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Newly obtained correspondence shows a senior White House official working directly with Kash Patel and Justice Department officials before the controversial July 2025 memo was released.
The White House was directly involved in preparing the July 2025 FBI-Justice Department memorandum announcing that investigators had found no Jeffrey Epstein client list, no additional prosecutable co-conspirators and no grounds for further investigation. Emails obtained by Raw Story show that Taylor Budowich, then White House deputy chief of staff, communicated with FBI Director Kash Patel about the document before its public release. The correspondence raises fresh questions about the administration’s involvement in presenting the decision to close further investigative avenues.
Two weeks before publication, Budowich asked Patel whether he had something he could edit. Patel replied that he had received the document from the Justice Department and forwarded it to him. Budowich subsequently told Patel that he had circulated the draft to the White House communications team and requested that it appear on official Justice Department and FBI letterhead.
Nearly a week later, then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche sent Budowich a version described as final, but the White House official complained that it lacked official identification. Budowich insisted that the document needed a government seal before distribution to reporters, arguing that an unauthenticated copy resembled a school assignment. Blanche’s counsel, Diego Pestana, supplied a revised version approximately 90 minutes later.
The July memo provoked anger among Trump’s supporters and intensified demands for disclosure of Epstein-related records. Chris Swartz of the Democracy Defenders Fund described the coordination as deeply concerning, citing Trump’s documented past association with Epstein. The emails establish White House participation in preparing and presenting the memo, although the reported correspondence does not establish that officials changed its investigative conclusions.
Hot Take: The FBI investigated Epstein, the Justice Department wrote its conclusions, and the White House wanted a copy to edit. Patel passed it along, Blanche supplied the paperwork, and Budowich demanded a government seal. Nothing says independence like getting the stationery approved upstairs.
A mediator will consider whether the accused killer has a legal right to money his parents set aside before their deaths, potentially allowing him to rehire a prominent defense attorney.
Nick Reiner is fighting for access to $558,000 from a family trust to finance his defense against charges that he murdered his parents, Hollywood director Rob Reiner and photographer Michele Singer Reiner. Attorneys representing Reiner and the trust informed a Los Angeles judge Friday that they had agreed to mediation beginning in December. Any settlement would require judicial approval, with a further hearing scheduled for March 2027.
Reiner wants the money to rehire criminal defense attorney Alan Jackson, who withdrew from the case amid the financial dispute. He is currently represented by public defender Kimberly Greene. His attorneys argue that the money was due to him on his 30th birthday in September 2023, more than two years before his parents were killed, and that he simply never collected the payment.
Trust representatives have invoked California’s Slayer Statute, which prevents people responsible for unlawful killings from benefiting financially from their victims’ estates. Reiner’s lawyers counter that he has not been convicted and that the disputed funds were irrevocably allocated to him before the murders. The 32-year-old faces two counts of first-degree murder over the December 2025 stabbing deaths and has pleaded not guilty.
Hot Take: Nick Reiner wants half a million dollars his parents put aside for him. The trust says the murder charges complicate matters. His lawyers say the money was already his. Even the family fortune has ended up in court.
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Beatrice Keul has expanded her earlier account of an alleged 1993 assault, telling Democratic investigators that Donald Trump raped her at his Atlantic City hotel.
A former Swiss beauty pageant contestant has accused President Donald Trump of raping her in 1993, according to a new report prepared by Democratic staff on the House Judiciary Committee. Beatrice Keul told investigators that Trump assaulted her inside a room at his Plaza Hotel in Atlantic City after she encountered him and Jeffrey Epstein at a pageant event. The White House categorically denies the accusation.
Keul, who was 24 at the time, previously told the Daily Mail in 2024 that Trump had jumped on her and groped her before she persuaded him to stop. In subsequent interviews with congressional investigators, she described a more serious assault, alleging that Trump forcibly raped her, tore her dress and left her bruised and bleeding. The report does not include interview transcripts or explain the differences between her earlier and later accounts.
The Democratic report also accuses the administration of withholding Epstein-related records and raises questions about Attorney General Todd Blanche’s handling of Ghislaine Maxwell, including his prison interview with her before her transfer to a lower-security facility. Rep. Jamie Raskin has called for an independent investigation into Epstein’s associates and the Justice Department’s handling of the files. White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis dismissed the report as a partisan attack and maintained that Trump had been cleared of wrongdoing involving Epstein.
Hot Take: Another woman has accused Trump of sexual assault, and this time the allegation is in a congressional report. The White House calls it politics, while Democrats want more Epstein records. The accusations are serious, and the missing interview transcripts leave questions of their own.
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The rapper says a damaging accusation involving drugs and a private jet was false, accusing news outlets of spreading the claim without giving equal attention to her denial.
Rapper Yung Miami has publicly rejected allegations that she transported drugs for Sean “Diddy” Combs, criticizing media outlets for repeating the claims without adequately reporting her response. During an appearance on The Breakfast Club Friday, October 23, the former City Girls member addressed a 2024 civil lawsuit alleging that she carried pink cocaine aboard a private jet for Combs. She insisted the accusation was false and said the damage to her reputation had never been properly addressed.
The allegation originated in litigation claiming she transported drugs from Miami to a music festival in Virginia. Sources close to the rapper disputed the claim when it first surfaced, but Yung Miami says the accusation continued circulating long afterward. She criticized the absence of corrections and apologies, arguing that sensational allegations attract far more attention than subsequent denials.
Yung Miami also discussed her former relationship with Combs, who is serving a 50-month federal prison sentence for prostitution-related transportation offenses. She said she was not defending his conduct but described him as personally supportive during their relationship. Promoting her debut solo album Watch Dis, she emphasized her work as a businesswoman, mother and podcast host, insisting her career should not be defined solely by her association with Combs.
Hot Take: Yung Miami says the drug story was a lie, and nobody bothered to clean it up. The allegation made headlines. Her denial is still looking for the same audience.
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Investigators recovered extensive evidence from Eugene Horsch’s property but found no human remains, despite believing five of the missing women are dead.
Federal agents and Philadelphia police have completed a three-week search of a house in the city’s Olney neighborhood believed to be connected to seven missing women. Investigators spent weeks examining Eugene Horsch’s property on Chew Avenue, searching the building and excavating sections of the backyard. Authorities say the operation uncovered numerous items of interest but no human remains.
Horsch, 44, was arrested in June following a traffic stop in Old City, leading investigators to search his home and seize more than one million digital images and videos from computers and storage devices. According to law enforcement sources, examination of the material has led investigators to believe five of the seven missing women are dead. Crews recovered animal bones from the backyard but found no human bones.
The search concluded Friday, October 23, with heavy equipment removed and the excavated ground leveled. A photograph of missing woman Gabrielle Amarando remained outside the property, left by her family. Horsch remains in federal custody on drug and firearms charges stemming from his June arrest, while the whereabouts and ultimate fate of the seven women remain unresolved.
Hot Take: Three weeks of digging, a million digital files and seven women still missing. The FBI found animal bones but no human remains. Somewhere in Philadelphia, seven families are waiting for answers the backyard didn’t give up.
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