FBI investigating Joe Kent, ex-intel official who resigned over Iran strikes: Report



Sources have informed multiple publications that the FBI is investigating combat veteran Joe Kent over an alleged leak of classified information. Four individuals with direct knowledge of the probe told Semafor that it predates Kent's resignation on Tuesday as director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

A source familiar with the case told Axios that Kent was suspected of leaking information to Tucker Carlson and another conservative podcaster and that the bureau is looking into whether the allegedly leaked information pertained to Israel and Iran.

'Israelis drove the decision.'

When asked for comment, the White House referred Blaze News to the FBI. The FBI declined to comment. Blaze News reached out to Kent for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

Kent — a retired Green Beret and former CIA officer whom President Donald Trump nominated to be NCTC director in February 2025 and the U.S. Senate confirmed in a 52-44 vote in July — wrote in a post accompanying his resignation letter addressed to Trump and published Tuesday that Iran "posed no imminent threat to our nation" and that "it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby."

The ex-intel official said further in the letter:

Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran. This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to victory. This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women.

The president told reporters on Tuesday, "I read his statement — and I always thought he was a nice guy — but I always thought he was weak on security, very weak on security."

RELATED: If Congress can’t oversee the FBI, who can?

Photographer: Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

"When I read his statement, I realized that it's a good thing that he's out, because he said that Iran was not a threat. Iran was a threat — every country realized what a threat Iran was. The question is whether they wanted to do something about it," said Trump.

Trump later shared an image of a tweet that Kent posted in January 2020, imploring Trump, then in his first term, to "wipe Iran's ballistic capability out and get our troops out of Iraq — they are only targets now."

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed on Tuesday that Kent's resignation letter was replete with "false claims" and noted that "the absurd allegation that President Trump made this decision based on the influence of others, even foreign countries, is both insulting and laughable."

On Wednesday, Kent appeared with Tucker Carlson, who said about the Iran strikes: "Joe Kent was right. Therefore, Joe Kent must be destroyed. And there is, of course, this ongoing effort to do that — to dismiss Joe Kent as a tool of the Islamists or a leaker."

During the interview, Kent explained to Carlson his reasons for leaving the administration, his misgivings about the conflict with Iran, and his support for the president and Trump's previous policies.

Referring to remarks made earlier this month by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Kent told Carlson — who was denounced on March 5 by the president following months of criticism — that the "Israelis drove the decision" to attack Iran.

Intelligence showed that Iran was neither on the verge of obtaining a nuclear weapon nor planning "to launch this big sneak attack," Kent added.

He further claimed that Trump was siloed when it came to the issue of Iran, stating that "a good deal of key decision-makers were not allowed to come express their opinion to the president."

'He quit because he's under investigation.'

Kent also claimed that when it came to Charlie Kirk's assassination, "we're not really even allowed to look into that at all." Kent even intimated that the assassination might have something to do with Kirk's vocal opposition to a possible regime-change war in Iran.

"One of President Trump's closest advisers who is vocally advocating for us to not go to war with Iran and for us to rethink, at least, our relationship with the Israelis, and then he's suddenly publicly assassinated, and we're not allowed to ask any questions about that — it's a data point," said Kent. "It's a data point that we need to look into."'

One of the sources reportedly familiar with the FBI investigation into Kent told Axios, "He left quite an online paper trail and he has been monitored for months."

"He's going to try to say this was in retaliation for his resignation," continued the source, "but it's the other way around: He quit because he's under investigation — and he knew it."

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Epstein files were allegedly compromised by foreign hacker in 2023; FBI admits 'cyber incident'



The FBI Field Office in New York produced myriad documents pertaining to its criminal probe into child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested in a Feb. 17, 2025, letter to FBI Director Kash Patel that "thousands of pages of documents related to the investigation and indictment of Epstein" were stored on site there.

Some of these documents were allegedly compromised in a hack years before the Department of Justice began publishing the heavily redacted Epstein files.

Reuters' source suggested that the hack appears to have been executed by a 'cybercriminal' rather than a foreign government.

The bureau revealed in 2023 that it was investigating a hack of its computer network, which it characterized as an "isolated incident that has been contained."

Multiple sources briefed on the matter told CNN at the time that FBI officials suspected the incident involved a bureau computer system used in the investigations of images of child sexual exploitation.

Reuters, citing a source familiar with the matter and recently published DOJ documents, reported on Wednesday that the hack entailed a foreign actor's targeting of files related to the FBI's investigation of Epstein.

The hack reportedly took place after a server at the New York FBI office's Child Exploitation Forensic Lab was allegedly left exposed by Special Agent Aaron Spivack, who did not return Reuters' numerous requests for comment but has previously issued a voluminous statement on the matter.

RELATED: 'The mistake I made': Bill Gates reportedly admits to affairs with Russians, apologizes for Epstein fallout

Photo by Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

Among the Epstein files released by the Department of Justice in recent months is a 2024 statement from Spivack in which he addresses the allegations that he "improperly stored digital evidence at his residence"; "improperly handled, documented, and stored digital evidence and failed to secure [child sexual abuse material] within policy, resulting in a cyber intrusion"; and "exceeded the limits of his authority by contracting an outside company to develop computer software on behalf of the FBI."

Spivack — who apparently participated in the Epstein investigation — stated that the cyber "intrusion" happened on Feb. 12, 2023.

