(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said on Monday that he would like to temporarily suspend the federal gas tax as prices soar due to the war in Iran.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump sounded off on Sunday about Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett over their joining the majority in the court’s opinion on his tariff policy, a ruling that said the president could not use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose broad tariffs.
“They were appointed by me, and yet have hurt our Country so badly!” Trump wrote on his social media platform on Sunday evening. “I do not believe they meant to do so, but their decision on Tariffs cost the United States 159 Billion Dollars that we have to pay back to enemies, and people, companies, and Countries, that have been ripping us off for years. It’s hardly believable!”
He added, “They could have solved that situation with a ‘tiny’ sentence, ‘Any money paid by others to the United States does not have to be paid back.’ Why wouldn’t they have done so?”
In a 6-3 decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court in February invalidated most of Trump’s sweeping global tariffs, a cornerstone of his economic policy in his second term.
“We claim no special competence in matters of economics or foreign affairs. We claim only, as we must, the limited role assigned to us by Article III of the Constitution,” Roberts wrote in the opinion. “Fulfilling that role, we hold that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.”
Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito dissented from the majority, arguing that Trump should have the power to impose tariffs during national emergencies.
Trump in March had railed on social media against the U.S. court system, saying at the time that Gorsuch and Barrett, both of whom the president appointed during his first term, were attempting to go “out of their way, with bad and wrongful rulings and intentions, to prove how ‘honest,’ ‘independent,’ and ‘legitimate’ they are.”
Gorsuch and Barrett have been reliable conservative votes on the court, consistently voting in favor of positions backed by the Trump administration. Last year, Barrett authored the landmark 6-3 decision restricting the ability of lower court judges from issuing nationwide injunctions against Trump policies.
Gorsuch last week responded publicly to Trump’s previous personal attacks, telling ABC News Live Prime anchor Linsey Davis that he is determined to remain “independent” and “fearless” in fulfilling his duty despite harsh criticism from the president who appointed him.
Trump also appeared to suggest on Sunday that Republican-appointed justices should never rule against a Republican president despite the fact that justices have previously ruled against the president that appointed them.
“With certain Republican Nominated Justices that we have on the Supreme Court, the Democrats don’t really need to ‘PACK THE COURT’ any longer,” he said. “In fact, I should be the one wanting to PACK THE COURT! I’m working so hard to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, and then people that I appointed have shown so little respect to our Country, and its people. What is the reason for this? They have to do the right thing, but it’s really OK for them to be loyal to the person that appointed them to ‘almost’ the highest position in the land, that is, a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.”
Trump on Sunday also said he believed the Supreme Court would block his attempt to limit access to birthright citizenship. The court heard a case on April 1 over Trump’s executive order.
“I don’t want loyalty, but I do want and expect it for our Country,” Trump said.
“Well, maybe Neil, and Amy, just had a really bad day, but our Country can only handle so many decisions of that magnitude before it breaks down, and cracks!!!” he added. “Sometimes decisions have to be allowed to use Good, Strong, Common Sense as a guide. A negative ruling on Birthright Citizenship, on top of the recent Supreme Court Tariff catastrophe, is not Economically sustainable for the United States of America?”
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(WASHINGTON) — The Pentagon on Friday released declassified UFO files from various federal agencies, some dating as far back as the late 1940s.
The documents, which the Pentagon said includes “never-before-seen” files on unidentified flying objects — called unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) by the U.S. government — were being posted on a new government website.
“The American people can now access the federal government’s declassified UAP files instantly. The latest UAP videos, photos, and original source documents from across the entire United States government are all in one place — no clearance required,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
The department said it will release more files “on a rolling basis.”
Many of the reported sightings of unidentified flying objects were clustered near active military operations, according to the files reviewed by ABC News.
A large share of the alleged encounters date back to the 1950s and 1960s, particularly in Cold War-era hotspots like Germany and the Soviet Union, according to the documents. More recent reports are concentrated in the Middle East —including around the Strait of Hormuz, Iraq and Syria — where the U.S. has maintained a substantial military presence and some of its most sophisticated monitoring capabilities.
The concentration of sightings around military activity is mostly likely a reflection of where the Pentagon is deploying its most advanced equipment and conducting frequent missions. The lion’s share of reported sightings come from military pilots, according to the files.
