancestral homeland….

Even as protesters demonstrated against Trump here on Saturday, the four nights in temperate Scotland come as a summertime respite after six months back in office. His administration is engulfed in a deepening political crisis over its handling of disclosures around the case of Jeffrey Epstein, accused sex trafficker and former friend of the president’s.

Nearly every time Trump has spoken with reporters in recent weeks, he’s been pressed with new questions about the Epstein scandal, many of which are fueled by deep suspicions that he and his followers have been stirring for years. New revelations about his personal ties to the disgraced financier have kept the matter alive.

Scottish folks do not like Trump, to put it mildly.

Authorities in Scotland have spent weeks preparing for Trump’s arrival. Assistant Chief Constable Emma Bond told reporters the security operation would be the largest the country has mounted since the death of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, including local officers, national security divisions and special constables.

The overall tone toward Trump has been markedly less fond, however. The Friday edition of The National, a liberal-leaning newspaper that supports Scottish independence, rolled out a not-so-welcoming message to Trump with a blaring and bold front-page headline: “Convicted US Felon to Arrive in Scotland.”

A group called Stop Trump Scotland, a coalition of demonstrators, organized protests at Aberdeen and outside the US consulate in Edinburgh as part of a “Festival of Resistance.” A few hundred people turned out Saturday to raise their voices against the visiting American president, waving colorful signs and chanting slogans….

It’s the first visit Trump has made to the country since 2023, when he broke ground on the golf course dedicated to his mother. But returning this weekend as the sitting American president has roused critics, including Green Party leader and member of parliament, Patrick Harvie.

“Donald Trump is a convicted criminal and political extremist,” Harvie told reporters in Scotland this week. “There can be no excuses for trying to cozy up to his increasingly fascist political agenda.”

I hope they make him miserable.

William Kristol at The Bulwark: It’s Starting to Smell Like Trump’s Watergate.

On June 6, 2025, Donald Trump’s FBI Director, Kash Patel, discussed the Jeffrey Epstein files with podcaster Joe Rogan. “We’ve reviewed all the information,” Patel stressed, “and the American public is going to get as much as we can release.”

One month later, on July 6, a joint, unsigned statement from the FBI and the Department of Justice announced that nothing would be released—except for a prison video. The video turned out not to be, in fact, the “raw” video the statement promised. But it was in any case an attempt at misdirection—an effort to get people to focus on the question of Epstein’s death, rather than on the crimes he committed when alive.

Space cats and brontosaurus

For that is where the danger to Trump lies. And, naturally, that is what is now being covered up.

As a story in yesterday’s New York Times makes clear, the documents about Epstein’s crimes were pretty much ready for release three months ago. The FBI and Justice Department had conducted extensive reviews and re-reviews of the files. They had considered what should and shouldn’t be released due to legal and privacy concerns.

The Times explains:

After the F.B.I. finished its review of the files, the materials were handed over to a team of dozens of Justice Department lawyers who were given the job of double-checking the bureau’s redactions to ensure that neither too much nor too little information was disclosed, according to a person familiar with the process. The lawyers, drawn from multiple divisions from within the department, sat at their desks beginning in late March or early April reviewing documents for the better part of two weeks, the person said. . . . By mid-April, the department’s review had been largely completed.

So in mid-April, the Trump administration was, it seems, very close to being ready to go with the oft-promised release of the bulk of the Epstein files.

But then, in May, Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy Todd Blanche briefed President Trump on the files. According to the Times, they told the president his name appeared multiple times.

Two months later, a decision: No files would be released….

But it is the safest of safe bets that Bondi and Patel didn’t simply sit and reflect and deliberate and come to a judicious determination not to release the files. We know Trump had been briefed on the files. We don’t know what subsequent conversations he had about them, or with whom. But we can safely conclude that the Justice Department and the FBI don’t make joint determinations on matters of great interest to the president without consulting him—indeed, without taking direction from him.

It is also the safest of safe bets that it was Trump’s determination that no further disclosure would be “appropriate or warranted.” And it is the safest of safe bets that Trump made that determination because he knew that no further disclosure would be in his interest. At this juncture, it’s impossible, indeed irresponsible, not to note that both Bondi and Blanche served as personal lawyers for Trump prior to taking on their government roles.

