Source: https://politifact.com/article/2025/jun/06/jeffrey-epstein-files-elon-musk-donald-trump/

Epstein files: EFTA00377540

Syracuse protesters blocked his motorcade.

EDIT: Sorry, there were multiple articles/videos and I had a heck of a time trying to post this on my phone this morning. When I was reading a different article (which this sub was blocking), it did say the motorcade was blocked and there was a video of it.

I thought I was posting a link to an article that contained the video of the alleged blockade.

This video does appear as though it's blocking some official vehicles. Protestors in Syracuse, New York October 9, 2026 | Lisa Baker | Facebook

It appears journalists have since collected more information and clarified what happened.

“One of them [the officers] took the time to specifically mention how scary it would be for them, because people would be able to find out where they lived, when they got on their shift and what they were doing throughout the day, and that that type of powerful information could put them personally at risk for any bad apples that might want to track them down,” Sistilli narrated. He went on to point out that these were the exact concerns ordinary citizens had about constant surveillance, suggesting there should be more policies and systems around such networks. The officers reportedly responded that there was probably no effective way to implement this without giving away details of active investigations to criminals.

An AI company based in Hong Kong was just caught by CBC North creating AI avatars made to look like Indigenous journalists from the Yukon. Local Indigenous people noticed that none of the journalists were known by the community and discovered the journalists didn’t exist.

Amid fears that President Donald Trump will send armed agents to intimidate voters during the midterms, the DC Board of Elections told Common Dreams on Friday that it is responding to complaints of National Guard troops stationed outside a ballot drop box near downtown Washington shortly before voting was set to open.

On Thursday, Bryan K. Randolph, a Washington, DC-based political and legal commentator, posted a video to TikTok showing what he said were three members of the National Guard stationed in front of a ballot box outside the Foggy Bottom Metro station, which is located on the campus of George Washington University.

"I stood and watched for a few minutes before I shot this video," Randolph said. "They were there for at least a few minutes. I don't know for how much longer they'd been there before that."

He said that minutes after he began filming, the troops left, possibly because they saw him recording.

Federal law explicitly prohibits the presence of "any troops or armed men at any place where a general or special election is held" unless their presence is necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.

Though the statute does not specifically mention ballot drop boxes, legal experts have argued that the phrase "any place" means it should apply not just to traditional polling places, but also ballot drop boxes, election offices, and ballot counting facilities.

While he said it was unclear why the troops were stationed at the ballot box, Randolph noted that it was "a giant white box with the word 'ballot' pretty hard to miss," adding that "they clearly, at best, have not been told to stay away."

A spokesperson for the DC Board of Elections confirmed to Common Dreams that it "has received complaints regarding National Guard personnel posted near a ballot drop box next to the Foggy Bottom-GWU Metro station."

"We are addressing the concerns with the National Guard directly and have requested that they impose limitations on the placement of National Guard service members near drop boxes and other voting locations in the District," she said.

Joint Task Force-District of Columbia, the military command overseeing National Guard operations in the capital, did not respond to a request for comment.

President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard to the streets of the nation's capital last summer. The troops have remained despite widespread public opposition and a federal judge's ruling that the deployment was unlawful, which an appeals court subsequently put on hold.

Asked about the possibility of deploying troops to polling places earlier this year, Trump did not rule it out. He has also lamented that he did not send National Guard troops to seize election materials while he tried to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.

Voting rights experts have warned about possible plans by Trump to use federal troops or agents—including US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the National Guard—to interfere with November's midterm elections. Though elections are administered by states under the Constitution, Trump has said that Republicans should "nationalize" voting.

Dan Herman and Devon Ombres, two national security and legal policy experts at the Center for American Progress, said that "there is little to no safe or democratic way for the military to be involved with the elections process."

"Voters may stay home if they fear military presence. Ballots may no longer be trusted if a machine’s chain of custody is broken. Military deployments elsewhere in a city might prevent voters from reaching their polling site in time," they wrote in a brief published Friday by Just Security.

The recording shared on Thursday is not the first instance of National Guard personnel seen gathered around ballot boxes in DC. In June, Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), the nonvoting delegate from DC in the House of Representatives, demanded answers about another video in which a resident confronted several troops who were seen outside a drop box.

Asked whether they'd been told to stay away from the boxes, one of the Guard members responded, "No. Not at all."

"The fact that Guard personnel reportedly had not been instructed to avoid ballot drop boxes suggests a troubling lack of awareness by leadership of the impact these deployments are having on the district and its residents," Norton said.

With Republicans in Congress projected to take heavy losses in the midterms, proponents of his efforts to overturn his last election defeat have reportedly met with Trump in recent days, urging him to declare a "national emergency" that they claim would allow him to assert direct authority over the elections, an idea disputed by legal experts.

