ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A pro-Iran armed group in Iraq said Sunday it carried out a drone attack targeting US military sites in Erbil, as Iran vowed to retaliate for the killing of its supreme leader.
The pro-Iran Saraya Awliya al-Dam (Guardians of Blood Brigades) group said in a statement dated Sunday that its “mujahideen” conducted an operation “with a squadron of drones” against “American bases in Erbil.”
Early Sunday, a large plume of smoke rose over Erbil following the strike. Casualties and damage were not immediately clear.
The statement said the attack was “in fulfillment of our religious duty and in support of the Islamic Republic of Iran against the Zionist-American aggression” and “defense of Iraq’s sovereignty.”
The claim came as pro-Iran armed groups vowed retaliation following US and Israeli strikes on Iran on Saturday. Other missiles and drones were intercepted by US-led coalition forces over the city on the same day.
Also on Saturday, the pro-Iran group Kataib Hezbollah said it would “soon begin targeting” American bases after a Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) base it uses in Iraq’s central Babil province was struck several times the same day. On Thursday, the group warned the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) against cooperating with what it described as “hostile foreign forces.”
“This will impose additional burdens upon it that may threaten its security and future,” the group said, calling on its fighters to “prepare to wage a war of attrition that may be long-term, exceeding the estimates of the US administration.”
Iran began its response less than three hours after the start of the US and Israeli strikes on Saturday, targeting sites in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, and the Kurdistan Region, according to Iranian state media.
Western forces in Erbil relocate ahead of possible US strikes on Iran
France, Norway, Germany, Sweden and Italy among countries that have repositioned troops in the region
In this file photo, German Soldiers receive a pre-flight brief before boarding the US Army Boeing CH-47 Chinook at Erbil Air Base, Iraq, 31 October 2025 (US Army photo by Capt. Bernard Jenkins Jr.)
Published date: 24 February 2026 11:42 GMT|Last update: 4 days 8 hours ago
A few days ago, amidst heightened US–Iran tensions, a military helicopter landed at the Erbil airport in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.
Although Western troops are rarely seen on the city’s streets, Erbil Air Base is heavily staffed with soldiers, and military helicopters fly overhead every day.
Now, this airport could potentially become a target for Iran if the situation escalates.
Since 2018, the Kurdistan region, including Erbil’s airport, has come under attack by drones, rockets and ballistic missiles from Iran and its proxies.
In July last year, a suicide drone was shot down above the airport amidst attacks on oil fields in the region. On 21 January, a drone also targeted an Iranian Kurdish opposition party, killing one Kurdish fighter.
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The Erbil base has a large target on it not only due to US withdrawal from other Iraqi bases but also because attacking it provides the Iranians with an opportunity to make a declaration to local US partners in the region as to the cost of working with the Americans,” Nicholas Heras, the senior director for the Strategy and Programs Unit in the Academic Division at the New Lines Institute, told MEE.
Highlights: Bill Clinton’s testimony about Epstein ties concludes after more than 6 hours
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are renewing calls for President Donald Trump to testify about Jeffrey Epstein as former President Bill Clinton is deposed in New York. “We’re talking to the wrong president today,” said Rep. Suhas Subramanyam. (AP Video: Ted Shaffrey)
Former President Bill Clinton finished his testimony before members of Congress for their investigation over convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The closed-door deposition ended after more than six hours of questioning from lawmakers about his connections to the disgraced financier.
“I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong,” the former Democratic president said in an opening statement he shared on social media at the outset of the deposition.
The deposition in Chappaqua, New York, marks the first time a former president has been compelled to testify to Congress.
It comes a day after Clinton’s wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sat for her own deposition, where she told lawmakers that she had no knowledge of how Epstein had sexually abused underage girls and had no recollection of even meeting him.
Neither Clinton has been accused of any wrongdoing.
FORWARD: THE IRANIAN-AMERICAN WAR – A MILITARY DISASTER IN THE MAKING
Today in the midst of the opening salvos of a new war in the Middle East, it is appropriate to not only analyze the current situation (we will publish a number of Special Reports as the War develops) but republish the Special Report originally. published on September 30, 2025. That Report discussed the Military’s current contempt for President Trump’s judgement as Commander in Chief. I believe it is important background and puts this new War in context.
