MAGA, the GOP, and the Trump administration don’t really care about the victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking. The MAGA GOP made a lot of noise during Biden’s single term because they were sure the files would show a Pizzagate’s-worth of Democratic political figures engaged in the ritual abuse of underage girls.
Once Trump was elected in 2024, the furor died down. While the MAGA faithful were willing to take down their own just to put a few Dems’ heads on spikes, they were suddenly less audible once they realized any document dump would take down a few of their own. Even Donald Trump seemed to know this, which is he why he shifted his focus elsewhere.
It took a literal act of Congress to get the Epstein files released, despite Trump and other GOP figures having promised to put this at the top of the MAGA to-do list if they retook the White House. Trump engaged in multiple rounds of spin, hoping to make it look as though demanding the release of the files and refusing to release the files were both the same side of the MAGA coin.
Trump’s DOJ then reluctantly began complying with the law. Millions of records were withheld. Those that were released were riddled with redactions, forcing politicians on the other side of the political divide to demand more releases with fewer redactions. Meanwhile, a handful of leaks and unforced errors revealed the Trump DOJ was doing whatever it could to cover for Trump and anyone else Trump might want to have redacted from rolling Epstein File releases.
FOIA requests are incapable of expediting the full release of the Epstein Files. But they are capable of sniffing out the details of the Trump administration’s attempts to maintain control of the “this was mainly Dems” narrative even as it seeks to satiate the MAGA base that has been demanding access to these files for years.
This report for Bloomberg — written by “FOIA terrorist” Jason Leopold and Harry Wilson — not only details FBI Director Kash Patel and former DOJ deputy director Dan Bongino attempts to spin Trump’s refusal to release documents as demonstrative of his “full transparency” promises.
It also shows the DOJ’s pre-release review of the files had President Trump in mind the entire time. While pretending to be engaging in radical levels of transparency and complying with both the letter and the spirit of law, the DOJ was actually flagging anything that might include Trump for the apparent reason of keeping these files out of the public’s hands.
In addition to the discussions about Ferguson and Hervey, the documents contain other noteworthy details, including a spreadsheet dated March 25, 2025 and titled “DOJ Document Flag List.” The first page, labeled “FLAGGED Items List, per case – per DOJ guidance,” includes a case number associated with the FBI’s 2006 investigation of Epstein by its Miami field office.
[…]
There are 16 entries on the list where the reason for the flag was simply marked “POTUS.” Those items include magazine and newspaper articles, message pads, phone message books and one unidentified record.
The report notes that some of these flagged files have since been released. But others have not and this FOIA release by the DOJ perhaps points to why they have not been. The DOJ could have cleared everything up with an explanation, but of course it didn’t, because why would it.
DOJ referred a request for comment on the “Flag List” to the FBI, which declined to comment.
Assuming every “no comment” is an admission of guilt is as fatuous as assuming everyone who pleads the Fifth is guilty of whatever they’ve been accused of. We won’t be doing that here. But it is strange that agencies that treat every request for comment as an opportunity to engage in attacks on journalists and/or personal attacks on the person making the request would have absolutely nothing to say here. Read into that what you will.
Back in January of last year, the Wall Street Journal published a story about a leather-bound birthday book that Ghislaine Maxwell had assembled for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003. The book included letters from various associates, and one of them bore Donald Trump’s name. According to the article, it featured a hand-drawn outline of a naked woman with typewritten text inside. The page was signed with a recognizable squiggly “Donald” signature positioned to mimic pubic hair and closed with the ridiculously creepy line: “Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
Trump denied writing the letter and called it “a fake thing” before suing the Journal, Rupert Murdoch, News Corp, and the two reporters for a mere $10 billion. Each count asked for at least $10 billion, because apparently that’s the going rate for Donald Trump’s hurt feelings these days.
On Monday, federal judge Darrin Gayles dismissed the lawsuit, finding that Trump hadn’t come anywhere close to adequately alleging “actual malice,” the standard required for a public figure to win a defamation claim. For those who follow this stuff, that’s about as unsurprising as it gets.
The actual malice standard, established in New York Times v. Sullivan decision, requires a public figure to show that the defendant either knew the story was false or published it with reckless disregard for the truth (which courts have interpreted to require that the publisher actually harbored serious doubts about whether the statement was true). It does not mean, as many people assume, the colloquial meaning of “malice”: that they just don’t like the person. Trump’s complaint was heavy on boilerplate language about malice and light on, well, anything resembling actual facts supporting it. Judge Gayles was blunt about the gap:
The Complaint comes nowhere close to this standard. Quite the opposite.
The “quite the opposite” is the fun part. Trump’s own complaint described the reporters reaching out to him, as well as the FBI and the Justice Department, before publication. Trump gave them a denial, which they printed; the DOJ didn’t respond and the FBI declined to comment. Trump’s argument was essentially that since he told the Journal the letter was fake before publication, running the story anyway proved they had serious doubts about its truth and therefore acted with actual malice.
You hear this a lot from SLAPP defamation filers, pretending that a mere denial by them means that anyone printing what they’re accused of is actual malice. But that’s not how any of this works. Just because you deny something, doesn’t automatically mean the journalists have to believe it’s false. Their evidence can (and often does) reveal that the subjects of their reporting are lying in their denials. A denial is not proof of falsity. It’s just proof that you’re denying something. The court wasn’t buying any of it:
To establish actual malice, “a plaintiff must show the defendant deliberately avoided investigating the veracity of the statement in order to evade learning the truth.”…
As the judge noted, printing Trump’s denial alongside their own journalistic findings demonstrated responsible reporting — the opposite of actual malice, which would require evidence that the reporters had serious doubts about the letter’s authenticity and deliberately avoided investigating further. Then printing the denial alongside the evidence, again, was the opposite of actual malice:
The Article also informed readers that President Trump decried the Letter as a fake and denied writing it. By “allowing readers to decide for themselves what to conclude from the [Article], any allegation of actual malice [is] less plausible.” Turner, 879 F.3d at 1274. See also Michel, 816 F.3d at 703 (holding that “reporting perspectives contrary to the publisher’s own should be interpreted as helping to rebut, not establish, the presence of actual malice.”)