After logging into his computer to find a .txt file indicating that his network had been compromised, Spivack claimed that he ran an anti-virus sweep, which identified a potential threat. He said that he was unable, however, to remove the threat, as his "administrative privileges had been removed."

Spivack notified some of his colleagues, attempting to rectify the issue, then noticed that the main server was down, that other servers were malfunctioning, and that "the folders that contain our data was missing."

According to Spivack's timeline, he and others later noticed "strange IP activity that took place [on Feb. 12] from two IP addresses."

"The activity included combing through certain files pertaining to the Epstein investigation," stated Spivack.

It's unclear what particular files were accessed and whether they were downloaded, reported Reuters.

By 5 p.m. on Feb. 13, 2023, Spivack said, "we realized we were hacked."

The FBI reiterated that the "cyber incident" was an "isolated one" and said in a statement obtained by Reuters that "the FBI restricted access to the malicious actor and rectified the network. The investigation remains ongoing, so we do not have further comments to provide at this time."

The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

Reuters' source suggested:

  • that the hack appears to have been executed by a "cybercriminal" rather than a foreign government;
  • that the hacker did not appear to realize he or she had hacked a law enforcement server; and
  • that the hacker expressed revulsion at the presence of child sexual abuse images on the device and threatened to turn its owner over to the FBI.

The hacker — whom the FBI allegedly spoke to on video chat but was unable to identify or locate — may have acted alone, but Jon Lindsay, an associate professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Cybersecurity and Privacy, suggested that the hack demonstrates the files' potential intelligence value.

"Who wouldn’t be going after the Epstein files if you’re the Russians or somebody interested in kompromat?" Lindsay told Reuters. "If foreign intelligence agencies are not thinking seriously about the Epstein files as a target, then I would be shocked."

Reuters indicated it was unable to "establish the result of the bureau's internal investigation" regarding Spivack or connect with FBI agents identified in the documents as being involved in the investigation.

Spivack stressed in his 2024 statement, "I have rescued more exploited children than anyone in the NYFO and in most of the Bureau. All I wanted to do was to better the Bureau. I did not know how to do everything right, but I always did the right thing and everything I did was with good intentions. I love this job. I was not reckless."

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'Deeply alarming': Patel goes on firing spree after revealing Biden FBI accessed his private phone records



The FBI has reportedly fired a slew of employees at the direction of Dir. Kash Patel following his revelation to Reuters on Wednesday that the bureau obtained phone records for him and for White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in 2022 and 2023 while they were private citizens.

Four individuals briefed on the terminations — more of which are expected — told CNN that the approximately 10 newly fired FBI employees were involved in the lawfare waged against President Donald Trump over retention of government documents at Mar-a-Lago.

'I am in shock.'

"It is outrageous and deeply alarming that the previous FBI leadership secretly subpoenaed my own phone records — along with those of now White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles — using flimsy pretexts and burying the entire process in prohibited case files designed to evade all oversight," Patel said in a statement.

According to Patel, operatives of the Biden FBI, led by then-Director Christopher Wray, not only obtained "toll records" for his and Wiles' private phone calls, as it had with Republican lawmakers in Operation Arctic Frost, but attempted to hide that they had done so in requesting court approval.

An individual with knowledge of the situation told the New York Times that some of the fired FBI employees — reportedly including support personnel, agents, and supervisors — were involved in that effort.

Toll records provide investigators with identifying information of callers along with the date, time, location, and length of a call.

RELATED: District Judge Cannon issues ruling on fate of Trump adversary's Biden-era special report

Susie Wiles. Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP via Getty Images

Reuters, citing two FBI officials, reported that in at least one instance, the bureau sought more than just toll records and taped a call between Wiles and her attorney in 2023. While Wiles' attorney was reportedly aware that the call was being recorded and provided consent, Wiles was allegedly unaware.

Wiles told associates, "I am in shock," reported Axios.

A source familiar with the matter told CBS News that Wiles' records were reviewed in connection with the Trump classified documents case and that Patel's records were not subpoenaed in connection with Arctic Frost, the investigation that morphed into former special counsel Jack Smith's federal election case against Trump regarding the 2020 election.

Blaze News has reached out to the FBI for comment.

Other Trump allies may have been surveilled by the FBI, and the latest revelations may be just "the tip of the iceberg," Trump officials familiar with the investigation told Axios.

The FBI Agents Association rushed to condemn the firings of those allegedly involved in the apparent spying operation, claiming the ousters "weaken the bureau by stripping away critical expertise and destabilizing the workforce, undermining trust in leadership and jeopardizing the bureau’s ability to meet its recruitment goals."

Anthony Coley, former director of public affairs for the Biden Justice Department who is now on MSNOW, complained to Axios that Patel "is on a singular mission: to find something, anything for which to prosecute Jack Smith."

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'Whack-a-mole': FBI allegedly fires, rehires, then refires agents linked to Jack Smith's anti-GOP Arctic Frost crusade



Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) published damning documents last month detailing how the Biden FBI not only secretly obtained the private phone records of numerous Republican lawmakers but subpoenaed records for over 400 Republican individuals and entities as part of what the Iowa senator called a "fishing expedition."

Grassley noted last week that Operation Arctic Frost, the "fishing expedition" in question, "was the vehicle by which partisan FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors could improperly investigate the entire Republican political apparatus."

'The road to reform is long.'

Amid the backlash over the latest insights into the Biden administration's yearslong apparent campaign to criminalize its political opponents, the FBI began canning some of the agents involved in Arctic Frost whose names appeared in the newly released documents. While the bureau handed out numerous pink slips in recent days, it evidently had issues making them stick.