This new conflict is nothing less than the LBJ Vietnam War on steroids without boots on the ground, and no plausible path to defeat this Iranian Regime without them. There is no question, based on the past century and a quarter of American military experience, that boots on the ground, either ours or theirs, such as convincing the Iranian Army to smash the Islamic Revolutionary Guard and then setting up a new secular government, can achieve Trump’s proclaimed objective: destroy the current Islamic Republic. That appears far from doable, and would probably result in a massive civil war between Islamic zealots and the secular civil society.
Meanwhile the Persian Gulf oil shipments have been disrupted threatening an huge increase in oil prices according to the New York Times. All tanker oil traffic is avoiding the Strait of Hormuz. The owners of oil tankers and their insurance companies fear the destruction of their ships, Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC) each one costing $130 million. This, in effect, closes the Strait. On top of this, while Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the Commander in Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard guard and two other members of the National Defense Council have been killed, ten other key members of the Islamic Military establishment, including the Commander in Chief of the Army remain very much alive, according to the Times, quoting Israeli and U.S. sources.
The Military leadership, including the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, argued strongly against the launching of a massive air war because a Regime Change is not a military objective that an air war can achieve. Without an achievable objective the Military is wasting its resources, weapons and billions of dollars of expense to move carriers, planes and personnel, not to mention the inevitable casualties such a war will incur. This advice is similar to the advice the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the theater commander William Westmorland gave President Lyndon Johnson in 1966: the North Vietnam invasion of South Vietnam could not be broken from the air. Their only recommendation to win the war was a combined arms ground invasion advancing toward Hanoi and the North’s major port of Haiphong. Johnson rejected the Generals’ advice for fear of bringing China into the war, as happened in Korea. The war lasted another seven years.
As China, Russia and United States weild military power, here is a reminder of a quote of Dwight D Eisenhower:
Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1953 address emphasized that military expenditures detract from vital social services, warning of the moral and economic consequences of excessive militarization. His message urged a balance between security and investment in human welfare amidst global challenges.
Sultan bin Sulayem, CEO of one of the world’s largest port operators, DP World, resigned from his position earlier this month after he showed up thousands of times in the files, linking him to conversations referencing sex trafficking, as well as signing his name on the sale of Jeffrey Epstein’s new island in 2016, Great Saint James, after the owner refused to sell to Epstein due to his criminal history.
Sulayem and Epstein cooking it up
The FBI did not search the island.
Les Wexner, Epstein and Maple Inc., company controlled by Epstein and based in the US Virgin Islands.
………..The 7-story, 40-room neoclassical mansion on Manhattan’s Upper East Side is cited 14 times in Epstein’s federal indictment in 2019, with prosecutors alleging Epstein recruited and brought dozens of underage victims to the palatial residence. Originally built for Macy’s heir Herbert Straus in the 1930s, the house was purchased for $13 million in 1989 by retail tycoon Leslie Wexner, who was Epstein’s main client and business partner for decades starting in the late 1980s. (Wexner has said he severed ties with Epstein in 2007.)
In 2011, Wexner transferred the property to Maple Inc., a U.S. Virgin Islands-based company controlled by Epstein. Epstein’s executors valued the home at $56 million after his death in August 2019 and put it up for sale for $88 million; it ultimately sold for $51 million in March 2021 to Michael Daffey, a former Goldman Sachs executive. A lawyer for Epstein’s estate told Forbes at the time that just under $51 million from the sale was transferred to the estate and the victims’ compensation fund
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Great St. James Island and Little St. James Island, U.S. Virgin Islands
Epstein bought the 70-plus-acre Little St. James Island, located in the U.S. Virgin Islands, for nearly $8 million in 1998. It came to be known as “pedophile island” after Epstein allegedly used it as the center of his sex trafficking ring. In 2016, he also purchased the larger island right next to it, the 160-plus-acre Great St. James, for $22.5 million. Between 2001 and 2018, Epstein allegedly brought underaged girls and young women to Little St. James and forced them to engage in sexual acts and forced labor, according to a criminal case filed by the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2020. The complaint also alleged that Epstein had bought Great St. James to “further shield his conduct on Little St. James from view” and “prevent his detection by law enforcement or the public.””