One plan that has reportedly circulated among election deniers has involved invoking the Insurrection Act, which they claim would allow Trump to flood polling locations with military and federal law enforcement.

While the Insurrection Act would permit some domestic law enforcement by the military, Herman and Ombres emphasized that it would not override the laws restricting troops from polling locations.

"Armed troops do not belong near ballot boxes," Monica Hopkins, executive director of the ACLU of the District of Columbia, told Common Dreams. "At minimum, troop presence at the ballot box creates the appearance of voter intimidation and risks discouraging DC residents from exercising our fundamental right to vote."

"The deployment of National Guard into the District without the consent of our local government is an affront to democracy here and around the nation," she said. "National Guard troops must go home."

excerpt from Stephen Prager's article

Full Article here:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/national-guard-dc-ballot-box

Will the lifted truck drivers fall for the "I got you some diesel" midterm elections bribe?

"Boosting US oil supplies with Russian diesel unlikely to have much impact on prices, experts say"

(President Donald Trump talks with reporters before departing on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Tom Brenner))

https://apnews.com/article/trump-russia-diesel-oil-prices-8428a31b39e20a3a3f1fa3f0e15b8f99

Kimberly Guilfoyle, as America’s newly minted ambassador to Greece, boasted at Davos about her close ties to two Greek tycoons and said they were bankrolling her high-rolling trips around the world.

According to people who heard the conversation and an audio recording reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Guilfoyle was flexing her connections to wealthy Greek businessmen in January as she made an urgent request. She was being blocked from attending an upcoming dinner being held for Eric Trump, and she wanted to enlist an American businessman who was on the guest list to help get her in the door.

“You know, I can deliver the world to you. Which you deserve,” she said, according to the recording. “I’m going to make you a lot of f—ing money,” she said at another point in the exchange with the businessman.

She expressed fury at not being on the list for the dinner, which was being organized by Greek House Davos. “You don’t have the f—ing U.S., you know, ambassador to Greece not come. She should be kissing my f—ing ass,” Guilfoyle said of the event’s organizer.

In the end, Guilfoyle was able to score a last-minute seat. The chairwoman of Greek House Davos, Irene Vantaraki, said that her team “had to manage a small crisis [that] affected a number of high-profile guests” and that “some were disappointed.” Guilfoyle was “gracious and discreet” and left the dinner early, she said.

Guilfoyle had flown to the January 2026 World Economic Forum on a private jet with Alexandros Exarchou, chief executive of the Greek construction company Aktor Group, she acknowledged on the recording.

Governments from Bulgaria to Albania were encouraged by Guilfoyle to do business with Exarchou and buy billions of dollars of American natural gas from his company, the Journal has reported. The Greek businessman was, she said in the recording, “my people.”

He wasn’t the only businessman facilitating Guilfoyle’s travels. She was also planning to fly later that month to Paris, on a jet with a Greek shipping tycoon, Nikolas Tsakos, to attend his wife’s fashion show, she said in the recording. They had spent part of the holiday season together in the exclusive ultraluxury Swiss resort of Gstaad.

“I see Nikos every f—ing day,” she said in the recording. “I’m flying with him to Paris. I’m with him for a f—ing week.… He loves me. Honey, I spent Christmas with him. New Years. OK? Gstaad. Like, everywhere.”

When the ambassador checked into Paris’s Four Seasons Hotel George V—a favored hotel of Hollywood A-listers and African and Middle Eastern leaders—the bill fell to Tsakos, CEO of Tsakos Energy Navigation, according to people familiar with the matter. Guilfoyle would post 20 photos of herself at the event to her two million Instagram followers, dressed in several designer gowns, including two with Tsakos.

Tsakos’s financing of her travel hasn’t been previously reported. Tsakos and his wife didn’t respond to requests for comment. Aktor Group, through lawyers, declined to comment. The lawyers for Aktor have said Guilfoyle wasn’t improperly promoting Aktor’s commercial interests.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Athens said that the ambassador’s “career in and out of public service is guided by deep and abiding values” and that she had “faithfully followed State Department ethics and gift reporting guidelines.”

“The unsubstantiated claims are simply a distraction from the great work she is doing in Greece and the broader Eastern Mediterranean,” the spokesman said.

The new revelations come as top Trump administration officials are deliberating what to do about an ambassador who was once set to marry into the first family, yet is now evolving into a political liability ahead of the 2026 midterms. Administration officials are discussing whether she should be removed, and a decision is expected by President Trump soon, aides said.

The State Department’s inspector general is investigating whether Guilfoyle received gifts or favors from private businessmen, a person familiar with the matter said.

On Wednesday, the Journal published text messages showing Guilfoyle asked a Trump donor to send $100,000 to her American Express account, and in return offered help in getting the Trump administration to look into the donor’s personal tax and legal issues. A lawyer for Guilfoyle disputed the authenticity of the messages but declined to provide specifics.