The judge also, somewhat gently, reminded Trump’s lawyers that actual malice is an actual legal standard, not just ‘they don’t like me.’
President Trump’s allegation that Defendants acted with ill-will is insufficient to plead actual malice. Aside from being conclusory and without factual support, “ill-will, improper motive or personal animosity plays no role in determining whether a defendant acted with actual malice.”
Meanwhile, as this lawsuit wound through the courts, the very letter Trump claimed didn’t exist surfaced publicly. The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the Epstein estate and obtained the birthday book. They released it publicly, and wouldn’t you know it, there’s a page that matches the Journal’s description of the letter exactly:
The judge couldn’t consider the produced letter at this stage of the litigation because Trump disputes its authenticity, which is his right procedurally. And the judge has to treat the claims in the complaint as true. But the rest of us sure can look at it. And judge for ourselves.
The court gave Trump until April 27 to file an amended complaint, and a spokesman for his legal team promised he would “refile this powerhouse lawsuit.” I suppose if you squint hard enough at a complaint a federal judge said “comes nowhere close” to meeting basic legal standards, “powerhouse” is one word you could use for it — just probably not in the way they mean.
The Journal’s defense team also sought attorneys’ fees under Florida’s anti-SLAPP statute. The judge denied the fee request for now, since Trump gets a chance to amend. But that request can be renewed, which means if the amended complaint fares no better, Trump could end up paying for the privilege of having sued the Journal over a story that appears to be true.
This is also a reminder of why we need stronger anti-SLAPP laws in every state, as well as a federal anti-SLAPP law.
This case isn’t over yet, but the judge clearly sees it as just as weak as we said it was when it was filed last year. As always, Trump files these vexatious lawsuits knowing none of them have a real shot — the goal is to burn time and money for media organizations, and scare some of them into softening their coverage or thinking twice before calling out his behavior.
The guy who presents himself as a champion of free speech remains the most anti-free speech president we’ve had in any of our lifetimes, consistently abusing the judicial system as a way to punish those who make him look bad.
We’ve noted how Bari Weiss’ tenure at CBS (or what’s left of it) isn’t really going very well. Hired by Trump-allied billionaire Larry Ellison to turn what’s left of CBS into a right wing extraction class-friendly agitprop mill, Weiss has been accosted on all sides for her clumsy mismanagement, ham-fisted enabling of government censorship, uninteresting propaganda, and just general incompetence.
But wait, there’s more!
Not that long ago, Weiss hired a whole bunch of new contributors to the CBS News masthead. Two of them were purported medical and science experts. One was Andrew Huberman, a wellness influencer derided for inconsistent principles not even three years removed from a scandal revealing that he’d overstated his scholarly work and lied to a half dozen of his sexual partners simultaneously.
The other new contributor, Dr. Peter Attia, is another health and wellness influencer whose advice has been utterly unavoidable online in recent years. Unfortunately for Attia, shortly after being picked up as a regular new contributor to CBS, the news broke that he was very heavily present in the Jeffrey Epstein files, with more than 1,800 references to his enthusiastic interactions with the sex-trafficking pedophile.
The revelations created a short-lived scandal featuring some fleeting introspection into the fact that modern U.S. media keeps elevating people with a giant sucking sound where ethics should be, followed by some short-lived hand wringing about how his qualifications aren’t commensurate with his fame:
“Many doctors have also criticized Dr. Attia’s credentials: He completed medical school and spent several years as a resident in general surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, but dropped out before the residency was over, then left the medical field to work at McKinsey & Company and an energy company before opening his health care practice. He is not board certified in any specialty.”
It’s been a pretty heated news cycle and it hasn’t really died down yet. Enter Bari Weiss, who appears to have personally ensured that Attia won’t be losing his job at the “new” CBS.
CBS is refusing to comment publicly, but reporting from inside the dying outlet indicates that Bari Weiss didn’t like the idea of “cancelling” Attia because that’s the sort of thing “the wokes” would do:
“Everyone internally unofficially concluded he was staying as of about a week ago,” one CBS News staffer told the outlet, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Another added: “We’re pissed off about it.”
However much Weiss tries to pretend that she’s trying to shift CBS’ focus back to “truth telling journalism” and speaking to “real Americans,” every single action she makes operates in obvious service to the extraction class that hired her, from peddling Erika Kirk as a person of importance, to trying to block stories about Trump’s concentration camps, to running cover for the buddy of a pedophile sex pest.
Weiss knows it’s unethical to retain Attia, based on the network’s refusal to air a rerun of his recent 60 minutes appearance. She just doesn’t care. And like the kind of folks who hired her, she’s eager to perpetuate the idea that meaningful accountability shouldn’t exist for the rich people she associates with.
Yesterday, Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared before the House Judiciary Committee. Among the more notable exchanges was when Rep. Pramila Jayapal asked some of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims who were in the audience to stand up and indicate whether Bondi’s DOJ had ever contacted them about their experiences. None of them had heard from the Justice Department. Bondi wouldn’t even look at the victims as she frantically flipped through her prepared notes.
And that’s when news organizations, including Reuters, caught something alarming: one of the pages Bondi held up clearly showed searches that Jayapal herself had done of the Epstein files:
A Reuters photographer captured this image of a page from Pam Bondi's "burn book," which she used to counter any questions from Democratic lawmakers during an unhinged hearing today.It looks like the DOJ monitored members of Congress’s searches of the unredacted Epstein files.Just wow.
The Department of Justice—led by an Attorney General who is supposed to serve the public but has made clear her only role is protecting Donald Trump’s personal interests—is actively surveilling what members of Congress are searching in the Epstein files. And then bringing that surveillance data to a congressional hearing to use as political ammunition.
This should be front-page news. It should be a major scandal. Honestly, it should be impeachable.
