Trump lands in Scotland ahead of UK and EU talks as Epstein furore continues in the US – live | Trump administration
Maxwell’s lawyer says Trump’s DoJ has not offered clemency as second day of questioning ends
Ghislaine Maxwell’s attorney David Oscar Markus has said the deputy attorney general has finished his questioning for the day, NBC News reports.
“We started this morning right around 9 o’clock, and went to now lunchtime, and we’re finished after all day, yesterday and today, Ghislaine answered every single question asked of her over the last day and a half, she answered those questions honestly, truthfully, to the best of her ability. She never invoked a privilege. She never refused to answer a question,” Markus told reporters as he left the federal courthouse in downtown Tallahassee, Florida.
“They asked about every single, every possible thing you could imagine. Everything.”
The justice department has not said whether Blanche intends to question Maxwell further. Markus said he did not know whether the discussions would have any impact on her case.
“We don’t know how it’s going to play out. We just know that this was the first opportunity she’s ever been given to answer questions about what happened and so the truth will come out about what happened with Mr Epstein, and she’s the person who’s answering those questions,” he said.
Prosecutors and the judge who oversaw Maxwell’s 2021 trial have said that she made multiple false statements under oath and failed to take responsibility for her actions. She was convicted for sex trafficking and other crimes, and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.
“People have questioned her honesty, which I think is just wrong,” Markus said.
Asked if she’d got any offer of clemency from the government, the lawyer said no offer had been made.
Key events
Trump greeted by Scottish secretary
The US president was greeted by Scottish secretary Ian Murray as he walked off Air Force One at Prestwick airport.
The pair could be seen shaking hands at the bottom of the aircraft stairs before Donald Trump walked across to a group of journalists to answer questions.
Air Force One has just landed in Scotland. I’ll bring you any key lines here if Donald Trump speaks to the media.
Disgraced former US representative George Santos reports to NJ federal prison to serve 7-year fraud sentence
Disgraced former US representative George Santos reported to a federal prison in New Jersey earlier today to begin serving a seven-year sentence for the fraud charges that got him ousted from Congress.
The federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed to the Associated Press that the New York Republican was in custody at the Federal Correctional Institution in Fairton, in southern New Jersey.
Santos pleaded guilty last summer to federal wire fraud and aggravated identity theft charges for deceiving donors and stealing people’s identities in order to fund his congressional campaign.
Lawyers for Santos didn’t respond to phone and email messages seeking comment.
The ever-online Santos, 37, hosted a farewell party for himself on X last night.
“Well, darlings … The curtain falls, the spotlight dims, and the rhinestones are packed,” he wrote in a post afterwards. “From the halls of Congress to the chaos of cable news what a ride it’s been! Was it messy? Always. Glamorous? Occasionally. Honest? I tried … most days.”
In a Thursday interview with Al Arabiya, a Saudi state-owned news organization, Santos said he’ll serve his sentence in a minimum-security prison “camp” that he described as a “big upgrade” from the medium-security lockup he was initially assigned to.
In April, a federal judge declined to give Santos a lighter two-year sentence that he sought, saying she was unconvinced he was truly remorseful. In the weeks before his sentencing, Santos said he was “profoundly sorry” for his crimes, but he also complained frequently that he was a victim of a political witch hunt and prosecutorial overreach.
Santos lied extensively about his life story both before and after entering the US Congress, where he was the first openly LGBTQ+ Republican elected to the body. He was ultimately convicted of defrauding donors.
He has apparently been holding out hope that his unwavering support for Donald Trump might help him win a last-minute reprieve.
The White House said this week that it “will not comment on the existence or nonexistence” of any clemency request.
A senior justice department official has told NBC News that attorney general Pam Bondi is still healing from a torn cornea, but it has not prevented her from doing day-to-day work and meeting with staff.
The update comes after Bondi abruptly canceled a scheduled appearance on Wednesday at CPAC’s anti-trafficking summit in Washington, citing recovery from a health issue.
As all the political firestorm over the Epstein saga continues to dominate the news cycle and consume Washington, there has been much online chatter about Bondi’s whereabouts.
She was last seen on Tuesday morning swearing in the new DEA administrator Terry Cole at the justice department.
NewsNation reports that following the conclusion of the DOJ interviews, David Oscar Markus, Ghislaine Maxwell’s attorney, said they were “very grateful” for the opportunity.
Markus said:
This was a thorough, comprehensive interview by the deputy attorney general. No person and no topic were off-limits. We are very grateful. The truth will come out.
Some more detail on that from the Tallahassee Democrat.
David Oscar Markus, Ghislaine Maxwell’s attorney declined to say whether Donald Trump was the focus of any of the Department of Justice’s questions during the interviewing sessions that have taken place behind closed doors at the federal courthouse in Tallahassee over the last two days.
“I’m just not going to talk about the substance,” Markus said.
Deputy attorney general Todd Blanche had asked Maxwell “every possible question”, Markus said. “He did a really good job and asked her a lot of things.”
