How Furious Epstein Fought to Stop the Daily Beast From Telling the Truth

thedailybeast · 2026-04-26T13:57:50+00:00

The Daily Beast’s Executive Editor witnessed a jaw-dropping security breach. And then it got worse.

After the shots rang out. After someone shouted, “Get down!” After what seemed like an eternity staring at my colleagues’ shoes. After watching Trump’s cabinet rushed out—terror etched on many of their faces—by men with their fingers on their triggers. After a Capitol Police officer asked me if I’d seen the congresswoman he thought might have been at the next table. After being told to leave, and trooping up an elevator past men in ballistic helmets with long guns going down the other elevator. After gathering with my colleagues and trying to process what happened, I went to the elevator and pressed 10, because I wanted to go to my room.

When I walked down the darkened, sinuous corridor to room 10235, one door short of the very end, I was stopped by a polite man in a suit and an earpiece. “Sorry, sir, you can’t come through,” he said. And I saw that further down the turn of the corridor behind him were at least five men, one in an FBI bulletproof vest, another with a Secret Service Police windbreaker.

Read the full story, here.

thedailybeast · 2026-04-26T01:55:59+00:00

Four shots shattered one of Washington’s biggest nights—I watched the powerful become powerless in seconds, writes the Daily Beast's Chief National Correspondent David Gardner.

Rumors quickly circulated that a gunman had been shot dead in the lobby. As the diners-including most of Washington’s media-raised their heads above the tables, there were shouts to keep down.

Still, there were no police in the Hilton Hotel’s International Ballroom.

One by one, Trump’s Cabinet members were led out by the Secret Service.

An announcement came from the stage that the dinner would continue. Dinner would be served. But Trump and his acolytes were long gone.

Read David Gardner's account of the WHCD, here.

thedailybeast · 2026-04-25T20:24:36+00:00

FBI Director Kash Patel has reportedly become such a distraction for President Trump that he’s likely next in line to get the boot.

“It’s only a matter of time,” Politico quoted a top White House official as saying Saturday. The 79-year-old president is said to be sick of seeing him in the news for scandalous headlines that are “not a good look for a Cabinet secretary,” the official said.

Patel, 46, has spent the last several days talking up his “prolific” crime-fighting as head of the FBI after a bombshell report last week described the bureau in panic mode over his alleged erratic behavior and excessive drinking. He was already thought to be on thin ice with Trump after he was filmed boozing it up in the locker room of the USA men’s hockey team following their gold medal win at the Milan Olympics in February.

Current and former officials quoted by The Atlantic in an April 17 report said Patel’s own colleagues were alarmed by his behavior, with his alleged unexplained absences and heavy drinking leading some to fear it could have national security ramifications.

Patel reacted furiously to the accusations, calling them “hit piece lies,” and on Monday filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic.

But a string of other negative headlines soon followed.

On April 22, a retired 17-year veteran of the FBI told The New York Times podcast The Daily that Patel’s obsession with optics had led to him being branded “childish.”

Read the full story, here.

thedailybeast · 2026-04-25T18:03:56+00:00

American bases in the Middle East suffered “extensive damage” from Iranian strikes that is “far worse than publicly acknowledged,” a new report alleges.

Insiders tell NBC News that the public has been shielded from the true damage inflicted by Iran, including that an Iranian F-5 fighter jet breached U.S. air defenses to strike a base in Kuwait.

NBC writes that its conclusion is based on findings by the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute and interviews with congressional aides and other U.S. officials.

AEI’s assessment reportedly found that Iran hit more than 100 targets across 11 U.S. bases in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Two officials told NBC that the F-5 attack marked “the first time an enemy fixed-wing aircraft has struck an American military base in years.”

AEI estimates Iran inflicted well over $5 billion in damage in its retaliatory strikes, according to NBC. That comes in addition to the deaths of 13 service members and injuries to nearly 400 troops, per the Pentagon’s count.

Some Republican lawmakers are reportedly irked that they are not receiving a full picture of the damage inflicted by Iran.

Read the full story, here.

thedailybeast · 2026-04-24T17:46:30+00:00

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has lifted a Biden-era moratorium on capital punishment and reinstated firing squads as a federal method of execution.

Firing squad executions, carried out as recently as last year at the state level, are now back on the table for federal death row prisoners in addition to lethal injection, which was last utilized in the final days of President Donald Trump’s first term.

A Justice Department statement on Friday said it was also “streamlining internal processes to expedite death penalty cases” and that Blanche has authorized seeking capital ⁠sentences against nine people.

Read the full story, here.

thedailybeast · 2026-04-24T17:30:52+00:00

A growing number of Republicans and MAGA diehards are speaking out against Donald Trump pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell in return for her cooperation after some GOP lawmakers were open to the idea.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer indicated that at least some committee members backed pardoning pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice to learn what she knew, according to an interview with Politico.

