Friday, February 27, 2026

SCREAM 7

SCREAM 7 is  a tight film.  If you've seen them all, you'll see this one.  I've seen them all and found this one to be very entertaining.  Neve Campbell's back as Sidney.  She was my only problem.  

I don't have a problem with Neve as an actress.  The set up for this film; however, has Sidney married and with kids including a teenage daughter.  I'm just seeing that as rather strange.  SCREAM (2022) -- or SCREAM 5 -- gave no indication of this.  Neve was in that film.  If Sidney had not been in the fifth film, if her last appearance had been in 2011's SCREAM 4, I might have accepted it more easily.  I don't think so though.  Sidney had been built up to be a survivor who knew she couldn't trust anyone so her marrying and having children?  Just seems a bit of a stretch for me.


That's my only quibble.  Otherwise, you'll enjoy it.  


In other news,  Andreas Wiseman (DEADLINE) reports:

Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon is in Spain this weekend to collect a career achievement prize at the 40th Goya awards.

Speaking at a press conference in Barcelona today, the decorated star discussed her support for Palestine — a cause close to the heart of the Spanish government — and recent career challenges, which she said had come about because of that support.

The Thelma And Louise star was dropped by UTA in 2023 after attending several rallies in support of Palestine and at one point telling a crowd: “There are a lot of people afraid of being Jewish at this time, and are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country.” She later apologized for those comments.

Sarandon told media today that her actions and words had led to her being shunned by Hollywood: “I was fired by my agency, specifically for marching and speaking out about Gaza, for asking for a cease fire, and it became impossible for me to even be on television. I don’t know lately if it’s changed, but, I couldn’t do any major film, anything connected with Hollywood.”    



Going out with C.I.'s "The Snapshot:"


Friday, February 27, 2026.  Yesterday, members of the House Oversight Committee went to Chappaqua to show how the Republican-controlled Committee will do anything in its power to avoid actually addressing Jeffrey Epstein and his crimes.  




Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told U.S. House lawmakers on Thursday that she had no knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein's or Ghislaine Maxwell's crimes at the start of two days of depositions that will also include former President Clinton.

“I had no idea about their criminal activities. I do not recall ever encountering Mr. Epstein," Hillary Clinton said in an opening statement she shared on social media.
The closed-door depositions in the Clintons' hometown of Chappaqua, a typically quiet hamlet north of New York City, come after months of tense back-and-forth between the former high-powered Democratic couple and the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee. It will be the first time that a former president has been forced to testify before Congress.

Annie Karni (NEW YORK TIMES) notes that the deposition was paused when someone broke rules:

Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado shared a photograph of Mrs. Clinton answering questions, which was posted on social media by Benny Johnson, a right-wing podcaster. Mrs. Clinton’s attorneys immediately asked to pause the proceedings, noting that the former secretary of state had been denied her request for a public hearing. The deposition resumed about 30 minutes later.

Was she drunk?  Boe-Boe?  She fell down after the State of the Union and some wondered if she was drunk then.  Was she drunk yesterday morning?  As well?   Her son got a misdemeanor citation for child abuse.  That was this month, by the way.  We're not talking about his 2025 issue for the same thing (he'll stand trial for that in April) or his 2024 arrest for property theft among other things.  Possibly Boe-Boe needs some time off to regroup? 



Representative Yassamin Ansari, Democrat of Arizona, also took a break to speak to reporters outside a performing arts center in Chappaqua, N.Y., where the House Oversight Committee investigating the Epstein matter has been taking a deposition from Hillary Clinton.  “We are sitting through an incredibly unserious clown show of a deposition,” she said, adding that Republicans in Congress were more concerned with getting photos of the closed proceeding out than “than holding anyone accountable.”


