Rudy update; full Epstein file released; Secret Service dangerously lacking; courtroom updates continue:
Photo credit: USA Today
We know you’d like an update on Rudy Giuliani’s condition after his car wreck, but first there are over 33,295 pages of just-released Epstein documents to go through.
Kidding; we’ll update Rudy’s condition first, and that was a serious accident. In this must-read story from the New York Post, Rudy says this is “the hardest I’ve ever been hit in my whole life” and that he “felt more pain than maybe I ever felt.” He would’ve “gone right through the window” and been killed, he says, if he hadn’t been wearing his seat belt.
But he was so honored to hear he’d be receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom that “all of a sudden my pain went away.”
He’ll be in a back brace for the next two weeks to keep his spine in place, but he said, “I think within three or four weeks I’ll be completely recovered.” Thank God there was apparently no damage to his spinal cord and he’ll be up and around right away. And thank YOU for the many prayers.
As for those many thousands of pages of Epstein records, the DOJ provided them to the House Oversight Committee in response to a subpoena from Committee Chairman James Comer of Kentucky, who has now made them public.
Comer promises that still more records are coming, with the DOJ advising that they’ve taken care to protect victims’ identities and redact any material depicting child sexual abuse.
Before that redaction, there were more than 3 million pages. Kidding again. But however many of “those” pages there were, we will never see them, and that’s a good thing because then we’d have to immediately disinfect our eyeballs with bleach, which might cause us to suffer inconvenient side effects such as permanent blindness.
Comer’s committee met with six of Epstein’s victims behind closed doors on Monday and told reporters afterwards that they’ve named several “persons of interest” in that case. Comer remarked that this meeting with the victims was “as bipartisan as anything I’ve seen in the nine years I’ve been here,” which might not be saying a lot, but at least it shows this is possible.
According to House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, at least two of the women had never told their stories publicly before, so there were “tears in the room.”
“There was outrage,” he said. “...I would describe it as both heartbreaking and infuriating. That justice has been delayed so long.” Some of these women were being groomed by Epstein and his accomplices (including Ghislaine Maxwell) 30 years ago, he said. Some of them started civil litigation about 20 years ago. So, is justice delayed the same as justice denied? Let’s hope not.
Now that you’ve had a chance to read all of the approximately 34,000 pages of Epstein documents (kidding again), let’s move on to something that, if not quickly rectified, could lead to tragedy in the here and now.
In a report released Tuesday, Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cufari concluded that the U.S. Secret Service counter-sniper teams are dangerously understaffed. They’re spread so thin, qualified marksmen are working overtime, and gaps are filled by less qualified shooters, some borrowed from other agencies. This happened during the 2024 campaign and, yes, even at Trump’s January 2025 inauguration.
As reported by John Solomon, this revelation is the latest sign that the Secret Service “is still dealing with legacy shortcomings and strategic failures that were first exposed by the assassination attempt on President Trump in July 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania.”
The IG report reveals, shockingly, that the counter-sniper team is staffed at 73 percent below “the level necessary to meet mission requirements.” Not 73 percent there --- 73 percent BELOW. And what is their mission? To keep their protectees, most notably the President of the United States, safe from attempts on their lives. But then, what are the odds that anyone would want to kill the President?
Here’s the full report.
On the bright side, at least the Trump-led Secret Service responded by saying it agreed with this assessment and was working quickly to rectify the shortage of skilled personnel. Wherever they have to get their shooters, this needs to happen TODAY.
Moving to the courts...of course you know that on August 29, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (DC) deemed President Trump’s tariffs “mostly illegal.” But senior White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro said on the latest edition of FOX News Sunday Morning Futures that he’s “very optimistic” the Supreme Court will overturn their order.
“This was weaponized partisan injustice at its worst,” Navarro said, calling the majority who came to this 7-4 decision “politicians in black robes.”
The “very, very strong” dissent “provides a roadmap for the Supreme Court.”
“If we lose the case,” he said, “President Trump is right: it will be the end of the United States.”
This report from The Epoch Times is a must-read, with lots more detail on the case…
On Tuesday, we had two more “Will this garbage never end?” court rulings. First, two Obama-appointed judges on the DC Court of Appeals (naturally) ruled that Trump must rehire a Biden appointee whom he fired from the Federal Trade Commission. In a scathing dissent, the Trump-appointed Judge noted that the Supreme Court has ruled in Trump’s favor on two similar cases, and said this injunction interferes with the President’s exclusive executive powers and creates confusion by ordering FTC commissioners to ignore and act contrary to a direct order from the President.
And in another 2-1 ruling, a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals panel sided with “immigrant” lawyers and ruled that Trump cannot cite the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport violent foreign gangs like Tren de Aragua. Two of the judges ruled that they "found no invasion or predatory incursion" in this case, i.e., that they determined Tren de Aragua did not constitute a dangerous invading force. We’re not sure why we even bother having a President to handle national security when federal judges obviously know so much more about deciding what constitutes a threat to the homeland.
Dissenting Judge Andrew Oldham said the majority was second-guessing the President’s decisions on foreign policy and national security, areas where the courts have granted him great deference, and their “approach to this case is not only unprecedented—it is contrary to more than 200 years of precedent."