Last week, the FBI reportedly fired at least two agents who had worked on the Arctic Frost investigation.

CNN originally reported that Aaron Tapp, the special agent in charge of the FBI's San Antonio office who previously had an oversight role on Arctic Frost, was among those fired, though it has since indicated that he was forced into retiring.

RELATED: Bondi exposes ‘UNPRECEDENTED’ Arctic Frost action against Trump by Biden admin

Jack Smith. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

On Monday, the bureau allegedly canned another four agents who worked on Smith's team: Jeremy Desor; Blaire Toleman, a Chicago-based agent who once led a now-defunct public corruption squad; David Geist, a former assistant special agent in charge of the bureau's Washington field office; and Jamie Garman, an agent who was placed on administrative leave early last month, reported Reuters.

"The public has a right to know how the government's spending their hard-earned tax dollars, and if agents were engaged in wrongdoing they ought to be held accountable," Sen. Grassley said in a statement. "Transparency brings accountability."

Multiple sources told Reuters that at least two of the terminations — Toleman's and Geist's — were rescinded later in the day, along with a number of other terminations that allegedly took place on Monday.

Sources familiar with the matter told CNN that Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, had intervened on Monday to reverse the firings of least four fired FBI agents. One source said she weighed in on account of the agents' involvement in the Trump administration's crackdown on criminality in the national capital.

This last-minute rescue was, however, apparently as short-lived as the initial terminations. The FBI reportedly fired the agents again on Tuesday.

It's presently unclear how many agents were officially canned.

The FBI and Pirro's office did not immediately respond to Blaze News' request for comment.

The FBI Agents Association complained in a statement on Tuesday that "the actions yesterday — in which FBI Special Agents were terminated and then reinstated shortly after — highlight the chaos that occurs when long-standing policies and processes are ignored. An Agent simply being assigned to an investigation and conducting it appropriately within the law should never be grounds for termination."

"Director Patel has disregarded the law and launched a campaign of erratic and arbitrary retribution," added the group.

Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, told Blaze News, "Individual accountability for participation in or oversight of weaponized operations such as Arctic Frost should absolutely be imposed. I'm glad some have been fired for this, and I am sure they will sue and be well represented."

"The personnel laws are very restrictive to accountability, which certainly makes accountability harder, especially when considering termination versus reassignment," continued Howell. "That being said, you can't have weaponized individuals still at the FBI, that just should not ever be an acceptable option. The road to reform is long."

Howell added, "I'd like to see more thought given to systemic reform at the FBI so it can't operate institutionally as it did during the Biden years especially. Whack-a-mole on weaponized individuals is tough work, but the FBI and government should also mitigate the potential for them to abuse power again."

Editor's note: Mike Howell is a contributor at Blaze News.

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'She's one of us!' Steve Baker stuns Glenn Beck with bombshell revelation about J6 pipe-bomb suspect



Blaze News investigative reporters Steve Baker and Joseph Hanneman have spent years working to identify the masked individual who placed pipe bombs near the headquarters of the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5, 2021.

Baker, whom the Biden FBI arrested over his January 6 reporting, revealed to Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck on Wednesday that they have finally locked in on a suspect. What's more, Baker hinted that the suspect's imminent identification will implicate and shame at least one federal agency.

'It is monstrous.'

Baker told Beck, "When I pulled this thread, I was so shocked by what I saw, I immediately took it to a source in one of the most important, highest-level investigative federal agencies in the country. I immediately took it to our sources there, and I said, 'You have to see this.'"

"After they looked at it for about two hours, the response that I got back was, 'Holy F,'" continued Baker. "And then the follow-up response was, 'She's one of us!'"

— (@)

When pressed by Beck about his confidence level in the suspect ID, Baker said, "I will tell you that from gait analysis — that's the analysis of the hoodied bomber ... compared to the gait analysis of this individual in private life and at work — that the actual software hit at a 94% accuracy."

"Human analysis from the experts in intelligence is much higher," continued Baker. "They looked at it and went, 'My God, that's it. We got it.'"

RELATED: Analysis: FBI’s Jan. 6 pipe bomb update omits key evidence, withholds video

FBI

Forensic gait analysis — the scientific study of patterns in an individual's style of movement in walking or running — is regarded as one of the most sophisticated approaches to identifying an individual from CCTV footage or video recordings and as especially valuable in the absence of other biometric identifiers.

The American Bar Association's Criminal Justice Magazine noted in 2023 that gait analysis, which has been used to help secure criminal convictions throughout the Anglosphere for decades, "can be compelling, corroborating evidence," especially since "criminals cannot hide their gait."

Baker indicated that he left some "breadcrumbs" in recent reports.

Hanneman and Baker reported last week, for instance, that the 8.5-minute video about the Jan. 6 pipe bombs released by the FBI in October contained footage edited to exclude showing a U.S. Capitol Police SUV pull up directly across the street from where the suspect stood at 8:15 p.m. on January 5, 2021.

In addition to raising suspicion about the selective edit, the investigative duo claimed that the FBI also deliberately chose not to publicly acknowledge the theory that the pipe bombs were part of a poorly timed training exercise.

Baker told Beck on Wednesday that while the FBI and the Metropolitan Police Department are offering a $500,000 reward for evidence that leads to an arrest in the case, he didn't take the new evidence implicating the yet-to-be named suspect to the agencies "because we believe that they were actively engaged in the cover-up."

