Ghislaine Maxwell prepared to speak ‘unfiltered truth’ about Epstein if Trump grants clemency, lawyer says – live

This is the end of our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day, but we will be back on Tuesday. Here are the latest developments:

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  Donald Trump threatened to block a new bridge connecting the US and Canada he supported in 2017 and made the bizarre false claim that increased trade between Canada and China would include a total ban on Canadians playing ice hockey.

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  The Miami Herald reported that one partially redacted Epstein files document includes an account of a 2006 phone call in which Trump told the Palm Beach police chief that “everyone has known” Jeffrey Epstein was abusing girls and Ghislaine Maxwell ‘“is evil”. Trump now says he had no idea Epstein was abusing girls and wishes Maxwell well.

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  An immigration judge rejected the Trump administration’s efforts to deport Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, who was arrested last year as part of a crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activists, her lawyers said in a statement.

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  The US military’s Southern Command, which oversees operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, announced it carried out another deadly strike on Monday, killing two suspected drug smugglers in the eastern Pacific.

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  A federal judge in California issued a preliminary injunction that blocks part of a new state law that bans federal law enforcement officers from covering their faces.

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As the Miami Herald’s Julie Brown first reported on Monday, Michael Reiter, the former Palm Beach police chief, told the FBI in 2019 that he got a call from Donald Trump in 2006 denouncing Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell after criminal sex charges were first made public.

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Reiter confirmed to the Herald reporter that a partially redacted document in the Epstein files posted online by the justice department was an account of a 2019 FBI interview with him in which he described the call from Trump.

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“Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this,” Trump told Reiter, according to the FBI summary of an interview with the former police chief conducted in October 2019.

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When Epstein was arrested in July 2019, Trump was asked by reporters if he had ben aware that the friend he socialized with for most of two decades had been molesting girls. “No, I had no idea,” Trump said then.

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In 2020, when Maxwell was arrested, Trump was asked at a news conference if he expected her “to turn in powerful men”.

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“I don’t know. I haven’t really been following it too much. I just wish her well, frankly,” Trump replied.

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“I’ve met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach, and I guess they lived in Palm Beach,” he continued, referring to someone he socialized with for years. “But I wish her well, whatever it is.”

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Reiter also told FBI agents that Trump had called Maxwell Epstein’s “operative”, and recalled Trump telling him “she is evil and to focus on her”, according to the FBI report.

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Trump also told Reiter in 2006 that “he was around Epstein once when teenagers were present and Trump ‘got the hell out of there’”, according to the FBI interview summary.

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Candace Laing, the Canadian chamber of commerce’s president, points out that Donald Trump supported the construction of the Windsor-Detroit bridge in 2017, before calling it an outrage and threatening to block its opening on Monday.

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In a statement Laing says:

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Whether this proves real or simply threatened to keep uncertainty high – blocking or barricading bridges is a self-defeating move. Through decades of collaboration, Canada and the United States built things together, created jobs together and compete globally together.

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The Trump administration was right in 2017 in its joint statement that endorsed the bridge as a priority project, calling it a “vital economic link between our two countries”. Modern border infrastructure strengthens shared economic security. The path forward isn’t deconstructing established trade corridors, it’s actually building bridges.”

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An immigration judge has rejected the Trump administration’s efforts to deport Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, who was arrested last year as part of a crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activists, her lawyers said in a statement on Monday.

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Öztürk’s lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union submitted a document in federal court on Monday announcing that removal proceedings against her have been terminated by an immigration judge.

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The document said that an immigration judge concluded on 29 January that the Department of Homeland Security had not met its burden of proving she was removable and terminated the proceedings against her, her lawyers informed a court in New York.

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Her immigration lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai, told Reuters, the decision was issued by immigration judge Roopal Patel in Boston.

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“Today, I breathe a sigh of relief knowing that despite the justice system’s flaws, my case may give hope to those who have also been wronged by the U.S. government,” Öztürk said in a statement. “Though the pain that I and thousands of other women wrongfully imprisoned by ICE have faced cannot be undone, it is heartening to know that some justice can prevail after all. I grieve for the many human beings who do not get to see the mistreatment they have faced brought into the light. When we openly talk about the many injustices around us, including the treatment of immigrants and others who have been targeted and thrown in for-profit ICE prisons, as well as what is happening in Gaza, true justice will prevail.”

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On 22 January, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that the government’s policy of arresting and detaining scholars like Öztürk violated the first amendment, and documents released as part of the case confirmed that the state department had targeted her solely on the basis of a 2024 opinion article she co-authored in a student newspaper calling for Tufts to divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel over of credible accusations of “deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide”.

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US-Canada relations were further shaken on Monday by a 299-word diatribe from Donald Trump, in which he threatened to block the opening of a multibillion-dollar binational bridge, connecting Windsor and Detroit, which the president claimed his predecessor, Barack Obama had “stupidly” approved.

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What Trump failed to explain to loyal readers of his social media platform is that he himself had publicly endorsed the bridge project in 2017, before construction began, in public comments and a joint statement issued by him and the then prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau.

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“No two countries share deeper or broader relations than Canada and the United States,” the joint statement issued on 13 February 2017 read.

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“Given our shared focus on infrastructure investments, we will encourage opportunities for companies in both countries to create jobs through those investments. In particular, we look forward to the expeditious completion of the Gordie Howe International Bridge, which will serve as a vital economic link between our two countries,” Trump and Trudeau said after their first meeting that day.

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“Prime Minister, I pledge to work with you in pursuit of our many shared interests,” Trump said that day. “America is deeply fortunate to have a neighbor like Canada. We have before us the opportunity to build even more bridges, and bridges of cooperation and bridges of commerce.”

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In his post on Monday, Trump told Americans they should be outraged that “Canada is building a massive bridge between Ontario and Michigan. They own both the Canada and the United States side.”

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In fact, Canada’s public broadcaster CBC reported in 2017, “the Canadian government agreed to pay for all construction costs, including $250m for the inspection plaza on the American side of the river, with a plan to recoup the costs through tolls” due to the importance of trade between the two nations.

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At the time, almost one quarter of all goods moving between the two countries passed over the existing, privately owned Ambassador bridge or a tunnel connecting Detroit and Windsor.

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The US military’s Southern Command, which oversees operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, announced it carried out another deadly strike on Monday, killing two suspected drug smugglers in the eastern Pacific.

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The statement said that the latest in what legal experts have called a series of extrajudicial killings by the Pentagon was carried out “at the direction of” the Florida-based combat unit’s new commander, Gen Francis L Donovan, who was sworn in at a Pentagon ceremony last Thursday. Donovan takes over after a US navy admiral, Alvin Holsey, chose to retire over reported disagreements over the boat-strike policy.

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The announcement, which was accompanied by video of the attack, was carried out on a boat “transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific”, the Pentagon said. The US coast guard was called to search for a lone survivor of the attack, the statement said.

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The new killings bring the death toll to at least 130 in 38 strikes, according to Pentagon statements tallied by the Intercept.

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A federal judge in California issued a preliminary injunction on Monday that blocks part of a new state law that bans federal law enforcement officers from covering their faces.

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