{"id":172452,"date":"2025-11-19T22:35:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T22:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/live-updates-trump-expected-to-sign-bill-to-release-the-dojs-epstein-files-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T22:35:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T22:35:20","slug":"live-updates-trump-expected-to-sign-bill-to-release-the-dojs-epstein-files-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/live-updates-trump-expected-to-sign-bill-to-release-the-dojs-epstein-files-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Live updates: Trump expected to sign bill to release the DOJ's Epstein files – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lawyers for former FBI Director James Comey were in court today to argue that charges that he lied to Congress should be dismissed.
Former Trump White House attorney\u00a0Ty\u00a0Cobb\u00a0said in an interview today that the case against Comey is \u201cdead\u201d in light of the revelation that the federal grand jury was not presented with the full indictment<\/a>.
\u201cThe fact that the grand jury never saw this indictment and only the foreperson approved it really makes the indictment a nullity,\u201d\u00a0Cobb\u00a0told moderator Kristen Welker on \u201cMeet the Press NOW<\/a>\u201d this afternoon.\u00a0
Cobb\u00a0also said Lindsey Halligan \u2014 the acting U.S attorney for Eastern Virginia who is presiding over the Comey prosecution \u2014 as well as Attorney General Pam Bondi could face disciplinary action based on their conduct, saying, \u201cI think Halligan and Bondi for sure could face disciplinary action, because Bondi has twice affirmed the purported legitimacy of Halligan\u2019s grand jury presentation before the court, and you know that those affirmations, you know, were false.\u201d
The House Ethics Committee has voted to create an investigative subcommittee to examine whether Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., violated any \u201claw, rule, regulation, or other applicable standard of conduct,\u201d according to a press release from the committee chair and ranking member.\u00a0
The subcommittee will investigate Mills for several possible violations, including whether he broke campaign finance laws or improperly solicited gifts as well as allegations of sexual misconduct.\u00a0
This announcement comes just hours after Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., introduced a privileged resolution to censure Mills. Democrats had also offered a censure of him yesterday but withdrew it after Republican’s attempt to censure Del. Stacey Plaskett, D-U.S. Virgin Islands, failed.\u00a0
The Ethics Committee is made up of an equal number of Republicans and Democrats. The members of the subcommittee have not yet been announced but the\u00a0full list of the committee is here.<\/a>
The wife of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Hanan Elatr Khashoggi, said she was upset by Trump\u2019s defense of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Trump said the crown prince knew nothing about the killing of Khashoggi by Saudi agents in 2018, offering a fierce defense of the visiting crown prince that contradicted a U.S. intelligence assessment.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker often warns that Trump might deploy military-style forces during the midterms to intimidate voters. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., has said Trump is signaling to supporters that he would forgive political violence on his behalf in future elections. And California Gov. Gavin Newsom has cast doubt on whether those elections will occur at all.
For months, the Trump administration has surged immigration agents and National Guard troops in Democratic-run cities, citing emergencies tied to crime or immigration. But leading elected officials on the left have increasingly speculated something far darker is afoot: a plan to undermine future elections.
\u201cThey clearly are looking to do everything to discredit elections, to sow distrust and claim fraud when they lose in 2026,\u201d Pritzker said in an interview. \u201cI\u2019m not a conspiracy theorist. I don\u2019t think like one. But it\u2019s hard to avoid the evidence here. … When you put all this together, it\u2019s hard not to wonder and think seriously that there is something in this about the 2026 elections for Donald Trump.\u201d
Read the full story here.<\/em><\/strong><\/a>
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg is reviving his criminal contempt proceedings<\/a> in an Alien Enemies Act case stemming from the government\u2019s potential \u201cwillful disregard\u201d on March 15, when planes with immigrants were taking off and traveling toward El Salvador, contrary to Boasberg\u2019s orders.\u00a0
At a hearing this afternoon in federal court in Washington, Boasberg ordered both sides to provide proposals for how to proceed, along with a list of witnesses to start the process, by Monday24.
