Pelosi calls for arrest of ICE agents — and Trump’s DOJ fires back



Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for the arrest of federal ICE agents for doing their jobs — and it did not go unnoticed by the Trump administration.

Rep. Pelosi (D-Calif.) claimed in a statement earlier this week that local police could “arrest federal agents if they break California law.”

“Our state and local authorities may arrest federal agents if they break California law, and if they are convicted, the president cannot pardon them,” Pelosi said in a statement on October 23.

Pelosi also wrote in a post on X: “A mass deployment of federal agents in the Bay Area is an appalling abuse of law enforcement power. The people of San Francisco stand with our patriotic immigrants who are the constant reinvigoration of America. We will not be intimidated by politically motivated fear tactics.”


BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey’s father and BlazeTV contributor Ron Simmons could not be more thrilled with the response her comments inspired.

“That statement is so inappropriate and, in some ways, factually incorrect that it’s just appalling,” Simmons says, noting that Attorney General Pam Bondi did not let Pelosi’s comments slide.

Bondi responded to Pelosi’s nonsensical statements on Fox News, explaining that “Pelosi got a letter today from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. So did Brooke Jenkins, that DA in San Francisco.”

“We told them, ‘Preserve your emails. Preserve everything you have on this topic because if you are telling people to arrest our ICE officers, our federal agents, you cannot do that. You’re impeding an investigation. And we will charge them. If they think I won’t, they have not met me, because we will charge them if they are violating the law,” she added.

Simmons couldn’t be happier with Bondi’s response.

“I say hooray. Thank goodness. Thank goodness that they’re willing to do that,” he says, pointing out that Blanche went on in his letter to write, “Any attempts to arrest or interfere with federal agents is illegal and futile.”

“So, I hope that they’ll enforce that to the fullest extent of the law. All these men and women are trying to do is carry out their responsibilities that are passed down from the leaders of the executive branch,” Simmons says.

“And again, they’re not deporting U.S. citizens, and they’re focusing primarily on those that have committed crimes here in the U.S. or at home,” he continues.

“So ... it's just sickening,” he says, adding, “and almost, in my opinion, what some of these people are trying to do is on the border of treasonous. When you’re trying to impede federal law being upheld, I don’t know what else there could be. I mean, you become almost an enemy of the state.”

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Trump felony conviction in doubt? President files appeal to clear his name



President Donald Trump's legal team has filed an appeal to reverse his New York criminal conviction, in which he was found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records.

The case, brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D), involved accusations that Trump improperly marked payments he made to his then-personal attorney Michael Cohen as legal expenses in an effort to conceal a $130,000 settlement payment that Cohen made to porn actress Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about an alleged affair with Trump.

'This case should never have seen the inside of a courtroom, let alone resulted in a conviction.'

Trump secured a new legal team, attorneys with the Manhattan-based firm Sullivan & Cromwell, in January following his inauguration. He was previously represented in the case by Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, whom he has since appointed as U.S. deputy attorney general and U.S. principal deputy associate attorney general, respectively.

Judge Juan Merchan sentenced the then-president elect just days before Inauguration Day with an "unconditional discharge," which allowed Trump to avoid jail time, fines, and probation supervision. While the sentence did not interfere with Trump's ability to return to the White House, it did brand him with a felony criminal conviction.

On Monday, Trump's legal team filed a 96-page appeal, writing, "This case should never have seen the inside of a courtroom, let alone resulted in a conviction."

RELATED: Trump's new lawyers move to appeal New York criminal conviction over 'misuse' of law

Juan Merchan. Marc A. Hermann for New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

"The DA, a Democrat, brought those charges in the middle of a contentious presidential election in which President Trump was the leading Republican candidate," the court filing read.

The president's attorneys claimed Bragg "concocted a purported felony by stacking time-barred misdemeanors under a convoluted legal theory."

