Jeffrey Epstein had no 'client list,' died by suicide, DOJ and FBI conclude

Jeffrey Epstein had no 'client list,' died by suicide, DOJ and FBI conclude

WASHINGTON ― The Justice Department and FBI say they have found no evidence thatJeffrey Epsteinkept a "client list," contradicting Attorney GeneralPam Bondi'spast suggestionthat such a list from the convicted sex offender and financier existed. A review of Epstein materials in the U.S. government's procession also found no evidence Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions or that he was murdered while in custody,according to a memo detailingthe Justice Department's and FBI's findings. The memo,first reported July 6 by Axiosand laterABC News, comes after PresidentDonald Trump's supporters have pushed for the administration to release details about Epstein's associates after Trump during the 2024 presidential campaignendorsed doing so. More:Jeffrey Epstein document release highlights his sprawling connections across states Bondi, when asked about releasing an Epstein "client list"during a February Fox News interview, said: "It's sitting on my desk right now to review." Justice Department officials did not respond to USA TODAY for a request to comment. Despite many conspiracies about Epstein's death in a New York federal prison, the FBI concludedhe died by suicide on Aug. 10, 2019as initially determined by New York City's medical examiner and past investigations, according to the memo. That conclusion is also supported by video evidence of the prison unit where Epstein was housed. The memo says the video ‒ which it plans to release publicly online ‒ confirms that nobody entered any of the tiers in Epstein's housing unit from the time his cell was locked at 10:40 p.m. EDT on Aug. 9, 2019 until around 6:30 a.m. the next morning. "One of our highest priorities is combatting child exploitation and bringing justice to victims," the memo says. "Perpetuating unfounded theories about Epstein serves neither of those ends. To that end, while we have labored to provide the public with maximum information regarding Epstein and ensured examination of any evidence in the government's possession, it is the determination of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted." More:Jeffrey Epstein was a convicted sex offender by 2008. Why did the powerful stick with him? The memo says the FBI reviewed more than 300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence during digital searches of databases, hard drives and network drives. It also conducted physical searches of locked cabinets, desks, closets and other areas where materials from the Epstein investigation had been stored. The Epstein files include large volumes of images of Epstein and victims who were minors or appeared to be minors, according to the memo, as well as more than 10,000 videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography. "Through this review, we found no basis to revisit the disclosure of those materials and will not permit the release of child pornography," the memo says. More:The death of Jeffrey Epstein: Fact, fiction, confusion and a warden reassigned The review confirmed prior findings that Epstein harmed more than 1,000 victims. Materials reviewed by the FBI included personal details about the victims, including their names, physical descriptions, places of birth, associates and employment history. As his relationship publicly imploded with Trump last month,Elon Muskalleged in a social media post that Trump's nameis mentioned in the Epstein files and claimed that's the reason the undisclosed classified documents had not been released. Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and a former White House adviser,later deleted the post. Muskin a series of July 7 posts on X,the social media platform he owns, criticized the Trump administration's claims in its new report. He posted an image that reads, "The Official Jeffrey Epstein Pedophile Arrest Counter," which is set to "0000." "This is the final straw,"Musk later postedregarding the Trump administration's previews promises to release the "Epstein list." More:Elon Musk escalates feud with Trump: 'Time to drop the really big bomb' Bondi has faced pressure from Trump's MAGA base to deliver big findings in the Epstein files. But after hyping up the release of declassified government files on Epstein, Bondi on Feb. 27 disclosed about 200 pages of documents that implicated no one else in Epstein's orbit other than Epstein, who died in a federal prison in 2019. The Trump-appointed attorney general in Aprilcited a review of "tens of thousands of videos"as the reason for a delay in releasing additional Epstein documents. Reach Joey Garrison on X @joeygarrison. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Jeffrey Epstein had no 'client list,' died by suicide: DOJ and FBI

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July 07, 2025

Jeffrey Epstein had no 'client list,' died by suicide, DOJ and FBI conclude

Jeffrey Epstein had no 'client list,' died by suicide, DOJ and FBI conclude WASHINGTON ― The Justice Department and FBI say they hav...