In all of the reported incidents, the aerial phenomena posed no apparent threat, with most encounters ending after the mysterious craft abruptly flew away. There was one brief reported encounter in Iraq in 2024 which a mysterious craft zipped across a U.S. aircraft’s surveillance systems at a high rate of speed while that crew was attacking an unrelated target.
In a statement, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth touted the release as “unprecedented transparency.” Some of the files are heavily redacted, including several documents with entire pages blacked out.
The release is in keeping with President Donald Trump’s announcement earlier this year that he is directing agencies to make public files related to unidentified flying objects, unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) and “extraterrestrial life.”
There are some redactions in the files, but this is the first time ever that complete case files have been released. In recent years, the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) has been reviewing these historic documents and has released public summaries and reviews to the public.
So far, none of their reviews have found anything that has led them to conclude that UFOs or UAPs are extraterrestrial in origin.
Trump touted the Pentagon’s release of the first batch of UFO files on Friday, taking credit for offering transparency to the American people.
“In an effort for Complete and Maximum Transparency, it was my Honor to direct my Administration to identify and provide Government files related to Alien and Extraterrestrial Life, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, and Unidentified Flying Objects,” Trump wrote on his social media platform.
Trump added that this document release will allow the American people to “decide for themselves” what is happening with the reported sightings.
For weeks, the president has floated the release of government files on UFOs and UAPs.
“Well, I think we’re going to be releasing as much as we can in the near future. For some reason, and I guess it’s just a reason, it’s been in the minds of people for a long time,” Trump said last month while welcoming the Artemis II astronauts to the Oval Office.
-ABC News’ Emily Chang contributed to this report.
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(WASHINGTON) — The Pentagon on Friday began to release declassified unidentified flying objects (UFO) files from various federal agencies, some dating as far back as the late 1940s.
The release is in keeping with President Donald Trump’s announcement earlier this year that he directing agencies to make public files related to UFOs, unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) and “extraterrestrial life.”
The documents, which the Pentagon said includes “never-before-seen” files, are being posted on a new government website.
“The American people can now access the federal government’s declassified UAP files instantly. The latest UAP videos, photos, and original source documents from across the entire United States government are all in one place — no clearance required,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
The department said it will release more files “on a rolling basis.”
There are some redactions in the files, but this is the first time ever that complete case files have been released. In recent years, the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) has been reviewing these historic documents and has released public summaries and reviews to the public.
So far, none of their reviews have found anything that has led them to conclude that UFOs or UAPs are extraterrestrial in origin.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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(WASHINGTON) — The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday overturned the state’s redistricting ballot measure, delivering a major setback to Democrats who hoped the new map would allow them to flip up to four congressional seats.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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(WASHINGTON) — When President Donald Trump arrives in Beijing next Thursday, he’ll be the first U.S. president to set foot in China in nearly a decade. The last visit was Trump’s own, in 2017.
He arrives in a very different position than he expected: the trip was originally scheduled for earlier this spring, then postponed because of the Iran war.
Trump had said the war would only last four to six weeks. Instead, there’s no end in sight with the the Strait of Hormuz remaining closed and U.S. gas prices surging — as the president faces record-low approval ratings.
That backdrop has flipped the leverage dynamic, according to experts who study the region.
The leverage flip
Beijing would have preferred this war never started — the energy disruption and the hit to global demand are real headaches for an export-dependent economy, experts say. But they say the conflict has handed Xi a relative advantage: Trump now has too many fires to put out at home and abroad to risk another escalation cycle with China.
“China is a relative bright spot in Trump’s foreign policy right now,” said Jon Czin, a former director for China at the National Security Council.
The longer the Iran war drags on, Czin argued, the more it minimizes the chance of another economic confrontation — Beijing has also already demonstrated it can retaliate — as it did with tariffs and rare earth export controls — and the administration backed down before.
Both sides are still trying to eke out an edge in the run-up. The Treasury Department recently sanctioned Chinese oil refiners and shipping firms tied to Iranian crude to cut off funding. In an unprecedented move, Beijing invoked a “blocking rule” for the first time, directing Chinese companies not to comply with sanctions on Chinese oil refiners.
Daniel Shapiro, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, points out the war has reduced the U.S. military posture in the Indo-Pacific with long-term consequences for deterring China and defending Taiwan.
