Cam here 👋 bringing you your daily dose of what people are doing – good, bad, and otherwise – in the world of politics. We’re diving into the stories you won’t see anywhere else. And remember, you can also keep up with me over on TikTok and Bluesky.
Since day one of Trump’s political career, people have desperately attempted to normalize his absurd abuses of power and blatant corruption – and 10 years later, much of corporate media remains a victim of their own attempts to return to a sense of normalcy.
It’s time to stop sane-washing the insanity.
What Happened
The Department of Justice on Monday announced the arrests of 28 Californians based on a debunked list of alleged noncitizen voters — the latest move in the Trump administration’s broader effort to meddle in the state’s midterm elections.
The targeted individuals were among 20,000 people the DOJ claims are noncitizens registered to vote in Los Angeles County. But an examination by the county election officials found that 13,000 of those on the list did not live in the county, 43% had already had their registrations canceled, and 71% had never voted.
Undeterred, the Trump administration executed countywide arrests using tactics usually reserved for drug busts or taking down crime rings. Six patrol vehicles and a helicopter were sent to arrest Omar Muñoz, a 72-year-old retiree who moved to the US in 1974. Muñoz was told by agents that if he didn’t open the door, they’d break it down. When he did, they shackled him and forced him to walk past a gaggle of reporters from conservative news outlets who had been invited by the DOJ to ensure the arrest would become a spectacle.
“Why couldn’t they send me a letter saying that you are required to come to this building because you have a warrant, or we will go and arrest you?” Muñoz said in an interview with KCRW. “They put chains on me around my waist, around my legs, and I said, ‘Look, I can’t even run away from you guys. Why are you doing this? Remember, I’m a fall risk.’ They didn’t care.”
Dubbed “the biggest voter fraud bust in California’s history” by the California Post, the numbers tell a very different story. The 28 arrests represent roughly 0.0001% of the state’s registered voters, and are a far cry from the 190,000 noncitizen voters the Trump administration originally claimed to have identified.
California voters approved new district maps for the midterm elections that are expected to net Democrats five additional seats in the House of Representatives. But state officials are concerned the arrests will be used to justify the White House’s goal of disqualifying any ballots cast by the 20,000 people on its list. If successful, it could affect the results in some of California’s more competitive congressional districts to favor Republicans.
US Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), who represents many of the individuals targeted by the Trump administration, believes the arrests amount to voter intimidation. He told COURIER that he’s working with county and state election officials to ensure voters are able to cast their ballots and have them counted.
“This administration is trying to unconstitutionally stop California from counting ballots and bully Americans out of voting in the midterms,” said Garcia. “California has some of the strongest election protections in the country, and non-citizens are already prohibited from voting. We’re in touch with LA County and the California Secretary of State to fight this sad, desperate attempt by Donald Trump to meddle in the midterms.”
Should Democrats take control of the House in January, Garcia is expected to chair the powerful House Oversight Committee, where he has pledged to investigate corruption within the Trump administration, ways the president’s family has leveraged the White House for personal enrichment, and the apparent cover-up of Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal network.
*It’s against federal law for military or armed law enforcement to be at voting locations, and state and local election officials across the country have reassured voters that federal agents’ presence will not be tolerated. If you see troops or law enforcement at your polling place — or if someone appears to be impersonating an officer — report it to onsite staff or contact your local election officials.
Attempts to Sanewash
Justice Dept. Charges 28 in California With Voting-Related Crimes
California residents accused by feds of voter fraud react with shock, confusion and anger
Far-Right Spin
DOJ Charges 28 Non-Citizens Found on Voter Rolls: ‘These Are Not Isolated Instances’
Operation Protect the Vote: Largest Voter Fraud Takedown in California History
New bill would force Trump admin to hand over Epstein’s financial documents
Congressional Democrats are laying the groundwork to seize a trove of sensitive documents that both the Trump and Biden administrations have kept out of public view: Jeffrey Epstein’s banking records.
For years, House and Senate investigations have tried to obtain Epstein’s finance records from the US Treasury, believing they could be used to prosecute the deceased sex trafficker’s co-conspirators. Investigators with the Senate Finance Committee were given a small glimpse at these records in 2024, and found more than $1.5 billion in suspicious transactions that were reported by banks but never investigated by regulators.
Bills introduced earlier this month by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) would change that. Under the legislation, regulators would be required to hand over the requested documents to Congress, which could then compel the Federal Reserve, FDIC, SEC, and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to immediately open investigations into any financial institutions connected to Epstein.
Regulators would also be required to report their findings to Congress within the first 180 days of the investigations, implement and enforce penalties, and refer evidence of criminal misconduct to the Department of Justice.
“I have spent the last year calling on Donald Trump’s financial regulators to launch investigations into the big banks and executives who may have enabled Jeffrey Epstein’s horrific crimes,” Warren said in a press release. “Since they have failed to act, Congress must.”
Banks that did business with Epstein have already paid out nearly $1 billion in civil lawsuit settlements in an attempt to prevent these exact details from entering the public domain. Deutsche Bank has paid over $250 million to victims and shareholders, JPMorgan settled two lawsuits for a combined $365 million, and Bank of America agreed to pay victims $72.5 million in August. Bank of New York Mellon, another of Epstein’s trusted depositories, was part of a class-action lawsuit filed by survivors of Epstein’s abuse, but the case was dismissed by a federal judge in January.
Warren and Garcia’s legislation goes beyond monetary penalties. If investigators find that any bank executives knowingly participated in Epstein’s crimes, they would be banned from the industry, with criminal referrals sent to federal prosecutors.
