“They’ll [DOJ] redact every Republican or conservative person in those files, leave all the liberal, Democratic people in those files, and have a very slanted version of it come out… without really seeing any of their bad behavior,” admitted Joseph Schnitt, Acting Deputy Chief at the Office of Enforcement Operations for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), on hidden camera to an undercover OMG journalist. Schnitt confirmed that the government is in possession of an extensive trove of Epstein-related documents but warned that any release would be politically manipulated.
Schnitt admitted that “There’s thousands and thousands of page-open files,” and further described how the department would handle disclosure of the material: “If they’re released in any way, it’s going to be very redacted.”
He further revealed new information regarding Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. “She got transferred to a minimum security prison,” Schnitt said, despite her conviction as a sex offender. “It’s against BOP policy because she’s a convicted sex offender. And they’re not supposed to get minimum security prisons, which is an interesting detail because she’s getting a benefit, which means they’re offering her something to keep her mouth shut.”
Schnitt also revealed internal conflict within federal law enforcement over the release of said files. “The head of FBI [Kash Patel] really wants to… second-in-command [Dan Bongino] at FBI has been causing problems, because he’s like, ‘No, these [Epstein Files] have to be released.’ He added, “The FBI wants them out. The top two guys that will do it. But they work for Bondi, so… Bondi wants whatever Trump wants. Internally there’s a lot of conflict.”
Despite public assurances that the government has been transparent, Schnitt admitted that nothing substantive has been revealed: “Whatever they’ve released has already been publicly released anyway, so they haven’t released anything new. Even though they were the ones that were claiming that they were going to release everything.”
OMG has reached out to the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Joseph Schnitt regarding Schnitt’s statements.
In response, the DOJ released a statement to OMG. According to the DOJ, Schnitt “had no role in the Department’s internal review of Epstein materials,” his comments were based only on “what he learned in the media,” and “have absolutely zero bearing with reality.”
The leaders of Russia, China, and North Korea are not good men. They preside over brutal autocracies replete with secret police and prison camps. But they are, nevertheless, serious men, and they know an unserious man when they see one. For nearly a decade, they have taken Donald Trump’s measure, and they have clearly reached a conclusion: The president of the United States is not worthy of their respect.
Wednesday’s military parade in Beijing is the most recent evidence that the world’s authoritarians consider Trump a lightweight. Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and North Korea’s maximum nepo baby, Kim Jong Un, gathered to celebrate the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. (Putin’s Belarusian satrap, Alexander Lukashenko, was also on hand.) The American president was not invited: After all, what role did the United States play in defeating Japan and liberating Eurasia? Instead, Trump, much like America itself, was left to watch from the sidelines.
But the parade was worse than a mere snub. Putin, Xi, and Kim stood in solidarity while reviewing China’s military might only weeks after Putin came to Alaska and showed no interest in moving to end Russia’s war against Ukraine. The White House tried to spin that ill-advised summit into at least a draw between Putin and Trump, but when the Kremlin’s dictator shows up with no interest in negotiation, speaks first at a press conference, and then caps the day by declining a carefully planned lunch and flying home, that’s a humiliation, not an exchange of views.
Nor has Trump fared very well with the other two members of this cheery 21st-century incarnation of SPECTRE. In the midst of Trumpian chaos, Xi is adroitly positioning China as the new face of international stability and responsibility. He has even made a show of offering partnership to China’s rival and former enemy India: Chinese diplomats last month said that China stands with India against the American “bully” when Trump was, for some reason, trying to impose 50 percent tariffs on India.
Likewise, the North Koreans, after playing to Trump’s ego and his ignorance of international affairs during meetings in the president’s first term, have continued their march to a nuclear arsenal that within years could grow to be larger than the United Kingdom’s. Trump was certain that he could negotiate with Kim, but the perfumed days of “love letters” between Trump and Kim are long over. Pyongyang’s leadership seems to know that it costs them little to humor Trump politely, but that they should reserve serious discussion for the leaders of serious countries.
