Closing summary<\/p>\n
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration<\/a>, but just for the day. Here are the latest developments:<\/p>\n Donald Trump turned on his former close ally, Marjorie Taylor Greene, denouncing the Maga congresswoman in a social media blast<\/a> posted as his motorcade brought the president to his Palm Beach club on Friday night.<\/p>\n Trump refused to rule out a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell, his former associate who was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in 2022, for her role in a scheme to sexually exploit and abuse multiple minor girls with Jeffrey Epstein over the course of a decade.<\/p>\n Trump directed the justice department to investigate Epstein\u2019s relationship with several prominent Democrats, including former president Bill Clinton, former treasury secretary Larry Summers, and donor and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman.<\/p>\n After Trump said that the focus of the investigation should be on another Epstein associate, Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn cofounder and Democratic donor, Hoffman wrote: \u201cTrump should release all of the Epstein files: every person and every document in the files.\u201d<\/p>\n Under pressure to explain why he refuses to release all of the files from the federal investigation into Epstein, Trump suggested that anything that reflects badly on him in those files might have \u201cbeen put in since the election\u201d that he won last year.<\/p>\n Documents provided to Congress this week by the estate of Epstein include transcripts of text messages that appear to show the late sex offender was in direct contact with a member of the House during a 2019 congressional hearing with Michael Cohen, Donald Trump\u2019s former fixer, the Washington Post reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s attorney general, Pam Bondi, announced <\/a>that she has assigned Jay Clayton, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, to lead the new Epstein investigation at the behest of the president.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a022.07 EST<\/p>\n Key events<\/p>\n Show key events only<\/p>\n Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature<\/p>\n Republican party boasts that Thanksgiving could be 3% cheaper this year, contradicting Trump’s claim of a 25% drop<\/p>\n In a social media post<\/a> on Friday, the Republican party thanked Donald Trump for the news that, the overall cost of a Thanksgiving dinner this year could be about 2% to 3% cheaper than last year for shoppers willing to turn to budget brands.<\/p>\n That finding, from an ABC News report<\/a> that cited research from the Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute which indicates that, despite a 2.7% increase of \u201cfood-at-home\u201d prices in 2025 as measured by the Consumer Price Index, the cost of some traditional components of a Thanksgiving meal had actually dropped.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the heart of the uptick in the CPI\u2019s food-at-home increase is protein, specifically beef and eggs, which are not on the Thanksgiving menu,\u201d Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute reported. Pumpkin pie prices from national brands are down about 3% this year, the institute noted.<\/p>\n But the key savings for the overall menu were available to those willing to use store-brand items instead of national brand names.<\/p>\n While the Republican party post attributed this potential price drop to what it called an improvement in the overall economy brought about by Trump, the figures cited are far lower than the reduction in prices Trump has claimed all week.<\/p>\n Trump, and official White House accounts<\/a> on social media have claimed repeatedly that the fact that Walmart is offering a Thanksgiving basket for 2025 that is 25% cheaper than its basket was in 2024 is evidence that costs have dropped dramatically.<\/p>\n \u201cThanksgiving dinner is 25% cheaper than under Biden,\u201d the White House claimed in an X post last Friday, days after a reporter had publicly explained to Trump that the new Walmart basket is cheaper mainly because it is far smaller<\/a>, including fewer items and more generic brands.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a022.06 EST<\/p>\n Reid Hoffman calls for ‘release all of the Epstein files’ after Trump says he should be focus of investigation<\/p>\n In his exchange with reporters on Air Force One on Friday night, when Donald Trump was asked about Marjorie Taylor Greene\u2019s call<\/a> for the full release of the investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender Trump socialized with for more than a decade, he suggested that the focus of the investigation should be on someone else who associated with Epstein: Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn cofounder and Democratic donor.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t care about it, released or not,\u201d Trump claimed. \u201cWhat I think you should do, if you\u2019re going to do it, then you have to go into Epstein\u2019s friends. This Reid Hoffman, who spent a lot of time on the island. I was never at his island,\u201d the president said.<\/p>\n Hoffman, who told the Wall Street Journal<\/a> in 2023 that he only visited Epstein\u2019s private island once, did so to aid in fundraising for MIT and regretted it, responded to Trump\u2019s claims about him by calling, in a thread on X<\/a>, for all of the Epstein files to be made public.