Epstein’s estate valued the islands—which featured a helipad, a private dock, a main residence and several villas—at a collective $31 million after his death in 2019 but later listed them for an asking price of $125 million. The estate settled with the U.S. Virgin Islands government in December 2022, agreeing to pay $105 million in cash—including returning more than $80 million in tax benefits—plus pay an additional $450,000 to repair environmental damage around Great St. James, due to Epstein’s alleged razing of centuries-old structures built by enslaved workers on the island.
And Ruchard Branson, a neighbouring billionaire friend of Jeffrey Epstein:
Uncovering Richard Branson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein
The discrepancies between the Virgin Group CEO’s statements and Paste’s comprehensive timeline of Branson’s presence in the documents raise questions that do not have answers.
Ever since January 30, when the Justice Department released 3.5 million documents related to the Epstein case, many prominent figures—politicians, CEOs, professors, heads of the Nobel Prize committee—have come under renewed scrutiny for their ties to Epstein. The music world has hardly been immune, as can be seen in Paste’s thorough coverage of the Casey Wasserman revelations and the subsequent backlash he received from artists. Wasserman, however, was not the only music mogul named in the files. The founder of Virgin Records, the British billionaire Richard Branson, is featured at length, with 798 pings of his last name alone in Epstein’s emails. The inclusion is not particularly surprising, given that Branson’s famous private island in the Caribbean, Necker Island, is just 20 minutes away from Epstein’s own private island by helicopter and ten minutes by plane, according to Epstein himself. Epstein even had a framed photo of himself and Branson in his mansion. But the full extent of the relationship between Epstein and Branson has yet to be determined.
Richard Branson famously co-founded the Virgin Group in 1970, which grew over the next 50 years to include the Virgin Atlantic airline, Virgin Trains and the Virgin Rail Group, the Virgin Galactic space tourism company, and crucially here for us at Paste, Virgin Records—one of the most predominant music labels of the past half-century, having signed everyone from the Rolling Stones to the Sex Pistols to Taylor Swift. While Virgin Records is no longer under Branson’s direct control (he sold the label to Thorn EMI in 1992, before Universal Music Group acquired it in 2012), it is still heavily associated with the English business magnate; it, like all other Virgin companies, features a quote from Branson himself at the bottom of its webpage: “Embedding purpose into your business will help it to stand out, and align it with customers who have the same values.”
Like many business magnates in this day and age, Branson has already faced scrutiny over his treatment of women. In 2017, Joss Stone backing singer Antonia Jenae accused Branson of sexually assaulting her on Necker Island. Janae alleged: “We were by the bar and he was saying bye to everyone. He came up to me and put his face in my breasts. He went ‘brrrrrr’ and just walked away. It was surreal, totally out of the blue. Joss and I were like, ‘What the hell was that?!’ Everyone was wondering why I wasn’t angry because I’m usually a firebrand. But I was just too shocked.” A spokeswoman for Virgin Management denied this: “Everyone appeared to enjoy their time on the island. Richard has no recollection of this matter and neither do his family and friends, who were with him on the island at the time. There would never have been any intention to offend or make anyone feel uncomfortable in any way and Richard apologises if anyone felt that way during their time on the island.”
While there has been coverage of Richard Branson’s inclusion in the files, much of it revolves around the same few quotes (an understandably eye-catching reference that Branson made to Epstein’s “harem” in 2013, as well as Branson’s offer of public relations advice to the then-already-convicted sex offender) and the official statement that was given to The Independent by Branson’s PR team. When Paste asked for comment for this piece, the Virgin Group again sent the same statement:
“Any contact Richard and Joan Branson had with Epstein took place on only a few occasions more than twelve years ago, and was limited to group or business settings, such as a charity tennis event. When Epstein offered a charity donation, the Bransons asked their team to carry out due diligence before accepting the donation, which uncovered serious allegations. As a result of what the due diligence uncovered, Virgin Unite did not take the donation and Richard and Joan decided not to meet or speak with Epstein again. Had they had the full picture and information, there would have been no contact whatsoever—Richard believes that Epstein’s actions were abhorrent and supports the right to justice for his many victims.”