And it was pointless.  Hillary has no association with Jeffrey Epstein.  As she pointed out, the whole thing was a distraction from Donald Chump who does have a reason to be questioned -- under oath -- and his wife Melania who also has a reason to be questioned under oath.  Both Chumps are pictured repeatedly with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, Melania has her e-mail to "G" that was released in the last document dump.  There are rumors that Epstein introduced Donald to Melania.  And that's before we get into the big news about the woman who complained to the FBI about Donald -- and how it was left out of the documents Pam Bondi released.  As Hillary noted in her opening statement -- which she posted in full on social media,  "Instead, you have compelled me to testify, fully aware that I have no knowledge that would assist your investigation, in order to distract attention from President Trump's actions and to cover them up despite legitimate calls for answers,"


Lawrence O'Donnell noted last night on MS NOW how Hillary called out this administration for covering up and for undercutting efforts to combat sex trafficking.  








House Democrats on Thursday demanded President Donald Trump follow the Clintons in testifying to congressional investigators on ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton began a closed-door deposition Thursday by a House panel investigating Epstein in Chappaqua in upstate New York, where she has a home with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, according to a person familiar with the proceedings. Bill Clinton is set to face questioning on Friday.

The House committee’s subpoena to a former president “sets a precedent,” Representative Robert Garcia, the panel’s top-ranking Democrat, told reporters gathered outside the local performing arts center where the panel is questioning the Clintons. 
“The person who actually appears more times in the files than the former president, who we want to speak with, is President Donald Trump,” Garcia told reporters.


Comer-Pyle, head of the US House Oversight Committee, managed to show up for this deposition -- he and the other Republican members of the committee bailed last week on Les Wexner's deposition.  He corn-poned himself but managed to attend. Prior to attending, Tom Durante (MEDIAITE) reports: 

Rep. James Comer (R-KY) was pressed by reporters about a possible Jeffrey Epstein cover-up by the Trump administration as he prepared to quiz former first lady and secretary of state Hillary Clinton on her ties to the notorious sex trafficker.

Speaking from Chappaqua, NY before the deposition was set to begin, Comer, the House Oversight Committee chair, was asked about a recent report that the Justice Department withheld dozens of pages from the Epstein document dump that mentioned President Donald Trump, including an allegation that he sexually abused a minor.
“We’re looking into the accusation by the NPR,” said Comer, who was flanked by fellow Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Nancy Mace (R-SC), Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), and others. “We don’t know the answer to that. We know what the administration says. We’re still looking to to get a definitive answer on that.”

The NPR investigation, published on February 24, found over 50 pages that appear to have been catalogued, but were not a part of the massive trove of files related to Epstein.

The accusation by the NPR?  Comer-Pyle is an idiot.  



The Justice Department said Thursday that it is examining whether it wrongly withheld FBI files that contained allegations against President Donald Trump in its release of millions of pages from the investigatory files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Three summaries of interviews the FBI conducted in 2019 with a woman who had accused Trump of sexually assaulting her are missing from the files, multiple news outlets have reported. The woman had accused Trump of sexually assaulting her decades earlier while she was a minor. No evidence has emerged publicly to corroborate that accusation.
The existence of the summaries — known as 302s in law enforcement parlance — was noted in an index that the Justice Department included in the massive cache of files released over the past three months in response to the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The index suggested that law enforcement agents interviewed the woman on four occasions, writing up a summary in each instance. Only one of the four summaries was included in the release.

The summaries were among the materials prosecutors gave to defense attorneys as part of the discovery process leading up to the trial of Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 on sex-trafficking charges.

Independent journalist Roger Sollenberger first reported on the apparent missing files.

The woman who accused Trump also said Epstein assaulted her when she was a minor in the 1980s. In an account that was included in the files, the woman said that Epstein introduced her to Trump and that Trump assaulted her.