“Trump’s position and leverage at the summit is considerably weaker if he goes to Beijing with the war still unsettled, or even with renewed escalation. And the Iranians know that. So they are whittling down the terms to end the war to something much more modest than what Trump originally envisioned,” Shapiro wrote in a post on X.
What Trump wants
The administration clearly wants Beijing to use its influence over Tehran. Secretary of State Marco Rubio this week urged Beijing to use the Iran’s foreign minister’s visit to China earlier this week to press Tehran on reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
“I hope the Chinese tell him what he needs to be told,” Rubio said when asked about China’s top diplomat meeting with Iran’s foreign minister. “And that is that what you are doing in the strait is causing you to be globally isolated. You’re the bad guy in this.”
Beyond the war in Iran, Trump will be looking for wins on trade and investment: For instance, Chinese commitments to buy Boeing planes and U.S. agricultural goods as well as an extension of the trade truce reached during the last Trump-Xi meeting in South Korea last year, according to experts.
The administration also wants China to continue its pause on rare earth export controls, analysts say. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has also proposed a “Board of Trade” to manage economic ties between the countries and goods the two sides are trading.
What Beijing wants — and what it doesn’t
Here’s the gap between the administration’s public framing and what analysts who study China most closely are saying: Beijing doesn’t actually plan to deliver much on Iran or get deeply involved.
Beijing’s statement after the meeting with the Iranian Foreign Ministry was carefully worded to not blame Iran for the crisis while also calling for greater efforts to open the Strait of Hormuz.
“The Chinese are not interested in assuming any kind of direct role in the conflict,” according to Patricia Kim, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “They see this as a problem that the United States needs to solve, and they have no interest in intervening on Tehran’s behalf.”
Czin’s read is similar. While Beijing’s meeting with the Iranian foreign minister this week let it “posture as peacemakers,” he says the Chinese don’t want Iran to take up too much summit time. His analog: even on North Korea, right on China’s doorstep, Beijing rarely puts real pressure on Pyongyang.
China’s energy buffer is part of why the urgency is lower than the Trump administration assumes. Beijing has built strategic oil reserves, invested heavily in green energy, and can shift to domestically produced coal. The bigger risk for China isn’t the energy crunch itself.
“The bigger issue for China is the secondary and tertiary effects from this conflict,” Czin said — such as a war-driven global slowdown that hits the Southeast Asian and European consumers that Chinese exports depend on.
What Beijing actually wants from the summit is more stability: lock in the trade truce, push back on U.S. export controls on advanced technology and ease restrictions on Chinese investment in the U.S.
What’s unclear is how hard Xi will push Trump on Taiwan. Any small shift in U.S. declaratory language on Taiwan would be significant, though Czin is skeptical Trump would stick with new wording even if he agreed to it.
Bottom line
Expect fanfare, expect deliverables on the margins — purchase commitments or a possible Board of Trade announcement — and don’t expect breakthroughs on the hard issues, experts say.
The summit’s significance is less in what it produces than in what it preserves: a tenuous stability that both leaders, for different reasons, want to keep intact through the rest of the year.
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(TENNESSEE) — As protesters accused them of racial gerrymandering, Tennessee state lawmakers passed into law on Thursday a new congressional map that could allow Republicans to flip the state’s lone Democratic-held seat, notching the GOP another win in the mid-decade redistricting scramble.
Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed the bill into law Thursday afternoon.
The session was interrupted by chaotic scenes with lawmakers shouting over protesters’ voices and at one point forcing police clear the balcony above the House floor before it voted on the new map.
The new map breaks up the state’s current 9th Congressional District, which is primarily made up of Memphis, and the state’s only majority-Black district. The district is currently represented by Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen.
The legislature also passed bills on Thursday that will allow the state to legally redistrict outside of the normal once-a-decade cycle, as well as providing funding to help implement the new map in time for the 2026 elections.
Impact on the midterms and representation in Congress
With the map passed, it paves the way for President Donald Trump and Republicans to gain an additional House seat in the next Congress, increasing their chances of maintaining control of the House as they continue their redistricting battle across the country.
Tennessee Democrats will likely not have any representation in Congress next year if Republicans flip the seat and the map will dilute the Black vote by breaking up Memphis.
But legal challenges against the map are expected.
Cohen said Thursday he will file a lawsuit against the new map.
