The Justice Department is reportedly probing allegations that Obama officials fabricated evidence of Russian interference during the 2016 election, doubling down on attempts to distract from its controversial handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Per reports from CNN and Fox News, Attorney General Pam Bondi has called on prosecutors to initiate a grand jury investigation into these claims – a move that could lead to subpoenas of former officials and even potential indictments.

A DOJ spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bondi’s decision effectively endorses Trump’s latest baseless conspiracy theory — which has included accusing Obama of treason — and comes as the administration has struggled to move on from the Epstein debacle.

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Tulsi Gabbard, the director of US national intelligence, hoped to uncover evidence that Barack Obama and his national security team conspired to undermine Donald Trump in a slow-motion coup.

But if her crusade was aimed at proving that Obama embarked on a “treasonous conspiracy” to falsely show that Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential election to help Trump, Gabbard made a mistake. A previously classified annexe to a report by another special counsel, John Durham – appointed towards the end of Trump’s first presidency – has further undermined Gabbard’s case.

It was a quixotic enterprise from the start.

After all, the 2019 report from Robert Mueller, the original special counsel appointed to investigate the Russia allegations, and a bipartisan five-volume report the following year from the Senate intelligence committee – then chaired by Marco Rubio, now Trump
’s secretary of state – both affirmed the offending January 2017 intelligence community assessment, which expressed “high confidence” in Russian interference.

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, seemed to validate the intelligence’s premise in 2018 when, standing beside Trump at a news conference in Helsinki, he admitted wanting him to win.

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Senior Republican lawmakers are condemning the decision of their party leader, Donald Trump, to fire the leading US labor market statistician after a report that showed the national economy added just 73,000 jobs – far fewer than expected – in July.

The disappointing figures – coupled with a downward revision of the two previous months amounting to 258,000 fewer jobs and data showing that economic output and consumer spending slowed in the first half of the year – point to an overall economic deterioration in the US.

Trump defended his decision to fire US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioner Erika McEntarfer. Without evidence to back his claims, the president wrote on social media that were numbers were “RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad” and the US economy was, in fact, “BOOMING” on his watch.

But the firing of McEntarfer, who had been confirmed to her role in January 2024 during Joe Biden’s presidency, has alarmed members of Trump’s own party.

“If the president is firing the statistician because he doesn’t like the numbers but they are accurate, then that’s a problem,” said Wyoming Republican senator Cynthia Lummis. “It’s not the statistician’s fault if the numbers are accurate and that they’re not what the president had hoped for.”

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More than 50 signatures on New York mayor Eric Adams’ petition to run as an independent candidate in November’s election are fraudulent, according to a report published on Friday.

The Gothamist said it had found 52 signatures from people who said their names were forged, including signatures of three people who turned out to be dead. The publication cited others who said they were deceived into signing the petitions.

The discovery, if confirmed, is likely to be insignificant to Adams’ independent campaign, which is required to produce 7,500 signatures to qualify him as a candidate. The Adams campaign has turned in nearly 50,000 signatures.

Still, the finding adds complexity to a race to lead the nation’s largest city that pits the incumbent mayor against Democratic party nominee Zohran Mamdani, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa and ex-prosecutor Jim Walden.

Cuomo and Walden, like Adams, are running as independents.

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