House committee releases tranche of Epstein records as White House fights petition to release all Epstein files
The Republican-led House oversight committee has released more than 33,000 pages of documents related to the federal investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender whose long friendship with Donald Trump has raised questions about what the president knew and when he knew it.
The records were posted online as the White House urged Republican lawmakers not to support a discharge petition from Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, and Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, which would force the release of all of the Epstein files.
Asked by Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, whether or not he supports the discharge petition, James Comer, the Republican chair of the committee, said on Tuesday that there was no need for that vote since the committee had now subpoenaed the records. The question of how many of those files were obtained by the committee, and how many will be released by the committee remains unanswered.
However, Massie told Axios on Tuesday that the selection of documents released by the committee would not stop him from trying to get a majority of House members to sign his petition to force a vote for the release of all of the files. “My staff has done a quick look at it and it looks like a bunch of redacted documents and nothing new, so it’s not going to suffice,” the congressman said.
The Massie and Khanna petition would require the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to publicly release all unclassified Epstein records in the possession of the justice department, including the FBI and US attorneys’ offices.
Massie and Khanna have scheduled a news conference with some of Epstein’s victims on Wednesday.
Reporters reviewing the files released by Comer’s committee agreed that so far, they appear to mostly contain information that was already publicly known.
Key events
Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of another day in the life of the second Trump administration, with Donald Trump once again stepping before the cameras, but still hiding his bruised right hand beneath a layer of makeup. We will be back on Wednesday. Here are the latest developments:
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The Republican-led House oversight committee released more than 33,000 pages of documents related to the federal investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender whose long friendship with Donald Trump has raised questions about what the president knew and when he knew it.
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Democrats called the limited release a ruse by Republicans, given that 97% of the Epstein records posted online were already public, and renewed their calls for all of the Epstein files to be released.
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In a post on his social network on Tuesday, Donald Trump wrote that the US military killed 11 members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua in a strike on a boat in international waters.
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While the White house shared video of the US military strike on a small speedboat off the coast of Venezuela, the administration offered no evidence that the 11 passengers who were killed were smuggling drugs, and there were questions about what legal authority licensed the use of lethal force.
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A US appeals court reinstated Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter on Tuesday, ruling that her attempted firing by Trump was unlikely to survive her legal challenge.
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Trump announced that he is moving US Space Command headquarters from Colorado to Alabama, and then offered false of misleading answers to questions from reporters on court rulings that his use of troops for law enforcement in Los Angeles was illegal, and so are most of his tariffs.
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The president claimed that video of a garbage bag being tossed out a White House window must have been “AI-generated” even though his aides had already acknowledged that the video was genuine.
Trump miffed by China’s massive military parade to mark 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender ending second world war
Watching from afar, Donald Trump channeled his bitterness at not being present for China’s huge military parade, to mark the surrender of Japan 80 years ago, ending the second world war, into a post on his social network.
As President Xi Jinping of China oversaw a celebration that downplayed the role of the United States in defeating imperial Japan, Trump posted: “The big question to be answered is whether or not President Xi of China will mention the massive amount of support and ‘blood’ that The United States of America gave to China in order to help it to secure its FREEDOM from a very unfriendly foreign invader.”
The US president added a somewhat confusing reference to the leaders of Russia and North Korea, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, who were greeted as honored guests.
“May President Xi and the wonderful people of China have a great and lasting day of celebration”, Trump wrote. “Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America.”
Was lethal US strike on accused drug traffickers illegal?
While the White House, the president, the secretary of state, the defense secretary and the deputy chief of staff have all shared video of the US military strike on a small speedboat off the coast of Venezuela on Tuesday, with barely suppressed glee, the administration has offered no evidence that the 11 passengers who were killed were smuggling drugs, or cited any clear legal authority for the use of lethal force.
“Drug trafficking is not a capital crime; it doesn’t carry a death sentence”, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a lawyer at the American Immigration Council, observed. “I genuinely cannot think of anything under U.S. law that would permit premeditated government assassination of people suspected of drug trafficking.”
“Even if they had ironclad proof, the fact that they had the boat under clear surveillance means they could have stopped it in U.S. waters, arrested the people on board, and tried them in a court of law”, he added. “What legal excuse could they have for killing them? Can’t think of one!”
