Trump Scrambles to Attack Obama in Panicked Bid to End Epstein Fallout

Donald Trump has become so desperate in trying to change the subject from Jeffrey Epstein, that he’s now started ranting about imprisoning former President Barack Obama.

During a posting spree on Truth Social Sunday night, Trump posted a series of lame memes attacking Obama, after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard suggested last week that the former president should be prosecuted for participating in a “treasonous conspiracy.”

Gabbard released a declassified report alleging that members of the Obama administration had “manufactured and politicized” intelligence to create the narrative that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election. It’s worth noting that shortly after the 2016 election, the Obama administration insisted that hackers had not affected the vote tallies.

Gabbard said she would deliver her findings to the Department of Justice to seek long-awaited accountability on behalf of Trump, who, despite twice finding his way back into the White House anyway, obviously never emotionally recovered from the so-called Russiagate “hoax.”

On Truth Social, Trump posted a Brady Bunch–style photo grid of Obama Cabinet officials wearing prison jumpsuits, and a video of different Democratic officials declaring that “no one is above the law” while circus music played. He also shared an AI-generated video of Obama being arrested in the Oval Office and donning prison orange.

This is the third week of fallout from the Trump administration’s disastrous rollout of the Epstein files—or lack thereof. The Justice Department announced earlier this month that the sex offender kept no incriminating “client list,” even though Trump’s attorney general claimed one had been sitting on her desk, sparking widespread backlash among Trump’s conspiracy-addled following. Now Trump hopes to shift the flames by tossing them another political enemy.

Donald Trump just made good on his threat to sue The Wall Street Journal for reporting on his lewd birthday note to alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The president filed a lawsuit in Miami court Friday against Dow Jones, News Corp, Rupert Murdoch, and two Wall Street Journal reporters, according to Reuters. The two journalists named in the lawsuit are likely Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo, whose names appeared in the story byline.

The Journal reported Thursday that in 2003, Trump penned Epstein a “bawdy” note inside of a doodle of a voluptuous woman as part of a book of birthday notes for the financier. The president wrote that he had “certain things in common” with the child sex offender, and wished his “pal” that “everyday may be a wonderful secret.”

In a post on Truth Social Thursday night, Trump fumed over the report, threatening legal action.

“The Wall Street Journal, and Rupert Murdoch, personally, were warned directly by President Donald J. Trump that the supposed letter they printed by President Trump to Epstein was FAKE and, if they print it, they will be sued,” he wrote.

Trump said he’d insisted the letter was fake, but that the publication had proceeded with the “false, malicious, and defamatory story anyway.”

“President Trump will be suing The Wall Street Journal, NewsCorp, and Mr. Murdoch, shortly,” Trump wrote.

By the next morning, Trump was ranting about getting Murdoch to testify in court. And within 24 hours of the story being published, a lawsuit had been filed. Talk about promises made and promises kept.

Trump’s lawsuit against the publication isn’t the least bit surprising—he has a tendency to sue any outlet that makes him look bad.

Paramount recently agreed to a $16 million settlement with Trump over the editing of CBS’s 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, despite CBS calling the suit “completely without merit.” The settlement summoned criticism that Paramount was attempting to ease its sale to Skydance Media, which will require approval from the Trump administration. On Friday, there was rampant speculation that openly criticizing the deal had cost Stephen Colbert his late-night gig.

Earlier this year, ABC News agreed to pay Trump $15 million to settle his defamation lawsuit over George Stephanopoulos’s use of the phrase “liable for rape” while discussing Trump’s E. Jean Carroll case verdict, which technically found Trump liable for sexual abuse, not rape. That settlement showed the then president-elect exactly how he can silence the press during his second administration.

This story has been updated.

Trump is purposely using a construction project that his own appointees are making more expensive as grounds to pick a fight and potentially fire his nemesis, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

The Fed building, opened in 1937, began undergoing plans for renovation in 2020 under the first Trump administration. While the architects wanted to give the Fed glass walls to indicate its transparency, three Trump appointees insisted on marble, which was much more expensive. One of those appointees was Duncan Stroik, who is now an architecture professor at Notre Dame. He acknowledged that the appointees on the commission willfully ignored the cost implications of sticking to marble.

“If they wanted to play the cost game, you do a marble facade and you do the glass facade and you compare the cost,” Stroik told the Associated Press. “And you know, they never did that.”

The project is now $600 million over budget, with an expected total cost of $2.5 billion, including additions of an underground parking garage and atria. The Trump administration is now blaming this on Powell, framing him as an irresponsible spender.