Trump responded to his exclusion from the gala in Beijing by acting exactly like the third-tier leader that Xi, Putin, and Kim seem to think he is. As the event was taking place, Trump took to his social-media site—of course—to express his hurt feelings with a cringe-inducing attempt at a zinger. “May President Xi and the wonderful people of China have a great and lasting day of celebration. Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America.”
Now, the reality is that Russia, China, and North Korea are conspiring against America, but it is beneath both the dignity and the power of an American president to whine about it. Trump continued his unseemly carping with a demand that China recognize the valor of the Americans who died in the Pacific:
The big question to be answered is whether or not President Xi of China will mention the massive amount of support and ‘blood’ that The United States of America gave to China in order to help it to secure its FREEDOM from a very unfriendly foreign invader. Many Americans died in China’s quest for Victory and Glory. I hope that they are rightfully Honored and Remembered for their Bravery and Sacrifice!
This message does not exactly project confidence and leadership; instead, it sounds like the grousing of a man beset by insecurities. A more self-assured commander in chief would have ignored the parade and, if asked about it, would have said something to the effect that the United States has always respected the sacrifices of our allies in World War II. But not Trump: He petulantly declared that he would not have attended even if the cool kids had invited him.
Authoritarians are unfortunately in good company in treating Trump as an incompetent leader. Even America’s allies have recognized that Trump may be their formal partner, but that they mostly get things done with the American president by soothing his ego and working around him. After Trump emerged from the summit in Anchorage essentially parroting Putin’s talking points, seven top European leaders rushed to Washington to tell Trump that he had done well and that they truly, really respected him, but that perhaps he should hold off on being a co-signer of Kremlin policy.
Trump’s damage to American power and prestige would be less severe if the president had a foreign policy and a team to execute it. He has neither: Trump ran for president mostly for personal reasons, including to stay out of prison, and his foreign policy, such as it is, is merely an extension of his personal interests. He holds summits, issues social-media pronouncements, and engages in photo ops mostly, it seems, either to burnish his claim to a Nobel Prize or to change the news cycle when issues such as the economy (or the Jeffrey Epstein files) get too much traction.
Worse, Trump is no longer surrounded by people who care about foreign affairs or can competently step in and create consistent policy. In his first term, Trump had a secretary of defense, James Mattis, who helped to create a national-defense strategy, a document that Trump might have ignored but was at least promulgated to a national-security establishment that needed direction from someone, somewhere. Now, at the Pentagon, Trump has Pete Hegseth, who shows little apparent inclination or ability to think about complexities.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was supposed to be one of the new “adults in the room,” but he has instead become a man in a Velcro suit, with the president sticking jobs and responsibilities onto him without any further guidance. He has been reduced to sitting glumly in White House press sprays with foreign leaders while Trump embarrasses himself and his guests. Meanwhile, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, is spending her time trying to root out the spies she thinks hate the president. Unfortunately, the agents she’s hunting are Americans, which must bring a smile to Xi’s face and perhaps even produce a belly laugh from former KGB officer Putin.
America is adrift. It has no coherent foreign policy, no team of senior professionals managing its national defense and diplomacy, and a president who has little interest in the world beyond what it can offer him. Little wonder that the men who gathered in Beijing—three autocrats whose nations are collectively pointing many hundreds of nuclear weapons at the United States—feel free to act as if they don’t even think twice about Trump or the country he leads.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/09/trump-parade-china-putin-xi-kim/684113
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) appeared to say that President Donald Trump once doubled as a confidential informant for the FBI before he ran for office.
Johnson made the comment while speaking to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday about Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-Ky.) effort to force a vote on releasing the Department of Justice’s remaining evidence on convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. When CNN congressional correspondent Manu Raju asked Johnson about Trump calling the ongoing controversy over Epstein a “hoax,” the speaker insisted that Trump’s statement was being misconstrued by the media.
“I’ve talked with him about this many times,” Johnson said. “It’s been misrepresented. He’s not saying that what Epstein did is a hoax. It’s a terrible, unspeakable evil. He believes that himself. When he first heard the rumor he kicked [Epstein] out of Mar-a-Lago. He was an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down.”
