Good morning, Raw America readers.
Another day, another cascade of revelations that would have dominated headlines for months in any normal administration. But there’s nothing normal about what’s happening to our democracy right now. The past few days brought us fresh and shocking evidence of just how deep the rot goes, from a Commerce Secretary who can’t keep his Epstein story straight, to explosive FBI tips naming Trump in Epstein’s death, to the president openly calling to “take over” American elections.
Before we dive in, I need to ask something of you. What Raw America does, connecting the dots that mainstream outlets either miss or ignore, takes time, resources, and a refusal to look away when things get uncomfortable. As MAGA’s takeover of media accelerates, with billionaires buying up outlets and newsrooms shrinking, independent journalism is one of the last lines of defense we have. If you value this work, please become a paid subscriber today. Your support directly funds anti-oligarch media at a time when we need it most.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s Epstein Problem Just Got Worse
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been telling anyone who’ll listen that he had “limited interactions” with Jeffrey Epstein and cut ties with the convicted sex offender back in 2005. That story is now in tatters.
Documents from the Epstein files reveal that Lutnick and Epstein were business partners as recently as 2014. On December 28, 2012, both men signed an agreement to acquire stakes in a now-shuttered advertising technology company called Adfin. Epstein signed for his Southern Trust Company, Lutnick for a limited liability company called CVAFH I. Their signatures appear on neighboring pages of the contract.
This comes after Lutnick told the New York Post in October that he and his wife Allison decided in 2005, after touring Epstein’s New York townhouse, “I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.” Yet emails show they arranged calls and planned to have drinks in 2011. The following year, the Lutnick family and their four children planned a visit to Epstein’s island, Little St. James. Lutnick was invited for lunch on December 24, 2012. Four days later, they signed the Adfin deal together.
The relationship continued well beyond that. In January 2013, Epstein had his assistant forward Lutnick a document about casino legislation in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Epstein maintained his island and various business dealings. Correspondence about Adfin continued until at least 2014, involving additional fundraising through Cantor Ventures, a venture capital subsidiary of Cantor Fitzgerald, where Lutnick had been president and CEO since 1991.
The proximity between these two men was literal as well as financial. In 1996, Epstein sold a property at 11 East 71st Street in New York to an entity called Comet Trust, which two years later sold it to Lutnick. It became Lutnick’s primary residence, right next door to Epstein’s notorious Manhattan mansion.
Perhaps most revealing is an email from 2017 in which Epstein agreed to donate $50,000 to a dinner honoring Lutnick. “hope pr is ok,” Epstein wrote to billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson, apparently aware of the reputational risk he posed to his associates. Even in 2018, Lutnick was emailing Epstein about a Frick Collection museum expansion that might “block your sunlight and views,” warning him to send a lawyer.
The Commerce Department’s response? Pure deflection. A spokesperson claimed this is “nothing more than a failing attempt by the legacy media to distract from the administration’s accomplishments.” They insist Lutnick “had limited interactions with Mr. Epstein in the presence of his wife and has never been accused of wrongdoing.”
But the documents tell a different story. They show a relationship that spanned decades, included business partnerships, family visits to Epstein’s island, and continued correspondence years after Lutnick claims he cut ties.
Trump Named in Explosive FBI Tip About Epstein’s Death
The Justice Department’s recent release of approximately 3.5 million Epstein files has revealed something particularly extraordinary: an FBI tip directly naming Donald Trump in connection with Jeffrey Epstein’s death.
The tip was submitted in February 2023 by Epstein’s own brother, Mark Epstein. “Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in his jail cell,” Mark Epstein wrote. “I have reason to believe he was killed because he was about to name names. I believe [President] Trump authorized [his] murder.”
Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. His death was officially ruled a suicide, but it immediately sparked conspiracy theories and a federal investigation into the circumstances. Mark Epstein’s tip was submitted to the FBI National Threat Operations Center and passed to a special agent whose name was redacted.
As journalist Mehdi Hasan noted, it’s “weird that mainstream media journalists haven’t asked Trump about it, right?” Indeed, despite the explosive nature of this allegation, there’s been virtual silence from major outlets.