Baker indicated that there are national security-related briefings under way, and Beck said that the suspect's name will be released after the relevant agencies have "battened down the hatches."

Beck said, "This is one of the biggest stories — I think it is the biggest scandal of my lifetime, maybe in the last 100 years. It is monstrous."

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'Shut it down': Newly released FBI doc reveals who apparently killed probes into Clinton Foundation



FBI Director Kash Patel found a damning memo written in October 2017 that details the timeline of the probes into twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's alleged pay-to-play scheme.

It is clear from the heavily redacted memo, which was first obtained by Just the News, that the investigations into Clinton's alleged scheme — set in motion following the publication of Governmental Accountability Institute president Peter Schweizer's bestselling book "Clinton Cash" — appear to have been brought to a screeching halt by then-Obama Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates with the help of other Justice Department and FBI officials.

Background

Hillary Clinton dealt with two particularly big scandals in 2016 before her humiliating electoral defeat.

One of the scandals concerned her use of a personal email system for official communications during her time as Obama's first secretary of state.

Authorities reportedly found hundreds of emails on her private system — which was vulnerable to hacking and enabled her to go off-the-books with her official engagements — containing classified information. Eight email chains were allegedly found to contain Top Secret information; 36 chains allegedly contained Secret information; and eight allegedly contained Confidential information.

The second scandal, which was brought to the nation's attention thanks to Schweizer's book, concerned the Clintons' alleged pay-to-play and bribery scheme, where big-time donors to the Clinton Foundation reportedly frequently found themselves materially benefiting from actions taken by Hillary Clinton during her time as secretary of state.

The 2017 FBI memo

The memo recently secured by Patel indicates that on Feb. 1, 2016 — just days after FBI agents at field offices in New York, Arkansas, and the District of Columbia launched investigations into the Clinton Foundation regarding the allegations in Schweizer's book — the Obama Justice Department indicated that "they would not be supportive of a FBI investigation."

RELATED: Declassified report: Obama’s FBI failed to search key evidence in Clinton email probe

Photo by Gilbert Carrasquillo/FilmMagic

The FBI timeline indicates that 16 days later, then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe "directed that no overt investigative steps were to be taken on the CF investigation without his approval."

The Durham report previously revealed that in February, McCabe — who had a possible conflict of interest and was described by one former FBI official as being "annoyed" and "angry" at the time — apparently leaned on the field agents to close their cases and that those restrictions on overt investigative activities remained in place for several months.

When speaking on Thursday to Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck about the significance of the revelations, Schweizer, who confirmed he worked with the FBI as a confidential informant, expressed his admiration for the FBI field agents who tried to hold Clinton accountable.

"I can't speak highly enough of them," said Schweizer. "They doggedly continued those investigations because they saw how much smoke and fire was actually there."

Despite agents being well-positioned to continue digging — particularly those at the Little Rock field office — FBI leaders continued to set up roadblocks, prohibiting agents from taking additional "investigative steps" or from reaching out to new confidential human sources.

RELATED: Ratcliffe releases damning Durham annex. Here's what it reveals about Obama-Clinton Russia collusion hoax.

Sally Yates. Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The FBI memo indicated that sometime around March 2016, Sally Yates apparently ordered the U.S. attorney's office in the Eastern District of Arkansas to "shut it down."

'The deep state is really becoming clear right now.'

Schweizer told Beck that Yates' purported order was "highly, highly, highly unusual because field offices are supposed to organically follow leads and investigate, and to have the headquarters shut down an investigation on somebody as important as the Clintons ... speaks of course of the problems of the deep state that you highlighted for so many years."

— (@)

Months after Yates allegedly spiked the Arkansas investigation into the Clinton Foundation, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York and Eastern District of New York made clear they "would not support the investigation" and apparently provided no explanation as to why.

"The deep state is really becoming clear right now," said Glenn Beck.

Additional insights

The Durham annex that was declassified by CIA Director John Ratcliffe last month provided insights into the alleged effort by former President Barack Obama to simultaneously protect his legacy and spare Clinton from accountability.

Russian intelligence services apparently hacked and gained access to the emails of a number of American government entities, nonprofit organizations, and think tanks ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Among the organizations allegedly hacked by Russian actors was Democratic mega-donor George Soros' Open Society Foundations.

A source shared with the FBI some of the intelligence gathered in these hacks — including purported emails between then-Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and two individuals at George Soros' Open Society Foundations, Jeffrey Goldstein and Leonard Benardo — the latter of whom just hid his tweets on X.

The source conveyed this information to the feds in two memos, one in January 2016 and the second in March 2016.

The first memo indicated on the basis of alleged communications between Schultz and Benardo that former President Barack Obama apparently sought to torpedo the FBI's investigation into the pay-to-play scheme that Hillary Clinton allegedly ran while secretary of state for fear of the scandal staining his legacy.

According to the second memo, Schultz confided in Benardo that Obama "sanctioned the use of all administrative levers to remove possibly negative effects from the FBI investigation of cases related to the Clinton Foundation and the email correspondence in the State Department."

Blaze News reached out to Schultz and to Obama's office for comment.

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Charlie Kirk outlines '10 immediate credible action items' Pam Bondi can take on Epstein case



President Donald Trump continues to deliver on campaign promises and to surmount obstacles thrown before him by radical Democrats and activist judges. His accomplishments in recent weeks, however, while impactful, have been overshadowed by his Justice Department's conclusion that child sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein did not have a client list that could implicate deep-pocketed elites.

