💣 Trump Nominates His Epstein Fixer For AG
Wednesday night, at a closed Rose Garden event, Trump told Dan Scavino he wanted it made official, and by morning Scavino had posted the video: Todd Blanche, the lawyer who once defended Trump in a courtroom, would be his nominee for permanent attorney general. Blanche has spent his months as acting head of the department doing the one thing Trump prizes above all others, executing the demand without flinching — clearing the prosecutions of the president’s enemies, carrying the $1.776 billion fund built to pay the president’s friends, and absorbing every hard question that came his way about the Epstein case.
💰 Trump’s $1.776 BN Slush Fund Resurrected
Blanche told Congress that the weaponization fund was finished, but it actually never died - the machine that pays Trump’s allies didn’t need the fund. When Lindsey Graham suggested the government simply use existing law, Associate AG Stanley Woodward answered with three words, “We’re on it,” and then deleted the post. The law is the Federal Tort Claims Act, a 1946 statute, and Trump’s allies are already filing lawsuits to claim their cash. 400 claims from Jan 6 insurrectionists were dropped off at the DOJ yesterday.
🎖️ Bolton’s Diary Becomes A Felony
John Bolton, the mustachioed hawk who served as Trump’s national security adviser and then spent the years since warning the country against him, has agreed to plead guilty to a single felony count of illegally retaining national security information — notes he kept in a private diary that only his wife and daughter ever read. The Justice Department had charged him with eighteen counts; it will take the one, a fine north of $2 million, and the spectacle, with up to five years on the table when he changes his plea on June 26.
🛢️ One Dead Soldier Away
The House voted 215-208 to cuff Trump’s war powers, four Republicans crossing the aisle to do it, even as Trump quietly set his own trigger: he has told aides he won’t return to all-out war with Iran unless American troops are killed.
📉 The Gates Are Closing
Blackstone capped withdrawals from its $79 billion credit fund on Thursday after redemption requests reached 10 percent, and Partners Group now says the run is spreading out of private credit and into private equity. Pimco’s Dan Ivascyn calls it the first sustained loss cycle in years.
🎯 THE PATTERN
Trump seems to defy gravity and logic as he anoints Todd Blanche for AG, forces John Bolton to plead guilty, and proves he’ll just ignore Congress on his $1.776 Bn fund. The most worrying sign out there is the credit markets tightening— a signal that Trump continues to steer the good ship USA into total economic collapse.