Maxwell’s lawyer says Trump’s DoJ has not offered clemency as second day of questioning ends
Ghislaine Maxwell’s attorney David Oscar Markus has said the deputy attorney general has finished his questioning for the day, NBC News reports.
“We started this morning right around 9 o’clock, and went to now lunchtime, and we’re finished after all day, yesterday and today, Ghislaine answered every single question asked of her over the last day and a half, she answered those questions honestly, truthfully, to the best of her ability. She never invoked a privilege. She never refused to answer a question,” Markus told reporters as he left the federal courthouse in downtown Tallahassee, Florida.
“They asked about every single, every possible thing you could imagine. Everything.”
The justice department has not said whether Blanche intends to question Maxwell further. Markus said he did not know whether the discussions would have any impact on her case.
“We don’t know how it’s going to play out. We just know that this was the first opportunity she’s ever been given to answer questions about what happened and so the truth will come out about what happened with Mr Epstein, and she’s the person who’s answering those questions,” he said.
Prosecutors and the judge who oversaw Maxwell’s 2021 trial have said that she made multiple false statements under oath and failed to take responsibility for her actions. She was convicted for sex trafficking and other crimes, and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.
“People have questioned her honesty, which I think is just wrong,” Markus said.
Asked if she’d got any offer of clemency from the government, the lawyer said no offer had been made.
Clare Considine
On the morning of 2 May, Florida teenager Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio was driving to his landscaping job in North Palm Beach with his mother and two male friends when they were pulled over by the Florida highway patrol.
In one swift moment, a traffic stop turned into a violent arrest.
A highway patrol officer asked everyone in the van to identify themselves, then called for backup. Officers with US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) arrived on the scene.
Video footage of the incident captured by Laynez-Ambrosio, an 18-year-old US citizen, appears to show a group of officers in tactical gear working together to violently detain the three men*, two of whom are undocumented. They appear to use a stun gun on one man, put another in a chokehold and can be heard telling Laynez-Ambrosio: “You’ve got no rights here. You’re a migo, brother.” Afterward, agents can be heard bragging and making light of the arrests, calling the stun gun use “funny” and quipping: “You can smell that … $30,000 bonus.”
The footage has put fresh scrutiny on the harsh tactics used by US law enforcement as the Trump administration sets ambitious enforcement targets to detain thousands of immigrants every day.
“The federal government has imposed quotas for the arrest of immigrants,” said Jack Scarola, an attorney who is advocating on behalf of Laynez-Ambrosio and working with the non-profit Guatemalan-Maya Center, which provided the footage to the Guardian. “Any time law enforcement is compelled to work towards a quota, it poses a significant risk to other rights.”
Jakub Krupa
Von der Leyen said she had a “good call” with Trump and said that at their meeting in Scotland on Sunday they will “discuss transatlantic trade relations, and how we can keep them strong”.
With EU diplomats saying earlier the deal was essentially ready and “in the hands of Trump now,” you would be forgiven for assuming it could be part of a broader political choreography leading to the announcement of the deal on the weekend – unless something goes wrong at the very last minute.
Before leaving for Scotland, Trump said it was “a 50:50 … maybe less than that”, but then we know he just loves similar games before big decisions.
EU’s von der Leyen to meet Trump on Sunday as US president says 50/50 chance of trade deal
Lisa O’Carroll
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has said that she will meet Donald Trump in Scotland on Sunday to discuss trade relations between the EU and US.
Earlier today, Trump told reporters outside the White House before departing for his trip to Scotland that he felt that the EU only has a 50/50 chance of a tariff deal with the US.
I would say … we have a 50/50 chance, maybe less than that, but a 50/50 chance of making a deal with the EU.
It will be a deal that where they have to buy down their tariffs, because right now it’s 30%, they will have to buy it down. Maybe.
Or they could leave it the way they are. But they want to make a deal very badly.
The US president’s warning shows he is looking to extract more concessions from the bloc before 1 August, his self-imposed deadline for a deal, my colleague Lisa O’Carroll writes.
Boarding his plane on his way to Scotland, he breezily told reporters that he had rated chance of a recent Japan deal at worse than that, 25%, but they came with concessions and “made a deal”.
“They kept coming back, and we made a deal,” he said warning that it was up to the EU if they wanted to stick with the 30% tariff rate he has threatened to impose on 1 August.
His words will send shivers around the capitals of the EU which was hoping a second version of an agreement in principle, accepting a baseline tariff of 15% on most exports to the US, would be enough to get the US president’s approval.
Even this week sources close to German chancellor Friedrich Merz were expressing frustration that a deal had not already been done.
Half year results published today by Volkswagen (14:52) revealed the current 25% extra tariff Trump has imposed on cars is already hurting hard. The car giant said it had taken a €1.3bn hit because of the US tariffs.
There was speculation that US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick and trade representative Jamieson Greer would join Trump in Scotland but they were not on the passenger list released to the media.
Trump already has a meeting scheduled with the British prime minister Keir Starmer scheduled during this trip, fuelling hopes that he will finish the trade agreement with the UK by slashing the 25% tariff he imposed on steel exports.
There is also speculation that European leaders such as Germany’s Merz may try and reach out to the US president over the weekend to try and break the impasse. Merz has had a direct line to Trump in recent weeks.