Aaron Blake (CNN) observes the murky aspects of Chump and The Epstein Files:

Trump’s questionable denials

Speaking of Trump’s name being in the files, that’s one of several instances of him downplaying his proximity to Epstein using claims that were subsequently undermined or called into question:

  • Trump in July denied being told his name was in the files, shortly before we found out Attorney General Pam Bondi had indeed told him that back in May.
  • In 2019, he said that he “wasn’t a fan” of Epstein’s and added, “I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him.” In fact, lots of evidence has suggested they were friendly before their falling out, including archived video footage and photos of them together uncovered by CNN’s KFile. The New York Times even reported Epstein once called Trump his “best friend.”
  • Trump in 2024 said he was “never on Epstein’s Plane,” despite flight logs showing he had been seven times in the 1990s.

His opaqueness

When Trump hasn’t made demonstrably false claims, he’s often been opaque:

  • He and his allies offered a number of claims for why Trump hadn’t written Epstein a lewd birthday letter published by the Wall Street Journal. While we don’t have proof that Trump authored the letter, the claims they used to deny it seemed to fall apart.
  • Trump in July seemed to reluctantly acknowledge he had known that Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell recruited their victim, Virginia Giuffre, from Mar-a-Lago. Trump previously avoided discussing why he and Epstein had a falling out, including saying in 2019: “The reason doesn’t make any difference, frankly.”
  • We then learned recently that Trump told a local police chief when Epstein was first under investigation in the mid-2000s that “everyone has known he’s been doing this.”

There have been other data points at least gesturing in the direction that Trump knew Epstein liked young women. But what he told local Florida police is perhaps the most compelling evidence yet that Trump knew something about Epstein’s crimes way back when.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she couldn’t confirm whether that conversation happened. She added that if it did, it “corroborates” Trump having called Epstein a “creep” and broken ties with him. But Trump has never been forthcoming about why he decided Epstein was a creep.

The Maxwell prison transfer

Shortly after she interviewed with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche last summer, Maxwell was moved to a minimum-security prison camp.

You begin to see how that might look bad. Maxwell, after all, is a convicted sex offender. She was also saying things that could help Trump — even as he dangled a potential pardon.

But the administration spent months not explaining why the transfer occurred.

Eventually Blanche told NBC News shortly before Christmas that the Bureau of Prisons recommended the transfer, and he suggested he had signed off on it. Blanche said that Maxwell had been facing “numerous threats against her life.”

But in testimony earlier this month, Bondi said she hadn’t known about the transfer (despite being Blanche’s boss) and claimed Maxwell was transferred to “the same-level facility,” which doesn’t appear to be true.


The apparent cover up flies in the face of what Pam Bondi told -- shouted, sneered, screeched -- at the House Judiciary Committee earlier this month.  She drew attention to herself as she insisted there were no accusations against Donald Chump.  She had a fit when US House Rep Ted Lieu attempted to explore that avenue.  She lied to the committee.  Which is why Ted's office issued the following this week:

WASHINGTON - Today, Congressman Ted W. Lieu (D-Los Angeles County) and Congressman Dan Goldman (D-NY) sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche calling for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Attorney General Pam Bondi for allegedly committing perjury during her February 11, 2026 testimony before the House Committee on the Judiciary when she said, “there is no evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime.” Following the hearing, NPR reported that the Justice Department has withheld and removed some Epstein files related to Trump from the public database.

In the letter, the Members write:

Dear Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche,

As former prosecutors, we watched – along with millions of Americans – Attorney General Pam Bondi lie under oathbefore Congress. Testifying before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on February 11, 2026, Attorney GeneralBondi emphatically stated, “There is no evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime.” Yet a number of thedocuments from the Epstein files released to date by the Department of Justice directly contradict her statement.When confronted with her lie, she did not retract her statement, she doubled down. She stated, “Don’t you ever accuse me of committing a crime.”

 Attorney General Bondi committed the crime of making false statements under oath, under 18 U.S.C. § 1001. We request that you immediately appoint a special counsel to investigate Attorney General Bondi for committing perjury. America cannot have a liar and a criminal as our top law enforcement officer.