<\/p>\n Hoffman wrote:<\/p>\n Trump should release all of the Epstein files: every person and every document in the files. I want this complete release because it will bring justice for the victims. I want this complete release because it will show that the calls for baseless investigations of me are nothing more than political persecution and slander. I was never a client of Epstein\u2019s and never had any engagement with him other than fundraising for MIT.<\/p>\n The call for an investigation is an obvious ploy to avoid releasing the files. Simply release all the files, and expose the people who had both deep and ongoing relationships with Epstein.<\/p>\n I will do everything in my power going forward to advocate for the release of the files, to get justice for Epstein\u2019s victims, and to promote the values of truth our great country was founded on.<\/p>\n I refuse to bend the knee to Donald Trump and his slanderous lies.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a022.02 EST<\/p>\n Trump breaks with Marjorie Taylor Greene, urging primary challenge<\/p>\n Donald Trump turned on his former close ally, Marjorie Taylor Greene, denouncing the Maga congresswoman in a social media blast<\/a> posted as his motorcade brought the president to his Palm Beach club on Friday night.<\/p>\n \u201cI am withdrawing my support and Endorsement of \u2018Congresswoman\u2019 Marjorie Taylor Greene, of the Great State of Georgia,\u201d Trump wrote.<\/p>\n His post did not mention the subjects of their recent disagreements, Greene\u2019s support for legislation that would require the full release of investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein<\/a> and her criticism of Trump\u2019s focus on foreign affairs over making life more affordable for Americans.<\/p>\n Instead, Trump cast the congresswoman as unhinged for failing to focus on what he called his many successes. He wrote: \u201call I see \u201cWacky\u201d Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t take a ranting Lunatic\u2019s call every day,\u201d the president added. \u201cI understand that wonderful, Conservative people are thinking about primarying Marjorie in her District of Georgia, that they too are fed up with her and her antics and, if the right person runs, they will have my Complete and Unyielding Support.\u201d<\/p>\n The president also hinted that the final straw for him was the fact that she appeared on a daytime talk show whose hosts have often been critical of him. \u201cShe has gone Far Left,\u201d Trump claimed, incorrectly, \u201ceven doing The View, with their Low IQ Republican hating Anchors.\u201d<\/p>\n The post came shortly after Trump was asked by a reporter on Air Force One to comment on Greene\u2019s latest call, during a CBS News interview<\/a> on Friday, for the full release of the Epstein files.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a021.53 EST<\/p>\n Trump suggests that anything incriminating about him in Epstein files was ‘put in’ after 2024 election<\/p>\n Under pressure to explain why he refuses to release all of the files from the federal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender he socialized with from more than a decade, Donald Trump suggested on Friday that anything that reflects badly on him in those files might have \u201cbeen put in since the election\u201d that he won last year.<\/p>\n Near the end of his exchange with reporters on Air Force One, Trump leaned into the talking point his defenders have been using: if the justice department had uncovered anything bad about him in the course of the Epstein investigation, the Biden administration would have released it in 2024 to damage Trump\u2019s standing with voters.<\/p>\n \u201cI will say this: if they had anything, they would\u2019ve used it before the election. OK?\u201d Trump said<\/a>.<\/p>\n He then hinted, as he has in the past, that false information about him might have been inserted into the files by his political enemies. \u201cI can\u2019t tell you what they put in since the election, but if they had anything, you don\u2019t think they would have used it before the election?\u201d Trump asked. He then answered his own question: \u201cThey would\u2019ve gladly used it before the election.\u201d<\/p>\n The most obvious problem with this theory is that the justice department during Joe Biden\u2019s presidency, run by the attorney general, Merrick Garland, often seemed to go out its way to demonstrate that it was independent and not driven by political considerations.<\/p>\n Julie Brown, the Miami Herald journalist whose investigation led to the arrests of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, explained on Thursday night why Garland did not release the criminal case files last year.<\/p>\n \u201cMaxwell\u2019s criminal case was still OPEN during the Biden administration\u201d, Brown explained on X<\/a> to someone who accepted Trump\u2019s premise at face value. \u201cShe wasn\u2019t convicted until late 2021, and then she appealed her conviction. Generally, it\u2019s not a good idea to open your evidence files when a criminal case is ongoing.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe also don\u2019t know whether the FBI was still investigating other possible suspects who helped Epstein or participated in his crimes,\u201d Brown added. \u201cIf you are still targeting suspects, you don\u2019t want them to know you are zeroing in on them.