He said they\u2019ll start with requiring sworn declarations to be filed by those involved with the decisions surrounding the deportations of the more than 137 people sent to El Salvador and move into live witness testimony if he finds the declarations are not sufficient or he has further questions.\u00a0
Boasberg mentioned fired Justice Department attorney Erez Reuveni and current Justice Department official Drew Ensign as two people to begin with. \u201cWe\u2019ll begin to get an idea of what happened here, and then we\u2019ll see where that leads,\u201d he said.\u00a0
An appeals court said <\/a>this month it<\/a> would not reinstate an order<\/a> in which Boasberg said he believed \u201cprobable cause exists\u201d to hold administration officials in contempt for violating his orders. The appeals court did say he \u201cremains free to require the government to identify the decision makers who directed the potentially contemptuous actions and to carefully consider next steps.\u201d
Trump said he will start “working” on resolving the Sudanese civil war after a discussion of the matter with Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman. According to Trump, the crown prince explained “the whole culture and whole history” of Sudan, which he found “very interesting.”
“His Majesty would like me to do something very powerful having to do with Sudan. It was not on my charts to be involved in that,” Trump said. “I thought it was just something that was crazy and out of control, but I just see how important that is to you and to a lot of your friends in the room, and we’re going to start working in Sudan.”
The Sudanese civil war between the country’s army and the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group, has been raging since 2023. An estimated 150,000<\/a> people have been killed <\/a>and over 11 million have been displaced as a result of the war, which human rights groups consider one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., will try to censure fellow Republican Rep. Cory Mills of Florida today, a source familiar with the matter said.
Her resolution is expected to be privileged, meaning the House would be required to vote on it.
Mace also wrote to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., urging that Mills be removed from the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees, citing what she called his \u201cseries of alarming ethical, legal, and personal misconduct allegations.\u201d
Mills\u2019 office did not respond to a request for comment on Mace\u2019s effort to take punitive action against him.
Mills has been mired in several controversies. Most recently, a judge issued a restraining order<\/a> for one of his ex-girlfriends, who has accused him of harassment and blackmail.
Democrats have threatened to censure Mills several times but backed off.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, also a Florida Republican, said on the floor yesterday that Mills shouldn\u2019t run for re-election.
Johnson has stood by Mills so far.
Trump said at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum this afternoon that he “may take a little heat” from his MAGA supporters over his advocacy of H-1B visas to attract “certain talents” to the United States.
\u201cI may take a little heat, I always take a little heat from my people, the people that love me and the people that I love, they happen to be toward the right of center,” Trump said in lengthy remarks at the Kennedy Center. \u201cI love my conservative friends, I love MAGA, but this is MAGA.\u201d
Trump appeared to be alluding to his argument that H-1B visas are necessary to attract workers from abroad<\/a>, an idea that has drawn criticism<\/a> from some of his MAGA and conservative supporters.
“Those people are going to teach our people how to make computer chips, and in a short period of time our people are going to be doing great and those people can go home where they probably always want to be,” he said.
Trump added that companies can’t open a computer chip factory in the United States and expect to “hire people off an unemployment line to run it.”
Republicans in at least a half-dozen counties in Texas are considering or have made plans to count ballots by hand in next March\u2019s primary elections, a move that\u2019s financially costly and could inject uncertainty into key contests.
Texas Republicans who are pushing for the shift argue that voting machines that normally handle the process are unreliable, a position Trump and his allies have been pushing for years, despite a lack of evidence. But voting experts and Democrats warn that hand-counting could result in errors, delays in final results and post-election litigation.
Texas tasks political parties, rather than local governments, with running Election Day voting in primaries, giving partisan officials unusual say over election administration. Democrats and Republicans in the state often administer elections jointly, outsourcing the job to the county election officials, and their expenses are reimbursed by the secretary of state.
