The Democrats have retaken control of the US House of Representatives as a “blue wave” of opposition to Donald Trump swept the party’s candidates to victory in congressional districts across the country.

A string of wins in Republican districts across North Carolina, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and New Jersey saw the party pass the 218 threshold needed to win a majority in the 435-member chamber, the minimum goal in achieving its aim of reining in Donald Trump’s presidential power.

The Democrat Troy Jackson has won Maine’s US Senate race, toppling five-term Republican incumbent Susan Collins in one of the biggest upsets of the 2026 midterms.

Jackson, 58, unseated Collins – who has been in the Senate since 1997 – in a closely fought, and often rancorous, race characterized by mutual accusations of corruption and clashes over living costs in the predominantly rural state.

The victory delivers Democrats one of their most coveted pickup opportunities this midterm cycle, and brings an end to Collins’ nearly three-decade tenure in Washington.

DOJ and FBI Shut Down Investigations and Withheld Evidence While Claiming No Basis to Prosecute or Even Investigate Any Additional Epstein Co-Conspirators

In Two-Day Interview, Attorney General Todd Blanche Instructed Maxwell Not to Discuss a Specific Survivor Whose Account Implicated Trump

Five Women Accuse Trump of Rape or Sexual Assault in Epstein’s Company or Presence; Others Describe Apparent Attempts by Epstein or Maxwell to Traffic Them to Trump

Committee Interviews, Survivor Accounts and FBI Records Trace Criminal Ties Among Trump, Epstein, Former Trump Envoy Paolo Zampolli and Known Pedophile John Casablancas in the Murky World of Beauty Pageants in 1990s New York

Judiciary Democrats Call for Independent Special Counsel to Investigate Epstein’s Co-Conspirators, Full Cooperation With State and Foreign Prosecutors Requesting Evidence, and Congressional Action to End DOJ’s Cover-Up

Washington, D.C. (October 26, 2026)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, released a sweeping new Committee staff report, “‘We Have Certain Things in Common, Jeffrey’: The Case Against Donald Trump Emerging in the Epstein Files and DOJ’s Desperate Efforts to Cover it Up,” detailing evidence involving 11 women, five of whom directly accuse Donald Trump of rape or sexual assault in Jeffrey Epstein’s close company or presence. The report concludes that, based on the available evidence and witness testimony, Trump and Paolo Zampolli—who until recently served as a senior Trump Administration official and diplomat—may have been co-conspirators in Jeffrey Epstein’s conspiracy to traffic and abuse young women in the 1990s.

Drawing on interviews conducted by Committee staff, survivor accounts, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) records and documents released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the report traces striking similarities in the stories of women abused by Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump. With one exception, each assault or instance of sexual misconduct occurred between 1992 and 1997, in New York and Palm Beach, and many of the victims were closely tied to the modeling industry and Zampolli.

The link to the actual report is at the bottom of the page:
https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/democrats-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/2026-10.hjc-dems-staff-report-epstein-and-trump.pdf

The attorney general of New Mexico on Wednesday filed a civil lawsuit against Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime attorney, Darren Indyke, and Epstein’s longtime accountant, Richard Kahn, accusing them of having “facilitated and concealed” Epstein’s crimes, and is seeking to stop them from being paid by Epstein’s estate while the litigation plays out.

The lawsuit, filed in the US district court for the district of New Mexico, names Kahn and Indyke as defendants both in their individual capacity, and in their capacity as co-executors of Epstein’s estate. The complaint also names Epstein’s estate, and the 1953 Trust, which holds the estate’s assets.

“Epstein, with the help of his associates, trafficked, isolated, and abused survivors at alluring locations” including at Epstein’s ranch in Stanley, New Mexico, known as Zorro Ranch, the complaint claims. It goes on to allege that “in exchange for furthering Epstein’s criminal project and remaining silent about it, his associates received generous salaries, access to elite social circles, and lavish gifts, including being named beneficiaries of his multimillion-dollar estate”.

Among the demands the lawsuit seeks is a court order preventing Indyke and Kahn from receiving estate payments while the case proceeds.

Jeffrey Epstein’s estate is facing a new lawsuit filed by two women who allege that Epstein possessed child sexual abuse material (CSAM) of them. They want a judge to order that a program be set up to identify and notify all individuals whose “unlawful sexualized images” might have been in Epstein’s collection, and are also seeking monetary damages.

The complaint was filed this week in the US district court for the southern district of New York on behalf of two plaintiffs, who are anonymous in the filing but described as survivors of Epstein’s CSAM crimes. The lawsuit was filed against Epstein’s former lawyer Darren Indyke and Epstein’s former accountant Richard Kahn, who are being sued in their capacities as co-executors of Epstein’s estate. Attorneys for Indyke and Kahn, who have both said that they had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes during their employment, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the complaint on Wednesday.