Cohen posted on X after the vote “[President Donald] Trump knows he HAS TO rig the game to keep his majority in November. And the TN GOP was willing to go along with it. It’s shameful. Next stop is the courts.”
Cohen had said earlier this week on CNN that the Republicans’ redistricting effort was a foregone conclusion, adding that he hopes the new congressional map can take effect in 2028 rather than 2026.
The speed at which the process occurred was remarkable — it was only last week that the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s congressional map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, dealing a blow to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
And just one day after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, Trump posted on Truth Social that he spoke with Lee and that the governor said he would work to redraw the state’s congressional maps in order to net another GOP seat for Tennessee in the House. Lee called a special session the next day, April 30, to review the state’s congressional map.
Potential redistricting efforts are also currently underway in Louisiana, Alabama and South Carolina, although each state has different procedural or legal barriers to overcome.
With Tennessee’s new map, Republicans potentially could flip 14 Democratic-held seats in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida. Democrats could pick up 10 from new maps passed in California, Utah and Virginia.
Acrimonious debate and protests in the state capitol
The proposed congressional map underwent much acrimonious debate and protest inside the legislature on Thursday before it was passed.
On the House floor, Democratic representatives condemned the map, saying it would dilute the Black vote in the state. At one point, chants of “our house!” started in the House gallery.
As the vote came up for the new map on the House side, chaos erupted in the room. A trooper was asked to clear out the balcony above the House floor as people protested.
Earlier, Democratic State Rep. Justin Pearson, who is running for Congress in the 9th District that will be broken up on the new map, said that “what is happening here is immoral and wrong.”
“This is about attacking, targeting and cracking District 9 into pieces for more political and racial dominance and white supremacy in the state of Tennessee. And we need to realize that the Callais decision that you all are basing your decisions off of that gutted the Voting Rights Act, that that Voting Rights Act was paid in blood,” Pearson said.
Pearson later confronted law enforcement officers, ABC affiliate WKRN reported, as they worked on clearing the House gallery of protestors. Pearson later said his brother KeShaun Pearson was arrested.
After the House passed the bill and it was taken up in the Senate, Republican state Sen. John Stevens spoke in support of the new map over audible protests and yelling.
“Tennessee is a conservative state, and I submit its congressional delegation should reflect that. The proposed map ensures that,” Stevens said.
He later said, “This bill represents Tennessee’s attempt to maximize our partisan advantage and allow Tennesseans to support a national Congress to be a Republican majority.”
But Democratic state Sen. London Lamar, who is Black, slammed the new map during debate as an attack on Black voters and said it “diminishes Memphis.”
“This map does not reflect Memphis. It diminishes Memphis. It slices our city into pieces and stretches our communities hundreds of miles away to places of different needs, different economies, different histories and different lived realities,” she said. “You cannot take a majority-Black city, fracture its voting power and then tell us race has nothing to do with it. Racism does not become less racist because it’s called partisan.”
Later, chants of “Hands off Memphis!” rang out and another lawmaker soon unfurled a banner that read “NO JIM CROW 2.0 – STOP THE TN STEAL.”
The Senate passed the map soon after.
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With six months until the high-stakes midterm elections, the Democratic Party is struggling to raise money and keep up with its GOP counterparts, leading to frustrations among some donors with Democratic National Committee leadership and its chair Ken Martin.
At the end of March, the Republican National Committee outraised the DNC $21.2 million to $11.4 million, according to new reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. The RNC reported having nearly eight times more cash on hand — $116 million to the DNC’s $13.8 million. In addition, the DNC is a little over $18 million in debt, according to FEC filings.
Democrats, though, are performing better than they did in 2018 at this point in the cycle when the party had raised $7 million and had little more than $9 million cash on hand. The party had just under $6 million in debt at that time, too.
Multiple Democratic bundlers, strategists and donors told ABC News that they are still angry over how funds were allocated during the 2024 presidential election — and frustrated at Martin’s unwillingness to publicly release a DNC audit that examined what went wrong for Democrats in 2024.
After Martin won his campaign to be DNC chair in 2025 following the presidential election, he committed to conducting a review of the 2024 election and making it public. However, Martin has yet to release the full audit, saying instead he’s focused on looking forward and has released “lessons” from the audit.
Democratic officials and leaders — including Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz, who is poised to become the No. 2 Senate Democrat after the midterms — have urged for the report to be released as they look toward the midterms.