“There is zero evidence of self-defense here. Looks like a massacre of civilians at sea. Even if they had drugs aboard, that’s not a capital offense”, Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group, noted on Bluesky in response to the video of the attack.
“Lethal force against a civilian vessel in international waters is a war crime if not in self-defense”, he added. “If not in self-defense, only non-lethal actions, such as warning shots or disabling fire, are allowed. ‘Not yielding to pursuers’ or ‘suspected of carrying drugs’ doesn’t carry a death sentence.”
Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, described the strike against suspected members of a transnational gang, Tren de Aragua, which the administration added to a list of terrorist groups in February, as an act of war. “We are going to age combat against drug cartels that are flooding American streets and killing Americans”, he told reporters, while referring questions about the legal authority for the strike to the White House counsel’s office.
A senior defense official likewise told The Intercept that “the U.S. military conducted a precision strike against a drug vessel operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization.”’
During his first term and then again during his campaign to return to office, Donald Trump repeatedly called for “everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts”.
Tuesday’s extrajudicial execution of the suspected drug smugglers comes decades after Trump loudly campaigned for the execution of five young men of color, who were wrongly accused of raping a female jogger in New York’s Central Park.
Appeals court reinstates federal trade commissioner removed by Trump
A US appeals court reinstated Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter on Tuesday, ruling that her attempted firing by Donald Trump was unlikely to survive her legal challenge.
The court said that FTC members may not be fired by a president without cause, saying that the law on this point has been clear for nearly a century.
“The government is not likely to succeed on appeal because any ruling in its favor from this court would have to defy binding, on-point, and repeatedly preserved Supreme Court precedent,” two judges wrote in the majority opinion.
Judge Neomi Rao, who was nominated by Trump, dissented, arguing that federal courts likely have no authority “to order the reinstatement of an officer removed by the President.”
“Amid the efforts by the Trump [administration] to illegally abolish independent agencies, [including] the Federal Reserve, I’m glad the court has recognized that he is not above the law”, Slaughter posted in response. “I’m eager to get back first thing tomorrow to the work I was entrusted to do on behalf of the American people.”
The FTC enforces consumer protection and antitrust laws.
Trump himself had appointed Slaughter to her first term on the FTC in 2018. Joe Biden then made her the FTC’s acting chair in January 2021, and appointed her to a second term in 2023, which is to end in September 2029.
Under the FTC’s bipartisan structure, no more than three of the five commissioners can come from the same party. Congress placed restrictions on the hiring and firing of commissioners in an effort to insulate the agency from partisan politics.
Trump fired the two Democratic commissioners on the FTC in March, in a major test for the independence of regulatory agencies.
The dispute over Trump’s firing of Slaughter and fellow commissioner Alvaro Bedoya will likely end up before the US supreme court, which ruled 90 years ago that FTC commissioners may be dismissed only for good cause, such as neglecting their duties. Bedoya formally resigned in June to take another job and is not part of the case.
House Democrats say 97% of Epstein records released by Republicans are not new and demand release of full Epstein files
After meeting on Tuesday with some of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, Democrats on the House oversight committee called for the release of all of the files on the late sex offender in possession of the federal government, and described the release of 33,295 pages of documents related to the late sex offender by Republicans a ruse, given that 97% of the records were already public.
After the committee met with the survivors of Epstein’s abuse, Robert Garcia, a California Democrat, posted: “Release all the files NOW.”
“Most of the documents that were sent to our committee,” Garcia explained, were the same previously released records “given to rightwing influencers back in February”, in what was widely viewed as a stunt to create the appearances of transparency.
“Today we heard from some of the women and girls who survived Epstein’s abuse,” Summer Lee, a Pennsylvania Democrat, said after the roundtable with the survivors. “It is clear the government has failed these survivors. Now it’s our responsibility to deliver justice and the peace and healing they deserve. We need the full files and accountability now.”
“We cannot powerful abusers to account without centering those survivors and doing it on the Congressional record to give that transparency to the public as well,” Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley said. “And then, finally, this discharge petition does need to come to the floor so that we can get all of the files.”