Epstein is President Trump’s coverup, as surely as Watergate was President Nixon’s.

And as we all know from Watergate, the cover-up is always worse than the crime. And the cover-up is moving in overdrive.

On his way out of town, Trump dangled a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell, who spent hours Thursday and Friday being interviewed by Trump’s former defense attorney and now second in command at DOJ. It was likely a “queen for a day” interview, in which she was given limited immunity–a guarantee that she can’t be prosecuted for anything she says in the interview, as long as she tells the truth.

NBC News: DOJ granted Ghislaine Maxwell limited immunity during meetings with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

A senior administration official confirms to NBC News that Ghislaine Maxwell was granted limited immunity by the Justice Department in order to answer questions about the Jeffrey Epstein case.

Astronauts and Pterodactyls

This type of immunity allowed Maxwell to answer questions from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche without fear that the information she provided could later be used against her in any future cases or proceedings.

The immunity is “limited” because it only covers Maxwell if she tells the truth; if it’s later determined that she lied during the interviews then the deal is off the table.

An immunity agreement like this one, often called “a queen for a day” deal, is common in criminal cases when a defendant offers to cooperate with prosecutors and provide information on an investigation and potential codefendants.

As part of the agreement, that information generally cannot be used against the defendant down the road.

In exchange, prosecutors will commonly consider the defendant’s cooperation while recommending a lighter sentence for a plea deal, or in some cases outright immunity from prosecution.

Aaron Blake at CNN: Trump just made a problematic Ghislaine Maxwell situation look even worse.

Interviewing Ghislaine Maxwell is the Trump administration’s first big move to allay concerns about its hugely unpopular handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on Friday wrapped up two days of interviews with Epstein’s convicted associate.

But there were already all kinds of reasons to be skeptical of this move and what it could produce, given the motivations of the two sides involved.

And President Donald Trump epitomized all of them in a major way on Friday.

While taking questions on his way to Scotland, Trump repeatedly held open the possibility of pardoning Maxwell for her crimes.

“Well, I don’t want to talk about that,” Trump said initially.

When pressed, he said, “It’s something I haven’t thought about,” while conspicuously adding, “I’m allowed to do it.”

I wonder if the MAGA crowd would be happy if Trump pardoned Maxwell? Anyone who actually cares about the victims would be outraged.

Sarah Ewall-Weiss at The Daily Beast: Ghislaine Handed DOJ 100 Names in Shameless Pardon Quid Pro Quo.

Ghislaine Maxwell, the partner of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, completed a second day of questioning Friday, sharing information on about 100 different people with the Department of Justice.

Maxwell, who was convicted of child sex trafficking in connection with the disgraced financier in 2021, met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche for about three hours on Friday at a courthouse in Tallahassee, Florida.

Escaping by helicopter

She also sat down with Blanche to answer questions for about six hours on Thursday as the DOJ tries to control the fallout from its handling of the Epstein files….

The meeting between the top Trump official and Maxwell was announced by the Justice Department amid mounting pressure for the administration to release more information on the case after it said there was no Epstein client list and indicated there would be no further prosecutions in a recent memo….

A bombshell report this week by the Wall Street Journal alleged that Attorney General Pam Bondi briefed Trump in May that his name was in the files multiple times, as were other names.

On Friday, the president would not rule out pardoning Maxwell, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022 for facilitating and participating in the sex trafficking of teenage girls….

Maxwell’s lawyer said in Florida on Friday that his team has not spoken to Trump about a potential pardon but indicated they will push for one.

“We hope he exercises that power in a right and just way,” Markus said.

No kidding.

Sarah K. Burris at Raw Story: DOJ’s new move raises ‘huge red flags’ — and ‘could blow up in their face’: Legal expert.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche met for a second day with Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, and a long-time prosecutor and former general counsel at the FBI is warning it could all “blow up in their face.”

MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace noted on her Friday show that she can’t understand why Blanche would ignore the career prosecutors who have been steeped in the case for years and are aware of the details.