The spokesperson then went on to provide us with the same explanation of Epstein and Branson’s relationship that was previously shared with The Independent. Essentially, the basic story is that Epstein and Branson had only minimal contact, limited primarily to a few “brief business meetings on Necker Island,” none of which Branson actually invited Epstein to, and that Branson “had no knowledge of the crimes that have since come to light.” However, a careful review of the released files produced discrepancies between the emails themselves and the official statements the Virgin Group gave to the press.
In response to Paste’s further inquiries, the Virgin spokesperson then provided information about additional interactions between Jeffrey Epstein and Richard Branson that were not included in their initial reply. When asked to clarify the claims made in that second response (that the pair’s first contact was in September 2013, for instance), the spokesperson provided information on further additional interactions. Yet even with three separate statements, each including more information than the last, inconsistencies remained between the information given to Paste by the Virgin spokesperson and the information made publicly available in the released files. This does not mean Branson himself is implicated in any wrongdoing, but rather, that significant questions remain about Branson’s exposure to Epstein and his inner circle, and the degree of his awareness of Epstein’s activities.
As such, Paste is providing a newly comprehensive timeline of Jeffrey Epstein and Richard Branson’s relationship as detailed in the files, including quotes from the statements received from Virgin’s spokesperson wherever relevant.
TIMELINE
January 10, 2006: First mention of a meeting between Epstein and Branson
None of the three sets of statements supplied by the Virgin Group make any mention of an official in-person meeting between Epstein and Branson prior to April 2013. However, in the emails, we see Epstein himself apparently discussing one such meeting as early as January 2006, seven years prior to the first meeting Branson’s spokesperson mentioned. As Epstein wrote to Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner on January 10, 2006: “sorry I missed you…. I met with Richard Bransn, who is working on creating what he terms an elder statesman council of the world… and asked who I thought might be appropriate… I told him i have no idea but he should contact you and inquire , about your work on trustees.”……………..
This itself seems to all be true, although Branson’s team (namely, Nicola Elliott, who was at one point Branson’s Executive Assistant) did play a role in facilitating this as well. On December 28, 2010, Bill Richardson’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Janis Hartley, contacted Elliott to inform her that “Jeffrey Epstein has volunteer [sic] to pickup the Governor at Necker Island on Friday, January 7th.” The two then went on to coordinate the specifics of the pick up.
On January 7, 2011, two important exchanges occurred: First, Epstein emailed the British politician and diplomat Peter Mandelson (who, it is worth noting, has been summoned to testify before the US Congress regarding his own ties to Epstein at this very moment) to say he “had breakfast with richard branson, he is also a big fan of africa.” Mandelson replied, inscrutably, “Let’s go for it.” Later that day, Epstein emailed Branson himself with a vaguely ominous-sounding message under the subject heading “a treat”: “dear neighbor, thanks for your hospitality this morning. Though its a little late to find new friends. I hope you and I can also meet that challenge.” Branson replied on January 10 with: “Dear Jeffrey, I’m sure we will. All the best, Richard.”
These emails suggest that what occurred on January 7 was not just Richardson being “collected by Epstein’s helicopter,” as the Virgin Group’s statements attest. Rather, it seems Branson and Epstein had a friendly breakfast, one that went well enough for Epstein to reach out to tell Mandelson about it, and for Epstein and Branson themselves to exchange warm (albeit oddly phrased) emails about the relationship that was formed.
Early 2011: Ongoing contact between Epstein and Branson, largely initiated by Epstein
For the next two or so months, Epstein contacted Branson frequently about his desire to get together, but Branson was never available. On January 13, Epstein told Branson he’d be in New York mid-month and Paris later if Branson was around; Branson was not, due to a leg injury. (Despite the apparent innocence of this exchange, Epstein then reassured Branson that “at the bottom of my emails I have always added a copyright notice. It gives great pause to publications that might get hold of them someday”). The next day, January 14, Epstein asked Branson if he wanted some company on Necker; Branson responded: “Dear Jeffrey, Sorry, would love to have done but had to go to Europe in the end. Love to the girls! Best, Richard.” Epstein told Branson he would be in Paris for the next week on January 21, but Branson was “sadly in San Diego.” On February 18, Epstein wrote Branson to say “fun people on the island,, both types,,are you here” but Branson “[v]ery sadly” was not. (The Virgin Group maintains that Branson did not understand what Epstein meant by that email, and thus replied with a “brush-off” in response.)