Amid mounting criticism over the lack of substantial insights from the DOJ, Turning Point USA founder and President Charlie Kirk — whom Trump reportedly called on Saturday to express support for Attorney General Pam Bondi — noted on his show Monday, "I'm going to trust my friends in the government to do what needs to be done, solve it; ball's in their hands."

'Anything that's credible, I would say, let them have it.'

Kirk subsequently outlined "10 immediate credible action items" Bondi could take that might satisfy Americans' hunger for answers and help the president move on to other matters with the reinvigorated support of his base.

Backlash, persistent curiosity

The backlash over the DOJ's conclusion was particularly severe in part because of Trump's campaign promise that he would "be inclined" to release Epstein's list of clients, saying, "I'd have no problem with it."

It certainly did not help that after telling cable news on Feb. 21 that the Epstein client list was "sitting on [her] desk right now," Bondi handed out to Trump-supporting podcasters binders titled "Epstein Files: Phase 1," loaded with publicly available information and documents devoid of significant revelations. She then failed to deliver the promised second phase of possibly substantial documents.

It also didn't help that the FBI's Epstein prison video is reportedly missing nearly three minutes of footage from one of two stitched-together clips.

Trump appears keen for the scandal "over a guy who never dies" to blow over.

"Why are we giving publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration, who conned the World with the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, 51 'Intelligence' Agents, 'THE LAPTOP FROM HELL,' and more?" Trump noted in a Truth Social post on Saturday. "They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called 'friends' are playing right into their hands."

RELATED: The White House will need to do plenty more to get past Epstein

Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Recent polling indicates that public interest in the alleged Epstein list isn't going anywhere.

A Rasmussen Reports poll revealed on Tuesday that only 21% of likely U.S. voters believe the FBI and the DOJ are telling the truth about Epstein; 56% don't think they're telling the truth; and 23% aren't sure. Sixty-eight percent of Democrats, 66% of Republicans, and 69% of unaffiliated voters reject the idea that the Epstein case is closed "and instead believe that there are dozens of powerful and wealthy offenders who need to face justice," reported Rasmussen.

10 action items

"I don't understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody," Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews on Tuesday.

"I think really only pretty bad people, including fake news, want to keep something like that going. But credible information? Let them give it. Anything that's credible, I would say, let them have it."

Responding to Trump's remarks, Charlie Kirk identified 10 immediate action items that could result in the production of "credible" information for the American public. Here are the 10 items in his list, summarized.

  1. Release the DOJ's 2020 Office of Professional Responsibility report that evaluated Epstein's 2008 plea deal.
  2. Unseal all of Ghislaine Maxwell's grand jury testimony.
  3. Press Alexander Acosta about what he knew about Epstein working for foreign intelligence. Acosta was the secretary of labor during Trump's first term and oversaw Epstein's 2008 plea agreement.
  4. Release underlying facts concerning Epstein's indictment in 2019, except child sexual abuse material.
  5. Release a full report concerning the "butchered" Bush-era federal investigation into Epstein.
  6. "Green-light Maxwell to speak freely and learn what she knows."
  7. Establish how exactly Epstein made his money and source relevant "bank records and financial statements."
  8. Overrule privacy rules and release the names of prisoners on the floor of the Metropolitan Correctional Center on the night Epstein died.
  9. "Get the missing minutes of the prison footage."
  10. Hold a press conference as soon as possible to remedy any remaining confusion.
— (@)

Action items one and three are related, as they both center largely on the insights of Acosta, who, while serving as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, approved the plea deal that enabled Epstein to plead guilty to a single charge of solicitation in exchange for a non-prosecution agreement — what the Miami Herald called the "deal of a lifetime."

'He'd cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein's attorneys because he had "been told" to back off.'

The deal that Acosta arranged reportedly scuttled the federal probe into a possible international sex-trafficking operation and prevented both the victims and the judge from knowing how many girls Epstein may have sexually abused between 2001 and 2005.

RELATED: Why MAGA wants the Epstein list — and won’t settle for less

Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

Bradley Edwards, a former state prosecutor who represented some of Epstein's victims, told the Miami Herald, "How in the world do you, the U.S. attorney, engage in a negotiation with a criminal defendant, basically allowing that criminal defendant to write up the agreement?"

Mike Benz, the founder of the Foundation for Freedom Online, recently told Kirk, "In the process of that [DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility] investigation, they interviewed everyone at Justice who was involved in that 2008 plea deal and sought to put the story to bed by collecting transcribed interviews, audio, and basically reams of files."

Benz indicated that the OPR report referred to an interview with Acosta in which he apparently discussed Epstein's intelligence ties.

The Daily Beast reported in 2019 that when being interviewed for the job of labor secretary in the first Trump administration, Acosta was allegedly asked whether the Epstein case was going to cause a problem for his confirmation hearings.

RELATED: The Epstein files may be Trump’s biggest liability yet

Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell (Photo by Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)

According to the Daily Beast, "Acosta had explained, breezily, apparently, that back in the day he'd had just one meeting on the Epstein case. He'd cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein's attorneys because he had 'been told' to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade."

Acosta allegedly told his interviewers, "I was told Epstein 'belonged to intelligence' and to leave it alone."

'No one from the government has ever asked her to share what she knows.'

While evidence of an intelligence link might not get the American public any closer to a client list, it could help explain why such a list may have been developed over time and was then suppressed.