Trump’s status as an FBI informant remains unconfirmed. However, he has a history of being willing to cooperate with the FBI in the past. BuzzFeed News reported in 2017 on a 1981 FBI memo in which he said he would to “fully cooperate” with the bureau. Trump reportedly agreed to accommodate undercover FBI agents at his Atlantic City, New Jersey casino who were investigating organized crime.
In 2016, the Washington Post reported that Trump “welcomed [agents] in” to his Manhattan office, and that the meeting came at a pivotal time in Trump’s career when he was trying to cement himself as a real estate tycoon in New York. The report detailed how Trump became close friends with both an FBI informant who worked for Trump as a labor consultant and investigator Walt Stowe, who at the time was one of the informant’s handlers.
If Trump indeed worked as an FBI informant to take down Epstein, it may have happened sometime between 2004 and 2005, when the two had their famous falling-out over a $41 million mansion in Palm Beach, Florida. The New York Post reported last year that the mansion became a “centerpiece of an intense rivalry” between the two men who were formerly close friends. The initial investigation into Epstein’s exploitation of underage girls began in March of 2005, according to the Palm Beach Post.
Trump previously said that he ended his friendship with Epstein after he “stole” Virginia Giuffre — one of Epstein’s most prominent accusers who died by suicide earlier this year — from the Mar-a-Lago spa in 2000. However, journalist and author Barry Levine said that Epstein maintained his paying membership at Mar-a-Lago as late as 2007, which was well after his initial arrest and subsequent prosecution for preying on teenage girls.
Despite the inarguably awful actions this administration has taken during its first eight months in office, Donald Trump remains largely impervious in the polls — low to be sure but hardly politically threatening, right in his zone. This despite taking some of the most unpopular and undemocratic actions in generations.
Yes, for a brief period, during his first week or two in office, he peaked above a 50 percent approval rating. But since then he has gracefully found the glideslope to his comfort zone, anywhere from 42-46 percent aggregate approval, 50-53 percent disapproval.
Even given the number of unpopular decisions that he has made — DOGE cuts to essential services, masked mauraders kidnapping the innocent, hiding the Epstein files, tariffs, health care cuts — the dynamic remains the same. There is almost nothing the man can do to fall into dangerous, sub-38 percent approval.
But there is are two elements on the horizon, one that likely shouldn’t play a huge role but does, another that always does.
First: there are exploding questions about his health.
Is there any there “there?” Seems so. Looks matter, especially within cults of personality. Trump’s age — 79 now — matters in the polls.
Much of Trump’s mystique among MAGA revolves around his seeming indestructibility, whether concerning his wealth, litigation against him (meagre attempts at criminal accountability, throwing out the award in a major New York civil case), or just his simple, unpleasant aggression.
The dynamic can even seep over to political independents, who see Trump as at least “doing something” and doing it well for himself. It must be working, some think. This is his real superpower.
So indications that Trump’s health may be teetering pose a major threat to the perception of invincibility. It’s important. If he ever loses the “cape,” it is all but impossible to get it back.
Both hands now show severe bruising. Fattened ankles have led — finally — to the admission that he does have some cardiovascular disease, whether just venous insufficiency or something more. There is the swinging gait that comes and goes. And there does seem to be a greater propensity to simply meander from topic to topic, on an ever-looser tether to linear thought.
He also just looks old: see pictures from the Oval Office meeting last Friday. Trump may never have looked worse.
The thing about cults is that the leader is absolutely invulnerable, the hold on people impermeable, right up until they are not. Once a leak springs, it is impossible to hold water back.
Yes, it is utterly infuriating that there has been so little pushback against troops in cities, threats to former allies, cutting Medicaid, the racism, the “cruelty as the point,” and even the Epstein files, which will now never amount to anything, a “Democratic hoax,” unless several victims come forward with direct knowledge of Trump’s actions, and they don’t seem to be in a hurry.
