Donald Trump wants to crush The Swamp. The leaks, the sneaks, and the secrets are all there. Our writers, David Gardner, Farrah Tomazin, and Sarah Ewall-Wice, are sifting through the ooze so you don’t have to. Don’t miss out.
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In this week’s news from the ooze: Ted Cruz, Prince Andrew, Ainsley Earhardt, Rachel Campos-Duffy, Karoline Leavitt, Katie Miller, Vladimir Putin, Kayleigh McEnany, Kristina Wong, Stephen Miller, Ghislaine Maxwell, Kaelan Dorr, Ken Block, Filip Styczynski, and Sean Hannity. |
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Maxwell’s House Leaves a Bitter Taste for Epstein’s Victims |
They weren’t married, had no children, and dated for less than three years before their relationship took an altogether darker turn. Still, Jeffrey Epstein was sufficiently enamored with Ghislaine Maxwell to buy her a fancy five-story $13 million Beaux Arts-style New York townhouse. Eh, voila! The brokeass heiress was suddenly the proud owner of Maxwell’s House. Just add money. Instant wealth.
Located on 65th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues, the 7,000-square-foot home had eight wood-burning fireplaces and a servants’ entrance. Maxwell also owned a $2 million mews house in London (where Prince Andrew was allegedly snapped with Virginia Giuffre in 2001) and a hideaway 156-acre estate in New Hampshire, bought for $1.5 million through a mysterious LLC in December 2019.
She’s since sold the New York manse for $15 million, and the Live Free or Die state retreat is up for grabs at $2.5 million and includes a master bedroom with a stone fireplace, walk-in closet, and a large soaking tub. |
Maxwell's empire included the New Hampshire home where she was arrested in 2020 after hiding for months. Reuters/Drone Base |
Financial documents filed in Manhattan Federal Court showed that transfers totaling more than $20 million were made from Epstein’s bank accounts to Maxwell’s and vice versa. So, where did Ghislaine get all this cash? And what has she done with it?
The answer, according to sources once close to Ghislaine, lies with the other domineering, scandal-plagued man in her life; Maxwell’s late father. These sources suggest shamed media baron Robert Maxwell’s ill-gotten millions were laundered by Epstein and filtered through to his favorite daughter. (He even named his superyacht the Lady Ghislaine).
Overweight and overleveraged, Maxwell Sr. fell off the side of his yacht in the Canary Islands in 1991 and drowned. It was never known for sure whether it was suicide, an accident, or murder, but his business affairs quickly unraveled, and it emerged that he had robbed the pension fund of the Mirror newspaper group he owned in the UK to the tune of $460 million. According to a British documentary, Ghislaine was on board the yacht when her father died and immediately ordered the crew to shred all paperwork linking him to Epstein.
“I was in the City [of London] and I had some friends who worked on Wall Street during that time, and they heard that Jeffrey Epstein and Robert Maxwell had entered into an agreement before Robert Maxwell’s death, whereby certain funds had been syphoned off,” said a former friend of Ghislaine. “That is what Jeffrey Epstein was doing at the time, he was helping very rich people park their money offshore, to avoid tax.”
Her father was a crook, and her boyfriend was a pedophile. Both destroyed lives while conniving to make Ghislaine rich.
Prosecutors uncovered more than 15 different bank accounts associated with Ghislaine, and it wasn’t small change. The balances ranged from hundreds of thousands of dollars to over $20 million. How did she get it? Only two other people truly know. And dead men don’t tell tales. |
Subway slinger Sean Charles Dunn might have been fired by Pam Bondi but he lives on in this Banksy-style work near DuPont Circle as well as Adam’s Morgan. |
‘Cancun’ Ted Gets Through a Vacation Without a Disaster
Texas Senator Ted Cruz was on vacation outside Texas and he is not ashamed to share it. The Republican lawmaker posted a video of his “bad-a**” wife water skiing on Lake Powell, which spans Utah and Arizona, during Congress’s August recess. And yes, Heidi Cruz is very good at the water sport. According to his post, Cruz was there for a week with his wife and daughters. Last month, Cruz got busted by The Swamp vacationing in Greece while Texas faced devastating flooding. In 2021, Cruz came under fire for heading to Cancun while his constituents suffered through a deadly winter storm. It must have been a real relief for testy Ted to finally go on a relaxing family vacation without it coming back to haunt him.
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Summer Jobs at DQ and TSA Hell? Not For the Duffy Nepobabies
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has his hands full with a perma-crisis in the nation’s air traffic control system and an endless (and sadly for him, one-way) feud with Pete Buttigieg. But the 53-year-old former TV reality show participant also has nine children (and one grandchild) to think about. So who would blame him for finding a summer job for one of them? In fact, who would blame him for finding summer jobs for two of them? Luckily for Lucia Duffy, a University of Dallas rising senior, and new high school graduate Paloma Duffy, it wasn't Dairy Queen or a local camp benefitting from their skills: It was the White House. Despite the pressure of the White House roles, it seems work-life balance is not a problem for the Duffys. In recent weeks, almost the whole family—including mom Rachel Campos-Duffy, a Fox & Friends weekend anchor—managed to fit in a trip to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to see a rocket launch and enjoyed time on the lake in Wisconsin with the Transportation Secretary at the controls of a powerboat. And as for those pesky airport problems, worry not: Lucia and Palmoa posted a picture on a private plane. No TSA hassles for the Duffys!