Read the full story here.<\/em><\/strong><\/a>
Larry Summers, the former treasury secretary and ex-president of Harvard University, announced today that he would resign from the board of directors at OpenAI amid scrutiny of his connection to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein \u2014 ties that are the subject of a new internal investigation at the Ivy League school.
\u201cIn line with my announcement to step away from my public commitments, I have also decided to resign from the board of OpenAI,\u201d Summers said in a statement. \u201cI am grateful for the opportunity to have served, excited about the potential of the company, and look forward to following their progress.\u201d
Summers, who was treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and a top economic adviser to President Barack Obama,\u00a0joined OpenAI\u2019s board<\/a>\u00a0in November 2023.
Read the full story here.<\/em><\/strong><\/a>
An attorney for the Justice Department, Tyler Lemons, repeatedly dodged questions from the judge about reports that prosecutors in U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan’s office had recommended Comey not be charged because of insufficient evidence, and said he’d been directed to be tight-lipped.
Asked if, as NBC News<\/a> and other news outlets have reported, there was a “declination memo” advising against charges, Lemons responded, \u201cAt this point, my posture would be whether one existed would be privileged.\u201d\u00a0
U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff didn’t like the answer and said he’d been looking for a yes or no response. \u201cYou are not permitted by someone to answer?\u201d the judge asked.\u00a0
Lemons eventually said he’d been directed by the deputy attorney general’s office to keep privileged information close to the vest. He acknowledged to the judge that there had been a memo from the prosecution team and he had reviewed it, but did not go into detail.
The prosecutor also denied that Halligan was simply doing Trump’s bidding when she charged Comey.
\u201cIt was her decision and her decision only,\u201d Lemons said. “Ms. Halligan was not a puppet.”
Tom Steyer, the billionaire philanthropist and Democratic climate activist who unsuccessfully ran for president in 2020, is jumping into the crowded race to be the next governor of California.
Steyer joins a crowded and uncertain field vying to replace term-limited Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom next fall. Prominent Democratic candidates include former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, former Rep. Katie Porter and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, with other prominent candidates also musing about a potential bid.
Despite the state\u2019s Democratic lean, some prominent Republicans are running too, including Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and former Fox News host Steve Hilton.
Read the full story here.<\/em><\/strong><\/a>
The hearing in the Comey case is underway, with an attorney for the former FBI director urging the judge to dismiss the charges against his client on the argument that he’s the victim of a “selective and vindictive” prosecution.
\u201cThis is an extraordinary case, and it merits and extraordinary remedy,\u201d the lawyer, Michael Dreeben, told U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff at the federal courthouse in Alexandria.
Dreeben pointed to statements from the president demanding that Comey be prosecuted.
He asked the judge to dismiss the case “with prejudice,” meaning the charges could not be refiled. Comey is in court for the hearing.
Many of the largest and most widely established state-sponsored online propaganda campaigns have embraced using artificial intelligence, a new report finds \u2014 and they\u2019re often bad at it.
The report, by the social media analytics company Graphika, analyzed nine ongoing online influence operations \u2014 including ones it says are affiliated with China\u2019s and Russia\u2019s governments \u2014 and found that each has, like much of social media, increasingly adopted generative AI to make images, videos, text and translations.
The researchers found that sponsors of propaganda campaigns have come to rely on AI for core functions such as making content and creating influencer personas on social media, streamlining some campaigns. But the researchers say that content is low quality and gets little engagement.
Read the full story here.<\/em><\/strong><\/a>
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announced that he has chosen New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch to continue in her role leading the largest police department in the nation.
As a candidate, Mamdani vowed to keep Tisch \u2014 who was appointed commissioner by Mayor Eric Adams \u2014 in the role.
\u201cTogether, we will deliver a city where rank-and-file police officers and the communities they serve alike are safe, represented, and proud to call New York their home,\u201d Mamdani said in a statement.
Read the full story here.<\/em><\/strong><\/a>
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi\u2019s announcement that she would\u00a0not seek re-election\u00a0<\/a>capped off a decades-long tenure in Congress and the top echelons of the Democratic Party.