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Annoying People to Death

Annoying People to Death

The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture.Sign up for it here. According to the White House, the One Big Beautiful Bill, the president's signature second-term domestic legislation, does not cut Medicaid. According to any number of budget analysts, including Congress's own, it guts the health program, bleeding it of $1 trillion in financing and eliminating coverage for 10 million people. The White House has found a simple way to square this technocratic circle: lie. A trillion dollars in cuts is not a cut; stripping 10 million people of health insurance does not constitute shrinking the program; the president never said "lock her up"; Joe Biden did not win the 2020 election; up is down and down is up. Other Republicans are adopting a more complicated form of explanatory geometry. The law implements a nationwide work requirement for Medicaid. Able-bodied adults will have to prove that they are employed, volunteering, or in school in exchange for coverage. "If you are able to work and you refuse to do so, you are defrauding the system," Speaker Mike Johnsonexplained on CBS. "You're cheating the system, and no one in the country believes that that's right. So there's a moral component to what we're doing." The law does notcutMedicaid, in this telling. Itprotectsthe program from abuse. Johnson's explanation is no less galling than Donald Trump's lies. The Medicaid work requirement will not strengthen the program, improve the labor market, or kick lazy cheaters off government benefits. Rather, it will saddle taxpayers with billions of dollars of new costs and low-income Americans with hundreds of millions of hours of busywork. Red tape will cause millions of people to lose health coverage, some of whom will perish because they cannot access care. Republicans are not protecting Medicaid. They are voting to annoy their own constituents to death. Why does Medicaid need a work requirement in the first place? To prevent the safety net from becoming a hammock, Republicans love to say. But most people on Medicaid are already working if they can work. And Medicaid doesn't provide its enrollees with cash or a cash-like payment, as the country's unemployment-insurance, welfare, Social Security, and SNAP programs do. You can't eat an insurance card. You can't pay your rent with the guarantee of low co-pays for ambulatory care. Because insurance does not help recipients make ends meet, it does notshrink the labor market, as proved by a randomized controlled trial. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 64 percent of nondisabled adults on Medicaid have a job. Most of the others are not working because they have medical problems or significant caretaking responsibilities, or because they are attending school. Just 8 percent of nondisabled adults seem to bein the categoryof folks Johnson hopes will be spurred to work by the threat of losing their health coverage. They aren't 28-year-old guys signing up for public insurance so they can play video games all day. They are retirees and people who can't find work in their community. Thus, the work requirement should really be understood as a work-reportingrequirement. Starting in 2027, nondisabled adults will have to log in and tell Uncle Sam what they do with their time in order to afford cancer screenings and bloodwork. Each state with an expanded Medicaid program will have to pay a contractor to create, test, and launch a complex intake-and-verification system in 18 months—six, really, because the Department of Health and Human Services is not expected to release detailed rules on the new requirement until midway through next year. In 2019, the Government Accountability Office found that states had spent as much as $463 per beneficiarysetting upsuch systems in the past. Georgia, the only state that currently has a Medicaid work requirement, spends $9 onoverheadfor every $1 it spends on medical care through the initiative. More than 20 million Americans will have to set up accounts to let the state know that they are in compliance with the work requirement, out of compliance, or not subject to it. This likely means collecting documents, uploading them, waiting for verifications, submitting sensitive personal data, and appealing incorrect determinations, all on what, history shows, will surely be a clunky, faulty system backed by a too-small cadre of overworked and underpaid civil servants. A broken laptop or a faulty internet connection might cause an individual to get rejected; a missed phone call from a caseworker might lead to a person missing out on care. Washington is shifting the burden of public administration onto individuals, and counting onpeople to fail. In general, work requirements are far better at weeding out worthy participants than they are at motivating noncompliant ones. Roughly 240,000 Georgians are eligible for the state'swork-for-Medicaid initiative, which covers very poor nondisabled adults. Only 5,500 are actually enrolled, thanks to thecomplexityof the program's rules and theimpossibilityof its portal. Arkansas kicked nearly 20,000 peopleoff Medicaidwhen it required applicants to prove that they were working in 2018 and 2019; the change had no effect on employment. One analysis of the One Big Beautiful Bill suggests that each "appropriate" disenrollment from Medicaid will cost taxpayers $5,000 in bureaucratic overhead—not far off from how much Medicaid spends per person to begin with. Trump's law doesn't protect Medicaid. It requires Americans to spend hundreds of millions of hours a year filling out tedious, unnecessary paperwork. It will cause millions of Americans to lose their health coverage, limiting their access to care and forcing them into debt. An estimated50,000 peoplewill die each year—many thanks to red tape. Article originally published atThe Atlantic

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July 07, 2025

Annoying People to Death

Annoying People to Death The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ide...