Julius Constantine Motal
A brother is torn from his sister. A father arrives for his immigration hearing with his family, only to find that they will be leaving without him. A woman, seemingly relieved after emerging from her hearing, finds that her life is about to change when she is apprehended by federal officials waiting just outside the door.
These are just some of the moments that happened on a single day in the Jacob K Javits federal building at 26 Federal Plaza in New York City, the largest federal immigration courthouse in Manhattan.
Courthouse detentions have been one of many flashpoints in the Trump administration’s expanding crackdown on immigration, as federal authorities seek to arrest 3,000 people a day. There have been reports of arrests at courthouses across the country, from Phoenix to Los Angeles to Chicago, turning routine hearings into scenes fraught with anxiety and fear. A recently filed class-action lawsuit against the Trump administration seeks to bar the practice of courthouse arrests.
For the full story, click here:
Speaking to CNN on Friday, Republican representative Pete Sessions of Texas said that Ghislaine Maxwell’s testimony with the justice department “holds very little water.”
Sessions said:
“Well, it’s always easy when you’re sitting in jail for 20 years to be unhappy. But she was convicted. She had her time in court. And she had that opportunity… It seems like to me that she acts like she wants to reset the record away from testimony that was given that convicted her in the first place.”
He went on to add:
“It holds very little water to me… I don’t know why they’re meeting with her except to gain her acceptance.”
Nina Lakhani
The furore over Donald Trump’s ties with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein continued on Friday as new revelations about the pair’s relationship threatened to mire the president’s golfing trip to Scotland.
The US president’s name appeared on a contributor list for a book celebrating Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003, according to reporting from the New York Times, lending further weight to reports that Trump participated in the leather-bound collection of messages, drawings and accolades – despite denying that he contributed a signed and sexually suggestive note and drawing, as reported by the Wall Street Journal earlier this month.
Trump’s name is listed among Epstein’s friends and acquaintances who contributed birthday messages for the professionally bound book which reportedly had multiple volumes, the Times reported. The tome opens with a handwritten letter, also reviewed by the Times, from the disgraced financier’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for conspiring to sexually traffic children. Maxwell is due to have a second meeting with US deputy attorney general Todd Blanche in Florida, where she is serving her term in federal prison, on Friday.
Sam Levine
As Republicans in their state move ahead with an effort to gerrymander congressional districts, 15 Texas Democrats are spending the day on Friday meeting with California governor Gavin Newsom and Illinois governor JB Pritzker.
The move comes as Newsom, Pritzker and other Democrats have threatened to redraw US House districts in their states to pick up Democratic seats. Donald Trump wants Texas Republicans to redraw the congressional map to add as many as 5 US House seats.
“Since Governor Abbott is acting like a child, we are going to find adults to go talk to,” representative Gene Wu, chair of the Texas House Democratic Caucus said in a statement. Wu is leading the delegation to Illinois to meet with Pritzker.
“There are dozens of dead kids and people are still missing from the central Texas floods. But Donald Trump is focused on manipulating elections to help himself,” said representative Rafael Anchía, who is leading the delegation to meet with Newsom in California.
The Democratic departures from the state will not delay the Texas special session, since it was in recess on Friday. Democratic lawmakers are reportedly considering fleeing the state enmasse to deny Republicans the quorum they need to pass the maps.
While Democrats have control over drawing the lines in Illinois, Newsom faces significant hurdles to redrawing California’s districts. Redistricting in California is controlled by an independent redistricting commission, not the legislature. Newsom has suggested he could try and put a quick referendum to voters to give the legislature the power to redraw the maps or try and untested legal theory and have the legislature draw the maps anyway.
Trump says he has not thought about pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell – but doesn’t rule it out
Further to my earlier post about Trump referring to the ongoing investigation when asked about possible clemency for Ghislaine Maxwell, NBC News reports that the president also didn’t seem to rule out the possibility of pardoning her.
“I’m allowed to do it, but it’s something I have not thought about,” Trump told reporters outside the White House this morning before leaving for his trip to Scotland.
His comments come as deputy attorney general Todd Blanche is meeting with Maxwell – who is serving a 20-year sentence in prison after being convicted of sex trafficking charges and other crimes after she recruited and groomed teenage girls to be sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein – and her attorney for a second consecutive day in Florida today.
Trump said he wasn’t sure how their conversation has gone, but when asked if Maxwell should be trusted to tell the truth, the president said Blanche is “a professional lawyer” and “he’s been through things like this before”.
Donald Trump also dismissed Emmanuel Macron’s plan to recognize a Palestinian state at the UN general assembly in September.
“What he says doesn’t matter,” Trump told reporters of the French president. “He’s a very good guy. I like him, but that statement doesn’t carry weight.”
Yesterday Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, responded angrily to Macron’s announcement, calling it a “reckless decision” that was a “slap in the face” to victims of the 7 October Hamas attack.
In a diplomatic cable in June, the US – long Israel’s strongest backer – said it opposed any steps that would unilaterally recognise a Palestinian state.
