TV News LIES

Zohran Mamdani met with Donald Trump in Washington on Thursday, during an unannounced trip to the nation’s capital.

On social media, the New York mayor said he had a “productive” meeting with the US president and he was “looking forward to building more housing in New York City”.

Mamdani also said he spoke to the president on the phone after the meeting to discuss the arrest of Elmina Aghayeva, a Columbia University student who was detained by federal immigration agents on Thursday.

“He has just informed me that she will be released imminently,” Mamdani said. The White House did not reply to the Guardian’s request for comment.

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Democrats on the House oversight and government reform committee announced on Tuesday the launch of an investigation to determine whether the US Department of Justice (DoJ) purposely withheld materials that pertain to allegations against Donald Trump in the government’s release of the Epstein files.

The lawmakers pledged to look into a report that Trump had been accused by a woman of sexually abusing her decades ago when she was a minor, and that material relating to the allegation in the Epstein files has not been released to the public.

The latest report refers to documents allegedly within the official records known as the Epstein files, where more than 3 million documents have been released relating to the late sex offender and disgraced New York financier, Jeffrey Epstein.

Congressman Robert Garcia of California, a Democrat and the ranking member of the committee, said in a statement that he reviewed unredacted evidence logs at the justice department and that “Oversight Democrats can confirm that the DoJ appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor who accused President Trump of heinous crimes”.

“Under the oversight committee’s subpoena and the Epstein Files Transparency Act, these records must immediately be shared with Congress and the American public,” said Garcia. “Covering up direct evidence of a potential assault by the president of the United States is the most serious possible crime in this White House cover-up.”

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The cancellation of the official House delegation to the annual Munich Security Conference has drawn pushback from Democrats who still plan to attend, even as it’s upended a decades-long tradition of robust bipartisan participation in the high-profile global policy forum.

A House leadership aide told The Hill that cancelling congressional delegations (CODEL) is standard operating procedure during the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

But House Democrats have sharply criticized Republicans for the cancellation, arguing that attending the conference is critical to restoring the United States’ standing with allies amid the Trump administration’s aggressive foreign policy approach.

“Because of the Republican shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, because Republicans refuse to make any compromises or any changes to ICE after the deadly murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, we have a shutdown, and therefore, we cannot go on official CODELS. I’ve decided, along with a number of my Democratic colleagues, to go anyway,” Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) said in a video statement on Thursday.

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Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are accusing the Department of Justice (DOJ) of spying on them as they reviewed the unredacted Epstein files on DOJ computers, tracking the documents they examined.

Attorney General Pam Bondi was photographed during a congressional appearance before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday flipping to a document titled “Jayapal Pramila Search History,” seemingly reviewing the activity of the Washington Democrat who tangled with Bondi during the hearing.

Bondi had a binder at the ready of stats and crime summaries to hurl at lawmakers during the contentious hearing, but members are unnerved that the DOJ apparently tracked their searches to have at the ready.

“It is totally inappropriate and against the separations of powers for the DOJ to surveil us as we search the Epstein files. Bondi showed up today with a burn book that held a printed search history of exactly what emails I searched. That is outrageous and I intend to pursue this and stop this spying on members,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) wrote on social platform X after seeing the photo.

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Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) shared the names of the six men he claimed were “likely incriminated” in the Epstein files on the House floor Tuesday.

Khanna’s comments come as the Justice Department has been under fire for how it has handled redactions in the documents, in some cases failing to conceal the names of victims while in other instances shielding the identities of those exchanging salacious emails with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Khanna and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who together co-sponsored the bill that mandated the public release of the files, both went Monday to review the unredacted version of the files now available to lawmakers at a Justice Department office. The duo told reporters that in their two-hour review they saw six names they thought could face criminal culpability based on the content of the files, with Massie describing the group as being “likely incriminated.”

Khanna, after revealing the six names on the House floor, said, “Now my question is, why did it take Thomas Massie and me going to the Justice Department to get these six men’s identities to become public? And if we found six men that they were hiding in two hours, imagine how many men they are covering up for in those 3 million files.”

“Now my bill is clear. The Epstein Transparency Act requires them to unredact those FBI files, and yet the Justice Department said to me and to Congressman Massie, ‘We just uploaded whatever the FBI sent us.’ And guess what? The FBI sent scrubbed files. That means the survivor statement to the FBI naming rich and powerful men who went to Epstein’s Island, who went to his ranch, who went to his home and raped and abused underage girls or saw underage girls being paraded — they were all hidden. They were all redacted. It’s a little bit of a farce.”

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President Donald Trump and Senate Democrats struck a deal to avert a prolonged shutdown for most of the federal government, according to the president and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office.

The agreement will fund all of the government except for the Department of Homeland Security through next September. DHS will operate on a short-term funding bill for two weeks while lawmakers negotiate changes after public outrage over the Minneapolis shootings, sources said.

The Senate is aiming to vote today. The House, which returns to Washington on Monday, would then need to pass the legislation and send it to Trump’s desk for his signature.

Until the deal is finalized by both chambers, funding will temporarily lapse for multiple agencies starting tomorrow. The impact is expected to be minimal since most federal employees don’t work on the weekend.

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