“One of the things that was said over and over again today was that the investigation is not complete,” she added. “The investigation is not even done, so we need all of this.”
House committee releases tranche of Epstein records as White House fights petition to release all Epstein files
The Republican-led House oversight committee has released more than 33,000 pages of documents related to the federal investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender whose long friendship with Donald Trump has raised questions about what the president knew and when he knew it.
The records were posted online as the White House urged Republican lawmakers not to support a discharge petition from Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, and Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, which would force the release of all of the Epstein files.
Asked by Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, whether or not he supports the discharge petition, James Comer, the Republican chair of the committee, said on Tuesday that there was no need for that vote since the committee had now subpoenaed the records. The question of how many of those files were obtained by the committee, and how many will be released by the committee remains unanswered.
However, Massie told Axios on Tuesday that the selection of documents released by the committee would not stop him from trying to get a majority of House members to sign his petition to force a vote for the release of all of the files. “My staff has done a quick look at it and it looks like a bunch of redacted documents and nothing new, so it’s not going to suffice,” the congressman said.
The Massie and Khanna petition would require the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to publicly release all unclassified Epstein records in the possession of the justice department, including the FBI and US attorneys’ offices.
Massie and Khanna have scheduled a news conference with some of Epstein’s victims on Wednesday.
Reporters reviewing the files released by Comer’s committee agreed that so far, they appear to mostly contain information that was already publicly known.
Trump says US military killed 11 members of Tren de Aragua in international waters off Venezuela
In a post on his social network on Tuesday, Donald Trump wrote that the US military killed 11 members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua in a strike on a boat in international waters.
The post was illustrated by what appeared to be video of the strike, marked “unclassified”, which was quickly picked up and broadcast by the Colombian news network Noticias Caracol.
Trump’s post described the gang members as “terrorists” who were “transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States” at the time. He offered no evidence for that claim.
The president also described the gang as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization, operating under the control of Nicolas Maduro”, the president of Venezuela.
Although the Trump administration invoked the claim that Tren de Aragua is directed by Venezuela’s government to justify its use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport men it claims were members of the gang to a high-security prison in El Salvador earlier this year, the New York Times reported in March that a US intelligence community assessment concluded that the gang, Tren de Aragua, is not controlled by Maduro’s government.
Tom Phillips
The US military has conducted “a lethal strike” against an alleged “drug vessel” from Venezuela, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has announced amid growing tensions between Washington and Caracas.
Donald Trump trailed the announcement during an address at the White House on Tuesday afternoon, telling reporters the US had “just, over the last few minutes, literally shot out … a drug-carrying boat”.
“And there’s more where that came from. We have a lot of drugs pouring into our country,” the US president added. “We took it out,” he said of the boat.
Shortly after, Rubio offered further details of the incident on social media, tweeting that the military had “conducted a strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela and was being operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization”.
It was not immediately clear what kind of vessel had been targeted, or, crucially, if the incident had taken place inside the South American country’s territorial waters.
Chris Stein
John Thune, the Republican Senate majority leader, has warned Democrats that he may move to change the chamber’s rules around confirmations if they do not agree to more quickly approve Donald Trump’s nominees.
With the exception of secretary of state Marco Rubio, Democrats have forced time-consuming roll call votes on every single executive nominee Trump has made since taking office in January. Under previous administrations, including Joe Biden and Trump’s first term, senators from both parties agreed to confirm some nominees, typically for less controversial positions, by unanimous voice votes.
In a floor speech on Tuesday, Thune warned that he may go ahead with plans to change Senate rules to prevent the Democrats from forcing votes on every nominee.
“I’m here to tell my Democrat colleagues that their historic obstruction cannot continue”, he said, adding that 302 nominees were awaiting confirmation.
“If Democrats continue to obstruct, if they continue to drag out confirmation of every single one of the nominations of a duly elected president, if they continue to slow the Senate’s business to such a drastic degree, then we’re going to have to take steps to get this process back on a reasonable footing”.
Democrats have countered by arguing that Trump’s appointees are not qualified, and that they will not support a president who has tried to usurp Congress’s authorities on matters such as spending since taking office.