Donald Trump is all over the Epstein files released to date – which is only half of the total number of documents in your possession – referenced over 38,000 times. Below are just a few examples of the evidence released by the Department of Justice alleging that Trump committed crimes:

  • The DOJ released a 21-page internal slideshow presentation about investigations into Epstein. In it, there aretwo accusations against Donald Trump provided by two witnesses:

                        o  “[REDACTED] stated Epstein introduced her to Trump who subsequently forced her head down to hisexposed penis which she subsequently bit. In response, Trump punched her in the head and kicked herout. (Date range 1983-1985, [REDACTED] would have been 13-15).”

                             o  “[REDACTED] remember Epstein introduced her to Trump saying “this is a good one, huh” and Trumpresponded “Yes”. (Date range roughly 1984, [REDACTED] would have been 14).”

  • A separate FBI record reflects that an individual contacted the FBI’s National Threat Operations Centerreporting that, as a limo driver, he overheard Trump “continuously stated the name ‘Jeffrey’ while on the phone, and made references to “abusing some girl.” The individual also said he met a girl who said she was raped by Trump and Epstein.

  •  In July 2019, FBI interview transcripts released by the DOJ indicate that a witness expressed fear of retaliation when discussing individuals who were “well known” including “current United States President Donald Trump.”

These examples contradict her claim that there is “no evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime.” Whenconfronted with one of these pieces of evidence, Attorney General Bondi doubled down instead of retracting her false statement. She also inappropriately and creepily spied on Members of Congress who were searching through the Epstein Files, so we know that she would have seen the documents that incriminated Trump. 

Further, it appears that the DOJ removed a document indicating that the underage accuser referenced above in the21-page internal slideshow was interviewed not once, but “at least four times” by the FBI.6 The removal of that document is not only suspicious, it raises obvious concerns about a coverup.

Moreover, both you and AG Bondi have stated that all of the survivors who have reached out to the Department have been able to provide testimony and evidence. As the country saw during

last week’s hearing, that is demonstrably false. Every survivor who attended that hearing indicated that they hadtried to meet with the Department and were rebuffed but would still be willing to provide evidence and testimony. Unless the Department is overtly covering up for President Trump or other child predators, we expect that theDepartment will meet with those survivors immediately.

Attorney General Bondi’s conduct meets all the elements of the crime of making false statements under oath. Sinceshe obviously isn’t going to prosecute herself, a clear conflict of interest exists.

Therefore, under 28 C.F.R. § 600.1, we request that you immediately appoint a special counsel to investigate Attorney General Pam Bondi for making false statements under oath during her February 11, 2026, testimony before the House Committee on the Judiciary.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this important matter. We look forward to receiving your response.

Sincerely,

READ THE FULL TEXT OF THE LETTER HERE




Now that everyone knows she lied, Democrats want answers. TAG24 NEWS notes:


Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused the Department of Justice, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, of unlawfully withholding documents that could implicate or embarrass Trump, and pledged accountability for those responsible.

"Let me be blunt, there is a massive cover-up going on in the Justice Department to protect Donald Trump and people associated with Jeffrey Epstein," Schumer told reporters.
"As we expected, Trump, Bondi, and their minions have played games with the release of these files, released some documents they wanted to release, and continue to hide others...President Trump – what are you trying to hide?"


Multiple outlets and Democratic lawmakers have reported that the Department of Justice failed to release materials in Epstein files that documented FBI interviews with a female witness who alleged that Trump and disgraced pedophile Jeffrey Epstein sexually assaulted her when she was a minor.

The substance of the allegation against the president and its cover-up have broken through, as they should. It is absolutely surreal to say the president of the United States is an accused pedophile - and that our country's law enforcement apparatus, together with the Republican Party, seems intent on killing that story. Yet that is where we are.