It is, of course, worth emphasizing that none of these emails indicate wrongdoing on Branson’s part, as he seemingly declined to meet with Epstein on any of these occasions. However, it is also worth emphasizing that there are multiple phrases throughout these emails that cast some doubt upon the Virgin Group’s insistence that Branson was utterly ignorant of Epstein’s doings. Virgin’s statements make it seem as though Branson did not know Epstein personally at this point, with the extent of their contact being Epstein picking up Richardson from Necker Island. And yet, as early as 2011, Epstein tried to coax Branson to come visit with the promise of “both types” of “fun people on the island,” and, elsewhere that same year, an unprompted Branson signed off with the phrase “Love to the girls!”
Anthropic has until Friday evening to either give the U.S. military unrestricted access to its AI model or face the consequences, reports Axios.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in a meeting Tuesday morning that the Pentagon will either declare Anthropic a “supply chain risk” — a designation usually reserved for foreign adversaries — or invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA) to force the company to tailor a version of the model to the military’s needs.
The DPA gives the president the authority to force companies to prioritize or expand production for national defense. It was recently invoked during the COVID-19 pandemic to compel companies like General Motors and 3M to produce ventilators and masks, respectively.
Anthropic has long stated that it doesn’t want its technology used for mass surveillance of Americans or for fully autonomous weapons — and is refusing to compromise on these points.
Pentagon officials have argued the military’s use of technology should be governed by U.S. law and constitutional limits, not by the usage policies of private contractors.
Using the DPA in a dispute over AI guardrails would mark a significant expansion of the law’s modern use. It would also reflect an expansion of a broader pattern of executive branch instability that has intensified in recent years, according to Dean Ball, senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation and former senior policy advisor on AI in Trump’s White House.
“It would basically be the government saying, ‘If you disagree with us politically, we’re going to try to put you out of business,’” Ball said.
In the documents, officials with the Department of Homeland Security state plans to “implement a new detention model by the end of Fiscal Year 2026,” which involves the creation of large-scale “hubs” across the country that would hold thousands of detainees.
The document release comes after Social Circle leaders met with DHS officials earlier this week to discuss the agency’s plan to turn a warehouse it recently purchased in the city into one of those “mega centers.”
There is ice activity happening here in Baltimore right now.
In the “Ice Detention Reengineering Initiative” document, the agency said it plans to reduce the total number of facilities from hundreds to around 34 while increasing the total bed capacity.
“The facility in Social Circle is expected to house anywhere from 7,500 to 10,000 detainees and will be constructed using a modular design so that capacity can be scaled up or down as needed,” the city posted on Facebook on Wednesday.
A screenshot of one of the pages of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s document showing what detainee housing at the Social Circle facility would look like. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Once construction has begun, the agency estimates to begin accepting detainees sometime between mid-May and June, and is expected to employ 2,000 to 2,500 staff.
The document says detainees will stay in the “mega-centers” for around 60 days. “Processing sites,” like the one expected to be in Oakwood, Georgia, will have detainees stay some time between three and seven days.
The documents show that the facility will include holding areas, gyms, recreational spaces, cafeterias, a gun range, and other services.
Concerns over straining infrastructure
In an infrastructure analysis provided to the city by DHS officials, the agency says that the detention facility will be designed “to not affect the existing infrastructure adversely in any way.”
“The design currently includes on sit mitigation strategies for wastewater treatment. Additional contingencies are in place if required due to non-engineering circumstances,” the document reads.
ICE officials also claim the economic benefits of the facility will help Social Circle complete the construction of another wastewater treatment plant that was already planned for industrial growth.