\u201d<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a021.55 EST<\/p>\n Trump is asked why Epstein wrote of him: ‘of course he knew about the girls’<\/p>\n Donald Trump was finally asked to respond directly to a 2019 email from Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender he socialized with for over a decade, in which Epstein told the writer Michael Wolff that \u201cof course\u201d Trump \u201cknew about the girls\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cMr President, what did Jeffrey Epstein mean in an email when he said you knew about the girls?\u201d a female reporter asked Trump as Air Force One flew the president in the direction of Palm Beach, Florida, where he and Epstein spent time together in the years during which Epstein was abusing young girls.<\/p>\n \u201cI know nothing about that,\u201d Trump replied.<\/p>\n He then suggested, as he has previously, that, if there was any evidence of misconduct on his behalf uncovered by investigators, \u201cthey would have announced that a long time ago\u201d.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s claim seems to be that his political rivals would have used anything incriminating about him in the files if it existed. However, previous presidents have respected the independence of the justice department, and not treated material from federal investigations as fodder for political campaigns.<\/p>\n The president then urged reporters to stop asking questions about his relationship to Epstein and focus instead on Democrats.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really what did he mean when he spent all the time with Bill Clinton, with the president of Harvard \u2026 Larry Summers?\u201d Trump said. \u201cJeffrey Epstein and I had a very bad relationship for many years.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut he also saw strength, because I was president, so he dictated memos to himself. Give me a break,\u201d Trump added, badly mischaracterizing Epstein\u2019s emails about him to other people, including those written before he even entered politics.<\/p>\n \u201cSir, if there\u2019s nothing incriminating in the files, sir, why not \u2013 \u201d a reporter tried to ask, before Trump cut her off saying, \u201cQuiet! Quiet!\u201d<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a020.53 EST<\/p>\n Trump refuses to rule out pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell<\/p>\n Donald Trump just took questions from reporters for the first time since Monday, and refused to rule out a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell, his former associate who was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in 2022, for her role in a scheme to sexually exploit and abuse multiple minor girls with Jeffrey Epstein over the course of a decade.<\/p>\n Maxwell is reportedly preparing to ask Trump to commute her sentence, and was recently moved to a low-security prison camp after she told the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, that she had never seen Trump do anything inappropriate during their years of friendship.<\/p>\n Donald Trump with his future wife Melania Knauss, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, Florida, 12 February 12, 2000. Photograph: Davidoff Studios Photography\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Friday night, Trump was asked<\/a>: \u201cHave you ruled out a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI haven\u2019t even thought about it,\u201d Trump replied. \u201cI mean, I haven\u2019t thought about it for months. Maybe I haven\u2019t thought about it at all, you\u2019re just asking me a question.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy can\u2019t you rule it out?\u201d the reporter followed up.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t talk about that. I don\u2019t rule it in or out, I don\u2019t even think about it,\u201d Trump answered.<\/p>\n In 2020, when Maxwell was arrested, Trump was asked whether he expected her to \u201cturn in powerful men\u201d during a White House briefing.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know, I really haven\u2019t been following it too much. I just wish her well,\u201d the president said. \u201cI\u2019ve met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach and I guess they lived in Palm Beach. But I wish her well.\u201d<\/p>\n In one of the emails<\/a> from Epstein released this week, sent to the writer Michael Wolff in 2019, the late sex offender said, of Trump, \u201cof course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop\u201d.<\/p>\n As he struggled to explain his long friendship with Epstein, Trump said earlier this year that he had asked Epstein to stop recruiting young women from the Mar-a-Lago spa, including Virginia Giuffre, who was hired away from Trump\u2019s club by Maxwell. The newly released email from Epstein suggests that it was Maxwell, not Epstein, that Trump asked to stop using his club as a place to recruit girls.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a020.15 EST<\/p>\n The United States carried out a lethal strike on Monday against a vessel in the Caribbean Sea that US officials say was operated by a \u201cdesignated terrorist organization\u201d, according to a post on X<\/a> by the US Southern Command.<\/p>\n According to the post, four men aboard the vessel were killed.<\/p>\n \u201cIntelligence confirmed that the vessel was involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics,\u201d reads the post.