The omitted FBI interviews with Trump's accuser are part of the tranche of Epstein files - documents in the federal government's possession related to its investigations of disgraced financier Epstein. Last year, Congress passed a bipartisan law requiring Department of Justice to release the files (subject to what are supposed to be narrow redactions, including of victims' names or material used in an ongoing federal investigation).
Of course, in any investigation, law enforcement receives junk tips that don't go anywhere. But there are several indications that the material the department is attempting to bury was viewed as serious.

For one thing, the witness who alleged Trump sexually assaulted her was interviewed by the FBI four times. If the witness wasn't credible, a second, third and fourth FBI interview probably wouldn't have been warranted. The witness interview was also memorialized in a 302, a form the FBI uses for documenting interviews with witnesses. Those documents, 302s, are significant investigative material - so much so that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche specifically instructed the Justice Department to flag 302s as they were reviewing the Epstein files.

Then there is the fact that the witness made a similar allegation (that she was sexually assaulted by Epstein and another prominent man) in litigation she filed in 2019. This witness - and their allegation against Trump - was also included in an internal department presentation that listed claims made against prominent individuals. So, again, this isn't someone who was being dismissed by people involved in the investigation.
The Justice Department has yet to release all of the Epstein files, even though the deadline to do so has already passed. But it's hard to imagine that, under Attorney General Pam Bondi's leadership, the department is investigating this allegation against Trump in light of all of the preferential treatment the president has received so far.


As Hillary said in her opening remarks to the Commitee:

A committee run by elected officials with a commitment to transparency would ensure the full release of all the files. It would ensure that the lawful redactions of those files protected the victims and survivors, not powerful men and political allies. It would get to the bottom of reports that DOJ withheld FBI interviews in which a survivor accuses President Trump of heinous crimes.



Howard Lutnick is one of the many people in the administration who had relationships with Jeffrey Epstein.   Lutnick, Robert Kennedy Jr., Doctor Oz, Stephen Feinberg, John Phelan, Kevin Warsh, Tom Barrack, Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, Melania Chump and Donald Chump all had ties to Epstein. 


None has been asked to testify before the committee.  And none has announced that they're stepping down.



Sarah K. Burris notes Lutnick may be wearing out his welcome:


So far, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick has been able to score deals that make President Donald Trump happy. However, he's now alienated the rest of the powers that be.

According to Politico, politicians on both sides of the aisle are angry over Lutnick's name popping up in the investigation files around Jeffrey Epstein. Lutnick lived next to Epstein for a time, went to his home and to his private island with his family. He never engaged in anything untoward, he told reporters.
“He is thumbing a middle finger to anyone who thinks he’s on the outs because the president has really given a lot of his Cabinet the assurance that they’re not going anywhere until he wants them to go somewhere,” said one person close to the White House.

Other Cabinet-level officials don't like Lutnick's "style," the report said. And there are larger questions about how much Lutnick's children were profiting from his position in the Cabinet. Over the holidays, Trump confronted the secretary over the matter while at Mar-a-Lago.


House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer appears to be changing his tune on Howard Lutnick, now suggesting that it is "very possible" he might subpoena him after the Trump Commerce Secretary allegedly lied before Congress about the extent of his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Just two weeks ago, MS NOW reported that Chairman Comer had dodged questions about subpoenaing Lutnick.

Asked at the time if his committee had any plans to subpoena the Commerce Secretary, Comer instead replied, "Well, we're going to try to get these five [witnesses] nailed down. We've got a lot of very important people we're trying to bring in to answer questions."

On Thursday, the question came up again, and Comer offered reporters a different perspective.

Asked if "in the spirit of bipartisanship" he would request Lutnick testify, Comer replied it was "very possible, and I think it's a good possibility his name will arise on some questioning today" as the Committee deposes former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.


The chairman’s suggestion that Lutnick could soon be facing a congressional subpoena comes after weeks of increased scrutiny of his relationship with Epstein, his onetime next-door neighbor in New York, after documents released by the Justice Department showed that he’d lied during an interview with the New York Post in October when he’d claimed to have cut off contact with Epstein after a 2005 encounter that he claimed had left him so unsettled that he’d vowed to “never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.”