The complaint claims that for more than two decades, Epstein, who died in a Manhattan jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges, possessed, transported, produced and distributed “child pornography and/or child sexual abuse material of countless children”. It alleges that Epstein “acquired by theft” nude or partly nude images of the first plaintiff, referred to in the document as Jane Doe, and that he transported the material across state lines and retained it.

The lawsuit argues that many of those depicted in the CSAM that they say was possessed by Epstein have never been identified or notified through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s victim-identification program.

This is not new news. But if/when Alan Dershowitz ever makes it to appearing before the House Oversight Committee, I want you to know what the news will never print. It is freely available in various depositions, but the media only ever takes a tiny snippet of what's there, usually the most prurient or titillating mosel, and leaves the rest, not least because they don't want to get sued by someone like Dershowitz.

It is my full expectation that whatever happens in that committee room, if it ever does, will be underreported at best, and so I offer you an original source of what you should know about this guy, straight from one of the victims.

As many of you already know, in 2014 Virgina Giuffre joined the Palm Beach survivors in their earlier legal action against the government because Jeffrey Epstein had been given a sweetheart deal in 2007 that appeared to violate federal law -- the Crime Victims Rights Act, or CVRA -- and in the course of joining that CVRA suit she gave her personal evidence of having been trafficked. She had done so before 2014, but had largely avoided naming names. Yet this time, in 2014, Virginia Giuffre named some names. Big ones.

When she did so, some of those involved decided that their best response would be to slander and defame her. When they did, Giuffre sued back, and was then countersued and slandered more, and in the end even the lawyers were suing the other lawyers, in endless cases, some of which are still being litigated today, over ten years later.

At the very core of this overwhelming blizzard of legal activity is Alan Dershowitz.

The post link, above, is to one of the full copies of her depositions, this particular one from 2016 given in the case of Bradley J. Edwards and Paul G. Cassell v Alan M. Dershowitz, one of the secondary lawsuits that arose from the original CVRA suit against the government: Brad Edwards was Virginia Giuffre's attorney when she joined the CVRA suit on behalf of the Palm Beach survivors, and Paul Cassell is a professor of law specializing in victims' rights who assisted Edwards in bringing the suit.

Edwards and Cassell brought the original CVRA suit against the government, and together they later sued Dershowitz for defamation.

Virginia Giuffre was brought into the defamation suit and forced to undergo deposition again with Alan Dershowitz sitting in the same room, watching and listening to her reply as she was grilled about how Dershowitz had used her body at Epstein's direction and command, in Epstein's own bedroom, and about whatever other sexual assaults and experiences his legal team thought would humiliate her. (This is the reason for the trigger warning: the deposition pulls no punches.)

You do not have to be a lawyer to read these things: skip the citations, skim over the legal business, attend the text. But what you will be is shocked. Not just at what Virginia Giuffre had to say about Alan Dershowitz, which never changed throughout all these depositions and who was in the room with her throughout this deposition, (see page 3, "Also Present") but at how poorly she was treated throughout, how even her own personal safety was repeatedly ignored as the opposition lawyers repeatedly tried to bully her into giving names she had already decided were not safe for her to name, and how they repeated question after question that, in my opinion, were crafted more for their potential to humiliate and embarrass as opposed to their use in uncovering relevant truth.

The psychological pressure they put on her was immense. She never buckled.

But this was just one time out of many where she had to undergo the same thing: someone has weaponized the law to sue someone else, and as retaliation a survivor, or many survivors, are brought in once again to relive their hell while one or more of those actually responsible -- or even a direct participant, as in this case -- sits in the room to watch it happen.

ALL the victim depositions I have read have been like this, and worse. That is not to say all of them are this bad, but if any are lighter or more gentle somehow, I have yet to come across them.

And they seem to be most especially prevalent wherever Dershowitz is involved in any way.

I don't think we normies really have any idea what it means for a victim to come forward and name even a single name, and how that can disrupt entire lives for years, even decades to come, and how after so much of this turmoil, not just within the legal system but outside of it from the perpetrators, and years of fighting for the truth to come out, some of them are no longer with us. This deposition is just a fraction of what they had to bear not just once but many, many times.

As you read, take note of who is asking what and why -- I kept one copy open to the introduction (Page 2) while I read a second copy so I could keep the participants straight -- and know that if Dershowitz ever makes it in front of the House committee, it will be only a fraction of what he and his attorneys put each of the victims who spoke up through, usually multiple times.