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Some federal lawyers want to leave. They can't find jobs because Trump's policies are closing typical exit paths.

Some federal lawyers want to leave. They can't find jobs because Trump's policies are closing typical exit paths.

Lawyers have left the federal government as Donald Trump has targeted the nation's workforce. Some typical off-ramps have closed as Trump takes a light touch with corporate crime. Nine current and former government lawyers and recruiters told BI about the harsh legal job market. Whenever a new president takes office, the revolving door between the federal government and the private sector starts to spin a little faster. Agency heads, their deputies, and their deputies' deputies typically exit to make room for the new president's picks, and take up jobs in C-suites and think tanks. At elite law firms, the practice became so routine that it was the subject of a running joke. "Out with WilmerHale, in with Jones Day," law professor Orin Kerrtweetedwhen Donald Trump won in 2016, a nod to each firm's ideological reputation. In 2020, when Joe Biden won, he flipped the names. In 2024, Trump and his allies made clear that they were going to do things differently. It wasn't just Biden's appointees who needed to go; it was thousands of federal workers who the administration saw as roadblocks to its agenda. The goal, Trump aide Russell Vought said, was to"put them in trauma"and make them want to quit. The administration has also prioritized immigration, while de-emphasizing financial regulation and corporate crime prosecution — closing some of the usual off-ramps. Now, the revolving door is jammed. Recruiters and lawyers in and outside government told Business Insider that it's increasingly hard to move from public to private sector work: there's a large supply of job seekers, and comparatively low demand for their expertise and experience. One federal lawyer who recently resigned said it took him months to find a new job despite working in a prestigious role, forcing him to stay at his job longer than he wanted. "I had a responsibility to my family to bring home a paycheck," he told Business Insider. Typically, the roughly 40,000 lawyers who work for the US government can parlay their experience drafting, interpreting, and enforcing a dense thicket of laws and regulations into well-paid jobs for law firms and large businesses. Over the last few months, law firms across Washington and in New York have been inundated with résumés, and they're being choosy, especially when hiring white-collar criminal defense lawyers — many of whom are former federal prosecutors. "White-collar demand is down across the board," whether it comes to recruiting from the government or poaching a partner with an established clientele from another law firm, said Karen Vladeck, the founder of Risepoint Search Partners, a legal recruiting firm. "For your standard white-collar partner right now, they want to see twice as much business as they want to see from another practice." In other words, law firms are skeptical that hotshot criminal defense lawyers can reel in the kind of revenue that they used to. Another headhunter told BI that only "very senior" lawyers coming out of US Attorney's Offices were getting interviews — and even those candidates were taking haircuts on compensation. The same job seeker who might have been able to get an offer for $1 million or $1.2 million in the past as a defense-and-investigations specialist might get $750,000 today, the headhunter said. Another issue, said Jack Zaremski, who runs Hanover Search Partners, is that Big Law firms already have a deep bench of white-collar litigators — and a partner at a large law firm said there isn't much work to go around for colleagues who focus on that kind of work. White-collar criminal enforcement has been declining since the Obama administration, according to Syracuse University'sTransactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which compiles federal law-enforcement data. The number of white-collar criminal cases filed yearly fell from a high of more than 10,000 in the mid-1990s to about 4,300 today. Though prosecutions were down, there was still work for Big Law's ex-prosecutors keeping their clients out of court. After the 2009 financial crash, banks needed outside help dealing with crisis-related investigations, the large law firm partner said. The2012 Libor scandaland similar rate-rigging allegations led to even more work. That has pretty much dried