Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are the latest developments:
Donald Trump tried and failed to ambush Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, during an on-camera exchange as the president inspected the renovation of the central bank’s historic headquarters in Washington.
The US supreme court temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that would have significantly limited the power of the Voting Rights Act and only allowed the Justice Department to file claims under the landmark civil rights law.
Trump’s hand-picked chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, announced that “the FCC approved Skydance’s $8 billion acquisition of Paramount”.
Deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, who was Trump’s criminal defense lawyer just last year, wrote that after meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell, a former socialite who was convicted of conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to recruit, groom and sexually abuse girls, he intends to spend more time interviewing her on Friday.
A leather-bound book of birthday greetings presented to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003 included messages from about 20 associates listed as “Friends”, including Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and Alan Dershowitz, the Wall Street Journal reports.
As Trump continues to insist that a letter and drawing attributed to him by the Wall Street Journal in leather-bound book of birthday greetings presented to Epstein in 2003 is “fake”, the New York Times reports that Trump’s name appears in a list of contributors to the book it has reviewed.
Greg Kelly, a host on the partisan, pro-Trump network Newsmax told his viewers on Wednesday night that Maxwell “just might be a victim”.
Newsmax host says Ghislaine Maxwell 'just might be a victim' and could deserve a commutation
Greg Kelly, a host on the partisan, pro-Trump network Newsmax told his viewers on Wednesday night that Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to recruit, groom and sexually abuse girls, “just might be a victim”.
“There was a rush to judgment”, Kelly said. “All right, granted, she hung out with Jeffrey Epstein, and I know that’s apparently not good, but she’s in jail. For how long now? 20 years.”
Kelly then introduced comments from Alan Dershowitz, who told another Newsmax host that Maxwell should not be in jail.
Dershowitz, Kelly did not note, was an associate of Epstein’s who, according to a Wall Street Journal report, contributed to a leather-bound album of birthday greetings assembled by Maxwell in 2003.
“She deserves to be out”, Kelly told his viewers. “And maybe she never deserved to be in there in the first place. Now, how could you say such a thing? I mean, these are perverts. These are child molesters. We’ve heard that from whom? From the media, from prosecutors. Prosecutors prosecuted President Trump over nothing. I don’t know, but I’m skeptical of everything and everybody these days. And you should be too.”
He went on to suggest that the fact that Maxwell was prosecuted by James Comey’s daughter was, in itself, enough for a commutation of her sentence.