<\/p>\n The strike comes a day after defense secretary Pete Hegseth announced a new operation called \u201cSouthern Spear\u201d to target \u201cnarco-terrorists\u201d in the western hemisphere. It\u2019s the latest escalation in the military buildup between the US and Venezuela.<\/p>\n Venezuela\u2019s president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, has announced what he called a \u201cmassive deployment\u201d of land, sea, air, river and missile forces, as well as civilian militia, to counter the US naval presence off his country\u2019s coast.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a019.59 EST<\/p>\n The Trump administration<\/a> appealed today a ruling from a federal judge in Oregon that barred it from deploying the national guard in Portland.<\/p>\n The appeal comes after district court judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, ruled a week ago that there was no evidence of widespread violence to justify federal intervention. She found that protests near Portland\u2019s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility were \u201cpredominately peaceful, with only isolated and sporadic instances of relatively low-level violence\u201d.<\/p>\n The administration criticized the decision and said the troops were needed to protect federal personnel and property in a city that Trump has described as \u201cwar ravaged\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe district court\u2019s ruling made it clear that this administration must be accountable to the truth and to the rule of law,\u201d Oregon attorney general Dan Rayfield said in response to the administration\u2019s appeal in an email to the Associated Press. \u201cWe will keep defending Oregon values and standing up for our state\u2019s authority to make decisions grounded in evidence and common sense.\u201d<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a019.39 EST<\/p>\n Trump refuses to answer reporter questions on Epstein or Venezuela as he leaves the White House<\/p>\n According to the White House pool reporter, Donald Trump<\/a> again refused to answer any questions from the media when he emerged from the Oval Office on Friday evening and left for a weekend in Florida.<\/p>\n Trump did not respond to shouted questions about possible US military strikes on Venezuela, the Jeffrey Epstein<\/a> scandal or other topics.<\/p>\n In an unusual move, the former TV gameshow host has not taken any questions from reporters since emails from Epstein about him were released on Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a019.11 EST<\/p>\n Documents show Jeffrey Epstein texted with House member during 2019 testimony from Michael Cohen \u2013 report<\/p>\n Documents provided to Congress this week by the estate of Jeffrey Epstein include transcripts of text messages that appear to show the late sex offender was in direct contact with a member of the House during a 2019 congressional hearing with Michael Cohen, Donald Trump\u2019s former fixer, the Washington Post reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n Although the identity of the person Epstein was texting with as the February 2019 hearing unfolded is not revealed in the transcripts, an analysis by the Post suggests that it was Stacey Plaskett, a Democrat who represents the US Virgin Islands as its nonvoting delegate in the House of Representatives.<\/p>\n By matching time-stamps on the text messages with video of the hearing, the news outlet identified Plaskett as the lawmaker Epstein was messaging with during the hearing.<\/p>\n At 10.41am on the day of the hearing, for instance, Epstein texted to the person: \u201cAre you chewing\u201d. One minute before, a live television feed of the hearing had cut to Plaskett, as she appeared to be chewing.<\/p>\n \u201cNot any more,\u201d the person replied to Epstein. \u201cChewing interior of my mouth. Bad habit from middle school.\u201d<\/p>\n Later, Epstein appeared to offer advice about questions Cohen could be asked. \u201cHes opened the door to questions re who are the other henchmen at trump org,\u201d Epstein texted at 12.25pm.<\/p>\n \u201cCohen brought up RONA – keeper of the secrets,\u201d misspelling the first name of Trump\u2019s former executive assistant Rhona Graff.<\/p>\n \u201cRONA??\u201d the person responded at 2.25pm. \u201cQuick I\u2019m up next is that an acronym.\u201d<\/p>\n Three minutes later, when Plaskett began her questioning of Cohen, she asked who \u201cMr Weisenberg\u201d and \u201cMiss Rona\u201d was and if there were \u201cother people that we should be meeting with?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo Allen Weisselberg is the chief financial officer in The Trump Organization,\u201d Cohen replied.<\/p>\n Plaskett jumped in to say: \u201cYou\u2019ve got to quickly give us as many names as you can so we can get to them. Is Miss Rona, what is Miss Rona\u2019s position?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cRhona Graff is the \u2014 Mr. Trump\u2019s executive assistant.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked by Plaskett if she would be able to corroborate Cohen\u2019s testimony, he said yes. \u201cHer office is directly next to his, and she\u2019s involved in a lot that went on.\u201d<\/p>\n Plaskett, who was the first nonvoting delegate to the House to serve as an impeachment manager, during Trump\u2019s impeachment trial in the Senate in 2021, declined to comment when reached by the Post. Her chief of staff told the paper she was \u201cnot in a position to confirm or not\u201d whether the congresswoman was texting with Epstein during the hearing.<\/p>\n