Tag Archives: Palm Beach

Alternet: ‘He was an FBI informant’: Mike Johnson makes stunning admission about Trump

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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.

They’re trying to infer that perhaps Trump was an FBI informant who ratted out Epstein.

But the math just doesn’t work out: Epstein was a due-paying member of Mar-A-Largo for years after Trump claimed to have shown him the door.

‘He was an FBI informant’: Mike Johnson makes stunning admission about Trump

https://www.alternet.org/trump-fbi-informant-2673962593

New York Times: Trump Pardoned Tax Cheat After Mother Attended $1 Million Dinner

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Paul Walczak’s pardon application cited his mother’s support for the president, including raising millions of dollars and a connection to a plot to publicize a Biden family diary.

As Paul Walczak awaited sentencing early this year, his best hope for avoiding prison time rested with the newly inaugurated president.

Mr. Walczak, a former nursing home executive who had pleaded guilty to tax crimes days after the 2024 election, submitted a pardon application to President Trump around Inauguration Day. The application focused not solely on Mr. Walczak’s offenses but also on the political activity of his mother, Elizabeth Fago.

Ms. Fago had raised millions of dollars for Mr. Trump’s campaigns and those of other Republicans, the application said. It also highlighted her connections to an effort to sabotage Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 2020 campaign by publicizing the addiction diary of his daughter Ashley Biden — an episode that drew law enforcement scrutiny.

Mr. Walczak’s pardon application argued that his criminal prosecution was motivated more by his mother’s efforts for Mr. Trump than by his admitted use of money earmarked for employees’ taxes to fund an extravagant lifestyle.

Still, weeks went by and no pardon was forthcoming, even as Mr. Trump issued clemency grants to hundreds of other allies.

Then, Ms. Fago was invited to a $1-million-per-person fund-raising dinner last month that promised face-to-face access to Mr. Trump at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla.

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trump-pardon-paul-walczak-tax-crimes.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/us/politics/trump-pardon-paul-walczak-tax-crimes.html

Raw Story: ‘Open hostility’: Reporters despair at what Karoline Leavitt [Bimbo #1] has done to the White House

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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt [Bimbo #1] has created an atmosphere of hostility, mockery, and disparagement in the briefing room, a veteran reporter told Politico.

In a lengthy profile, correspondent Adam Wren quoted Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent with The New York Times, who has covered 17 press secretaries over his career.

Wren wrote, “He told me that the current tension ‘goes beyond anything that is traditional to the point of open hostility, and mockery and disparagement in a way that’s meant for the larger audience, not for the people in the room.'”

Baker continued, “They don’t view the briefing room as a way to impart information. They don’t even view the briefing room as a way to shape reporters’ stories. They view the briefing room as a theater for the MAGA audience.”

Wren wrote that Leavitt [Bimbo #1] “relishes dispatching mainstream reporters’ hardballs with dismissive quips and, increasingly, welcomes right-leaning influencers’ softballs.”

What do you expect in a White House run by an orange-faced clown surrounded by a collection of suck-up sycophants, failed right-wing fringe politicians, and Fox celebrities looking for a better gig?

‘Open hostility’: Reporters despair at what Karoline Leavitt has done to the White House
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has created an atmosphere of hostility, mockery, and disparagement in the briefing room, a veteran reporter told Politico. In a lengthy profile, correspondent Adam Wren quoted Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent with The New York Times, who has covered 17 press secretaries over his career. Wren…

https://www.msn.com/en-in/lifestyle/smart-living/open-hostility-reporters-despair-at-what-karoline-leavitt-has-done-to-the-white-house/ar-AA1DCymq