As for action item six, Maxwell — whose father the Telegraph indicated was a newspaper baron who had "known links with MI6, the KGB, and the Israeli intelligence service Mossad" — might be able to shed some light on the operations she ran with her former lover and boss.

Maxwell was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in prison for her role in a scheme to sexually exploit and abuse minor girls as young as 14 with Epstein, going all the way back to the early 1990s.

A source close to Maxwell recently told the Daily Mail that the convicted groomer "would be more than happy to sit before Congress and tell her story."

"No one from the government has ever asked her to share what she knows," said the unnamed source. "She remains the only person to be jailed in connection to Epstein, and she would welcome the chance to tell the American public the truth."

When asked about Maxwell possibly testifying, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters, "I'm for transparency. We're intellectually consistent in this," reported CBS News.

The steps outlined by Kirk might help Bondi satisfy the American people's desire for truth about the "guy who never dies" and possibly also his clients.

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Exclusive: Oversight Project refers former FBI Director Wray to DOJ for criminal charges



FBI Director Kash Patel announced earlier this month that the bureau located an intelligence report from August 2020 that detailed "alarming allegations" regarding an apparent Chinese communist plot to interfere in the presidential election for the benefit of then-candidate Joe Biden.

Such allegations, if brought to light at the time, would have vindicated the concerns about voter fraud and foreign election interference then expressed by President Donald Trump and former Attorney General Bill Barr, which were written off by election officials, Democrats, and the liberal media as "unfounded" and "preposterous."

Instead, elements of the intelligence community apparently covered up the alleged foreign election interference campaign.

"Former FBI leadership withheld the facts and misled the public on China's 2020 election interference," Patel stated on Thursday. "And they did so for political gain."

Patel noted in a separate message, "We're restoring trust — through transparency, not politics."

Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, sent a criminal referral for former FBI Director Christopher Wray to the Department of Justice on Thursday, seeking accountability not only for Wray's alleged role in the apparent cover-up but for his alleged false or misleading statements to Congress regarding the infamous FBI memo targeting traditional Catholics.

Election interference cover-up

The referral obtained by Blaze News, which was also sent to Director Patel's office on Thursday, alleges that Wray violated federal law by giving false and misleading testimony to Congress on the topic of known voter fraud efforts.

On Sept. 24, 2020, Wray told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that the FBI had "not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it's by mail or otherwise."

On March 2, 2021, Wray suggested to the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI was "not aware of any widespread evidence of voter fraud, much less that would have affected the outcome of the presidential election."

RELATED: Vindicated? Patel's FBI uncovers apparent Chinese communist plot to rig 2020 mail-in vote for Biden

Photo by LEAH MILLIS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

The trouble with both statements is that they fly in the face of what the FBI apparently knew about the alleged Chinese communist attempt to swing the election for Biden.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced on July 27, 2020, that between Jan. 1 and June 30 of that election year, CBP officers at the International Mail Facility at Chicago O'Hare International Airport had seized 1,513 shipments containing fraudulent documents, including 19,888 counterfeit U.S. driver's licenses.

"The majority of these shipments were arriving from China and Hong Kong, with other seized shipments arriving from Great Britain and South Korea," noted CBP.

Blaze News previously reported that the bulk of the licenses were intended for college-age students across numerous states and in many cases had functional barcodes.

The August 2020 FBI intelligence report helped make sense of this sudden glut of fake IDs, suggesting that the Chinese communist regime was mass-producing fake American driver's licenses in order to create voter identities for Chinese nationals so that they could vote with fake mail-in ballots.

'Accountability for the bad actors in government would be practically a case of first impression.'

Patel told Just the News that while substantiated, the allegations in the intelligence report "were abruptly recalled and never disclosed to the public."

The Oversight Project made abundantly clear in its referral that it was highly unlikely Wray was unaware of this report and the allegations therein when he testified before Congress in 2020 and 2021.

After all, Wray apparently received routine briefings about threats to the integrity of the 2020 election from Nikki Floris, the FBI deputy assistant director for counterterrorism at the time, who had raised the alarm in October 2019 about China "aggressively pursuing foreign influence operations."

RELATED: 1,004 days of betrayal for suspended FBI Special Agent Garret O’Boyle

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Weaponization against Catholics

The House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government indicated in a December 2023 report that the FBI:

  • "abused its counterterrorism tools to target Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists";
  • "relied on at least one undercover agent to develop its assessment";
  • "proposed developing sources among the Catholic clergy and church leadership"; and
  • would likely still be "violating the religious liberties of millions of Catholic Americans" were it not for former FBI special agent Kyle Seraphin's disclosure.

Congressional investigators began looking closely at the bureau's anti-Catholic animus after a memo from the bureau's Richmond field office was leaked earlier that year, tying adherents of the Catholic faith to violent extremist views.

RELATED: The FBI was completely correct to keep an eye on Catholics

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While Wray previously testified to Congress that the Richmond field office produced only a "single product," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has demonstrated that not to have been the case.

Grassley revealed earlier this month both that the memo was distributed to over 1,000 FBI employees across the country and that the FBI produced "at least 13 additional documents and five attachments that used anti-Catholic terminology and relied on information from the radical far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)."

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The Oversight Project's criminal referral alleges that Wray repeatedly gave false testimony about the Richmond anti-Catholic memo, noting that his "testimony was inaccurate not only because it failed to reveal the scope of the memo’s production and dissemination, but also because it failed to reveal the existence of a second draft product on the same topic intended for external distribution to the whole FBI."

