Ghislaine Maxwell transcripts: Epstein associate says she ‘never’ saw Trump receive a massage – as it happened

The transcript of the interview between deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, and Ghislaine Maxwell show that he asked the convicted sex trafficker about her and Epstein’s interactions with a spate of prominent Democrats, including former New York governor Andrew Cuomo and billionaire Democratic donor George Soros.

Maxwell did not implicate any of those individuals in wrongdoing.

Maxwell said she worked with Bill Clinton on his philanthropic endeavors, and that he used Epstein’s plane for a trip to Africa. But she said Clinton never visited Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands, where Epstein was accused of abusing some girls.

Vice-president JD Vance said the FBI raids on former national security adviser John Bolton’s home and office were part of a legal process, not a political one against the now harsh critic of Donald Trump.

“We’re in the very early stages of an ongoing investigation into John Bolton. I will say we’re going to let that investigation proceed,” Vance said in an interview with MSNBC’s Meet the Press.

“What I can tell you is that, unlike the Biden DOJ and the Biden FBI, our law enforcement agencies are going to be driven by law and not by politics,” he added. “And so, if we think that Ambassador Bolton has committed a crime, of course, eventually prosecutions will come.”

It looks like more defense officials were fired, shortly after we reported today that defense secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed Lt Gen Jeffrey A Kruse​, who served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The Associated Press is reporting that V Adm Nancy Lacore, who was chief of the Navy Reserve, as well as R Adm Milton Sands, a navy SEAL officer who oversaw Naval Special Warfare Command, were also fired.

The reasons for their firings, the latest in a series of steps targeting military leaders, were not clear Friday.

Convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell said Hillary Clinton did not associate with Jeffrey Epstein, according to the recently-released transcripts of an interview conducted by Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, with Maxwell.

When Maxwell was asked if Epstein “knew or had any sort of visit, dealings or associated with Hillary Clinton,” Maxwell responded, “I would say no.”

“Did you ever see them together?,” asked Blanche. Maxwell responded “No.”

Maxwell was also asked whether Epstein ever did any business with the Clintons. She said he may have given money to their foundation.

“I think he did do that. And that, I believe, the money that he may have given could have been independent of me,” Maxwell said.

The Guardian’s Lauren Aratani brings us her analysis of Donald Trump’s push for steeper rate cuts and the Fed’s reality:

Stocks soared on Friday following the strongest signal yet that US the Federal Reserve is gearing up to start cutting interest rates again this fall. But how long can this celebration last?

While Wall Street cheered the biggest headline from the speech by the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, at the annual Jackson Hole symposium in Wyoming, Powell also delivered a reality check on where interest rates could settle in the longer term.

“We cannot say for certain where rates will settle out over the longer run, but their neutral level may now be higher than during the 2010s,” said Powell.

In other words: even if the Fed does start cutting interest rates again this year, they may not fall back to their pre-pandemic levels. It’s a signal, despite the short-term optimism on potential rate cuts, that the Fed’s long-term outlook is more unstable.

“Markets might be ahead of their skis on how aggressive the Fed is going to be in reducing interest rates, because the neutral rate might be higher than some believe,” Ryan Sweet, an economist at Oxford Economics, said.

Higher rates means borrowing money for loans, such as mortgages, will be more expensive. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was just under 3% in 2021, when interest rates were near zero.

Now the average mortgage rate is closer to 6.7%. Paired with home prices at near-record highs, elevated mortgages mean many Americans will continue to struggle to purchase a home.

Although Trump has been pushing the Fed for months to decrease rates to 1%, claiming that Powell is “hurting the housing industry very badly”, it seems unlikely that rates will return to such a level any time soon.

The Fed is trying to achieve a Goldilocks balance. Rates that are too high risk unemployment, while rates that are too low could mean higher inflation. Policymakers are searching for a “neutral” level, where everything is just right.

Read the full analysis here:

The Internal Revenue Service has halted planned layoffs and is offering jobs back to some employees who previously took the so-called “fork in the road” that encouraged staffers to take a buyout as the agency scrambles to boost staffing ahead of tax season, Axios reports.

The so-called “department of government efficiency’s” (Doge) early days made headlines for targeting government workers with layoffs and pushing others to resign.