Now, her departure also sets up a clearer picture of the race to be San Francisco\u2019s next representative in the House \u2014 and of how Democrats want to chart the future of their party at a moment of generational change.
The two main contenders for Pelosi\u2019s district \u2014 Scott Wiener, a California state senator, and Saikat Chakrabarti, the former chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez \u2014 had already jumped into the race ahead of Pelosi\u2019s decision.
Read the full story here.<\/em><\/strong><\/a>
Trump welcomed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia\u2019s de facto leader, to the White House for the first time since the CIA concluded that the crown prince approved the 2018 killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In a tense Oval Office exchange with reporters, the president defended the visiting leader, saying the the crown prince \u201cknew nothing\u201d about the murder. NBC\u2019s Peter Alexander reports for “TODAY.”
Former FBI Director James Comey’s lawyers will argue in a federal court in Virginia today that he is facing a \u201cselective and vindictive\u201d prosecution after he was\u00a0charged<\/a>\u00a0with making a false statement to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding.
Comey\u2019s team argues the Trump administration has singled out their client because of his protected speech and what they call Trump\u2019s \u201cpersonal animus\u201d toward Comey.\u00a0
\u201cThe Constitution forbids the government from prosecuting an individual based on his protected speech or based on a government official\u2019s animus toward the individual,\u201d Comey’s lawyers wrote in filings. \u201cObjective evidence establishes that President Trump directed the prosecution of Mr. Comey in retaliation for Mr. Comey\u2019s public criticisms and to punish Mr. Comey because of personal spite.\u201d
Comey\u2019s team has provided the court pages of examples \u2014\u00a0more than 200 in total\u00a0<\/a>\u2014 of Trump\u2019s disparaging posts and comments about the former FBI director. The posts, including a message to Attorney General Pam Bondi calling on her to prosecute Comey and others that Trump had intended to be private<\/a>, are sure to play a role in today\u2019s hearing.
They are asking U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff to dismiss the case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be brought for a second time.
Read the full story here.<\/em><\/strong><\/a>
Trump said last night that he is designating Saudi Arabia a \u201cMajor Non-NATO Ally,\u201d saying the classification would take the country\u2019s military cooperation with the United States \u201cto even greater heights.\u201d
\u201cYou always had a little cloud over your head, and sometimes that cloud was very big. That cloud is not there anymore, and we want to keep it that way,\u201d Trump said before he announced the designation at a dinner honoring Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Major Non-NATO Ally status is a designation that \u201cprovides foreign partners with certain benefits in the areas of defense trade and security cooperation,\u201d\u00a0according to the State Department<\/a>. It does not, however, require U.S. security commitments to the country.
Other countries that\u00a0have the MNNA designation include<\/a>\u00a0Israel, Japan and South Korea.
The designation comes as part of Trump\u2019s outreach to the country, which includes a massive investment deal from the Saudis. Trump said at the dinner that the investment would equate to $1 trillion.
Congress voted overwhelmingly yesterday to pass legislation to compel the Justice Department to release its records related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein \u2014 a major victory for lawmakers in both parties who\u2019ve been leading the push for months.
As the final vote tally in the House, 427-1, was read, several\u00a0Epstein survivors<\/a>\u00a0who were sitting in the gallery embraced ane another and loud cheers went up through the chamber. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., was the\u00a0only lawmaker to vote no<\/a>.
Just hours later, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., headed to the floor and requested unanimous consent that the measure be passed in the upper chamber once the bill is sent over from the House.
Read the full story here<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.
NBC News<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lawyers for former FBI Director James Comey were in court today to argue that charges that he lied to Congress should be dismissed.Former Trump White House attorney\u00a0Ty\u00a0Cobb\u00a0said in an interview today that the case against Comey is \u201cdead\u201d in light of the revelation that the federal grand jury was not presented with the full indictment.\u201cThe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":172453,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-172452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}