“Historically bad nominees deserve a historic level of scrutiny by Senate Democrats”, minority leader Chuck Schumer said last month.
Back in front of the cameras, Trump misleads on tariffs, viral video and judge’s ruling troops in LA broke the law
Following Donald Trump’s announcement that he is moving US Space Command headquarters from Colorado to Alabama, in part, he suggested, to punish Colorado for using vote-by-mail, the president took questions from reporters in the White House pool for the first time in a week. Several of his answers were false or misleading.
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Asked to comment on the federal appeals court ruling last week that most of his tariffs are illegal, Trump falsely claimed that the US has taken in trillions of dollars” because of the tariffs. Actual tariff revenue in 2025 is about $115bn, as the economist Justin Wolfers has pointed out, which has been paid by American importers, not, as Trump claims, other countries. The president said that the administration will be asking the supreme court to issue an expedited ruling to reverse the appeals court finding that he exceeded his authority under the 1977 International Economic Emergency Act by imposing tariffs without the consent of Congress.
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While dismissing rumors about his health, prompted by his sudden lack of public appearances, and a persistent bruise on his right hand that was again covered by makeup on Tuesday, Trump was shown video of a garbage bag being tossed out of an upper floor of the White House over the weekend and claimed that it must have been “AI-generated”, since, he said, the windows are too heavy to lift and “sealed”. But the White House has already acknowledged that the video was genuine and said that contractors had thrown the material out the window.
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On his deployment of troops in Los Angeles, Trump was asked to respond to the ruling from a federal judge in California on Tuesday that the use of troops to enforce the law was illegal and must stop. He bristled at the question, accusing the reporter who asked him of making “a statement”, and of leaving out what he said was an important detail. “The judge said that you can leave the 300 people that you already have in place. They can stay. They can remain. They can do what they have to do”, the president claimed.
In fact, Judge Charles Breyer ruled that the troops Trump ordered to Los Angeles had clearly violated the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, prohibiting the military from being used for law enforcement, and issued an injunction blocking them from carrying out any such activities from now on.
Referring to the Trump administration, the judge wrote: “at Defendants’ orders and contrary to Congress’s explicit instruction, federal troops executed the laws. The evidence at trial established that Defendants systematically used armed soldiers (whose identity was often obscured by protective armor) and military vehicles to set up protective perimeters and traffic blockades, engage in crowd control, and otherwise demonstrate a military presence in and around Los Angeles. In short, Defendants violated the Posse Comitatus Act.”
The 300 National Guard troops who remain stationed in Los Angeles, the judge wrote: “have already been improperly trained as to what activities they can and cannot engage in under the Posse Comitatus Act. Further, President Trump’s recent executive orders and public statements regarding the National Guard raise serious concerns as to whether he intends to order troops to violate the Posse Comitatus Act elsewhere in California.”
As a result, Breyer ordered, the administration is now “enjoined from deploying, ordering, instructing, training, or using the National Guard currently deployed in California, and any military troops heretofore deployed in California, to execute the laws, including but not limited to engaging in arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control, evidence collection, interrogation, or acting as informants”.
No Kings mass protests set for 18 October
The coalition behind the “No Kings” rally have announced another mass protest set for 18 October.
The nationwide protest that turned out hundreds of thousands of people is rooted in Trump’s threats to send militarized forces into different American cities and his detention and encampment of immigrants, the organizers say.
“I would love to receive calls from governors and mayors saying they need help” Trump said about deploying national guard across the country while in the Oval Office. “We’ll help them, we have a lot of people, we have a great military force.”
Trump: ‘Would be honored’ to get a call from Illinois governor for national guard
Trump said “he would be honored” to take a call from Illinois governor JB Pritzker to send national guard to his state.
“I would love to have governor Pritzker call me”, Trump said. I’d gain respect for him and say we do have a problem, and we’d love to send in the troops, because you know what the people they have to be protected.”
Trump said because of the national guard roaming around DC, new restaurants will open up in the city.
“Washington DC is a safe zone right now, it’s a safe city” he said. “This took place in 12 days, now it’s 15 days, but three days ago it became what’s known as a safe zone”.
“We took 1,600 people out,” Trump said.