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Lucia (left) and Paloma (right) Duffy are bypassing the airport lines their dad Sean Duffy is responsible for. Paloma Duffy/Instagram |
Machine Gun Leavitt and The Art of Professionalism
Long before Donald Trump was swooning about her being a White House star with “lips that move like a machine gun,” Karoline Leavitt was teaching aspiring politicos how to conduct themselves if they ever landed a job in the administration. While she doesn’t talk about it these days, the 27-year-old press secretary once played a starring role in a training video created by the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think-tank responsible for the president’s Project 2025 playbook. The 30-minute guide, titled “The Art of Professionalism,” was produced before Trump returned to the Oval Office and features Leavitt providing tips on everything from competence (“you have to be resourceful,” she says); to "knowledge" (“reading the news of the day”); and "confidence” (“just be prepared”).
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Leavitt had not yet graced the podium when she filmed the video with Chris Hayes, who was then the careers coordinator at the right-wing Leadership Institute (and not to be confused with the left-wing MSNBC host of the same name). She had, however, clocked up some experience in the briefing room during Trump’s first term as an assistant press secretary to spinner-turned-Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany. “Those were some of the most high-pressure moments of my life, knowing that the White House press corps was out there, going to berate my boss on something that we had not covered throughout the day,” she says. “But rather than get stressed out, cry or have a negative emotional response, you have to pull yourself up from your bootstraps, you have to be prepared, and you have to execute in that moment.” Leavitt need not worry now, as her current boss is suitably impressed by her obfuscation skills and on-stage presence. “It’s that face. It’s that brain. It’s those lips. The way they move,” Trump said of his press secretary during a creepy Newsmax interview last month. The art of professionalism indeed.
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Somewhere Over the West Wing….
Karoline Leavitt wasn’t taking any chances. On Friday, observers saw the White House Press Secretary emerging ashen-faced from her boss’s Alaska meeting with Vladimir Putin. So, she could be forgiven for worrying about the outcome of Monday’s White House summit with Volodymyr Zelensky and a slew of Europe’s leaders. Leavitt donned her best red pointy-toed shoes complete with red bows. If the Wizard of Oz was revealed as a fraudulent trickster, she could click her heels and be right back home in Atkinson, New Hampshire.
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No Press Response
Trump’s White House communications office is known for slinging attacks at the media without directly answering their questions, and they’re happily celebrating the strategy. This week, Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson touted her response to NPR by making the excerpt her X profile banner. It now reads, “White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson didn't directly respond to NPR's questions for this story. She sent an emailed statement saying, ‘The White House consistently posts banger memes,’ and went on to mock NPR.” Jackson’s White House colleague Kaelan Dorr highlighted her non-response to a story about the administration’s immigration memes with fire emojis, while another press aide, Anna Kelly, responded: “slay!” While they’re having a fun go of it on the taxpayers’ dime, it’s hardly a laughing matter for NPR after Congress recently stripped public funding at Donald Trump’s behest.
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SPOTTED: Kristina Wong, spokesperson for Navy Secretary John Phelan, and Filip Styczynski, operations director at the Institute of World Politics, in Dupont Circle. Author and former Trump campaign consultant Ken Block at Reagan International Airport. Bondi Partners communications director Sheradyn Holderhead at the Target Center arena, Minneapolis. |
Dive Deeper Into the Swamp… |
White House Tours Get the Golden Boot
Donald Trump gave Volodymyr Zelensky and Emmanuel Macron a special tour of his MAGA headwear at the White House on Monday. There were two shelves full of his signature caps but he took time to point out a favorite that read, ‘4 More Years.’ That may have been part of the Gold Standard tour (any more gold in the Oval Office and they’ll need to reinforce the flooring), but members of the public hoping for the Bronze Tanning tour won’t be so lucky. Emails have now gone to Americans across the country, some of whom had booked non-refundable trips to DC for September and October that they’re out of luck. Public tours will come to a halt next month as construction begins on Trump’s $200 million grand ballroom. Many would-be visitors are feeling disappointed given it can take months to secure a tour through your local member of Congress. “Call your Senator - it’s the People’s House!” wrote one aggrieved Facebook user. “It’s not Trump’s White House,” added another. “If the White House isn’t fancy enough, he can waddle back to Mar-a-Lago!”
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Trump Gives Hannity and Earhardt a Sweetheart Meal Deal
The Swamp can’t help but wonder if Trump was playing a prank on Fox pals Sean Hannity and his fiancée Ainsley Earhardt when he urged them to go out for dinner in D.C., claiming that all the restaurants were full and the capital had boomed since he turned it into a police state. Maybe he doesn’t know the city resembles a Stephen and Katie Miller potluck outside a Home Depot in Anacostia. Crickets. On the usually bustling 14th Street, Crushbar co-owner Mark Rutsein closed early last Wednesday due to the “bull—t police presence,” and by Friday much of his usual crowd of LGBTQ clientele was noticeably missing from the dancefloor. Around the corner on U Street, D.C.’s newest hotspot, Revolt, posted a note on its window declaring that “the heavy police presence has made many in our community feel unsafe and venues across the city are feeling the impact with drops in attendance and revenue.” At Mixxed Bar in Adams Morgan, one woman told The Swamp on Sunday that she almost didn’t go out due to the sight of Army vehicles and National Guard on the streets. “I’m from Colombia. That s–t triggers me,” she explained, referencing the civil unrest that plagued the South American country for years. Still, every cloud. Trumpy colleagues-turned-lovers Hannity, 63, and Earhardt, 48, won’t have trouble getting a table. As long as the staff don’t flee out the back door when they walk in.
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The Swamp is written by David Gardner, Farrah Tomazin, and Sarah Ewall-Wice. |
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