"Furthermore, a query of Sentinel (the FBI’s case management system) identified 13 documents and 5 attachments that included the term, 'radical traditionalist catholic' or 'Radical-Traditionalist Catholic' in the FBI systems," said the watchdog's criminal referral. "The Intelligence Memo itself states on page 24 of the PDF — '(U) Prepared by the Richmond Division and the Domestic Terrorism Operations Unit; coordinated with FBI Milwaukee and FBI Portland Divisions.'"

Between his statements to Congress about election interference and his statements about the FBI's anti-Catholic memorandum, the Oversight Project figures that Wray committed several criminal violations, including obstruction of proceedings before Congress; corrupt conduct; and making false statements.

When asked to comment on whether he expects Wray to be held accountable for his alleged violations, Howell told Blaze News, "I don't expect accountability, but we certainly deserve accountability."

"Accountability for the bad actors in government would be practically a case of first impression," continued Howell. "To expect it would be unrealistic optimism, but it should and could happen, and that's why the Oversight Project is making the case publicly and doing everything we can to make it more likely to happen."

Mike Howell is a contributor to Blaze News.

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FBI launches criminal probes into 3 children's hospitals over child sex changes: Report



The medical advocacy group Do No Harm has in recent years worked with health care professionals, hospital administrators, patients, and policymakers to combat DEI-branded racism and gender ideology in the field of medicine.

In order to better tackle the second of these two scourges, the organization launched the Stop the Harm Database in October, identifying hospitals and medical facilities around the country that were subjecting vulnerable children to sex-change mutilations and sterilizing chemical treatments.

The FBI has launched criminal probes into three of the apparent worst offenders in the database — Boston Children's Hospital, Children's Hospital Colorado, and Children's Hospital Los Angeles — a source familiar with the investigations told Fox News Digital this week.

FBI Director Kash Patel appeared to signal that the anonymous source's claim was legitimate by retweeting a post on X regarding the investigations.

The Stop the Harm Database indicated that Boston Children's Hospital has offered sex-change treatments to patients ages 3 to 25 through its Gender Multispeciality Service; performed 204 sex-change surgeries between 2017 and 2020; offered vaginoplasty surgeries to 17-year-old patients without parental consent; and dished out sterilizing hormone and puberty blocker drugs to hundreds of patients.

Children's Hospital Colorado in Aurora has long offered puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors. The hospital also allegedly billed for sex-change surgeries in previous years but announced in 2023 that its practice of genital mutilation was coming to an end. However, the hospital's practice of dishing out sterilizing chemicals continued.

RELATED: Sacrificing body parts and informed consent to the sex-change regime

Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Kash Patel. Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

The Colorado hospital temporarily paused its nonsurgical child-related "gender-affirming medical treatments" earlier this year in the wake of President Donald Trump's Jan. 28 executive order directing all federal agencies to ensure that medical institutions receiving federal funding "end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children." However, it subsequently resumed the practice after the president's order was challenged in court.

The Colorado hospital's TRUE Center for Gender Diversity does not identify a minimum age for sex-change treatments on its website, instead claiming that "gender-affirming care does not look the same for everyone."

'Each of them is listed on our Dirty Dozen list of worst-offending children's hospitals promoting sex-change treatments for minors.'

According to the Stop the Harm Database, the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children's Hospital Los Angeles boasted patients as old as 25 and as young as 3 and billed millions of dollars for hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and sex-change mutilations for minors.

The Los Angeles Times recently indicated that the center currently has over 3,000 patients.

The L.A. center's medical director, Johanna Olson-Kennedy, is a gender ideologue who publicly argued against the need for psychological assessments for sex-change mutilations; allegedly provided sex-change hormones to kids as young as 12 and referred little girls as young as 13 for double mastectomies; and covered up the results of a years-long study concerning the efficacy of puberty blockers, which revealed kids' depression symptoms and emotional health "did not change significantly over 24 months" of being on puberty blockers.

Thanks in large part to Trump's executive order, the Children's Hospital Los Angeles is shuttering its sex-change center, effective July 22.

RELATED: Trump claims another scalp in war on gender ideology: Children's Hospital LA to shutter child sex-change center

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The FBI is looking at the hospitals for possible violations of 18 U.S.C. § 116, which prohibits female genital mutilation on minors.

Attorney General Pam Bondi noted in an April 22 memo that pursuant to Trump's executive order "Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation," she was directing all Department of Justice employees "to enforce rigorous protections and hold accountable those who prey on vulnerable children and their parents."

"I am putting medical practitioners, hospitals, and clinics on notice: In the United States, it is a felony to perform, attempt to perform, or conspire to perform female genital mutilation on any person under the age of 18. That crime carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years per count," wrote Bondi. "I am directing all U.S. Attorneys to investigate all suspected cases of FGM — under the banner of so-called 'gender-affirming care' or otherwise — and to prosecute all FGM offenses to the fullest extent possible."

It's abundantly clear from the documents leaked last year from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the landmark Cass Review in the United Kingdom, and other penetrating studies that so-called gender-affirming care is a ruinous practice based on bogus claims that does not help but rather harms vulnerable patients.

Hospitals still suggesting otherwise could also find themselves in trouble. After all, Bondi indicated in her memo that the DOJ would investigate medical providers that "mislead the public about the long-term side effects of chemical and surgical mutilations."