RELATED: Trump presses SCOTUS for 11th-hour intervention ahead of criminal sentencing in New York hush-money case

Alvin Bragg. Photo by YUKI IWAMURA/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Trump's legal team told Fox News Digital, "President Trump's legal team filed a powerhouse appeal in the Manhattan DA's Witch Hunt, as the president continues his fight to put an end to the Radical Democrat Lawfare once and for all."

"The Supreme Court's historic decision on Immunity, the Federal and New York State Constitutions, and other established legal precedent mandate that this meritless hoax be immediately overturned and dismissed," the spokesperson said. "President Trump will keep defeating Democrat weaponization at every turn as he [focuses] on his singular mission to Make America Great Again."

Blaze News reached out to Bragg's office for comment.

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Supreme Court rejects Ghislaine Maxwell's appeal on first day of session



Scrutiny over the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case continues, and in the last couple of months, people have been increasingly worried that Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's convicted partner in crime, may have her case reconsidered.

However, the Supreme Court just shut down Maxwell's appeal on Monday, the first day of the term.

Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison on June 28, 2022, after being found guilty of multiple charges, including sex trafficking of a minor, on December 29, 2021.

Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for multiple charges, argued to no avail that some of her charges should be dropped on a technicality with regard to Epstein's case.

Specifically, according to SCOTUSblog, Maxwell's appeal requested that the Supreme Court review a decision regarding a 2007 non-prosecution agreement between Epstein and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida. The agreement protected Epstein from future charges, presumably in that district, but it also mentioned "potential co-conspirators" in part of the deal.

"If Epstein successfully fulfills all the terms and conditions of this agreement, the United States also agrees that it will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein," it said.

RELATED: DOJ reaches out to one major Epstein witness everyone's been afraid to talk to

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.Photo by Andrew Savulich/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images

Because the deal specifically mentioned "the United States," Maxwell argued that the clause was binding on all federal courts and therefore should have potentially protected her from some of the charges brought against her by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York that led to her conviction.

According to SCOTUSblog, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer called this clause "highly unusual" in the government's response to Maxwell's petition for certiorari.

Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison on June 28, 2022, after being found guilty of multiple charges, including sex trafficking of a minor, on December 29, 2021.

At the beginning of August, Ghislaine Maxwell was moved from a prison in Florida to the lower-security Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas. This transfer was arranged following a two-day interview session with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

She also previously offered to testify before Congress on several conditions, including immunity. Thus far, her offer has been rejected.

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DOJ releases full Ghislaine Maxwell transcripts — and they raise more questions than answers



The U.S. Department of Justice has released the entirety of the Ghislaine Maxwell transcripts, which reveal the conversations had between Pam Bondi’s Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, and Maxwell — who has been convicted of trafficking underage girls to Jeffrey Epstein.

“After our outcry, the Department of Justice sat down with Ghislaine Maxwell. Kind of unbelievable that they hadn’t done that before, that no Department of Justice had ever asked Ghislaine Maxwell about Jeffrey Epstein specifically. Mind-blowing, actually,” BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler says on “The Liz Wheeler Show.”

And Wheeler believes there are some important takeaways from the transcripts.

“First of all, it’s important to understand that Ghislaine Maxwell is not a good person. She’s a criminal, and she’s the worst kind of criminal. She trafficked underage girls to a pedophile, and she’s serving time in prison for it, which she should be,” Wheeler says.


But it wasn’t just Maxwell’s answers that has Wheeler questioning whether they’re true.

“The more I read of these transcripts, the back-and-forth between Maxwell and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, it didn’t answer my questions,” she continues. “It raised more questions.”

“First of all, Ghislaine Maxwell does not think that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. So, on that, I suppose she agrees with the majority of the American people,” she explains.

“I do not believe he died by suicide, no,” Maxwell said in the interview.

Blanche went on to ask whether she believes he was murdered by someone on the outside of prison who wanted him dead or a disgruntled prisoner on the inside?