There is no legitimate investigative purpose here. No subpoena. Nothing at all. Just the executive branch tracking the oversight activities of the legislative branch, then weaponizing that information for political culture war point-scoring. The DOJ has no business whatsoever surveilling what members of Congress—who have oversight authority over the Justice Department—are searching.
Jayapal is rightly furious:
Pam Bondi brought a document to the Judiciary Committee today that had my search history of the Epstein files on it. The DOJ is spying on members of Congress. It’s a disgrace and I won’t stand for it.
We’ve been here before. Way back in 2014, the CIA illegally spied on searches by Senate staffers who were investigating the CIA’s torture program. It was considered a scandal at the time—because it was one. The executive branch surveilling congressional oversight is a fundamental violation of separation of powers. It’s the kind of thing that, when it happens, should trigger immediate consequences.
And yet.
Just a few days ago, Senator Lindsey Graham—who has been one of the foremost defenders of government surveillance for years—blew up at a Verizon executive for complying with a subpoena that revealed Graham’s call records (not the contents, just the metadata) from around January 6th, 2021.
“If the shoe were on the other foot, it’d be front-page news all over the world that Republicans went after sitting Democratic senators’ phone records,” said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who was among the Republicans in Congress whose records were accessed by prosecutors as they examined contacts between the president and allies on Capitol Hill.
“I just want to let you know,” he added, “I don’t think I deserve what happened to me.”
This is the same Lindsey Graham who, over a decade ago, said he was “glad” that the NSA was collecting his phone records because it magically kept him safe from terrorists. But now he’s demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars for being “spied” on (he wasn’t—a company complied with a valid subpoena in a legitimate investigation, which is how the legal system is supposed to work).
So here’s the contrast: Graham is demanding money and media attention because a company followed the law. Meanwhile, the Attorney General is actually surveilling a Democratic member of Congress’s oversight activities—with no legal basis whatsoever—and using that surveillance for political theater in a manner clearly designed as a warning shot to congressional reps investigating the Epstein Files. Pam Bondi wants you to know she’s watching you.
Graham claimed that if the shoe were on the other foot, it would be “front-page news all over the world.” Well, Senator, here’s your chance. The shoe is very much on the other foot. It’s worse than what happened to you, because what happened to you was legal and appropriate, and what’s happening to Jayapal is neither.
But we all know Graham won’t speak out against this administration. He’s had nearly a decade to show whether or not the version of Lindsey Graham who said “if we elected Donald Trump, we will get destroyed… and we will deserve it” still exists, and it’s clear that Lindsey Graham is long gone. This one only serves Donald Trump and himself, not the American people.
But this actually matters: if the DOJ can surveil what members of Congress search in oversight files—and then use that surveillance as a weapon in public hearings—congressional oversight of the executive branch is dead. That’s the whole point of separation of powers. The people who are supposed to watch the watchmen can’t do their jobs if the watchmen are surveilling them.
And remember: Bondi didn’t hide this. She brought it to the hearing. She held it up when she knew cameras would catch what was going on. She wanted Jayapal—and every other member of Congress—to see exactly what she’s doing.
This administration doesn’t fear consequences for this kind of vast abuse of power because there haven’t been any. And the longer that remains true, the worse it’s going to get.
Peter Mandelson—the former UK cabinet minister who was just sacked as Britain’s ambassador to the United States over newly revealed emails with Jeffrey Epstein—has found a novel way to avoid answering questions about why he told a convicted sex offender “your friends stay with you and love you” and urged him to “fight for early release.” He got the UK press regulator to send a memo to all UK media essentially telling them to leave him alone.
The National published what they describe as the “secret notice” that went out:
CONFIDENTIAL – STRICTLY NOT FOR PUBLICATION: Ipso has asked us to circulate the following advisory:
Ipso has today been contacted by a representative acting on behalf of Peter Mandelson.
Mr Mandelson’s representatives state that he does not wish to speak to the media at this time. He requests that the press do not take photos or film, approach, or contact him via phone, email, or in-person. His representatives ask that any requests for his comment are directed to [REDACTED]
We are happy to make editors aware of his request. We note the terms of Clause 2 (Privacy) and 3 (Harassment) of the Editors’ Code, and in particular that Clause 3 states that journalists must not persist in questioning, telephoning, pursuing or photographing individuals once asked to desist, unless justified in the public interest.
Clauses 2 and 3 of the UK Editor’s Code—the privacy and harassment provisions—exist primarily to protect genuinely vulnerable people from press intrusion. Grieving families. Crime victims. People suffering genuine harassment.
Mandelson is invoking them to avoid answering questions about his documented friendship with one of history’s most notorious pedophiles—a friendship so extensive and problematic that it just cost him his job as ambassador to the United States, days before a presidential state visit.
According to Politico, the UK Foreign Office withdrew Mandelson “with immediate effect” after emails showed the relationship was far deeper than previously known:
In a statement the U.K. Foreign Office said Mandelson had been withdrawn as ambassador “with immediate effect” after emails showed “the depth and extent” of his relationship with Epstein was “materially different from that known at the time of his appointment.”
“In particular Peter Mandelson’s suggestion that Jeffrey Epstein’s first conviction was wrongful and should be challenged is new information,” the statement added.
So we have a senior political figure who just got fired over revelations that he told a convicted sex offender his prosecution was “wrongful” and should be challenged, who maintained this friendship for years longer than he’d admitted, and his response is to invoke press harassment protections?
The notice does include the important qualifier “unless justified in the public interest.” And it’s hard to imagine a clearer case of public interest: a senior diplomat, just sacked from his post, over previously undisclosed communications with a convicted pedophile, in which he expressed support for challenging that pedophile’s conviction. If that’s not public interest, the term has no meaning.
But the mere act of circulating this notice creates a chilling effect. It puts journalists on notice that pursuing this story could result in complaints to the regulator. It’s using the machinery of press regulation as a shield against legitimate accountability journalism.