Expect to hear more about these cases, which are already on appeal and, we hope, will be tossed into the trash can of history along with sharp rebukes to the lower courts. Let’s hope they listen this time, before Congress has to scrap the entire federal court system and replace it with something that respects the Constitution.
In yet another corruption story, one we’ve had no inkling of, let’s hop over to Pennsylvania, where a Democrat commissioner in Lehigh County is one of two dozen suspects arrested Thursday in connection with an alleged massive drug ring that also extends to Illinois, New York and Wisconsin. County Commissioner Zach Cole-Borghi was cuffed at Bethlehem City Hall, where he works as an open-records officer.
Cole-Borghi was charged with possession of marijuana and possession with the intent to deliver a pound of it. He was released on $50,000 bond.
On Friday, Lehigh County DA Gavin Holihan explained that the alleged ring started about three years ago and that their investigation has been geographically extensive and therefore “multi-jurisdictional.” Arrests were also made Thursday in Wisconsin and the city of Chicago, with warrants out “for people in multiple counties in Pennsylvania, as well as the state of New York, as well as the state of New Jersey, Philadelphia --- so, a wide-ranging conspiracy.”
Holihan said they recovered “a massive haul” of evidence related to this case, including lots of drugs (much more than pot) and at least 25 firearms, including semi-automatic rifles and ghost guns (!). Rough stuff. It’s hard out there for a pusher...
The grand jury investigation continues, and, as reported by The Blaze, “the extent of Cole-Borghi’s alleged participation in drug trafficking is unclear.” As of their update Tuesday, he had not resigned his seat on the board of commissioners. Also, without a judge’s order, his name cannot be removed from the November ballot, as the deadline to withdraw his name and substitute another candidate has passed. His name and picture remain on the commissioners’ website, though on Tuesday morning there was no accompanying biographical information. His listing (third from the top) just says “profile information coming soon.”
And, no, that’s not a mug shot, although it kind of resembles one.
For now, we’re kind of left hanging on this story, with much more certainly to come. As of this writing, no other names of those charged have been released. Here’s what The Blaze had as of Tuesday.
As reported in yesterday’s newsletter, good ol’ Jeb Boasberg, chief judge of the DC District Court and self-appointed Trump nemesis, is back in the news again for releasing a clearly unhinged woman who has been threatening Trump wildly on social media, saying she was willing to (apologies for the disturbing imagery here) “sacrificially kill this POTUS by disemboweling him and cutting out his trachea.” She would attack him “with a bladed object.”
Nathalie Rose Jones (“allegedly”) made these threats directly to the Secret Service. After agreeing voluntarily to be interviewed by agents in New York, this pharmacist and pro-COVID vaccine activist (surprise) had instead taken off for DC, where she attended the August 16 “No Fascist Takeover of DC” rally. The Secret Service caught up with her in DC that day and searched her car; not finding any weapons, they let her go. (Editorial aside: Wow, this might be something besides the lack of counter-snipers to take up with the Secret Service.)
But later in the afternoon, after she approached the White House fence line, she was arrested and charged with two counts of making threats against the President. U.S. Attorney for DC Jean Pirro announced that Jones will be prosecuted “to the full extent of the law,” and a magistrate judge in DC smartly denied bail and ordered a competency evaluation. To Judge Boasberg, though, whose deep-seated TDS might not involve dreams of sharp objects but in some ways seems to rival this woman’s, Jones did not need to be detained, so he reversed the magistrate’s order. To Boasberg, all the assurance Trump needed for his personal safety was that she would be wearing an ankle monitor (SO effective!) and be ordered to see a psychiatrist.
So, WHO else in this story needs to see a psychiatrist? Do we have to say it?
In her column Tuesday, Julie Kelly expressed concern that Judge Boasberg is actually endangering President Trump. It’s not enough, she said, that he’s been wielding his considerable power to “sabotage Trump’s agenda.” He’s gone beyond that now. In Kelly’s words, “he’s taking his animus toward the President to a new, and dangerous, level.”
Oh, and he has help in DC. Thanks to Kelly’s report, we have the shocking-but-increasingly-not-surprising update that a DC grand jury has refused to indict Jones for her threats. Her public defender is now asking the court to drop ALL conditions of release, including the ankle monitor, for what that was worth. Care to predict how this will go?
The additional details in Kelly’s story make it a must-read.
But we’ll end with a story about a positive judicial move. Remember Obama-appointed DC Judge Tanya Chutkan’s injunction to stop the EPA from calling back that $20 billion slush fund for Biden-era “climate” grants? EPA head Lee Zeldin had terminated those grants after a Project Veritas undercover video showed an EPA adviser bragging that billions of dollars had quickly been allocated to climate change initiatives in advance of Trump’s re-inauguration. You might recall that this was the guy who said, “We’re throwing gold bars off the Titanic.”
Chutkan had ordered that Citibank unfreeze the funds by this Thursday and distribute them to the various “nonprofits.”
But a three-judge federal appeals panel has reversed Chutkan’s injunction, and the majority opinion absolutely rips her. (Wow, how many ways can one judge be wrong?)