What little is known about Epstein’s finances suggests the impact of such an investigation would be widespread. Suspicious activity reports filed by banks — and initially left unredacted when published under the Epstein Files Transparency Act — show just how far bank employees went to cater to Epstein, despite acknowledging that his financial maneuvers were textbook examples of what money launderers and traffickers do to conceal their crimes. Epstein is also believed to have helped his wealthy clients evade taxes and negotiated hush money agreements between his friends and women he trafficked.
While it is unlikely the bill will be brought to the floor for a vote this year, Garcia and Warren plan to reintroduce it in January, and they expect it to pass quickly should Democrats take control of Congress.
“Donald Trump has launched an all-out cover-up in trying to hide these files,” Garcia said in a video posted online. “Donald Trump needs to understand that we are not going to stop until we get full truth and accountability, and ensure that this never happens again.”
New Mexico Sues Epstein’s Lawyer and Accountant to Stop Them From Cashing In on His Estate
By Jackie Appel, investigative reporter
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime attorney, Darren Indyke, and his accountant, Richard Kahn, on Wednesday, accusing the two men of helping finance and conceal Epstein’s sex trafficking operation, including abuse at his Zorro Ranch south of Santa Fe. The civil lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in New Mexico, seeks to block Indyke and Kahn — who serve as co-executors of Epstein’s estate — from collecting payments from it while the case proceeds. It is the first law enforcement action against either man, according to Torrez’s office.
“Under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and the New Mexico Racketeering Act, we have in short made a complaint that alleges that Mr. Indyke and Mr. Kahn, through patterns of conduct including participating in the organization of various corporate entities and structuring payments and concealing the operations of that enterprise facilitated the criminal conduct and the trafficking behavior of Jeffrey Epstein for a number of years,” Torrez said at a press conference. “And it is unconscionable in my mind that people who actively participated in the efforts of that trafficking enterprise should in any way benefit from what is left of his estate.”
Both men stand to gain from the estate, whose assets are held in an entity called the 1953 Trust. The estate is valued at more than $107 million, according to Torrez’s office. Under the trust’s terms, Indyke is eligible for a $50 million bequest and Kahn for $25 million, subject to the availability of funds. The complaint also alleges that between 2011 and 2019, Indyke received more than $16 million from Epstein and related entities, and Kahn received more than $10 million. Both men have testified before Congress that they did not know about Epstein’s abuse, The Associated Press reported.
Dan Weiner, an attorney for Indyke and Kahn, told the AP that the pair “emphatically reject” the allegations, and said New Mexico officials never sought to interview them before going to court. “Not a single woman has ever accused Mr. Indyke or Mr. Kahn of committing sexual abuse or witnessing sexual abuse,” Weiner said in an email.
Earlier this year, Indyke and Kahn, acting as executors, agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by Epstein accusers for up to $35 million. They did not admit wrongdoing as part of the deal.
Two Epstein survivors, Julia Molchanova and Anouska De Georgiou, joined Torrez at the announcement. In a letter released alongside the lawsuit, a group of survivors also backed the state’s action. “Epstein’s trust names both men as primary beneficiaries, each standing to receive tens of millions of dollars. Now, as co-executors of his estate, they occupy a position of profound and deeply troubling conflict: helping determine what victims receive while standing to gain what is left over after the victims are paid for their damages.”
“That disparity is not a footnote,” the letter continues. “It captures the central moral failure of the estate: Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn, the two people who helped the most to sustain Epstein’s world of abuses and to gain far more from it than any one of the people he harmed. And, to be sure, it is Darren and Rich that made sure of it.”
The lawsuit follows another Torrez filed Aug. 5 against the U.S. Department of Justice, seeking unredacted Epstein investigative files that the state says could help identify victims, witnesses and additional criminal conduct in New Mexico. Specifically, Torrez sought files that name visitors, employees, and residents of Epstein’s Zorro Ranch, near the small community of Stanley, about 30 miles south of Santa Fe.
Epstein bought the ranch in 1993 and built a 26,700-square-foot mansion there, along with a private airstrip and helipad, the AP reported. The complaint describes the remote property as a place where Epstein and his associates recruited, transported, isolated and sexually abused girls and young women for more than two decades. The earliest documented abuse there dates to 1996. To investigate what happened at the ranch and who enabled it, the New Mexico House unanimously created the New Mexico Survivors’ Truth Commission, a bipartisan special committee, in February.
The commission’s interim report, the first of two it is required to issue this year, paints a disturbing picture of what went on at the ranch. It includes the confirmed accounts of five victims and acknowledges as many as 30 more whose accounts have not been confirmed. One survivor describes being flown to the ranch at the age of 15 and being molested by Epstein “for many hours.”
“What I remember most vividly was him explaining to me how beneficial the experience was for me and how much he was helping me to grow,” the account continues.
The report also lays out the commission’s lines of inquiry into Epstein’s conduct at the ranch, including his interest in eugenics and transhumanism, and into the people, organizations, power structures and loopholes that allowed his abuse to continue for decades. More is expected when the commission releases its final report, due Dec. 31.
Torrez cast the lawsuit as a way to steer what remains of Epstein’s fortune to the people he harmed. “Frankly,” he said, “if anyone is entitled to a recovery of Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, it’s the Epstein survivors who were targeted and trafficked here in New Mexico and beyond.”
The criminal investigation Torrez announced earlier this year remains ongoing, his office said.
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I definitely agree with this bill. I seriously wonder if Musk did in fact get Trump elected. Trump has never once stood out as actually embodying the responsible role of the president of this nation. He’s much too petty and self absorbed, without an once of the sense that he truly understands what the office of the presidency demands. It
seems criminal to have such a buffoon as the president of our Nation.
Let us ALL demand more from ALL future presidential candidates. We cannot afford to elect our President on an Advertised IMAGE.
Will too far ever be TOO FAR?