New York University Law School Professor Andrew Weissmann connected the dots from the cases involving Epstein and Maxwell to other Justice Department scandals, such as the one involving Mayor Eric Adams.

“Mayor Eric Adams, where this administration learned to shut out the career people,” said Weissmann. “If you are trying to get the defendant or in this case, Ghislaine Maxwell, to say something that will help Donald Trump, if that’s your goal and it’s not about sort of justice writ large, it is a continuation of your work for the president. In other words, you were his personal attorney, and you are still essentially operating as his personal attorney. If that’s your goal, you do not want the career prosecutors and agents in the room for the same reason you didn’t want them in the room for Eric Adams.” [….]

“You’re not engaging in what’s in the public interest. You’re engaging in what is in Donald Trump’s interest, and whether that is to exonerate Donald Trump, as Tim [Miller] suggested, or whether it’s to implicate other people. So, it’s sort of a distraction. Those are things that Todd Blanche can do and can do better when he doesn’t have career people in the room,” Weissmann clarified.

And, of course, Pam Bondi fired the lead prosecutor in the Epstein and Maxwell cases, Maurene Comey.

Kittens and T Rex

Glenn Thrush and Valerie Crowder at The New York Times: After Ghislaine Maxwell Interview, Concerns Mount Over Possibility of Pardon.

Ms. Maxwell has made it clear she wants her 20-year sentence thrown out or reduced or a pardon. President Trump, asked whether he would consider pardoning her, said, “I’m allowed to do it, but it’s something I haven’t thought about.” He made the remarks before he headed off to Scotland, wishing her well….

Mr. Blanche has described his trip as a neutral fact-finding mission, saying he would share details of the discussion “at the appropriate time” — yet he has also declared that the federal criminal investigation into targets beyond Ms. Maxwell and Mr. Epstein remains closed. By that standard, new interviews would appear to serve a function beyond the purposes of traditional law enforcement, unless new evidence of criminality has been discovered, current and former officials said….

Teresa Helm, who was abused by Mr. Epstein and testified against Ms. Maxwell, was blunt about the consequences of such a deal in an interview with MSNBC on Friday. “It would mean the complete crumbling of this justice system that should first and foremost stand for, fight for and protect survivors,” she said, adding that the government had accused Ms. Maxwell of perjury on top of other charges.

“She should stay in prison,” said Lisa Lloyd, 65, the lone protester at the courthouse. “This is wrong. Anyone who is concerned with justice should be appalled by this.” [….]

Some conservative news outlets friendly to Mr. Trump have begun to soften their tone about Ms. Maxwell — whom they previously described as a child sex predator — suggesting she might now be trusted to tell the truth about the case. This week, a host on Newsmax who has praised Mr. Trump went so far as to suggest that Ms. Maxwell “just might be a victim” who was not given a fair legal hearing.

That is outrageous. Maxwell is far from being a victim. She lured young girls and brought them to Epstein to be abused. He couldn’t have had access to as many victims without her help. She also participated in the abuse.

Former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori at Politico Magazine: The Epstein Files Timeline Raises Real Questions for Trump.

The revelation this week from The Wall Street Journal about Donald Trump and the so-called Epstein files was shocking — and, for those following the administration closely in recent weeks, not shocking at all.

According to the Journal, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Trump during a White House meeting in May that his name appeared multiple times in the Epstein files. The fallout continues as we speak, with the White House and Republicans in Congress facing that age-old Washington question: What did they know, and when did they know it?

We have gathered below some of the most significant statements that Trump and his senior officials have made on the topic, focusing in particular on what they have said since Trump returned to office.

Several key themes emerge. Head straight to the timeline here.

For starters, there is a conspicuous rhetorical shift that occurs after May, when Bondi and Blanche reportedly briefed Trump. The administration’s statements became more terse, and Trump in particular began pointing the finger at people — the Democratic Party and the mainstream media — that had little to nothing to do with the Epstein frenzy.