The warehouse of Hightower Trail is expected to become an ICE facility holding thousands of detainees. CBS News Atlanta
City leaders have consistently expressed concerns over how the facility may strain its services, pointing to the fact that it would nearly triple the area’s population when fully up and running.
“The City’s concerns regarding water and sewer infrastructure have not been addressed to our satisfaction. We continue to have more questions than answers,” the city wrote. “DHS referenced a wastewater analysis to support its claims of available capacity; however, a portion of that capacity was attributed to the A. Scott Emmons Treatment Facility. This treatment facility is not owned by the City of Social Circle, is not located within the city limits, is in a different county, and does not connect to the City’s utility system or this building.”
Social Circle officials also criticized the agency’s plan for the water supply, saying a “cistern-based” approach, where tanks are filled during off-hours, would not offset the increasing demand from the facility.
“To be clear, the City has repeatedly communicated that it does not have the capacity or resources to accommodate this demand, and no proposal presented to date has demonstrated otherwise,” they wrote.
The nationwide detention center plan is estimated to cost $38.3 billion, which would be funded through Congress’s allocation of funds via the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
More than 75,000 immigrants were being detained by ICE as of mid-January, up from 40,000 when Trump took office a year earlier, according to federal data released earlier in February.
Two of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) biggest contractors for building and managing detention centers have posted record revenue in 2025, as companies are expanding their facilities nationwide to hold more immigrants apprehended by the Trump Administration.
GEO Group, which operates 19 facilities for ICE around the country, reported $2.6 billion in total revenue in 2025, up 6% from $2.43 billion in 2024. CoreCivic, which owns and operates at least ten ICE detention facilities, reported $2.2 billion in total revenue in 2025, up 13% from $1.96 billion in 2024.
Going back to Michael D Sellers Substack on the topic, here is another extract:
How big is this, really?
ICE detention has already surged. AP reports detention numbers rising from roughly 40,000 to about 75,000, with a push toward 92,600 beds by the end of FY 2026.
To put the scale in plain terms:
DHS’s own FY 2026 budget justification talks about sustaining 50,000 detention beds.
The “reengineering” plan being reported targets 92,600 beds.
That is not a marginal increase. It’s close to a doubling of the bed base implied by DHS’s budget narrative—an attempt to build a detention system sized for sustained mass apprehension, not episodic surges.
A second scale check: ICE vs. federal prison
The Bureau of Prisons currently reports 153,121 total federal inmates (with 138,755 in BOP custody and additional federal inmates in other facility types).
If ICE reaches 92,600 beds, immigration detention alone would approach two-thirds the size of the entire federal prison population.
That comparison doesn’t say the systems are identical—they’re not. But it does clarify what “mega detention” actually means: an incarceration-scale institution built inside the executive branch, expanding on a timetable measured in months.
Why warehouses? Because warehouses are policy.
Warehouses are the perfect chassis for this kind of state project:
enormous footprints
highway access
modular interiors
relatively fast retrofits
and a zoning vocabulary that can be softened (“processing,” “staging,” “temporary”) until the beds are already installed
AP describes ICE quietly purchasing large warehouses in at least 20 communities, with local officials repeatedly saying they learned about plans late or indirectly.
This is the central political move: use real estate to make the policy a fait accompli.
The pressure point: scale so big it breaks normal governance
The reason this is detonating locally is not simply ideological opposition to enforcement. It’s that mega-centers create problems that local government is not designed to absorb quietly:
water and sewer demands
EMS capacity and hospital load
traffic, transport, staffing
tax base and land use
litigation exposure and public safety escalation
In Social Circle, Georgia, reporting described a proposed facility that could hold double the town’s population—a statistic so stark it becomes a narrative by itself.
In Romulus, Michigan, Axios reported that a federal document helped confirm a plan for a facility near Detroit Metro Airport while local officials complained they still lacked basic details—an illustration of the “paperwork moves faster than consent” dynamic.
In Maryland, Reuters reported a state lawsuit alleging DHS spent over $100 million on a site for a 1,500-bed facility without required environmental review or public input—an attempt to drag the program back inside normal legal process.