But the IRS is now reversing course, joining other federal agencies, either rehiring terminated workers or pulling back on “reduction in force” plans.

In February, the IRS laid off roughly 7,000 workers in Washington and around the country.

Donald Trump announced that he named Sergio Gor to be the next US ambassador to India and special envoy for South and Central Asian affairs, according to a post on Truth Social.

Gor is currently the director of the White House presidential personnel office, and is slated to remain in that position until his confirmation.

“For the most populous Region in the World, it is important that I have someone I can fully trust to deliver on my Agenda and help us, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” Trump wrote on Friday.

Carol Alvarado, a Texas Democratic senator from Houston, says she intends to filibuster tonight in the Texas senate to delay Republicans from passing a redrawn congressional map.

“Republicans think they can walk all over us. Today I’m going to kick back.

I’ve submitted my intention to filibuster the new congressional maps. Going to be a long night,” she wrote in a post on X, accompanied by a picture of sneakers.

Democrats have gone back and forth with Phil King, the bill’s GOP sponsor, since this morning, trying to get him to admit that he considered race in drawing the maps.

The local television station KVUE has more on the rules Alvarado will have to follow as she filibusters the new congressional map.

Alvarado will not be able to eat or drink and must stand at her desk the whole time without breaks for the bathroom, the outlet reported.

The national guard personnel deployed on the streets of Washington DC will now be armed, a defense official confirmed to The Guardian.

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth authorized the nearly 2,000 of the national guard members to carry “service-issued weapons,” the official said.

“The Interim Commanding General of the D.C. National Guard retains the authority to make any necessary force posture adjustments in coordination with the D.C. Metropolitan Police and Federal law enforcement partners,” said the defense official.

The Pentagon and the US army had said last week that troops would not carry weapons.

In a Truth Social post, President Donald Trump announced that his administration is undergoing a “major tariff investigation” into imported furniture and is expected to release its findings within 50 days.

Trump said the US will impose tariffs (at a rate still to be determined) on foreign-made furniture, in efforts to revive the industry in states including North Carolina, South Carolina, and Michigan.

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth fired ​​Lt Gen Jeffrey A Kruse​, the military’s top intelligence officer. The Washington Post first reported the story.

Kruse, who served as Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) director, is the second senior Air Force general in a week to be forced out or retire unexpectedly. On Monday, Air Force chief of staff Gen David Allvin announced he was stepping down after just two years in the role, a position typically held for four years.

A spokesperson for the DIA told CBS News that deputy director Christine Bordine will assume the role of acting director “effective immediately.”

“The firing of yet another senior national security official underscores the Trump administration’s dangerous habit of treating intelligence as a loyalty test rather than a safeguard for our country,” said senator Mark Warner, vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, in a statement.

The firing comes a few months after details of the agency’s preliminary assessment of damage to Iranian nuclear sites from US strikes leaked to the media. It found that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months by the US strikes, contradicting assertions from Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

An update from the Texas senate, where Molly Cook, a Democratic lawmaker from Houston, is now questioning Phil King about the new Texas map.

Her line of questioning appears designed to highlight that the senator is not completely blind to race in Texas. She points out that he’s likely done polling in his own races that breaks down results by race and has analysed other statewide racial data as part of his job as a legislator.

“I have not drilled into racial data with regard to redistricting,” King says.

When asked about the ongoing discussions about a possible bilateral meeting between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president said it will be “interesting to see” whether that goes ahead.

Earlier he explained his decision to let the two leaders have a meeting together: “I could have been at the meeting, but a lot of people think that nothing’s going to come out of that meeting.”

Trump went on to say that he’ll know “one way or the other” about his next steps in two weeks. “It’s going to be a very important decision. And that’s whether or not it’s massive sanctions or massive tariffs, or both, or do we do nothing and say ‘it’s your fight,’” he said.

Earlier the president said he was “not happy” when asked about a US factory being hit during a Russian strike in Ukraine.

The FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, has gifted Donald Trump the first ticket to the 2026 World Cup’s final match.

The Texas senate is taking a brief recess amid questions about the state’s new congressional map.

State senator Phil King, the bill’s sponsor, has been taking questions for about an hour and a half from Democrats. In nearly all of their questions, Democrats have asked King questions about the racial makeup of the new districts. King has essentially said the same thing over and over – he did not consider racial data when looking at the map and the primary purpose why districts look the way they do is to benefit Republicans.