“What’s in the report that you wouldn’t want publicized?” “Pod Save America” host and former Obama administration speechwriter Jon Favreau asked Martin during an episode released April 28.
Martin replied that there was no “smoking gun” and that he wants to “keep the focus on the lessons.”
A longtime DNC finance member, who spoke to ABC News on the condition of anonymity, noted many donors are still questioning how funds were allocated during the 2024 race and the unreleased results of the DNC’s promised audit.
The member said donors were upset that, despite the DNC’s massive fundraising during the 2024 election, Kamala Harris didn’t win a single battleground state. It raised concerns about allocations toward paid media, voter outreach and, most troubling for many donors, the amount of money that went to consultants.
But following the 2024 election and Martin taking over the reins at the DNC, there has been a shift toward investing in state parties long before elections, as well as podcasts, influencers and more modern forms of public relations and communications
Cooper Teboe, a Democratic strategist in California, told ABC News that donors are “feeling incredibly jaded, incredibly unhappy” with the DNC over the 2024 election — with some questioning whether their financial contributions make a difference.
“We’re coming off of record fundraising for Democrats that seem to really not move the needle,” Teboe said. “So, folks have been in a position of, well, does my money actually do anything? Does my money do anything to change the needle?”
DNC spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg said the party is investing in ways that will help Democrats win.
“Democrats are putting our resources into the field, building infrastructure to power wins today and for years to come, and delivering overperformances all across the country, meanwhile Republicans are losing elections at a humiliating rate in spite of their billionaire donors,” Ehrenberg said in a statement to ABC News.
As frustrations with Martin over how he’s handling his job grow, a few members have started exploring options and rules for removing a chair, a source familiar with the situation told ABC News — although the source framed the efforts as very informal and focused on asking about the process.
“I don’t see Ken as a leader. The DNC reached out to me probably six months ago, and I told them to take me off their list, that it’s a waste of their time to send me anything, and the more they send, the less chances they ever have of getting me back,” said one longtime Democratic donor, who is now focused on individual candidates as opposed to the national committee.
Asked about his job to raise money for the party on “Pod Save America,” Martin said “the job of the DNC chair is singular: It’s to win,” adding that he has been helping the party succeed in that effort.
Michael Knapp, a DNC member, said he supports Martin’s work as chair, telling ABC News that Martin “came in with a clear mandate to shift the DNC towards long-term party building.”
“[Ken’s] investing in state parties, organizing, partisan voter registration, infrastructure … the things that actually win elections over time,” Knapp said to ABC News in a text message.
“On the fundamentals of the job, I think he’s very strong. The DNC’s raising significant grassroots money even while paying down inherited debt,” Knapp also said.
Daniel Weiner, director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s elections and government program, told ABC News that historically, the party out of power has had an “uphill battle with fundraising that’s not unique to this moment.”
“Frankly, over the years, the president has become much more habituated to raising the sort of big money that you would expect an incumbent to raise, and that Democratic incumbents have also raised, to some degree,” Weiner said. “And so we see the more traditional pattern emerging of the party in power just raises a lot more money than the party out of power.”
A longtime DNC finance member said frustrations with the DNC have led donors to focus on “individual elections as opposed to the DNC as an organization.”
While the national party is struggling to raise money, individual Democratic candidates are seeing a massive cash infusion ahead of November’s midterm elections, as donors show greater interest in investing in individual candidates.
Many of the Democratic Party’s top Senate candidates posted gainful fundraising hauls for the first quarter of 2026, massively outraising their Republican opponents, according to FEC filings.
“I think folks are very desperate for new leaders and new voices in the party, and I think that’s why you’re seeing the party infrastructure raising less, because the donors, both the donor class and the grassroots, want to see what is out there to define the future of the Democratic message and that’s just not going to come from the DNC,” Teboe said.
One senior Democratic official in touch with donors and party leaders told ABC News that while many big donors are frustrated by the results of the last election, an increasing number are expected to get off the sidelines and contribute more to various Democratic candidates and organizations through the summer and fall.
“Donors can be complicated,” she told ABC News.
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(WASHINGTON) — Amid intensifying scrutiny of the Senate Republican proposal to spend up to $1 billion on security for the new White House ballroom, top Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Secret Service officials say the money would also be spent on “other critical missions.”