“Chairman Jerome Powell has grossly mismanaged the Fed,” Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought wrote last week on X. “While continuing to run a deficit since FY23 (the first time in the Fed’s history), the Fed is way over budget on the renovation of its headquarters. Now up to $2.5 billion, roughly $700 million over its initial cost. These renovations include terrace rooftop gardens, water features, VIP elevators, and premium marble. The cost per square foot is $1,923--double the cost for renovating an ordinary historic federal building. The Palace of Versailles would have cost $3 billion in today’s dollars!”

But none of this was Powell’s idea.

Trump has sought to remove Powell as Fed chair for some time now, as he has consistently refused to capitulate to Trump’s demands to lower interest rates and remained brutally honest about the negative inflation impacts of Trump’s trade war. And while Trump has said that he won’t fire Powell outright, he certainly seems to be exhausting less direct methods.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is now allowing ICE to use U.S. military bases to detain undocumented immigrants as part of Donald Trump’s sweeping deportation efforts. 

In a brief letter signed Tuesday, Hegseth approved Camp Atterbury in Indiana and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey “for temporary use by the Department of Homeland Security to house illegal aliens.”

Hegseth insisted that the policy would “not negatively affect military training, operations, readiness, or other military requirements, including National Guard and Reserve readiness.” 

So, somehow having trangender people serve in the military affects readiness, but refashioning military facilities as internment camps doesn’t? In the case of both policies, the Trump administration is carrying out a wildly radical agenda that will only result in more human suffering. 

It was first reported in May that Camp Atterbury was being considered as a possible detention facility, as immigration arrests in Indiana surged. The base, which is operated by the National Guard, was one of a dozen military bases that housed hundreds of Afghan refugees in its barracks starting in 2021. 

In a statement Friday, Representative André Carson said he’d asked the federal government to confirm whether it intended to use the military training center in May, but received no reply. This week, the Indiana Democrat got his answer.  

“I remain concerned on this use of Camp Atterbury given the deplorable and inhumane conditions at other ICE detention facilities nationwide,” Carson said in a statement, stressing the “alarmingly high rates” of detainee deaths during the second Trump administration. At least 12 people have died in ICE custody so far this year. 

“This is a dark time for our nation. I will continue fighting these unlawful, cruel policies and will actively monitor activities at Camp Atterbury to ensure humane and sanitary conditions,” Carson added. 

A group of Democratic lawmakers from New Jersey also released a statement condemning the Trump administration’s decision. 

“This is an inappropriate use of our national defense system and militarizes a radical immigration policy that has resulted in the inhumane treatment of undocumented immigrants and unlawful deportation of U.S. citizens, including children, across the country,” said the statement from Senators Cory Booker and Andy Kim, and Representatives Herb Conaway Jr.,  Bonnie Watson Coleman, Rob Menendez, Frank Pallone, Nellie Pou, Donald Norcross, LaMonica McIver, and Josh Gottheimer.

Dick Durbin is leading the Senate Judiciary Committee in an effort to receive more transparency regarding the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files, particularly an order from Attorney General Pam Bondi for FBI agents to “flag” any mention they made of President Trump.

In a letter addressed to Bondi on Friday, Durbin wrote: “According to information my office received, you then pressured the FBI to put approximately 1,000 personnel in its Information Management Division (IMD), including the Record/Information Dissemination Section (RIDS), which handles all requests submitted by the public under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Privacy Act, on 24-hour shifts to review approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records in order to produce more documents that could then be released on an arbitrarily short deadline.”

“My office was told that these personnel were instructed to ‘flag’ any records in which President Trump was mentioned,” he added.

There was likely something for those agents to flag, given Trump’s well-documented relationship with the defamed sex trafficker. There’s the 2002 New York magazine quote where Trump referred to Epstein, his friend of “15 years,” as a “terrific guy” who liked women “on the younger side.” And there was the recent Wall Street Journal report that showed Trump writing a strange birthday message to Epstein in 2006, with the closing line “may every day be another wonderful secret.”

But what else was flagged under Bondi’s watch, and what happened to it? Durbin’s report asks just that:

Why were personnel told to flag records in which President Trump was mentioned?

1. Please list all political appointees and senior DOJ officials involved in the decision to flag records in which President Trump was mentioned.

2. What happened to the records mentioning President Trump once they were flagged?

Trump’s rollout of the Epstein files has been so disorderly that it has Democrats and the most hardcore MAGA loyalists asking the exact same question: What is the truth about Epstein?

The due date for Durbin and the committee’s request is August 1. Trump and Bondi have yet to comment.