up, the partner said, and banks' in-house lawyers can do some of the work that they used to have to outsource. Trump, who was convicted of falsifying business records, has shown skepticism for white-collar criminal enforcement. His Justice Department hasslashed its corruption unitandmade movesto close its tax division and fold its responsibilities into other parts of the agency. One of his early executive orders paused cases under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bans paying bribes to foreign officials to get business. (Several have since resumed.) He has alsopardonedpeople and companies that collectively owed $1.3 billion for offenses like securities fraud and tax evasion, erasing their debts to the government and their victims. Matthew Burke, a former federal prosecutor on the team led by Jack Smith that charged Donald Trump with keeping classified documents after his presidency and trying to subvert the 2020 election, said that while his experience deterred some potential employers, it attracted others. Scale LLP, a firm of about 80 lawyers that focuses on the tech sector, said in May that Burke would lead its investigations practice. "There undoubtedly were doors that were closed to me because of what I've done, but there will also be doors that will be opened," he said. It's been "informative to know what doors have been closed and which have been opened," he added. It's not just criminal cases where the administration's approach is being felt. Some financial regulatory lawyers are also stuck in a tightening job market, as the administrationattempts to pare down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. A former bureau lawyer said that among some people who have managed to stay employed, the common attitude is "They're gonna have to drag me out of here." The Trump administration's efforts to reduce headcount at the Bureau have been put on hold by the courts. The CFPB employees' union said in an email that some of its members have taken other jobs, but "many more remain ready to get back to the work we were hired to do." Some CFPB managers have been able to parlay their experience into jobs at financial technology firms, law firms, and banks or credit unions, the former bureau lawyer said. And some people leaving the Justice Department are still in high demand. Deep familiarity with international trade restrictions and export-control laws makes some lawyers valuable to tech companies worried about running afoul of US sanctions and trade restrictions. Antitrust experience is also a plus, Vladeck and others said. Charles Cain, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission's FCPA Unit, went to work at EY, according to a LinkedIn post. He was one of at least five lawyers who announced their departures from the unit at a meeting in late March, according to Mark Yost, a former member of the unit who was present. Some former feds are having a much tougher time on the job market. Waves of civil rights lawyers have been fired or left theJustice Departmentand other agencies, like the Department of Education. "There are only so many civil rights-related jobs out there, and a lot of people are competing for them," said Stacey Young, a former Justice Department attorney who leads the networking group Justice Connection. Despite competition for open roles, relatively few lawyers, regardless of where they work, are quitting or being terminated without something lined up. While the D.C. area unemployment rate has ticked upward, the national rate for legal occupations — a group of about 1.8 million people of whom 1.1 million are lawyers — was 2.1% in May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, below the 4% average across the US workforce. For lawyers, a smaller group of workers for which estimates are less reliable, the first-quarter unemployment rate was about 1%. Still, a glut of supply on the job market means lawyers will need to broaden their search. Vladeck tells job seekers to think of landing their next job outside government as a Trivial Pursuit pie, with each slice representing a more niche avenue for employment: boutique firms, in-house counsel roles, nonprofits, or legal-adjacent roles. "In order to get a job in this market, you have to pay attention to each of those slices," Vladeck said. "You can't rely on the DOJ to Big Law path." Have a tip? Know more? Reach Jack Newsham via email (jnewsham@businessinsider.com) or via Signal (+1-314-971-1627). Do not use a work device. Read the original article onBusiness Insider