Now, to be fair, one could imagine scenarios where even a disgraced public figure might legitimately invoke harassment protections—it wasn’t that long ago there was a whole scandal in the UK with journalists hacking the voicemails of famous people. But that’s not what’s happening here. Mandelson is invoking these provisions to avoid being asked questions at all. “Please don’t inquire about why I told a convicted pedophile his prosecution was wrongful” is not the kind of harm these rules were designed to prevent.
This is who Mandelson has always been: someone who sees regulatory and governmental machinery as tools to be deployed on behalf of whoever he’s serving at the moment. Back in 2009, we covered how he returned from a vacation with entertainment industry mogul David Geffen and almost immediately started pushing for aggressive new copyright enforcement measures, including kicking people off the internet for file sharing. As we wrote at the time, he had what we called a “sudden conversion” to Hollywood’s position on internet enforcement that happened to coincide suspiciously with his socializing with entertainment industry executives.
Back then, the machinery was deployed to serve entertainment executives who wanted harsher copyright enforcement. Now it’s being deployed to serve Mandelson himself.
There’s a broader pattern here that goes beyond one UK politician. The Epstein revelations have been remarkable not just for what they’ve revealed about who associated with him, but for how consistently the response from the powerful has been to deflect, deny, and deploy every available mechanism to avoid genuine accountability. Some have used their media platforms to try to reshape the narrative. Some have simply refused to comment.
Mandelson is trying to use the press regulatory system itself.
It’s worth noting that The National chose to publish the “confidential – strictly not for publication” memo anyway, explicitly citing the public interest. Good for them. Because if there’s one thing that absolutely serves the public interest, it’s shining a light on attempts by the powerful to use the systems meant to protect the vulnerable as shields for their own accountability.
Mandelson’s representatives say he “does not wish to speak to the media at this time.” That’s his right to request—but no media should have to agree to his terms. Weaponizing press regulation to create a cone of silence around questions of obvious public interest is something else entirely. It’s elite impunity dressed up in the language of press ethics.
We called bullshit when Republicans tried to order websites to carry content. We’re calling bullshit now when Democrats are trying to do the same.
We spent years explaining to politicians across both parties why the government can’t dictate how private platforms moderate content. During the Biden admin, GOP governors seemed most aggressive about trying to tell platforms they couldn’t moderate. We wrote many thousands of words words about why Texas’s HB20 and Florida’s SB7072 were flagrantly unconstitutional. We cheered when courts, up to and including the Supreme Court, agreed.
And now California Governor Gavin Newsom has decided to… do the exact same thing, just from the other direction.
NEW: Following TikTok’s sale to a Trump-aligned business group, our office has received reports — and independently confirmed instances — of suppressed content critical of President Trump.
Gavin Newsom is launching a review of this conduct and is calling on the California Department of Justice to determine whether it violates California law.
We could save a lot of taxpayer dollars by just giving him the answer: no, it does not violate California law. It cannot. Because of the First Amendment.
It’s even worse if you dig down one level and see what Newsom is responding to:
That’s a rando X account with just a few thousand followers tweeting that “you can’t even mention epstein lmao” showing a TikTok warning that her trying to post the word “epstein” “may be in violation of our community guidelines.”
Newsom is quote tweeting this saying:
It’s time to investigate. I am launching a review into whether TikTok is violating state law by censoring Trump-critical content.
There’s so much wrong here.
Let’s start with the obvious: these “reports” are sketchy as hell. Beyond it coming from some rando account, TikTok has already explained that there was a data center power outage that caused “a cascading systems failure” affecting content posting and moderation. This happens! Content moderation systems fail all the time. Also, moderation systems make mistakes. All the time! As we’ve discussed approximately ten thousand times, even with 99.9% accuracy, you’re going to have hundreds of thousands of “mistakes” every single day on a platform the size of TikTok. That’s just math.
For the Governor of California to jump from “some rando users reported upload problems during a technical outage” to “we must investigate whether this violates California law” is… not how any of this should work.
But, who even cares about that? There’s a bigger issue here: even if every single one of these reports were accurate—even if TikTok were deliberately, systematically moderating content to favor Trump—that would be totally legal under the First Amendment.
Content moderation decisions are editorial decisions. They are protected speech. A private platform can legally decide to promote, demote, or remove whatever content it wants based on whatever criteria it wants, including political viewpoint. It can decide what it doesn’t want to host. It can do so for ideological reasons if it wants.
This is the same thing we’ve been saying for years when Republicans howled about “anti-conservative bias” on social media. And, arguably, Newsom merely investigating TikTok for its editorial choices creates chilling effects that themselves raise First Amendment concerns.
When Texas passed HB20, which tried to prohibit large social media platforms from moderating based on “viewpoint,” we pointed out that this was flagrantly unconstitutional because it would compel platforms to host speech against their will. The Supreme Court agreed, with Justice Kagan noting during oral arguments that Texas’s law would mean “the government can force you to have certain speech on your platform.”
When Florida passed SB7072 with similar provisions, we said the same thing. The Eleventh Circuit agreed, calling it “an unprecedented attempt to compel private platforms to host speech,” which violates “the First Amendment’s long-held protection for the editorial discretion of private businesses.”
So now Newsom wants to do the exact same thing, just from the other direction? He wants California to investigate whether a platform’s content moderation choices—choices protected by the First Amendment—somehow “violate California law”?
Is he just making up new theories now about how a state can control the editorial decisions of private platforms based on which political direction those decisions allegedly lean?
How is this different from when Josh Hawley or Ted Cruz threatened to strip Section 230 protections from platforms they accused of “anti-conservative bias”? How is this different from when Ron DeSantis tried to punish Disney for political speech he disagreed with?
The answer is: it’s not different. It’s the same unconstitutional impulse to use government power to control private editorial decisions, just wearing the other team’s jersey. We’ve detailed time and time again that both Republicans and Democrats are super quick to reach for the censorship button whenever they see online speech they don’t like, but it’s particularly egregious here because the courts have already ruled on this exact issue.
