Congress
Alex Acosta cleared Trump of wrongdoing in the Epstein case, GOP says
Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee took a victory lap Friday after releasing a transcript of their recent interview with former U.S. attorney Alex Acosta regarding Jeffrey Epstein, saying it provides evidence President Donald Trump was not involved in the case against the late convicted sex offender.
“Acosta NEVER talked to Trump about Epstein,” the Republican majority of the Oversight Committee said in a post on X, attaching a screenshot of Acosta’s interview from September. “Not in person. Not on the phone. Not over email.”
At one point in the exchange between lawmakers and Acosta — who appeared before the committee as part of its ongoing investigation into the Epstein case — Oversight committee ranking member Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) asked, “So you never — the entire time you were U.S. attorney, you never once spoke to Donald Trump?”
Acosta replied, according to the interview transcript, “The entire time — let me be more clear. I did not speak with President Trump, with Donald Trump before I was considered for Secretary of Labor.”
Asked by another Democrat whether Trump was named in any document in the Epstein case, Acosta said he did not recall any such instance.
Oversight Democrats, however, had a starkly different takeaway from Acosta’s interview, with Sara Guerrero, a Democratic spokesperson, arguing his remarks suggested a lack of contrition for his part in the case.
“The transcripts of Alex Acosta’s interview confirm what we’ve known all along: he has no remorse for his mishandling of the Epstein case,” Guerrero said in a statement. “Because of the deal Alex Acosta gave Epstein, he was able to continue assaulting and raping young women and girls for another decade. No matter how House Republicans try to spin this, Oversight Democrats will keep pushing for the truth.”
Acosta, in his capacity as U.S. attorney, oversaw the deal between the federal government and Epstein that many have argued allowed the financier to continue to victimize women for years. Acosta resigned from his post as Labor Secretary in the first Trump administration amid renewed scrutiny of the Epstein case. He told Congressional investigators last month that the decision to resign was his choice and not by the urging of the White House.
The panel has been probing the Epstein case for months, after a subcommittee in July compelled the full committee chair, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), to subpoena the Justice Department for documents.
Epstein’s estate has also turned over materials to Congressional investigators, including a so-called birthday book that included a note allegedly written by Trump for Epstein.
Trump has denied his connection to the note and sued the Wall Street Journal, which was the first to report on its existence. Democrats continue to suggest Trump is trying to hide his longtime relationship with Epstein.
The House Oversight Committee also on Friday released a new batch of documents it had previously received from Epstein’s estate, including Epstein’s schedules.
The materials mention a host of powerful men with whom Epstein had dealings, including a proposed 2011 appointment with Tom Pritzker — who appears to be the businessman and executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels — and a planned 2012 dinner with filmmaker Woody Allen and his partner, Soon-Yi Previn.
Among other events mentioned, Epstein also appeared to scheduled a dinner in Feb. 2013 with the former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak and Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary and Harvard University President.
A Democratic trio attempted to pass an artificial intelligence bill via a unanimous consent request on Tuesday but were blocked on the Senate floor.
Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Andy Kim (D-N.J.) sought to pass their Artificial Intelligence Risk Management and Security Act using the procedural mechanism, which allows expedited consideration of legislation but fails if one senator opposes it.
“The whole world has recognized that we’ve got to do something,” Warner said in a speech on the floor. “We should not miss the moment to put a safety protocol in place now.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) objected to the bill, preventing any chance of passage.
“Congress must not legislate on the issue of artificial intelligence hastily or in a closed manner,” he said on the floor, adding that it gave some in the government too much power to dictate the technology that could be permitted to be released.
As some lawmakers grow concerned over dire warnings from AI labs’ top executives about the technology’s risk to humanity, Congress’ attempts to legislate AI guardrails have largely stalled.
In the past few weeks, two other AI-related bills, the Ratepayer Protection Act and AI Emergency Button Act, were also nixed in an attempt to pass them unanimously.
Warner, Schatz and Kim’s new bill would have established a new safety board within the Commerce Department to vet models before they are deployed and set safety standards for the industry. It would also have created a reporting process for safety and security incidents.
Sen. Darline Graham sought to take up her brother’s mantle Tuesday, going after former special counsel Jack Smith for obtaining the late-Sen. Lindsey Graham’s phone data.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” the South Carolina Republican told Smith as he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, adding that the anguish the prosecutor caused her brother “makes me sick.”
Lindsey Graham, until his unexpected death in July, was among the most vocal in his outrage over revelations that Smith secretly collected electronic data from GOP lawmakers as part of the Biden-era investigation into President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The late senator was also unapologetic in his support for a provision tucked into a government funding package, which was later repealed, allowing senators to sue the federal government for $500,000 or more if they discover their electronic records were seized without notification — language specifically designed to compensate Smith’s targets.
But Smith replied that Lindsey Graham was not a target of his investigation and was not suspected of wrongdoing — in fact, he considered Darline Graham’s brother “a patriotic public servant” who likely would have been a “witness” in his case against Trump for attempted election subversion.
“Your brother investigated the claims that Donald Trump was making,” Smith told Darline Graham. “He found them to be false.”
The federal government’s internal watchdog told Congress Tuesday that it has concluded President Donald Trump acted unlawfully in unilaterally canceling $810 million in federal funding.
In a letter to congressional leaders obtained by Blue Light News, the Government Accountability Office’s top lawyer panned Trump’s declaration Friday that he is nixing money Congress appropriated through a controversial budget maneuver called a “pocket rescission.”
“The Constitution vests in Congress the power of the purse,” GAO General Counsel Edda Emmanuelli Perez wrote,
adding that “Congress did not cede this important power” by enacting the 1970s impoundment law intended to stop presidents from withholding money Congress approves.
“Any withholding of appropriated funds beyond their date of expiration, regardless of size, subverts both the constitutional process for enacting federal law and Congress’s constitutional power of the purse,” Perez added. “The President may not force the expiration of budget authority Congress has already enacted and did not rescind.”
It is unclear what practical effect, if any, the letter will have on the interbranch funding fight. Outside groups sued the administration last year over a prior pocket rescission, but the Supreme Court issued a preliminary ruling that they did not have standing to challenge the matter. The Trump administration has argued that only the head of the GAO is able to sue under the 52-year-old law governing rescissions.
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