But it doesn’t appear that any of the above can puncture Trump. Anyone in doubt needs to revisit the polls that refuse to move or simply spend a half-hour on X. Nothing has changed, except Trump’s acceleration in his push to fascism.
In a post-truth America, where Trump can claim 70 percent approval rating with a straight face, dismiss a mediocre jobs report with a termination and declaration the numbers are fixed, make baseless claims to being the “hottest country in the world,” claim crime as a national emergency and only himself as the savior, Trump’s opponents are left searching for a leveling truth.
Enter the appearance of diminishing health.
Whatever is going on with his hands, it cannot be hidden. Whatever it is about his ankles, it cannot easily be cured. The doddering goes way back, but it means more now after all the attacks on Joe Biden.
It’s a fact that Trump is getting older and appears to be getting worse. The best his followers can do is write it off to simply aging. Precisely. It leaves them uneasy, seeing Trump vulnerable for perhaps the first time — that being time itself.
And then there’s the other wild card — the economy.
Inflation is just getting going. But in the same way it is impossible to hide a black spot on the back of a hand or slurred words going nowhere, no makeup can cover a bag of potato chips over $5, beef approaching $20 a pound for a decent cut and getting higher, along with other goods rising and rent to pay — all without any commensurate increase in pay.
Put the two undeniables together, Trump’s health and his sickening economy, and there are two paths to sinking Trump to polling levels that will leave him and the GOP extremely vulnerable in 2026.
The country is largely unmoved by troops invading cities, masked men kidnapping working undocumented migrants (and some Americans) off the streets, stolen legislative seats, threats to the vote.
All of it screams fascism, but all of it has too many people simply yawning.
Anyone doubting that Trump acutely feels the vulnerability need only look at his responses to his major problems: hiding the hand, firing people over numbers, the constant and humiliating talk about the country being “hot.” And yet too many simply don’t care. His supporters rely on him for entertainment and have their own lives to worry about. The marauding menace in Washington D.C. does little more than appear on screens as an owning of the libs, which is what he was hired for.
Nothing touches the man … except for indications that he’s weaker, going downhill, unable to fight like he once did. That and chips, for $5.50.
It’s the little things, things that don’t have to make sense.
Trump won’t get younger. Energy prices show no sign of going down. Chips and bread seem destined to jump. He promised to reverse such trends but he threw gas on the fire with tariffs. It isn’t turning around.
Cults are invulnerable until they’re not. The things that make them teeter don’t have to make any sense. Watch these developments. They just might work, which might be enough.
Keep an eye out for black and blue hands, puffy eyes and swollen ankles. And prices on chips and sirloin.
Two small pins, sharp enough to pop the balloon. He knows it.
https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/trump-age-2673924798
The neofascist takeover of America — of our cities, universities, media, law firms, museums, civil service, and public prosecutors who tried to hold Trump and Trump’s vigilantes accountable to the law — worsens by the day.
As I’ve traveled across the country peddling my book, trying to explain how this catastrophe happened and what we can do about it, I’ve found many Americans in shock and outrage.
“How could it have happened so fast?” they ask. I explain that it actually occurred slowly and incrementally over many years until our entire political-economic system became so fragile that a sociopathic demagogue could bring much of it down.
Some people I speak with are still in denial and disbelief. “It’s not as bad as the press makes it out to be,” they say. I tell them that it is — even worse.
Others are in despair — heartbroken and immobilized. “Nothing can be done,” they say. I tell them that hopelessness plays into the hands of Trump and his lackeys who want us to think that the game is over and they’ve won. But we can’t let them. The stakes are too high. Hopelessness is a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Rest assured. The seeds of Trump’s destruction have already been sown. He will overreach. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of birthright citizenship, for example, and Trump announces he’s not bound by the Supreme Court, the uproar will be deafening.
Or the economy will bite him in the butt. As prices continue to rise and job growth continues to slow — due to Trump’s bonkers import taxes (tariffs), his attempt to take over the Fed, and his attacks on immigrants — America will fall into the dread trap of “stagflation”: stagnation and inflation. After months of this, his base is likely to turn on him — remember, many voted for him because he promised to bring prices down — and he and his Republican lackeys in Congress will be toast in the 2026 midterms.