Also note some of the bizarre redactions. For example, a special master was appointed to ensure that legal confidentialities remained legal even as lawyers were suing other lawyers: when he appears, they have redacted the word Master from his title, so you'll see a lot of Special _______ in the text. They have also bizarrely redacted the names "Bradley" and "Edwards" from this publicly filed suit.

An outgoing Republican congressman accused billionaire Leon Black and David Copperfield, the illusionist, of being co-conspirators of the accused late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and repeated a call for the Department of Justice to launch an immediate investigation into the men, among others.

Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who recently lost his primary to a challenger backed by Donald Trump, named several friends and associates of Epstein on the floor of the House in his bid to “shame” the Department of Justice to investigate a group of men and one woman who Massie called “perpetrators” of Epstein’s crimes. He also noted that, nearly one year after Trump signed the Epstein Transparency Act, which led to the release of millions of so-called “Epstein files”, millions more have yet to be publicly disclosed.

“The government continues to withhold over three million files” Massie said on Monday. “That’s why we’ve introduced the Epstein Files Transparency Act II, to bring the fight to the state courts, accountability to the Department of Justice and closure for survivors.”

“We want perpetrators of these crimes to be investigated and prosecuted” he added. Massie called the individuals “co-conspirators” on his Instagram account.

Black, the New York private equity investor who paid Epstein tens of millions of dollars in fees, is separately facing a threat of being held in contempt of Congress because of an ongoing standoff over demands that he appear to testify before the House oversight committee later this week, on 3 September.

Black has not yet confirmed his appearance before the committee, according to a person familiar with the matter. Black’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the scheduled hearing or Massie’s comments.

Black has described his work for Epstein as tax and estate-planning services. In a previous statement before the oversight committee in June, Black wrote of his relationship with Epstein: “I did not know about this nefarious activity until Epstein was charged with trafficking in July 2019.” But Black acknowledged that he did know about Epstein pleading guilty in “2008 to state charges relating to prostitution involving a minor”.

The chairman of the House oversight committee, the Republican James Comer, has previously said he would hold Black in contempt if he did not fully cooperate with his panel’s ongoing investigation into Epstein, including by handing over subpoenaed documents.

Susan Estrich, Black’s lawyer, has rejected Comer’s assertions that Black has not been cooperative and has said that Black was being targeted in a “political witch hunt”.

Epstein’s former lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, has also not yet confirmed his appearance before the oversight committee, according to a person familiar with the matter. Dershowitz’s appearance was scheduled to take place on Wednesday. Dershowitz told the Guardian on Tuesday that he was “working on a date”.

FBI agents investigating Copperfield in 2007 said that “a clear connection” existed between the famous illusionist and Epstein, according to documents released by the Department of Justice earlier this year. Copperfield’s lawyers have previously denied he was friends with Epstein. Lawyers for the illusionist did not respond to a request for comment on Massie’s comments, accusing Copperfield of being an Epstein co-conspirator.

In a post on X on Tuesday morning, Massie said that he, along with Representatives Ro Khanna and Teresa Leger Fernández had launched a “discharge petition to collect 218 signatures” to force a vote on the new Act.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ghislaine Maxwell seems to be all but guaranteed to have run out of legal avenues to challenge her conviction for her involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of girls and young women with perhaps her lingering hopes of freedom resting on a pardon from the Trump administration.

Paul Engelmayer, a Manhattan federal court judge, last week rejected Maxwell’s contention that her constitutional rights were violated at trial and sentencing for her crimes. “Maxwell’s claims are all meritless and all or almost all are frivolous,” Engelmayer wrote in his ruling on the former British socialite’s legal gambit.

Engelmayer also rejected Maxwell’s claim that new evidence, which she said came to light during Epstein Files Transparency Act disclosures, did not support her allegations of constitutional violations. “On the contrary, to the extent it is relevant, far from exculpating her, it incriminates her or reinforces the correctness of the legal rulings,” he ruled.

Maxwell’s family said in a statement that Engelmayer’s ruling was “marked by a tone of sarcasm and disdain that, in our view, undermines the appearance of impartiality and invites scrutiny of the judge’s conduct”. They also said Maxwell “will continue to pursue every available legal avenue” for relief.

Legal veterans said, however, that Maxwell had virtually exhausted all her court-based routes. With Maxwell apparently running out of legal pathways, many have wondered whether Donald Trump will at some point deliver a Hail Mary – a presidential pardon.

Today I was reading about the judicial progress against another unchecked billionaire rapist and it mentioned some statements Lord Peter Mandelson made to Jeffrey Epstein upon the occasion of Epstein's conviction in 2008.