Even before May, Trump himself tended to add qualifiers to his statements that he does not typically use when he talks about investigations — like the probe into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation by special counsel John Durham — that are of interest to him.

In an interview with Fox News last June during the heat of the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump said that he would release more information if reelected but hastened to add that he was concerned about the impact of revealing more material on third parties and the possibility that there might be “phony stuff” in the government’s investigative files. More recently, Trump has said that he supports the release of “credible” information and “pertinent” grand jury testimony while accusing the media of focusing on old news.

These are concerns that Trump does not typically invoke in other settings. Taken together, Trump’s comments suggest the possibility that he suspected that there may be politically damaging information about him in the files and wanted to preemptively discredit revelations about him. Following the reported briefing in May, Trump appears to have sought to narrow the government’s public disclosures to avoid releasing information. Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing linked to Epstein.

I’m sure he did. Read the rest at the Politico link.

Space kittens and small horse

One more from Arwa Mahdawi at The Guardian: Will the ghost of Epstein finally bring down King Trump?

Brrrr. Brrrr. Brrrrrrr. That’s the sound of Donald’s Trump’s distraction machine, which has been running at full power as the president tries his best to stop us all from talking about Jeffrey Epstein. Or, to be more specific, from talking about just how chummy he was with the dead paedophile.

Though he’s usually a master of controlling the narrative, none of Trump’s normal distraction techniques seem to be working now. Indeed, at this point we should probably rename the Streisand effect the Trump-Epstein effect because the president’s repeated insistence that there is NOTHING TO SEE HERE EXCEPT A VERY NASTY WITCH-HUNT only has people scrutinizing his dealings with Epstein more carefully. From South Park to Scotland to billboards in Times Square, Trump can’t escape his past association with Epstein.

Over the past couple of weeks, a lot of new information has come out about just how close Epstein and the president were. On 17 July, for example, the Wall Street Journal reported Trump allegedly sent Epstein a 50th birthday card in 2003 with a drawing of a naked woman and a message which said, in part, “may every day be another wonderful secret.” Trump denied writing the card and filed a $10bn lawsuit against the rightwing paper and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, a day after the outlet published the story.

Trump’s lawsuit clearly didn’t scare off the Journal because, on Wednesday, it published a new report stating Trump’s name appears “multiple times” in justice department files about Epstein. On Wednesday CNN also published newly uncovered photos and video footage of the two men together, including one of Epstein at Trump’s wedding to Marla Maples at the Plaza hotel in New York in 1993 and footage from a 1999 Victoria’s Secret fashion event. Then, on Thursday, the New York Times confirmed that Trump’s name appeared on a contributor list for a book celebrating Epstein’s 50th birthday, as the Journal first reported, along with a number of other well-known Epstein associates including Leslie Wexner, then the owner of Victoria’s Secret. The Times further reported that in 1997 the president had written a note calling Epstein “the greatest!” in a copy of Trump: The Art of the Comeback.

While none of these new bits of information are evidence of criminal conduct on Trump’s part, the president’s furious reaction to anything Epstein-related, along with his administration’s sudden U-turn on its promise to release damning evidence related to possible Epstein clients, certainly makes Trump look like he’s got something to hide. And it’s not just Trump, of course. The sudden flurry of reporting about Epstein means that a lot of powerful men, including Bill Clinton, who the Journal says also sent a birthday letter to the disgraced financier, have been having a bad couple of weeks.

The big question now is this: will the renewed interest in Epstein blow over in a few more weeks or could this deal a serious political blow to Trump and his lackeys? Trump is nicknamed the “comeback kid” for good reason: the man has an uncanny ability to shake off scandal. Still, nobody is completely untouchable; could the ghost of Epstein be the thing that finally topples King Trump from his throne? While that’s obviously an impossible question to answer, there are a few ways this could all play out.

Again, read the rest at the link.

That’s it for me today. As I said, I can’t stop thinking about the Epstein story. What’s on your mind today?

#catArt #caturday #DonaldTrump #GhislaineMaxwell #JeffreyEpstein #pardons #SpaceCatAndTheKittens #theCoverupIsWorseThanTheCrime #ToddBlanche #Watergate