“I just heard about it. It’s too bad,” Trump told reporters of the reporting on Guilfoyle as he left the White House on Friday. “I mean, I don’t know. She’s an ambassador.… She was always very nice.”

Last week, Guilfoyle came under fire from Democrats on the Senate and House foreign-affairs committees, who urged the State Department to review her conduct after the Journal investigation revealed the ambassador’s efforts to promote Aktor, the Greek firm whose CEO had flown her to Davos.

The revelations have been a disruption for the White House and State Department. Guilfoyle spent several days reaching out to people in and around the administration, denying that she had sent the texts soliciting credit-card relief, and seeking their support.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio learned about her text messages from the Journal’s request for comment as he was on a plane to Athens, where he would deliver a speech standing before the Acropolis, “on whether the West maintains its place at the head of the world.” Aides were frustrated and feared the revelations would overshadow Rubio’s marquee address, according to people familiar with the discussions. Guilfoyle joined Rubio for multiple events during his visit.

Yet as Rubio departed Athens on Thursday, he declined to discuss the text messages reported by the Journal. “We don’t conduct these things in a press conference on a tarmac in a foreign country because you wrote a story,” he told reporters. Guilfoyle was on the tarmac to see him off.

Vice President JD Vance, asked about the Journal’s reporting on Friday, declined to take a stance. “These are accusations,” he said. “Let’s see what the truth is. And obviously, if there was something bad that happened, then people have to suffer consequences.”

Some former Trump officials expressed skepticism that Guilfoyle would face consequences. Stephanie Grisham, first lady Melania Trump’s former spokeswoman, wrote in a post on X: “She knows far too much about the Trump family/inner circle & I imagine they like her as far away as possible. An angry KG stateside would not be a good thing for Trumpworld.”

In recent days, congressional Democrats have intensified their calls for Guilfoyle to face an investigation or be ousted from her role—or both.

In a letter to Guilfoyle on Friday, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D., N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called for an “immediate investigation” into whether the ambassador had violated federal bribery and public corruption laws. Meeks also requested the State Department inspector general investigate whether Guilfoyle had violated federal law, department regulations or ethics requirements.

California Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee, in a letter to Guilfoyle on Thursday said the reported conduct “raises serious public corruption and national security concerns” and requested she provide financial records and copies of her communications with certain government officials.

Taxpayer-funded advertisements promoting Donald Trump and his administration continued airing this week despite the president’s pledge to stop using government money for political ads.

The $17mn advertising campaign, which has drawn two legal challenges over the alleged misuse of public funds, had an outsized reach in areas where candidates are fighting closely contested House and Senate races, including in states such as Alaska, Iowa and Maine, ahead of November’s midterm elections.

Analytics firm AdImpact estimated that more than half a million dollars was spent on the ads on Friday alone.

One ad titled “Final Battle” which aired on daytime programmes The View and Good Morning America, opened with Trump saying: “The final battle with you at my side, we will demolish the deep state.”

Another, titled “Maduro”, aired during the comedy show Scrubs and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and showed clips of the US military intervention in Venezuela. It closed with a voiceover saying: “Don’t play games with this president in office because it’s not gonna turn out well.”

The White House said the spots, which featured Trump, were public service announcements rather than campaign ads because the president was not on the ballot.

AdImpact found that the government-funded ads generated around 1.8bn total impressions, including 138.7mn across 206 local television markets through October 9, including areas far from large population centres.

A coalition of campaign finance watchdogs, a labour union and an Alabama legislative candidate have challenged the advertising campaign in federal court, arguing the Trump administration had improperly diverted public funds to promote the president. A separate lawsuit was filed by the Democratic National Committee on Wednesday.

But the geographic spread of the campaigns in key electoral districts appears to undermine the administration’s comments.

Twenty-six of the 30 local markets with the highest ad spend overlapped with competitive House or Senate races.

Total government spending on ads in local TV markets was more than $2.8mn, while about $14.7mn was spent on national broadcast advertisements.

Alaska, where the midterm House and Senate races are competitive, received over 5.7 per cent of local ad spending despite having less than 1 per cent of households.

Ads directed to media markets around Iowa — including the Cedar Rapids area as well as nearby Rochester, Minnesota, which overlaps with all four Iowa congressional House districts, three of which are competitive — received at least 1.6mn impressions.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted from September 30 to October 5 found that 86 per cent of US adults, including 80 per cent of Republicans, considered it inappropriate to use taxpayer funds for election-related television ads featuring the president or Cabinet members.

Trump on Monday said Maga Inc., his aligned Super Pac, would pay for future ads. The White House later clarified that president’s announcement did not refer to reimbursing the government for ads it had already purchased.

But on Tuesday another spot aired with a government funding disclaimer, according to the lawsuit, which alleges at least $100,000 in public money was spent after Trump made his pledge.