The Supreme Court already made it quite clear that Newsom can’t do what he’s doing just a couple years ago in the Moody ruling, directed at the governors of Texas and Florida:
But a State may not interfere with private actors’ speech to advance its own vision of ideological balance. States (and their citizens) are of course right to want an expressive realm in which the public has access to a wide range of views. That is, indeed, a fundamental aim of the First Amendment. But the way the First Amendment achieves that goal is by preventing the government from “tilt[ing] public debate in a preferred direction.” Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., 564 U. S. 552, 578–579 (2011). It is not by licensing the government to stop private actors from speaking as they wish and preferring some views over others.And that is so even when those actors possess “enviable vehicle[s]” for expression.Hurley, 515 U. S., at 577. In a better world, there would be fewer inequities in speech opportunities; and the government can take many steps to bring that world closer. But it cannot prohibit speech to improve or better balance the speech market.
TikTok could, tomorrow, announce that they’re going to remove every single piece of content critical of Trump and promote only pro-Trump material. That would be stupid. It would probably be bad for their business. Users would likely flee to competitors. But it would be legal, because private platforms have the First Amendment right to make their own editorial choices, even bad ones.
Newsom knows this. Or he should. We’ve been explaining it to politicians of both parties for years: the First Amendment protects against government control of speech, including a platform’s editorial decisions about what to host. It doesn’t guarantee anyone a right to have their preferred content amplified on someone else’s platform.
We called bullshit when Republicans tried this. We’re calling bullshit now when Democrats like Newsom are doing the same thing.
The state has no role in dictating editorial practices of any media entity. Period.
Imagine having all the power but none of the brains. That’s the current administration, the one that behaves like a blind, enraged bull set loose in its own china shop. “We can always get more china,” says the administration, shortly before realizing it really can’t, thanks to tariff efforts that ensure China won’t be buying from the US any time soon, much less selling replacement china at the expected price point.
This is worse than the inmates running the asylum. This is more akin to a bunch of Nurse Ratchets running the asylum. The asylum becomes more cruel and less competent with each passing day. Cruelty isn’t generally associated with intelligence. And that truism remains unbothered during Trump’s second ascendance to the Oval Office.
Trump and his fans spent years stoking conspiracy theories about Democratic party members and the wholesale sexual abuse of children. These conspiracy theories led to actual violence that those participating in these conspiracy theories refuse to take responsibility for.
New York financier/pimp Jeffrey Epstein was apparently a friend to everyone rich or powerful. And he gave them what they couldn’t get elsewhere: sexual access to minors. Some of this remains alleged. But some of it was the supporting evidence for Epstein’s conviction. Epstein is dead and I can imagine lots of his friends and acquaintances breathed a sigh of relief when it was reported he had (allegedly) died by suicide in jail.
A resurgence of interest in Epstein’s files posed a unique problem for Donald Trump. On one hand, Trump had spent years stoking interest in these files, claiming they would expose a vast Democratic party cabal solely interested in sexually exploiting minors. But he also knew these files would reveal things about his own relationship with Epstein and, very likely, contain implications about Trump’s interest in much younger women.
After a period of proclaiming the Epstein files to be something no one was interested in (blatantly false, no matter which side of the MAGA you fall on), Trump and his DOJ decided to move forward with a staggered release of these documents. Congress actually managed to get in on the governance game (something lately completely subsumed by Trump’s desire to rule solely from the confines of the Oval Office via executive orders) and passed a bill that required a full release by December 19.
This didn’t happen. GOP leaders made sure it wouldn’t happen by declaring a Congressional holiday recess well in advance of the holidays to ensure GOP reps would be safely back in their home states before the release of additional Epstein files.
We got whatever the DOJ chose to release. And that release was a combination of stuff we’ve mostly already seen, some (heavily-redacted) stuff we hadn’t seen yet, and more than 200 pages of fully-redacted documents. We already knew we were in for a whole lot of opacity. What we possibly didn’t expect was the DOJ attempting to hide stuff after the fact.
At least 16 files disappeared from the Justice Department’s public webpage for documents related to Jeffrey Epstein — including a photograph showing President Donald Trump — less than a day after they were posted, with no explanation from the government and no notice to the public.
The missing files, which were available Friday and no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showing a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, was a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
Trump’s DOJ is either too dumb to know or too stupid to care about the Streisand Effect. The quickest way to draw attention to something you don’t want people paying attention to is to perform a hasty deletion.
Anyone who was paying attention to this release had already saved the documents to a bunch of cloud services and static storage devices. Those who were paying attention past the initial release would know if the government decided to bury something after the fact.
Of course, the government did try to do that. The people with the most power and money seem to think they’re the smartest people walking the earth because they’ve fully bought into the meritocracy illusion. And they’re always wrong. Being rich or powerful doesn’t make you smarter. It just makes it easier to shrug off your losses.
The DOJ tried to do that after people outside of the imaginary “meritocracy” pointed out this post facto deletion.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche early Sunday said the image was removed from the website after learning there were concerns about women in the photo, “so we pulled that photo down.”
“It has nothing to do with President Trump,” said Blanche on NBC’s “Meet the Press.
That’s impossible to believe because everything this particular federal government does has everything to do with Donald Trump. It’s a system of supposed checks and balances manned entirely by people who demand that the moment Poochie isn’t on screen, everyone should be asking “Where’s Poochie?”
Here’s the most high profile image the DOJ deleted (albeit temporarily) just in case it tries to do it again. Take a look in the drawer to find a photo of the current president next to someone the DOJ now implies was “a victim.”
After everyone noticed this premature burial, the DOJ restored the files, pretending this was all about protecting victims of crimes committed by Epstein and his associates (Donald Trump among them), rather than a misguided attempt to rewrite history while this particular history was still being published.
The Department of Justice on Sunday restored online a photo from the Jeffrey Epstein files that contained images showing President Donald Trump after backlash over its removal.
[…]
“The Southern District of New York flagged an image of President Trump for potential further action to protect victims,” the DOJ said in a post on the social media site X.
“Out of an abundance of caution, the Department of Justice temporarily removed the image for further review. After the review, it was determined there is no evidence that any Epstein victims are depicted in the photograph, and it has been reposted without any alteration or redaction.”