I didn't recall that exact wording, so I went to the linked article that focused entirely on the emails between Epstein and Mandelson. As I often do, I wanted to see if the quoted section was all there is or just a truncated version of a much longer exchange, so I went to find the EFTA version.

Only thing is, when I went to the DoJ site, these particular career-ending emails are gone, or are at least not found when searching by text, which is what I was doing. They're still readily found in Jmail, of course, though even the Jmail versions no longer have a link to the actual EFTA files on the DoJ site.

Here's the first email mentioned in the above-linked Guardian article, and here's the second. But nothing left on the DoJ site, even though almost 6,000 other records of Epstein's communications with Mandelson remain.

Just to see if this is going to be a thing, I went to another linked article in The Guardian that lists ten points of evidence in the Epstein -- Mendelson correspondence that suggest a close friendship, and looked up each of the quotes on both the DoJ site and in Jmail.

Many were there and findable on a text search just as they should be, but sure enough two are missing from both the DoJ site and strangely also from the Jmail archive: #3: “Peter will be staying at 71st over weekend” from Epstein to Jes Staley, June 2009; and #5: “Petie’s quitting” from Epstein to Jes Staley, May 2010.

Am I missing something? Or are the orange lackeys just back to quietly removing the rich and powerful from the EFTA releases hoping nobody notices.

A federal judge has rejected Ghislaine Maxwell’s legal effort to throw out her 2021 conviction on sex-trafficking charges and 20-year prison sentence, calling her claims “demonstrably meritless, and generally based on speculation, distortions, and/or outright falsehoods”.

In a 67-page decision filed on Tuesday, the US district judge Paul Engelmayer for New York’s southern district denied the former British socialite’s petition for relief, finding that Maxwell had failed to make a substantial showing that her constitutional rights were denied when she was convicted for her role in crimes linked to the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Maxwell, who is serving out her punishment at a minimum-security prison camp in Bryan, Texas, had petitioned the court to vacate her conviction on grounds that there were issues at her trial, including a juror who later revealed he was a sexual abuse victim and evidence she alleged was not made available to her defense team.

Her petition, which came before the massive Epstein-related document dump by the federal government, also raised the 2007 non-prosecution agreement between federal prosecutors in Miami and Epstein, which she claimed protected her from prosecution. Maxwell was not named in that agreement.

In the decision denying the petition, Engelmayer wrote that the “vast majority” of grounds on which Maxwell made her appeal “are procedurally barred – either because Maxwell made and lost the same arguments on direct appeal, or because she could have made such arguments on appeal but elected not to do so”.

The judge also rejected that new evidence had come through the Trump administration-led US justice department’s multimillion-page release of documents. Those, Engelmayer said, “incriminates her or reinforces the correctness of the legal rulings Maxwell challenges”.

The Republican chairman of the House oversight committee has threatened to hold the private equity investor Leon Black in contempt if he does not fully cooperate with the panel’s ongoing investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, amid accusations that the billionaire is purposely delaying and disrupting the panel’s inquiry.

A letter released by Representative James Comer’s office on Tuesday, which was addressed to Black’s lawyer, revealed new details about the high-stakes clash between the powerful Kentucky congressman and Black, the co-founder of Apollo Asset Management who was Epstein’s friend and former client and paid Epstein tens of millions of dollars in fees.

“If Mr Black refuses to provide the Committee with responsive documents or refuses to appear for his scheduled deposition on September 3, 2026, the Committee will use all tools at its disposal, including contempt,” Comer said.

Susan Estrich, Black’s lawyer, rejected Comer’s assertions in a statement released on Tuesday night, saying the letter was misrepresenting the facts, and that Black was being targeted in a “political witch hunt”.

Black voluntarily agreed to be questioned by the House panel in June as part of the committee’s broad investigation into Epstein, which the panel has said includes an examination of the alleged mismanagement of the federal government’s investigation into the late sexual predator; the operation of sex-trafficking rings; and the ways in which Epstein and his companion Ghislaine Maxwell “sought to curry favor” to protect their “illegal activities”.

But Black’s appearance ended abruptly – after just one hour of questioning – after members of both parties said Black was refusing to answer questions about non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). Comer, in his capacity as committee chairman, issued two subpoenas on that day in response to Black’s alleged lack of cooperation: one demanding that Black produce “all non-disclosure agreements to which he is a party” and another demanding he appear before the committee for a deposition.

This is the press release from McConnell's staff: https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=25E43CBF-8898-4D4C-AFFE-B31F85872009