As Ben notes this morning on MEDIASNEWS NETWORK, photos emerged yesterday of Lutnick on Epstein's island, having the time of his life.  Years after he insisted he'd  broken with Epstein, years after the 'grossed out' moment he and his wife supposedly had when they visited their neighbor Epstein and saw things that turned their stomachs, things that made them both agree to never again have anything to do with Epstein. 



Let's note this from Senator Patty Murray's office:

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), a senior member and the former chair on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, issued the following statement on the Trump administration’s moves to roll back worker protections. Today, the Trump nominee-packed National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced its decision to formalize the return of the first Trump administration’s joint employer rule. This coincides with this morning’s announcement from the Department of Labor of its intent to rescind the Biden Administration’s employee and independent contractor classification rule.

“Every day, little by little, the Trump administration is rigging the system to benefit giant corporations and shortchange workers—it’s an outright grift and working people should be furious. The joint employer rule is nothing more than a return to Trump’s anti-worker policies that let giant corporations skirt their basic obligations to employees—Trump is giving the biggest corporations cover to deny workers their ability to band together for better wages and working conditions and leaving millions of workers in the lurch, vulnerable to egregious violations of their rights.

“At the same time, today, the Trump administration announced they’re working to rescind the independent contractor rule. Trump wants to let giant corporations classify workers as contractors so that they don’t have to pay them minimum wage and overtime—these workers deserve fair pay.

“Under the Trump administration, giant corporations get giant tax breaks paid for by cutting Medicaid—the health care that the poorest workers are forced to rely on. Now, Trump wants those same corporations off the hook for every benefit, protection, and dollar they’d otherwise owe to millions of workers—it’s a shakedown. Republicans are proving time and again, they don’t care about workers—they don’t want to even let workers have crumbs, but billionaires can get trillions in tax breaks that will blow up our national debt. I am going to keep fighting for laws on the books that protect workers and build an economy that grows the middle-class, not just profit margins for the largest corporations on earth.”

Senator Murray has long led efforts in Congress to shield against employee misclassification and protect workers’ rights. In January of last year, Senator Murray forcefully condemned President Trump’s illegal firing of NLRB Member Gwynne Wilcox and the firing of Jennifer Abruzzo—Murray has consistently called for the immediate reinstatement of Wilcox and condemned Trump’s move as a breach of the NLRB’s independence. Senator Murray is fighting to pass—and is the original Senate author of—the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which, among other things, would close loopholes that allow employers to misclassify their employees and deny them protections under the law. Among many other pieces of pro-worker legislation, Murray also leads the Wage Theft Prevention and Wage Recovery Act, to fight wage theft and protect workers hard earned wages, and the Paycheck Fairness Act to combat wage discrimination and help close the pay gap, and has helped lead the fight for paid family and medical leave since she first joined Congress. Most recently, Senator Murray reintroduced her Bringing an End to Harassment by Enhancing Accountability and Rejecting Discrimination (BE HEARD) in the Workplace Act, in response to Trump and Andrea Lucas, Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), eliminating workplace anti-harassment guidance and attacking transgender workers for using the locker rooms, bathrooms, and private spaces. BE HEARD takes critical steps to address workplace harassment, protects against discrimination based on gender identity and sexuality, and ensures workers can seek accountability and justice.

In December 2023, Senator Murray led 21 of her colleagues in a letter in support of the Biden Administration’s proposed rule to reinstate the joint-employer standard and she fought efforts to weaken the historic joint-employer standard under the previous administration at every step of the way. She continuously opposed the first Trump administration’s attempt to overturn the historic standard and led her colleagues in opposing its rule eroding the standard, which was finalized in 2020.

###


And we'll note this from THE BLACK COMMENTATOR:

Cover Story
The Rotunda Is Too Small for the Reverend Jesse Jackson
By Dr. Julianne Malveaux, PhD
BC Editorial Board

Click below to read issue 1076


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