I’d love to be able to take the DOJ at its word. But it has steadily destroyed that option ever since [gestures at the long history of the DOJ, but emphasizing its recent actions with much more demonstrative hand gestures] it has been the (alleged) Department of Justice. But it gets even less of a benefit of a doubt here because we are absolutely right to assume this DOJ considers Donald Trump to be the victim of any criminal acts he may have actually perpetrated while getting cozy with Mr. Epstein.
At some point, the Trump DOJ is going to insist that if Trump ever participated in the rape of underage women, he was forced to do by Antifa protesters backed by billions in George Soros funding. He will have been the victim of a “woke” cabal that recognized him for the sexual predator he is and then used his predilections against him.
This move by the DOJ to temporarily bury a photo of Trump makes it clear it will always do whatever it thinks might please Trump even when it’s immediately obvious it cares more about fluffing Trump than serving the nation.
We’ve seen some pretty ridiculous lawsuits here at Techdirt, but the one that Donald Trump filed on Friday against Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal over the article about the birthday card he was alleged to have given Epstein is so legally incompetent that it reads like a masterclass in how not to file a defamation claim.
The complaint is such a train wreck of basic legal errors and factual misrepresentations that it can only be understood as a SLAPP suit designed to harass the WSJ and force them to reveal sources. The legal malpractice on display would be almost comical if it weren’t so transparent in its authoritarian intent.
Trump is using a Miami law firm that appears to specialize in franchise law—which might explain the amateurish quality of this defamation complaint. When you can’t get competent media lawyers, apparently you make do with whoever will take your money.
Let’s start with what the WSJ actually reported, because the lawyers filing this suit seem to have struggled with basic reading comprehension. It claims that Trump gave Epstein a card for his 50th Birthday that, well, here’s how they describe it:
The letter bearing Trump’s name, which was reviewed by the Journal, is bawdy—like others in the album. It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.
The letter concludes: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
The Journal also includes the type written faux dialogue between Trump and Epstein that was apparently included, which is so bizarre I’m not even going to bother repeating it here.
Here’s where the legal incompetence begins. Trump’s defenders, led by JD Vance, immediately seized on the fact that the WSJ didn’t publish a photo of the letter as somehow “proof” it doesn’t exist:
This reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how journalism works. Major publications don’t publish stories like this without solid sourcing—the WSJ’s legal team wouldn’t allow it. More importantly, there are often very good reasons for media organizations not to reveal images of documents that have been leaked to them. Just ask Reality Winner. And, of course, I’m sure the Trump regime would love to know who leaked this document, so seeing an image might help reveal that information.
But that doesn’t make it a good legal argument. Unless you’re just trying to flush out the leaker.
So it’s notable that the lawyers decide to lead with that as their key piece of “evidence” that the story is fabricated—a strategy that’s likely to backfire spectacularly when the WSJ produces the letter in discovery (or before).
On the one hand, Defendants Safdar and Palazzolo falsely pass off as fact that President Trump, in 2003, wrote, drew, and signed this letter. And on the other hand,Defendants Safdar and Palazzolo failed to attach the letter, failed to attach the alleged drawing, failed to show proofthat President Trump authored or signed any such letter, and failed to explain how this purported letter was obtained.The reason for those failures is because no authentic letter or drawing exists.Defendants concocted this story to malign President Trump’s character and integrity and deceptively portray him in a false light.
That’s a bold claim. It seems like quite the gambit to open with a claim that the letter doesn’t even exist, when it seems quite likely that this argument will come back to haunt them.
Also, the lawyers can’t even accurately describe what the WSJ reported. The complaint claims the article states that “President Trump, in 2003, wrote, drew, and signed this letter.” But that’s not what the WSJ said. The article carefully states the letter bore Trump’s name and signature, and that the drawing “appears to be hand-drawn” without attributing the drawing to Trump.
This isn’t just sloppy—it’s the kind of basic factual error that suggests the lawyers either didn’t carefully read the article they’re suing over, or are deliberately misrepresenting it.
The complaint also has a weird argument about how the WSJ published this as an “exclusive” but then… disseminated it widely. As one does. With news. I don’t know why this paragraph is in here, other than to make it clear that the lawyer who wrote this is unfamiliar with how journalism works:
The Article was published in The Wall Street Journal as an exclusive.1 However, since publication, Defendants have widely disseminated it to hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
They also double down on their claim that it’s impossible that this letter exists, which seems like a kind of lawsuit claim preceding an unfortunate event for them.
Tellingly, the Article does not explain whether Defendants have obtained a copy of the letter, have seen it, have had it described to them, or any other circumstances that would otherwise lend credibility to the Article. That is because the supposed letter is a fake and the Defendants knew it when they chose to deliberately defame President Trump.
But the most egregious nonsense comes in how they identify the allegedly defamatory statements.
In a defamation lawsuit, you have to state which statements made by the defendant were “false statements of fact” and that’s tough to do here, but these lawyers power on through.
They claim, among other things, that the phrase “the letter bearing Trump’s name” is false. They also claim that stating the letter “is bawdy” is false. Calling something “bawdy” would clearly be an opinion based on disclosed facts and literally can’t be defamatory.
But here’s where you know these lawyers didn’t actually read the article they’re suing over. They claim it’s defamatory that the WSJ described some contributors to Epstein’s birthday book as “childhood pals”—and they’re claiming this defames Trump. But look at the sentence:
The album had poems, photos and greetings from businesspeople, academics, Epstein’s former girlfriends andchildhood pals, according to the documents reviewed by the Journal and people familiar with them
The “childhood pals” reference clearly refers to other contributors to the birthday book—not Trump. This is such a basic reading comprehension failure that it raises questions about whether these lawyers actually practiced law before filing this complaint.
They separately claim it’s defamatory to claim that Epstein socialized with Trump, which is ridiculous as the evidence for that is widespread, including multiple images, videos, and Donald Trump’s own words
This is not a serious lawsuit that anyone expects to win.
This is a SLAPP lawsuit.