Trump and Jeffrey Epstein had a long, well-documented friendship spanning the 1990s to the early 2000s. In 2002, Trump called Epstein a “terrific guy” who “likes beautiful women,” many of whom “are on the younger side.” In 2017, Epstein himself said he was Trump’s “closest friend for ten years.”
Whether Mark Epstein’s allegation has any merit is unknown. But the fact that it exists, that it was submitted to the FBI, and that it has received almost no mainstream coverage while Trump occupies the Oval Office, tells you everything about where we are as a country.
Raw America is Raw Story and Really Americans people powered response to MAGA’s takeover of American media. Join us to help us continue to fight back and tell the stories other outlets won’t cover.
Trump Calls to “Take Over the Voting” as Democracy Experts Sound Alarm
Democracy isn’t dying in darkness anymore. It’s happening in broad daylight, with Trump saying the quiet part out loud.
Earlier this week, Trump escalated his months-long assault on election integrity by openly calling for the federal government to “take over the voting” in multiple states ahead of the 2026 midterms. “We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many, 15 places,” Trump said during an interview. “The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
Let’s be clear: the president has no constitutional authority over elections. Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution explicitly gives states the power to run elections, with Congress able to pass nationwide rules for federal elections. The president’s role is precisely zero.
But Trump and his allies are floating the idea that emergency powers could somehow override the Constitution. Cleta Mitchell, a conservative lawyer and Trump ally, suggested last year that “maybe the president is thinking he will exercise some emergency powers to protect the federal elections going forward” based on claims about threats to national sovereignty.
Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice, is blunt about what’s happening: “We should not be waiting for the next shoe to drop. There is a full-blown effort to seize control of some of the mechanisms of our elections and to lay the foundation for interfering in upcoming elections.”
Declaring a national emergency unlocks about 150 statutory powers for the president, but as Weiser notes, none of them “even come close to giving the president any authority over elections. The president has zero emergency powers over elections.”
This comes on the heels of an unprecedented FBI raid on the election office in Fulton County, Georgia, where agents seized ballots and materials related to the 2020 election. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, was present at the raid, raising questions about why an intelligence official was involved in a domestic matter.
Steve Bannon has gone even further, calling for ICE agents to surround polling places in November. “We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November,” Bannon said on his podcast. “We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again.”
This would violate federal law prohibiting federal troops at polls unless necessary to “repel armed enemies of the United States.” But legal niceties haven’t stopped this administration before.
Weiser believes Trump is deliberately trying to normalize the illegal acts: “He is trying to socialize an idea that has nothing to do with what our actual system is and that is actually against the law, to change public expectations about what’s actually valid and allowed.”
A Vice President Nobody Wants
Finally, a moment of schadenfreude: JD Vance got booed loudly at the Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Milan. When he and second lady Usha Vance appeared on the big screen during the Parade of Nations, the stadium erupted in jeers. “Those are not, oh, those are a lot of boos for him,” noted CBC commentator Adrienne Arsenault. “Whistling, jeering, some applause.”
Unlike other national leaders, Vance’s name wasn’t even announced during the ceremony. This came despite the International Olympic Committee explicitly asking attendees to be respectful of all delegations.
Even Kamala Harris couldn’t resist trolling the moment, linking to coverage of the IOC’s pre-emptive plea for people to be nice to Vance.
It’s a small thing, perhaps, but it’s a reminder that the world is watching, and what they see doesn’t inspire respect.
What This All Means
We’re witnessing an attempted authoritarian takeover in real time. A Commerce Secretary who lied about his Epstein ties. Explosive allegations about Trump’s potential involvement in Epstein’s death that the media won’t touch. Open calls to federalize elections in defiance of the Constitution. And a vice president so unpopular he gets booed on the world stage.
Each story alone would be a scandal. Together, they paint a picture of a government that believes it’s above the law, beyond accountability, and unstoppable.
They’re only unstoppable if we let them be.
Stay vigilant,
John, Justin and The Raw America Team