King has also conceded that he did not draw the maps himself and has been a lot more circumspect about what data mapmakers looked at when they drew lines.

The reason King is answering this way is because any concession that racial data was used would be a significant tool Democrats would use in expected legal fights ahead to argue that the new maps diminish the influence of minority voters in the state.

Police officers from around Georgia, and around the country, gathered on Friday morning at the First Baptist Church of Atlanta for a memorial service for police officer David Rose, who was killed on 8 August while fending off a gunman at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) headquarters.

“David Rose was a man whose life was defined by service,” said interim police chief David Padrick, noting his service in the Marine Corps before joining the county police force. “David was more than a co-worker. He was family.”

Rose was his class leader in the police academy, from which he graduated only six months before his death.

“As the class leader, you are expected to lead from the front and not the rear,” said sergeant Trey Jones, his instructor. “He carried himself with a calm presence and a clear sense of purpose … He was unshakable.”

Rose’s death has been met with a wide outpouring of grief in Atlanta. He was the father of two children. His wife is pregnant.

About 500 police officers filled the sanctuary. Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, attended, as did officers from as far away as New York City and Aurora, Colorado.

Many CDC employees also attended the memorial. Their grief was matched by fury at the Trump administration, which many said had been insufficiently supportive since the shooting, if not tacitly encouraging the anti-vaccine sentiment which drew the shooter to their door.

One remarkable thing evident from watching Texas state senator Phil King’s testimony about the state’s new congressional map is the way he openly says the map is being redrawn for partisan purposes.

“HB 4, I believe, should elect more Republicans to the US Congress,” King said.

This is an admission that would only be made behind closed doors a decade ago. But in 2019, the US supreme court said that federal courts could do nothing to stop gerrymandering for partisan purposes.

That is a huge boon for lawmakers. Since they are still prohibited from drawing lines based on race, they can get some legal protection by simply saying they are going to draw districts for partisan purposes. Lawmakers are betting that there will be no blowback from voting for openly admitting that they are doing this for partisan gain. Of course, the risk is also quite limited since they are in districts already drawn to virtually guarantee their re-election.

Texas state senator Phil King, the sponsor of the bill to enact the redrawn congressional map, is taking questions from Democrats in the Texas senate about the new map.

Democrats are asking questions about how the map was made that can be used in expected court challenges to the map.

King knows this and is using his remarks on the floor to try to immunize the map from future challenges. To bolster that effort, he’s insisting over and over again that he did not consider race or look at racial data when drawing the map.

“I also want you to know, and I can’t emphasize this enough, that I have not reviewed any racial data,” he said at the outset of his remarks.

The US supreme court has said that lawmakers are entitled to a “good faith” presumption in drawing maps, so Republicans will get a lot of leeway as long as they don’t openly admit to considering race.

As we’ve been reporting this morning, FBI agents have searched the home of John Bolton, a former adviser to Donald Trump turned persistent critic, this morning in what a source familiar with the matter told Reuters was part of a national security inquiry.

The investigation is focused on the potential criminal release of classified information, the source added.

An FBI spokesperson confirmed “court-authorized activity” in the area of Bolton’s home in the Washington suburb of Bethesda, Maryland, and also confirmed law enforcement activity at Bolton’s Washington DC office, earlier reported by CNN.

The president is planning to announce today that the 2026 World Cup draw will take place at the Kennedy Center in Washington this December, NBC News is reporting, citing a White House official.

The announcement combines Trump’s enthusiasm for the World Cup and his cultural realignment of the Kennedy Center. We’ll bring you more on that as it comes later.

Donald Trump has confirmed a Guardian report that he wants Russia and Ukraine to meet in a bilat before he intervenes again, although he acknowledged he might have to get involved.

We’re going to see Putin and Zelenskyy will be working together. It’s like oil and vinegar. They don’t get along too well, for obvious reasons. And then we’ll see whether or not I would have to be there. I’d rather not. I’d rather have them have a meeting and see how they can do.

Over the last couple of hours, key leaders in the justice department have co-signed FBI director Kash Patel’s minatory post on X as agents searched John Bolton’s Maryland home.

“America’s safety isn’t negotiable. Justice will be pursued. Always,” the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, wrote.