Those missions, they said, would include securing “frequently visited venues” outside of the White House.
In a letter to congressional leaders obtained by ABC News, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Secret Service Director Sean Curran described the proposed billion-dollar package as “critical funding to address urgent needs in response to the unprecedented increase in threats against the President and other public officials.”
Mullin and Curran said that the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner last month as well as a shooting near the National Mall earlier this week show a need for a secure White House ballroom.
The letter said the security upgrades to the “East Wing Modernization Project” will “afford needed protection for the President, his family, and visitors, along with the below-ground security functions.”
The officials noted that, per the text of the Senate reconciliation bill, “none of these funds will be used to support non-security improvements at the White House.”
The Senate proposal, released earlier this week, would provide $1 billion for the Secret Service “for the purposes of security adjustments and upgrades, including within the perimeter fence of the White House Compound to support enhancements by the United States Secret Service relating to the East Wing Modernization Project.”
Without spelling out how much of the billion dollars would be spent on the ballroom construction project specifically, the officials said the funding would also be directed toward other locations, including “frequently visited venues facing heightened risk due to their public visibility and static nature.”
The text of the Senate’s bill makes no reference to “frequently visited venues” outside of the White House that Mullin and Curran mentioned in their letter.
Also, Mullin and Curran said the additional money would also go toward training USSS agents, USSS training facilities, the Secret Service’s Special Operations Division’s work on drones and biological and “other emerging threats,” as well as securing “high profile national events that require significant planning.”
Overall, the $1 billion package is described in the letter as a “critical infusion to ensure the safety of the current President and future Presidents.”
By comparison, to fund all of its operations, USSS receives more than $3 billion a year from Congress via the regular appropriations process.
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(WASHINGTON) — Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick testified behind closed doors on Wednesday about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, making him the first Trump cabinet official to face questions as part of the House Oversight Committee investigation into the late financier.
Lutnick agreed to the voluntary transcribed interview after months of criticism over his relationship with Epstein — who was once Lutnick’s neighbor — and past statements distancing himself from the notorious sex offender.
During an interview last year with The New York Post, Lutnick described Epstein as “gross” and claimed that he said in 2005 he would “never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again” after touring Epstein’s New York City mansion.
However, documents released by the Department of Justice showed that Lutnick planned a visit to Epstein’s private island in 2012 — years after Epstein pleaded guilty to two prostitution-related charges in 2008.
“We are looking forward to visiting you,” Lutnick’s wife emailed Epstein’s assistant. “We would love to join you for lunch.”
When asked about the documents in February, Lutnick acknowledged he visited the island and said that he did not see anything inappropriate during his visit.
“I did have lunch with him, as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation. My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies,” Lutnick testified on Capitol Hill in February.
While the DOJ’s Epstein files included a photo from that trip, the Department of Justice acknowledged they temporarily removed the photo before restoring it following backlash. A DOJ official claimed that the photo was temporarily removed with a “batch of files that were flagged for nudity,” though the photo did not contain any nudity and did not include any redactions when it was restored.
Lutnick also appeared to enter a business deal with Epstein in 2012, according to documents released by the Department of Justice. Both men signed business documents in 2012 to acquire an advertising company called Adfin.
Other documents released by the DOJ showed Epstein agreed to donate $50,000 in 2017 related to a dinner hosted in Lutnick’s honor.
During his New York Post interview last year, Lutnick said he believed that Epstein may have used blackmail to get the “sweetheart deal” he received during his first criminal case in 2008.
“I assume, way back when, they traded those videos in exchange for him getting that 18-month sentence, which allowed him to have visits and be out of jail. I mean, he’s a serial sex offender. How could he get 18 months and be able to go to his office during the day and have visitors and stuff? There must have been a trade,” Lutnick said.
But those allegations contrast with statements from multiple Trump administration officials who have insisted that Epstein neither trafficked young women for people beyond himself nor held compromising information about high-profile individuals,
“There is no credible information. None. If there were, I would bring the case yesterday that he trafficked to other individuals,” FBI Director Kash Patel said last year.
When asked about Lutnick’s relationship with Epstein in February, President Trump described Lutnick as a “very innocent guy” and suggested he would be willing to testify.
“Well, Howard would go in and do whatever he has to say,” Trump said. “He’s a very innocent guy, doing a good job.”
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