Not even Trump can bring himself to defend his Defense Department’s second strike on two men in the Caribbean Sea.

“Have you watched the video?” Politico’s Dasha Burns asked Trump in a Monday interview.

“I watch everything, yeah.… I see a lot of things,” Trump replied.

“And do you believe that that second strike was necessary?”

“Well it looked like they were trying to turn back over the boat,” Trump said, contradicting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s story.” “But I’m not involved in that, that’s up to them.”

Last week, the Defense Department alleged that the two men could have attempted to radio back to their cartel to continue their drug-trafficking mission. Lawmakers were informed in closed-door briefings that “it was judged that these two people were capable of returning to the fight.” But here, Trump echoes the Democrats’ story that the video shows the exact opposite.

POLITICO: Do you believe the second strike was necessary?

TRUMP: Uhhhh. Well it looked like they were trying to turn back over the boat. But I don't get involved in that. That's up to them. pic.twitter.com/afTFdEI9qZ

“What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service,” Representative Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN last week. “You have two individuals [in] clear distress, without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel, [who] were killed by the United States.”

The fallout from this potential war crime has been an exercise in finger-pointing. First, Hegseth claimed the entire story was fabricated, then he made a point to blame the order for the second strike on Admiral Frank Bradley, who was heading the attack. Now Trump—who is above them both—implies that he doesn’t just disagree with the decision but that his Defense Department is lying about why they even struck twice at all.

Maybe Trump sees the writing on the wall and is just trying to absolve himself of any guilt before this goes any further. Or maybe he really is tired of Hegseth and his strike first, think later decision-making style. Either way, this saga seems far from over.

The Department of Justice has confirmed that President Donald Trump blocked the release of more than 4,100 documents related to the deadly riot on January 6.

In a court filing Monday night, lawyers for the DOJ revealed that Trump had stepped in to prevent the release of some material requested as part of a lawsuit brought by police officers injured by violent rioters at the U.S. Capitol. The materials were originally subpoenaed from the National Archives and Records Administration in February.

The filing included the December 1 memo signed by Trump, which claimed the subpoena had requested an “extremely broad set of materials” and blocked the release of 4,152 documents.

“I have determined that the following records are subject to a constitutionally based claim of executive privilege. This privilege helps respect the separation of powers enshrined in the United States Constitution and the need for the President of the United States to receive candid and confidential advice in decision making,” the memo stated.

Trump’s memo asserted that claiming executive privilege did not waive other privileges, such as that for presidential communications, deliberative process, and attorney-client.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson released a statement last week confirming that Trump had asserted executive privilege in response to “overly broad” discovery requests in this case, Politico reported at the time.

With this action, Trump is directly blocking a case alleging that he helped to fuel the riot. In a 2022 ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta, who is overseeing the current case, found that there were indications Trump may have been aware that some of his supporters were armed and had discouraged security checks.

A federal judge opened the floodgates Tuesday, allowing the Justice Department to publicly release investigative materials related to a sex trafficking case brought against Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime associate and girlfriend of child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The decision, made by Manhattan-based federal Judge Paul A. Engelmayer, could release hundreds or even thousands of previously unseen documents, reported the Associated Press. They will be released to the public in a searchable format in the next 10 days, as required by the recently passed Epstein Files Transparency Act.

The DOJ argued that the release was what Congress intended after the legislature passed the law last month. The latest document release will “encompass 18 categories of investigative materials” collected in the sex trafficking probe, including “search warrants, financial records, survivor interview notes, electronic device data and material from earlier Epstein investigations in Florida,” according to the AP.

Engelmayer is now the second judge to allow the DOJ to release previously secret Epstein documents, after a judge in Florida approved the release of transcripts from an abandoned federal grand jury investigation into the New York financier roughly two decades ago.

Maxwell was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in jail for playing an active role in Epstein’s crimes, identifying and grooming vulnerable young women while normalizing their abuse at the hands of her millionaire boyfriend. Maxwell’s attorneys have pressed the White House for a pardon for several months now, and the British ex-socialite signaled in a court filing last week that she would ask a court to free her from her captivity.

In a statement issued prior to Engelmayer’s ruling, Maxwell’s attorneys claimed that the release of the documents “would create undue prejudice so severe that it would foreclose the possibility of a fair retrial.”

Engelmayer made headlines in August when he

© New Republic