Meanwhile, Patel’s deputy, Dan Bongino, reposted the director’s comments, adding that “public corruption will not be tolerated” and continuing the cryptic messaging around the details of the raid.

Some more pictures are coming through of FBI agents carrying empty cardboard boxes into John Bolton’s home in Bethesda, Maryland.

Looking ahead today, we’ll actually hear from Donald Trump at noon ET, when he makes an announcement in the Oval Office.

On such a busy day of news, we can expect plenty of questions. We’ll bring you the latest as it gets under way.

Earlier, the Associated Press reported that after the search on Bolton’s home started, he was seen standing in the lobby of the Washington building where he keeps an office and talking to two people with “FBI” visible on their vests.

The AP also reported that Bolton left a few minutes after the conversation, and appeared to have gone upstairs in the building. Agents were seen taking bags into the office building through a back entrance.

Earlier, Benjamin Wittes – the editor of Lawfare – was livestreaming on the street near John Bolton’s house in Maryland as FBI agents conducted their search.

Wittes noted that “the statute of limitations is about to run out” – referring to the five-year time limit when it comes to prosecuting the disclosure or mishandling of classified documents (the crux of the Trump administration’s earlier lawsuit). But Wittes said it was unclear what exactly law enforcement are looking to recover, or the basis of the search warrant.

We’re now seeing some pictures of John Bolton’s wife, Gretchen, outside their Maryland home this morning as FBI agents search the property. Bolton told CNN earlier that he was not home during the raid and was unaware it was taking place.

The raid began at about 7am ET and was first reported by the New York Post. CNN also reported the news, saying its reporters had observed FBI officers near Bolton’s residence in Maryland and further reporting that Bolton, when reached, said he was not at home during the raid, nor was he aware of the law enforcement activity.

The FBI and Department of Justice did not immediately respond to requests from the Guardian for comment. A spokesperson for the FBI told the New York Times that agents were “conducting court-authorized activity in the area”.

Meghan Hays, who was a White House special adviser to Joe Biden, told CNN in an interview that the raid “seems extremely political, extremely petty” and said it smacks of “pure revenge” on the part of Trump and “poor use of FBI resources”.

Roger Stone, a longtime political operative who was prosecuted during the Russia investigation and later pardoned by Trump, posted on social media:

Good morning. John Bolton. How does it feel to have your home raided at 6 o’clock in the morning?

The Trump administration is ratcheting up pressure on the Federal Reserve to remove governor Lisa Cook, after the economist declared she had “no intention of being bullied” into stepping down.

Cook, who was appointed to the US central bank’s powerful board of governors by Joe Biden, has been accused by Donald Trump’s officials of committing mortgage fraud. The allegations are unconfirmed.

The US president has waged an extraordinary war on the Fed’s independence, breaking with precedent to demand interest rate cuts and urge its chair, Jerome Powell, to resign. Trump promptly called on Cook to quit on Wednesday.

The Department of Justice is reported to have indicated it is investigating the allegations, with a top Trump official telling Powell the case “requires further examination” – and calling on him to remove Cook from the Fed’s board.

“At this time, I encourage you to remove Ms Cook from your Board,” Ed Martin, the official, wrote in a letter, according to Bloomberg News. “Do it today before it is too late! After all, no American thinks it is appropriate that she serve during this time with a cloud hanging over her.”

The Fed declined to comment. The justice department declined to comment.

The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has repeatedly endorsed the Reformation Red Pill podcast, and has appeared on four episodes.

But the former pastor who hosts the show, and who attends Hegseth’s theocratic church, has voiced a range of extreme positions in recent months on issues including Ice raids, capital punishment, the racist “great replacement” theory, adultery and neo-Nazism.

The revelations come on top of recent media reports focused on Hegseth also boosting a video of Douglas Wilson and other Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC) pastors arguing that women should lose the vote in the United States. They also follow previous revelations about Hegseth’s links to or apparent sympathies for Christian nationalist positions.

Joshua Haymes is a member of the CREC-aligned Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship (PHRF), and his podcasts advocate for the CREC’s moral and theological positions. As the Guardian previously reported, he once served as a pastoral intern at the church. Online he has claimed that liberalism is a greater threat to the US than neo-Nazism, and that the Bible is “pro-Ice raids”. On X, he has also advocated for capital punishment for adultery and abortion, and appeared to call for the drowning of LGBTQ+ Pride marchers.