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, chairman at Do No Harm, told Blaze News in a statement, "We applaud Attorney General Pam Bondi and the FBI for launching criminal investigations into these hospitals. Children's hospitals should be places where sick children can receive high-quality and evidence-based care, not laboratories where activist doctors experiment on kids. Sadly, this is what we have seen at many medical centers around the country."

"Boston Children's Hospital, Children's Hospital Colorado, and Children's Hospital Los Angeles are ripe targets for investigation, which is why each of them is listed on our Dirty Dozen list of worst-offending children's hospitals promoting sex-change treatments for minors," continued Goldfarb. "We look forward to working with the Justice Department and its new Coalition Against Child Mutilation to identify and hold accountable other children's hospitals that are inflicting irreversible harm on minors."

Fox News Digital indicated that Children's Hospital Los Angeles did not respond to its requests for comment; that Boston Children's said it has yet to receive notice from the FBI concerning alleged criminal violations; that Children's Hospital Colorado claimed it "never" provided sex-change surgeries to patients under 18; and that the FBI noted that as a matter of policy, it "declines to confirm or comment on investigations."

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Declassified memo reveals how Biden admin set stage for feds to hound Americans over 'non-criminal behavior'



Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced last month the formation of the Director's Initiatives Group, a new task force dedicated to ending the weaponization of the federal government.

In addition to declassifying and releasing the John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. assassination files, Gabbard indicated that the DIG had set about reviewing other documents for potential declassification, including information related to "the Biden administration's domestic surveillance and censorship actions against Americans."

One of the documents declassified under this initiative has provided critical insights into how the stage was set in 2021 for the Biden administration's subsequent treatment of traditional Catholics and concerned parents who spoke out at school board meetings as potential terrorists.

A memo titled "Strategic Implementation Plan for Countering Domestic Terrorism" assigned the FBI, the Department of Justice, and other agencies various tasks with the overarching aim of countering perceived domestic terrorism and violent extremism. The memo was reportedly developed by the FBI, the DOJ, and Biden's National Security Council.

The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Counterterrorism Center were directed, for example, to provide state and local law enforcement agencies with resources "that cover relevant iconography, symbology, and phraseology used by many domestic terrorists, as well as data-driven guidance on how to recognize potential indicators of DT-related mobilization."

One such "resource" appears to have been the FBI's "Domestic Terrorism Symbols Guide," which associated the Betsy Ross flag, the Gadsden flag, the Gonzales cannon with accompanying "Come and Take It" caption, Revolutionary War imagery, and Second Amendment-related imagery with "Militia Violent Extremism."

'A broad brush to start spying on Americans.'

The declassified memo also tasked the Domestic Policy Council with driving "executive and legislative action, including banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines"; reining in the "proliferation of 'ghost guns'"; mitigating "xenophobia and bias" in COVID-19 responses; and supporting "interventions to foster resiliency to disinformation."

Lawmakers and legal experts suggested to Just the News that the more concerning element of the memo was its apparent loosening of the requirements for opening criminal and national security investigations — a drop in standards that may have helped pave the way for fishing expeditions into groups disfavored and/or critical of the Biden administration.

Whereas for decades FBI agents needed "an articulable factual basis" that "reasonably indicates" a crime or a threat has or will occur in order to launch an investigation, experts told Just the News that the memo substantially lowered that standard such that behavior deemed "concerning" was sufficient to begin probing.

The memo tasked the DOJ and the FBI with DHS to "enhance public understanding of the role of federal law enforcement in responding to incidents of concerning non-criminal behavior."

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) told Just the News that the memo amounted to "merely a broad brush to start spying on Americans."

'The types of tools and responses that they have been making for people who are engaged in some type of violence actually applied to non-violent individuals.'

"It doesn't have to be criminal, for sure. But it doesn't have to be heterodox," said Biggs. "It just has to be something that some agent, or some local agent, says, 'Oh, we got a beef about this. We're going to check it out.'"

"It's spying on Americans," added Biggs, "violating the Fourth Amendment."

John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, told "John Solomon Reports" that "back in June 2021, the Biden administration put out its plan for dealing with domestic terrorists. The one that they put out at that time talked about how they were going after criminal activity. And of course, everybody, anybody who's espousing violence or trying to or committing violence, one wants the government to get a handle on that."

"What Tulsi Gabbard declassified was the rest of the document that was there," continued Lott. "What was shocking to me is that the types of tools and responses that they have been making for people who are engaged in some type of violence actually applied to non-violent individuals, non-criminal activity."

The FBI's scrutiny of conservative Catholics appears to have been prompted not by past or anticipated crimes but by "concerns" regarding "non-criminal behavior."

The House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government revealed in a 2023 report titled "The FBI's Breach of Religious Freedom: The Weaponization of Law Enforcement Against Catholic Americans" that the FBI field office circulated an internal memo in January 2023 warning that violent extremists are attracted to "radical traditionalist Catholic ideology."

The committee report stated, "Under the guise of tackling the threat of domestic terrorism, the memorandum painted certain 'radical-traditionalist Catholics' (RTCs) as violent extremists and proposed opportunities for the FBI to infiltrate Catholic churches as a form of 'threat mitigation.'"

"There was no legitimate basis for the memorandum to insert federal law enforcement into Catholic houses of worship," said the committee's report. Nevertheless, "this single investigation became the basis for an FBI-wide memorandum warning about the dangers of 'radical' Catholics."

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