These aren’t detached anecdotes. They’re the same conflict repeating: institutional-scale detention introduced as a procurement project, leaving communities to fight it after the machinery is already in motion.
“American Gulag” is loaded language. Here’s what earns it.
Historically, “gulag” refers to something specific and far more extreme than immigration detention in the United States. That matters.
But the phrase does useful work as a warning label for a narrower idea: a domestic confinement system that is being industrialized, scaled, and normalized through logistics rather than debated through politics.
The reporting supports three ingredients of that warning:
Scale (tens of thousands of additional beds; mega-centers)
Secrecy-by-process (towns learning late; deals moving before public input)
Democratic bypass (lawsuits and backlash triggered by perceived end-runs)
Even those who favor strict immigration enforcement should pause at the method. Because method becomes morality when the state is building the capacity to cage people at industrial scale.
Evil has marched upon the Earth many times, more recently, the industrialised mechanism of the Holocaust:
January 10, 2019
A Biologist Reconstructs the Grotesque Efficiency of the Nazis’ Killing Machine
Lewi Stone used his statistical prowess to reveal the furious intensity of the Holocaust’s industrial-scale genocide during three months of 1942
The American version is sloppier but just as cruel, it is like a Gazan type genocide, depriving people of clean water, sanitation, food and adequate safe shelter. Death by a thousand cuts, it is traumatic and a desolate experience of hopelessness.
A nearly blind Burmese refugee who was abandoned by border patrol agents has been found dead in Buffalo, New York, city officials confirmed.
Nurul Amin Shah Alam, 56, had been missing since 19 February, when he was dropped off by border patrol following his release from Erie county holding center, according to the Investigative Post.
A city hall spokesperson, Ian Ott, told the Investigative Post that homicide detectives were “investigating the circumstances and timeframe of events leading up to his death, following his release from custody”.
Shah Alam had been in the Erie county holding center for the past year, after being arrested by Buffalo police in 2025 on charges of assault, trespassing and possession of a weapon. The arrest stemmed from an incident in which Shah Alam got lost while on a walk and ended up on the porch of a woman’s home. He had been using a curtain rod as a walking stick, according to his attorney.
The woman called the police, and when Shah Alam did not follow police commands to drop his curtain rod, they Tasered and beat him, his attorney said.
He was released on bail, and then transferred to border patrol custody.
Border patrol agents then dropped him off at a Tim Hortons about five miles from his home. Neither his attorney nor his family were notified of his release.
“We are saddened to learn that our client, Nurul Amin Shah Alam, was found deceased last night in the City of Buffalo,” the Legal Aid Bureau of Buffalo said in a statement shared with the Guardian.
Jessica Zweng, Substack:
In the post-civil rights era of the 1960’s and 1970’s, the United States had banned formal categories of discrimination and was on the brink of prison abolition. During the 1980’s backlash, the manufactured drug-war replaced race with crime as the socially acceptable marker of dangerousness and the modern era of mass incarceration and immigration detention began. Following the 9/11 attacks, the cross-stitching of everyday criminality, immigration control, and national security terrorized common crime and solidified an apparatus of government power primed to exercise the endgame of a nationalist authoritarian regime. The centerpiece of this transformation was a federal enforcement agency whose origin myth is to rid the nation’s interior of the disposable and despised—socially, legally, and politically enabled through the designation of the “criminal alien.”
ICE officer training is ‘deficient’ and ‘broken,’ former agency lawyer tells congressional forum
By Associated Press
Updated Feb 24, 2026
ICE whistleblower Ryan Schwank …
AP —
A former US Immigration and Customs Enforcement lawyer who was responsible for training new deportation officers warned Monday that the agency’s training program for new recruits is “deficient, defective and broken.”
Ryan Schwank’s comments during a forum held by congressional Democrats come at a time of intense scrutiny of the officers tasked with carrying out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda. Critics, including rights groups and Democratic politicians, have accused deportation officers of using excessive force when arresting immigrants, attacking bystanders who record their conduct and failing to follow constitutional protections of people’s rights.
Arming ICE:
Fear as senator discovers staggering true amount Trump spent on arming ICE
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) officers stand guard in Minneapolis, Minnesota. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu
A report produced by the office of Sen. Adam Schiff reveals that federal immigration enforcement agencies amassed a gigantic weapons stockpile during the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term.