“Of course, it’s possible,” she continued. “But I don’t know of any reason why, and I don’t believe in the blackmail or in any of this. I don’t think Epstein had a hit on like that.”

Wheeler notes that throughout the transcript, it feels “like he’s leading her to her answers.”

“It feels to me like these are not open-ended questions, that these are him planting ideas,” she says.

And as Wheeler continues to go through the transcript, she continues to see Blanche planting ideas.

“So, what is the takeaway from this conversation? The takeaway from this portion of the conversation is, Todd Blanche is leading Ghislaine Maxwell to the conclusion. I don’t know what Todd Blanche believes. I don’t know Todd Blanche personally,” she says, adding, “but he’s clearly forming the conversation to get her to agree with him, not asking open-ended questions.”

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DOJ releases interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, reviving unanswered questions in Epstein scandal



The Department of Justice released several transcripts and audio recordings of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche's interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, 63.

The senior Trump administration official met with Maxwell and her lawyer, David Oscar Markus, over two days in July at the federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida, where she was previously held while serving her 20-year sentence.

'Except for the names of victims, every word is included. Nothing removed. Nothing hidden.'

Maxwell, who was moved to a minimum-security federal prison in Bryan, Texas, earlier this month, was convicted in 2021 for trafficking minors for sex as Jeffrey Epstein's co-conspirator and confidante.

Transcripts and audio recordings from their meeting revealed that Maxwell still does not believe that Epstein committed suicide in 2019. When asked to speculate about who might have killed him, she stated she did not know.

She claimed that Epstein did not have a client list, and she was unaware of him previously being accused of blackmailing or extorting anyone, suggesting that his death was unrelated.

RELATED: Clinton appointee blocks DOJ push for Epstein transparency

Photo by Florida Department of Law Enforcement via Getty Images

"In prison, where I am, they will kill you, or they will pay — somebody can pay a prisoner to kill you for $25 worth of commissary," Maxwell said. "That's about the going rate for a hit with a lock today."

Maxwell insisted that she never witnessed President Donald Trump and former President Bill Clinton do anything inappropriate. She rejected claims that Clinton traveled to Epstein's island.

She noted that she met Trump before Epstein and believed the two were "friendly like people are in social settings," but added, "I don't think they were close friends."

"President Trump was always very cordial and very kind to me. And I just want to say that I find — I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the president now. And I like him, and I've always liked him. So that is the sum and substance of my entire relationship with him," she said.

Maxwell also insisted that she did not introduce Epstein to Prince Andrew and called claims that Epstein worked for or communicated with an intelligence agency "bulls**t."

"That is a flat untruth," she said.

RELATED: Ghislaine Maxwell opposes unsealing of grand jury testimony requested by Pam Bondi

Andrew Savulich/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

Blanche stated that the interview files were released "in the interest of transparency."

"Except for the names of victims, every word is included. Nothing removed. Nothing hidden," he remarked.

Markus applauded the DOJ's decision to publish the files. He claimed that Maxwell was "innocent and never should have been tried, much less convicted, in this case."

"She never committed or participated in sexual abuse against minors, or anyone else for that matter. In fact, the government has admitted that it did not even consider her a conspirator during the extensive investigation into Epstein in the Southern District of Florida. The only reason she was ever charged is that she served as a scapegoat after Jeffrey Epstein died in prison," Markus stated.

"We are thankful to the Department of Justice and to Todd Blanche for making these tapes and transcripts public so that people can judge for themselves. We are also grateful to the president for his continued commitment to the truth in this matter and for refusing to cave to the mob," Markus added.

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What In The World Is Going On With Ghislaine Maxwell?

'She was asked about every possible thing you could imagine'

Vance To Hold Meeting With Top FBI, DOJ Officials To Discuss Epstein Strategy

Vance To Hold Meeting With Top FBI Officials To Discuss Epstein Strategy