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July 07, 2025

Some federal lawyers want to leave. They can't find jobs because Trump's policies are closing typical exit paths.

Some federal lawyers want to leave. They can't find jobs because Trump's policies are closing typical exit paths. Lawyers have left ...

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BRICS nations resist 'anti-American' label after Trump tariff threat

BRICS nations resist 'anti-American' label after Trump tariff threat

By Manuela Andreoni and Lisandra Paraguassu RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) -Developing nations participating in the BRICS summit on Monday brushed away an accusation from U.S. President Donald Trump that the bloc is "anti-American," as he threatened them with additional 10% tariffs. Trump's threat on Sunday night came as the U.S. government prepared to finalize dozens of trade deals with a range of countries before his July 9 deadline for the imposition of significant "retaliatory tariffs." "Tariffs should not be used as a tool for coercion and pressuring," Mao Ning, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said in Beijing. The BRICS advocates for "win-win cooperation," she added, and "does not target any country." South Africa, which was slapped with 30% tariffs that were later suspended pending trade talks, reaffirmed that it is "not anti-American," trade ministry spokesman Kaamil Alli said, adding that talks with the U.S. government "remain constructive and fruitful." A Kremlin spokesman said Russia's cooperation with the BRICS was based on a "common world view" and "will never be directed against third countries." India and Brazil, which is hosting the BRICS gathering, did not immediately provide an official response to Trump. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told reporters that he would only comment after wrapping up the summit. His opening remarks to BRICS leaders gathered in Rio de Janeiro on Monday focused on the environmental and public health issues on the summit's official agenda. A Brazilian diplomat who was not authorized to comment officially said Trump's threat underscored the importance of the BRICS group to give developing nations a way to argue for fair and effective global ground rules on topics such as trade. Many BRICS members and many of the group's partner nations are highly dependent on trade with the United States. New member Indonesia's senior economic minister, Airlangga Hartarto, who is in Brazil for the BRICS summit, is scheduled to go to the U.S. on Monday to oversee tariff talks, an official told Reuters. Malaysia, which was attending as a partner country and was slapped with 24% tariffs that were later suspended, said that it maintains independent economic policies and is not focused on ideological alignment. MULTILATERAL DIPLOMACY With forums such as the G7 and G20 groups of major economies hamstrung by divisions and Trump's disruptive "America First" approach, the BRICS group has presented itself as a haven for multilateral diplomacy amid violent conflicts and trade wars. In a joint statement released on Sunday afternoon, leaders at the summit condemned the recent bombing of member nation Iran and warned that the rise in tariffs threatened global trade, continuing its veiled criticism of Trump's tariff policies. Hours later, Trump warned he would punish countries seeking to join the group. The original BRICS group gathered leaders from Brazil, Russia, India and China at its first summit in 2009. The bloc later added South Africa and last year included Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates as members. Saudi Arabia has held off formally accepting an invitation to full membership, but is participating as a partner country. More than 30 nations have expressed interest in participating in the BRICS, either as full members or partners. (Reporting by Manuela Andreoni and Lisandra ParaguassuEditing by Brad Haynes and Hugh Lawson)

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July 07, 2025

BRICS nations resist 'anti-American' label after Trump tariff threat

BRICS nations resist 'anti-American' label after Trump tariff threat By Manuela Andreoni and Lisandra Paraguassu RIO DE JANEIRO (Reu...

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Beshear: Democrats will ‘have strong candidates’ in rural states

Beshear: Democrats will 'have strong candidates' in rural states

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) said Sunday that Democrats "will have strong candidates" in governor's races in rural states led by Republicans. "Your name frequently comes up as a contender for the 2028 Democratic primary for president. You said, 'I'll think about it after next year.' What will make you decide that that's going to be a yes, you'll run for president?" CNN's Dana Bash asked Beshear on "State of the Union." "So, my primary obligation and what I'm putting all my energy towards is to be the best governor of Kentucky that I can be," the Bluegrass State governor responded. "Next year, I'll also be the head of the Democratic Governors Association. And I think, especially in these rural states where Republican governors have not spoken up whatsoever to stop this devastating bill, we're going to have strong candidates," he added, talking about President Trump's "big, beautiful bill." "We're going to win a lot of elections. And, hopefully, that paragraph about who's speculated in '28 gets bigger because we've brought in more leaders," he continued. Beshear is notable among Democratic governors for holding his state's top job in deep-red Kentucky. He was also considered a possible running mate for Vice President Harris after former President Bidendropped out of the2024 presidential race. The Kentucky governor also slammed the Trump megabill in a post on the social platform X on Thursday, the day it passed the House. "The passage of the 'big, ugly bill' marks a sad day for our country and commonwealth. This bill risks 200,000 Kentuckians' lives, the jobs of 20,000 health-care workers, 35 rural hospitals and our economy," Beshearsaid in his post. "Kentucky deserves better. I'm going to keep fighting for our people." Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.

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July 07, 2025

Beshear: Democrats will ‘have strong candidates’ in rural states

Beshear: Democrats will 'have strong candidates' in rural states Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) said Sunday that Democrats "wil...

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