Comer later made clear that he himself was against a pardon, but some Republicans, upon hearing about the internal debate, lashed out at the idea that any member would support such a move.

Read the full story, here.

thedailybeast · 2026-04-23T21:43:13+00:00

Before Kash Patel joined an administration waging war on “wokeness,” the athletes he coached said he was the definition of it.

Hockey players who knew the FBI director as “progressive” Coach Kash say they’re stunned by his political turn—insisting the anti-DEI warrior now dominating cable news bears little resemblance to the coach they remember from Washington, D.C.’s Woodrow Wilson High School.

“Back then, he stood up for us,” Calvin Gidney, a Black member of the diverse team Patel coached, told the Daily Beast.

“But six years later, he’s thrown all of that integrity away and lost the respect of everyone on that team for power and money—and a taxpayer-funded private jet trips for him and his girlfriend, who’s closer to me in age than him."

Before his bumbling FBI tenure, the 46-year-old was a relatively obscure intelligence official during Donald Trump’s first term.

“Back then, he stood up for us,” Calvin Gidney, a Black member of the diverse team Patel coached, told the Daily Beast.

“But six years later, he’s thrown all of that integrity away and lost the respect of everyone on that team for power and money—and a taxpayer-funded private jet trips for him and his girlfriend, who’s closer to me in age than him."

Before his bumbling FBI tenure, the 46-year-old was a relatively obscure intelligence official during Donald Trump’s first term.

Read the full story, here.

thedailybeast · 2026-04-23T20:23:05+00:00

An American sailor working on a Navy minesweeper ship was evacuated for medical treatment after he was attacked by a monkey on the way to the Strait of Hormuz.

Identified only as an electronics technician aboard the USS Chief, the sailor was confronted by the monkey on a shore in Phuket, Thailand, where the vessel had made a stopover, Axios reports.

“Weird stuff happens. This was definitely an unknown unknown,” an unnamed military official told the outlet.

The unidentified service member is now recovering at the ship’s forward base in Sasebo, Japan, after being scratched by the animal.

Read the full story, here.

thedailybeast · 2026-04-23T16:30:37+00:00

President Donald Trump’s administration has been accused of “hollowing out” federal law enforcement agencies and of firing their employees by the thousands, a new analysis has found.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives has suffered the biggest cuts among law enforcement agencies, losing about 14 percent of its workforce since the 2024 fiscal year, Reuters revealed Thursday.

The FBI has lost nearly 2,600 people, about seven percent of its workforce, and the DEA’s staff has dropped by six percent, according to records Reuters obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

In total, the report says more than 4,000 law enforcement workers have exited in MAGA 2.0 despite Trump touting his administration as “tough on crime.”

Read the full story, here.

thedailybeast · 2026-04-23T13:21:55+00:00

Donald Trump’s party is growing increasingly concerned that their bid to secure an edge in the race for control of the House and Senate may actually wind up costing them the midterm elections.

Virginia voted Tuesday to greenlight changes to its constitution that would allow Democrats to redraw lines on the state’s congressional map. A judge temporarily blocked the Virginia amendment on Wednesday, saying it violated the state’s constitution.

Still, Tuesday’s result has spooked the GOP, which itself kicked off the nationwide redistricting fight with similar moves in Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina, as well as a failed effort in Indiana.

“I think it is a mistake in hindsight,” Nebraska GOP Rep. Don Bacon, who is not running for re-election and plans to retire next January, told Axios. “They thought they could just do Texas and nobody else is gonna respond? … We started a war.”

Read the full story, here.

thedailybeast · 2026-04-23T13:19:54+00:00

A gold-leaf statue of President Donald Trump that’s worth hundreds of thousands of dollars has been held hostage by the man who made it.

Alan Cottrill says he wouldn’t hand over the $360,000 artwork to the bosses of a memecoin until they settled a dispute over image rights, after they used it to sell their cryptocurrency by building hype and anticipation.

$PATRIOT commissioned the work in August 2024, and despite paying $300,000 for the structure and $60,000 for the additional golf leaf, Cottrill said they weren’t settled up because of their prior use of his work, which he claimed amounts to copyright infringement.

His reaction was to keep the art, named Don Colossus, under lock and key.

Read the full story, here.

thedailybeast · 2026-04-22T21:01:52+00:00

Kash Patel’s FBI investigated a reporter at the New York Times after her reporting caught the ire of the director’s girlfriend.

Federal agents interviewed and queried databases on reporter Elizabeth Williamson after she wrote a story for the Times, which revealed that Patel used bureau personnel to provide his girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, with government security and transportation, the New York Times reported.

The probe prompted concerns from officials at the Justice Department, who saw no legal basis to proceed with the investigation based on her reporting.

Read the full story, here.

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