In an emailed comment, Haymes clarified his current professional role. “I am not a pastoral intern. I have gone full-time into media and content creation. I am not employed by Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship,” he said.

President Donald Trump’s administration is faltering in its aggressive pursuit of the death penalty as it revisits cases in which predecessors explicitly decided against seeking capital punishment, AP reports.

Since taking office in February, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has authorized prosecutors to seek the death penalty against 19 people, including nine defendants in cases in which president Joe Biden’s administration had sought lesser sentences.

But judges have blocked those reversal attempts for all but two defendants, most recently on Monday in a pair of cases in the US Virgin Islands, showing the limits of the Trump administration’s power to undo decisions in cases already well underway.

In pursuing capital punishment, the Justice Department is seeking to follow through on a Trump campaign promise to resume federal executions after they were halted by Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The Republican president’s Justice Department has accused the previous Democratic administration of supplanting “the will of the people with their own personal beliefs” in failing to seek death sentences in many cases involving horrific crimes.

Detailed opinions haven’t been issued in the most recent two cases, which involve a man accused of killing a police officer in 2022 and two men accused of armed robbery and murder in 2018. But other judges who have rejected reversal attempts on constitutional and procedural grounds were blunt in their assessment of the Trump administration’s approach.

“The government has proceeded hastily in this case, and in doing so has leapfrogged important constitutional and statutory rights,” Trump appointee US judge Stephanie Gallagher in Maryland wrote in June, striking the notice of intent to seek the death penalty against three alleged MS-13 gang members accused of killing two teenage girls in 2020. “That is unacceptable.”

The US vice-president, JD Vance, previewed in Georgia on Thursday the lines of attack candidates will use to defend the president’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act in the midterms next year, calling it “the biggest tax cut for families that this country has ever seen”.

Vance touted an increase in the child tax credit, the elimination of taxes on overtime and on tips in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act while speaking in a warehouse for ATLA Refrigeration in Peachtree City, Georgia.

Vance did not mention that only the first $25,000 of tips will be tax free and will require itemization to claim, something few service workers do because the standard deduction usually provides a larger benefit. Eliminating overtime taxes also applies to the first $12,500 of a filer’s overtime income, phasing out at $150,000 of income. The increase in the child tax credit is $200 a child under 17 to $2,200, which will now be indexed to inflation.

The event also served as a preview of the attacks Jon Ossof, the Georgia Democratic senator, will face in the bruising swing state battle to come next year.

The White House paired Vance’s appearance with an information blitz on the “working families” tax cut. Ossoff would come to regret voting against the bill, Vance said.

“In about a year, you are not going to be able to turn on the television without Senator John Ossoff pretending that he supported the working families tax cut, when in reality he voted against them,” Vance said.

California voters will decide in November whether to approve a redrawn congressional map designed to help Democrats win five more US House seats next year, after Texas Republicans advanced their own redrawn map to pad their House majority by the same number of seats at president Donald Trump’s urging.

California lawmakers voted mostly along party lines Thursday to approve legislation calling for the special election. Democratic governor Gavin Newsom, who has led the campaign in favor of the map, then quickly signed it – the latest step in a tit-for-tat gerrymandering battle, AP reported.

“This is not something six weeks ago that I ever imagined that I’d be doing,” Newsom said at a press conference, pledging a campaign for the measure that would reach out to Democrats, Republicans and independent voters. “This is a reaction to an assault on our democracy in Texas.”

Republicans, who have filed a lawsuit and called for a federal investigation into the plan, promised to fight the measure at the ballot box as well.

California Assemblyman James Gallagher, the Republican minority leader, said Trump was “wrong” to push for new Republican seats elsewhere, contending the president was just responding to Democratic gerrymandering in other states. But he warned that Newsom’s approach, which the governor has dubbed “fight fire with fire,” was dangerous.

“You move forward fighting fire with fire and what happens?” Gallagher asked. “You burn it all down.”

Texas’ redrawn maps still need a final vote in the Republican-controlled state Senate, which advanced the plan out of a committee Thursday but did not bring the measure to the floor. The Senate was scheduled to meet again Friday.