And it asks for $10 billion dollars.
I mean, it’s kinda like this:
The real question is whether this strategy will work. Given that CBS just paid Trump $16 million to settle a similarly frivolous lawsuit, that ABC paid him $15 million to settle another lawsuit, and that Meta paid him $25 million in what amounts to protection money, Trump has good reason to think that flinging enough legal garbage will eventually pay off. Indeed, he crowed about these payoffs on social media as evidence that Murdoch will pay him too.
But this case presents a fascinating test of media power dynamics. Trump is essentially betting that he can bully Rupert Murdoch the same way he’s successfully bullied other media companies. That’s a bold gamble, in part because of how important Rupert Murdoch has been to Trump’s success. Rupert has been a Trump ally for years, but he can be ruthless when his business interests are threatened.
More importantly, the WSJ has the legal resources to fight this, and, hopefully, the financial incentive to do so.
If the WSJ folds here, it would complete Trump’s transformation of SLAPP suits from a nuisance tactic into a reliable revenue stream. The man who famously complained about “fake news” has figured out that threatening to sue over real news is far more profitable.
But Murdoch isn’t exactly known for backing down when someone tries to shake him down. This could get very messy, very quickly—which might be the most entertaining thing to come out of this embarrassing legal filing.
Donald Trump admitted yesterday that he called Rupert Murdoch and demanded the Wall Street Journal kill its story about Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. When Murdoch couldn’t deliver, Trump promised to sue the media company and gleefully looked forward to putting Murdoch on the witness stand. Update: Just as this story was going live, it was reported that he had, in fact, sued. We’ll write about the details of the lawsuit as they become clear.
This is the exact type of behavior that Trump’s supporters spent years claiming represented “arguably the most massive attack against free speech in United States history” when they falsely accused the Biden administration of doing far less.
I understand that we live in an era of blatant hypocrisy where “it’s okay if a Republican does it” is the norm, but I wanted to call out how directly similar this scenario is.
For the past few years, we covered the Missouri v. Biden (later, Murthy v. Missouri) case through all its twists and turns. The underlying claim in the case from the states, and a few social media users who had their accounts restricted in some form or another, was that there was a huge First Amendment violation by the Biden administration because it had spoken to social media companies asking them about their policies regarding fighting disinformation on things around Covid.
The case was built on out-of-context communications and outright lies, but Trump-appointed Judge Terry Doughty ruled that the Biden administration asking social media companies to explain their editorial policies was “arguably the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.”
The Supreme Court dismissed the case for lack of standing, but the legal standard the Trump-supporting MAGA lawyers presented is crucial here. Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguinaga argued that any government “ask” to media companies about their editorial choices violates the First Amendment:
JUSTICE KAGAN: So, I mean, what about that? I mean, you know, take a — an example where — I mean, these platforms, they’re compilers of speech, and some part of the government, let’s call it part of the law enforcement arm of the government, says you might not realize it, but you are hosting a lot of terrorist speech, which is going to increase the chances that there’s going to be some terrible harm that’s going to take place, and we want to give you this information, we want to try to persuade you to take it down.
Are — are — the government can’t do that?
MR. AGUINAGA: The government can absolutely do that, Justice Kagan.
JUSTICE KAGAN: They’re taking —
MR. AGUINAGA: Terrorist activity, criminal —
JUSTICE KAGAN: — they’re — they’re asking them to take down the speech.
MR. AGUINAGA: Terrorist activity, criminal activity, that is not protected speech. Absolutely, the government can inform the — the
JUSTICE KAGAN: Well, that might — might be protected speech. I mean, terrorists engage in, you know, things that come under the First Amendment. I mean, let’s say they’re just recruiting people for their organizations.
MR. AGUINAGA: Your Honor, if it’s First Amendment speech, protected speech, then I think we’re in an entirely different world.
More directly, when Justice Kavanaugh asked about government officials telling media companies they should take down “factually erroneous information,” Aguinaga said that crosses the constitutional line:
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: And one thing that I think I want to square up with you is if someone calls and — or contacts the social media company and says what you have there, this post, has factually erroneous information, so not a viewpoint that we disagree with, factually erroneous information, and the social media company says, we’ll take a look at that and — and you still think that’s significant encouragement that qualifies as coercion, if they take it down in response to concluding that it, in fact, is factually erroneous?
MR. AGUINAGA: No, Your Honor.If there’s no ask from the government, if the government’s just saying here’s our view of the statement —
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: Okay. And we think it should be — it should be taken down, it’s up to you, butwe think it should be taken down.
MR. AGUINAGA:I think that’s a harder casefor me. I guess, you know, if you think it is a close case decide it under the First Amendment.
So by the legal standard Trump’s own lawyers established, any government request to suppress media coverage violates the First Amendment. Now let’s see how Trump himself measures up.
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal published a story claiming that Trump and Epstein had a very close relationship, focusing on a supposed birthday card Trump allegedly created for Epstein. Trump’s response was his usual cry of “fake news!” about anything he dislikes but—more importantly—involves him admitting he had directly pressured Murdoch to kill the story:
If you can’t see the image, here’s the text of Trump’s rambling:
The Wall Street Journal, and Rupert Murdoch, personally, were warned directly by President Donald J. Trumpthat the supposed letter they printed by President Trump to Epstein was a FAKE and, if they print it,they will be sued. Mr. Murdoch stated that he would take care of itbut, obviously, did not have the power to do so. The Editor of The Wall Street Journal,Emma Tucker, was told directly by Karoline Leavitt, and by President Trump,that the letter was a FAKE, but Emma Tucker didn’t want to hear that. Instead, they are going with a false, malicious, and defamatory story anyway. President Trump will be suing The Wall Street Journal, NewsCorp, and Mr. Murdoch, shortly. The Press has to learn to be truthful, and not rely on sources that probably don’t even exist. President Trump has already beaten George Stephanopoulos/ABC, 60 Minutes/CBS, and others, and looks forward to suing and holding accountable the once great Wall Street Journal. It has truly turned out to be a “Disgusting and Filthy Rag” and, writing defamatory lies like this, shows their desperation to remain relevant. If there were any truth at all on the Epstein Hoax, as it pertains to President Trump, this information would have been revealed by Comey, Brennan, Crooked Hillary, and other Radical Left Lunatics years ago. It certainly would not have sat in a file waiting for “TRUMP” to have won three Elections. This is yet another example of FAKE NEWS!