Or his brazen corruption will do him in (he’s personally raking in hundreds of millions from crypto, for example). Or Putin will do him in (if Ukraine falls to Russia or an emboldened Russia strikes Lithuania). Or the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
He no longer has any truth-tellers to advise him — he has purged all of them. And a president who’s flying blind, without anyone around him to tell him he’s about to crash, will inevitably crash. Many innocent people will likely suffer “collateral” damage. But at least the nation will see him for who he is and consign him to the dustbin of history.
None of this argues for complacency. We must continue to fight — demonstrate, phone your representatives and senators, boycott corporations and organizations that are caving in to tyranny, protect the vulnerable, make good trouble.
But please do not fall into denial or despair, and don’t let anyone else.
U.S. District Judge Richard Berman has denied the Justice Department (DOJ)’s third request to release grand jury transcripts in the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell case, citing safety concerns and unmet legal criteria. President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi have expressed frustration over the perceived lack of transparency. The DOJ is withholding roughly 100,000 pages of evidence on Epstein.
Release them, all 100,000 pages of them!
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/clinton-appointed-judge-rejects-epstein-motion/ss-AA1Lz7CM
It has finally dawned on Joe Rogan that President Donald Trump doesn’t appear to have any evidence to back up the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
The podcaster gave Trump a huge platform when he was a guest on the show in the final week of the 2024 presidential election campaign, where he reeled off his widely-debunked grievance that the 2020 election was “fraudulent.”
Now, Rogan has shared his skepticism.
“I don’t think they have any evidence,” Rogan told his guest comedian Dave Smith on Tuesday’s episode ofthe Joe Rogan Experience, referring to Trump’s 2020 claims.
“I think there’s a lot of speculation and there’s a lot of consideration about mail-in ballots. There’s a lot of shenanigans,” Rogan added. “There’s a good record of shenanigans and there’s the reality of any kind of electronics can be hacked.”
“It was one of the most interesting parts of your podcast with him was when you asked him about that, it was like he really didn’t have anything to back it up,” Smith interjected.
Rogan then criticized Trump for not having a “tight 10 minutes” prepared to present his evidence and argument.
“If that was you or if that was me, I mean, there was some reason why I knew that they did something and I could give you all the facts, I would have that ready for anybody,” Rogan said. “Because…you’re, for four f***ing years they’ve been telling him he’s crazy for questioning the election. So after four years I’d have a f***ing tight 10 minutes on the election where I could just rattle off at you and rock your world with it.”
Rogan’s interview, which pulled in 38 million viewers within three days of airing, and other podcast appearances within the so-called “Manosphere” have been credited with helping Trump clinch the presidency.
Rogan, who endorsed Trump after the episode aired, gave him the opportunity to explain his evidence for claiming the 2020 election was stolen from him.
“I want to talk about 2020 because you said over and over again that you were robbed in 2020,” Rogan said. “How do you think you were robbed?”
Trump then launched into a familiar tirade about judges not having “what it took to turn over an election,” mail-in ballots being insecure, and Democrats using “Covid to cheat.”
Rogan appeared to sympathize with Trump. “You get labeled an election denier,” he said, drawing similarities with being labeled an “anti-vaxxer if you question some of the health consequences that people have from the Covid-19 shots.”
More recently, Rogan has been calling out the man he endorsed for president. In July, the podcaster ripped into the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files.
“They’ve got videotape and all a sudden they don’t,” Rogan said. “You had the director of the FBI on this show saying, ‘If there was [a videotape], nothing you’re looking for is on those tapes,’” referring to FBI Director Kash Patel’s interview with Rogan in June.
He also criticized the Trump administration’s aggressive ICE raids on his show, appearing to suggest that they had taken things too far.
“The targeting of migrant workers — not cartel members, not gang members, not drug dealers. Just construction workers. Showing up in construction sites, raiding them. Gardeners. Like, really?” Rogan said. “I don’t think anybody would have signed up for that.”