This isn’t just government pressure—it’s a sitting president threatening to weaponize the courts against media for editorial decisions over what he claims is “erroneous information.” By Trump’s own supporters’ legal standard, this is a textbook First Amendment violation. Perhaps the most massive attack against free speech in the history of the United States. (Update: as noted above, it’s now being reported that the lawsuit has been filed, which we’ll cover in a follow-up story).
He didn’t just ask them not to publish the thing, he told them he would sue them if they published and has now said he’s going to sue Murdoch’s “ass off.”
Compare this to what the Biden administration actually did: some officials sent less than polite emails to social media companies asking about their misinformation policies. No threats. No lawsuits. No demands for specific content removal. Yet Trump’s supporters called that “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.”
Trump is doing exactly what the MAGA world spent years accusing Biden of doing, except with explicit threats and promised retaliation. And it’s crickets from the free speech warriors who spent four years screaming about government pressure on media.
The inevitable defense will be “but this was fake news, so of course he can do that.” But Biden officials also believed they were pointing to misinformation—and they never threatened personal lawsuits against media executives for editorial decisions.
Again, I get it. We judge the MAGA world on a curve. Everyone expects them to be authoritarian hypocritical censorial asshats, so it’s not news when they are.
We’ve normalized authoritarian behavior by expecting it from Trump, but this deserves attention. A sitting president threatening to sue media companies and their owners for editorial decisions isn’t just hypocrisy—it’s the kind of direct government coercion that actually violates the First Amendment.
And yes, part of the problem is that the media keeps capitulating every time Trump does this. CBS and ABC each paid millions of dollars to Trump over bogus lawsuits. So did Meta. This has only emboldened Trump. Media capitulation and kowtowing has taught Trump that he can bully and sue media companies to silence them. All of this is an actual First Amendment violating attack on speech.
The silence from Trump’s supposed free speech defenders says everything about how seriously they actually take the principles they claim to champion.
You might recall that, back in February, Senator Ron Wyden’s office revealed how a data broker named Near Intelligence had collected the data of women visiting abortion clinics, then sold that data (via a proxy) to right wing activists. Those activists then turned around and used it to target vulnerable women with health care misinformation.
The scandal perfectly exemplified the very real hazards of having a Congress that’s too corrupt to regulate data brokers or pass even a basic internet-era privacy law.
When it originally went public, Near bragged about how they owned a database tracking the movement and online behavior of 1.6 billion people across 44 countries. That company ultimately went bankrupt, resulting in a rush by Wyden and the FTC to ensure that data didn’t bounce around the open web.
But the data broker’s impact lives on all the same. As part of an exclusive report (paywalled, Quartz alternative) Wired found datasets (left exposed online) collected by the company that tracked visitors to Jeffrey Epstein’s notorious pervert island down to the centimeter. The data exposes the movement patterns gleaned from 200 mobile devices across 11,279 coordinates as they visited the island:
“The coordinates that Near Intelligence collected and left exposed online pinpoint locations to within a few centimeters of space. Visitors were tracked as they moved from the Ritz-Carlton on neighboring St. Thomas Island…The tracking continued after they arrived. From inside Epstein’s enigmatic waterfront temple to the pristine beaches, pools, and cabanas scattered across his 71-acres of prime archipelagic real estate.”
The Wired report notes that the data on Epstein’s guests was created by an unknown third-party client using a free trial of Near’s systems. Those systems are based on an intelligence platform formerly known as Vista (since folded into a product called Pinnacle). And again, Wired kind of buries the lede: that the data was found openly accessible online.
“WIRED discovered several so-called Vista reports while examining Pinnacle’s publicly accessible code. While the specific URLs for the reports are difficult to find, Google’s web crawlers were able to locate at least two other publicly accessible Vista reports: one geofencing the Westfield Mall of the Netherlands and another targeting Saipan-Ledo Park in El Paso, Texas.”
It’s not hard to see the problem with dodgy international companies tracking granular, detailed online behavior down to the centimeter, then failing to secure that data as part of a massive market economy that sees very little oversight. It makes the hysteria surrounding TikTok seem laughable, yet mysteriously gets far less press and regulatory attention because U.S. profits are involved.
In this case the data revealed the dodgy behavior of pedophile shitheads; but the data could just as easily have included any manner of easily abused and exploited sensitive user data, including that of marginalized folks.
Half of the companies involved in tracking this data have since been acquired or changed their names — all part of the intentionally convoluted industry specifically designed to make oversight and regulation as difficult as possible. Near Intelligence has since been reincorporated and rebranded as Azira.
Outside of scattered FTC action, the U.S. doesn’t even try to ethically rein in this sector for two reasons: one, Congress is too corrupt to resist the advances of a coalition of massive companies with unlimited lobbying budgets, keen to see the data monetization party continue. Two: the U.S. government also exploits this lack of oversight to hoover up data itself and, in many cases, avoid getting traditional warrants.
This kind of data isn’t just valuable to marketers. It’s valuable to city planners, sociologists, and traffic management firms. It’s super valuable to military contractors and the military. But it’s also hugely beneficial to global governments (including authoritarian ones), and I’d wager the intelligence systems they’ve built to exploit it make Edward Snowden-era surveillance look downright adorable.
There’s no financial incentive for anyone involved in this chain of dysfunction to behave ethically or implement reform. And the scale at which this dysfunction now operates is mind boggling.
So despite endless scandal, this data surveillance free-for-all continues unabated. At least until there’s a scandal so ugly (likely involving mass fatalities, some unprecedented embarrassment for the rich and powerful, or both) that Congress is shaken from its corrupt apathy and forced to pass some kind of basic guardrails.