In total, the report released by Schiff (D-Calif.) finds that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) committed to spending over $144 million on weapons and ammunition over the last year, a massive increase over these agencies’ spending on weapons in years past.
“In just one year, ICE’s spending commitments on weapons, ammunition, and accessories surged fourfold—an increase of over 360 percent—when compared to ICE’s contracts in 2024,” states the report. “In 2025, CBP’s contracts for weapons, ammunition, and accessories doubled when compared to CBP’s 2024 contract totals.”
Hostorical Database errors and failures:
American Citizens in the Deportation Database: When Surveillance Goes Wrong
How algorithmic bias and database errors put U.S. citizens at risk of detention and deportation
Thousands of U.S. citizens have been wrongly detained or deported by ICE
Database errors and algorithmic bias disproportionately affect communities of color
Surveillance systems cannot reliably distinguish citizens from non-citizens
Constitutional rights are routinely violated through automated enforcement
Mixed-status families face ongoing harassment from flawed targeting systems
⚠️ Constitutional Crisis
Between 2007 and 2015, ICE detained or removed at least 2,840 U.S. citizens. The real number is likely much higher due to inadequate record-keeping and ongoing cases.
The Scale of the Problem
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) rely heavily on algorithmic systems and databases to identify deportation targets. These systems, designed to process millions of records quickly, routinely misidentify U.S. citizens as deportable immigrants, leading to wrongful detention, deportation, and constitutional violations.
The problem is systemic, not exceptional. Surveillance databases used for immigration enforcement are plagued by errors, outdated information, and algorithmic bias that disproportionately affects citizens of color, particularly those with Latino surnames or mixed-status family situations.
A view of the site where Mexican Army troops killed Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as El Mencho, during an operation in Guadalajara, Mexico, on Feb. 22, 2026. Photo: Stringer/Anadolu via Getty Images
A new player in the U.S. military’s decadeslong war on drugs announced itself to the world on Sunday, providing intelligence that supported a Mexican military operation that killed the head of the infamous Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
Though details continue to emerge from the operation, which set off a spasm of violence that left at least 70 people dead, some of the information that led Mexican security forces to Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes was delivered by a new Joint Interagency Task Force called Counter Cartel, based out of Southern Arizona.
The outfit operates out of Fort Huachuca, a military intelligence hub nestled in a rugged mountain chain 15 miles north of the U.S.–Mexico border. According to media reports, the task force, staffed by a combination of some 300 military and civilian employees, provided its Mexican counterparts with a “detailed target package” in the run-up to Sunday’s operation. The CIA also provided key support for the mission.
Existence of the task force was first revealed in a little-noticed ceremony at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, last month. Its online footprint is slight. The information that is publicly available, however, confirms deepening ties between President Donald Trump’s domestic homeland security agenda and his lethal drug war operations abroad.
Known internally as JIATF-CC, the task force is part of the U.S. Military’s Northern Command, once considered a backwater that today enjoys renewed prominence under Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. In the past year, Trump and Hegseth have used the Southern Command, NORTHCOM’s counterpart in the Western Hemisphere, as well the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command, to conduct the kinds of targeted killing missions long associated with the war on terror against targets in Latin America.
After the Mexican military killed drug cartel kingpin Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, widely known as El Mencho, officials detailed the weapons recovered in the firefights. The stockpile included a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, 10 long arms, handguns, and grenades, officials said.
Mexico Defense Minister Ricardo Trevilla Trejo said that, as with other Mexican crime scenes, about 80% of the recovered weapons were bought in the United States and smuggled into Mexico. The details were shared in a Feb. 23 news conference, a day after the killing of El Mencho.
Gun ownership in Mexico is tightly restricted. There is only one military-run gun store in the country, in Mexico City, where weapons sales are strictly regulated. But easy access to guns in the United States has created an “iron river” of firearms flooding Mexico’s black market.
The Justice Department has withheld some Epstein files related to allegations that President Trump sexually abused a minor, an NPR investigation finds. It also removed some documents from the public database where accusations against Jeffrey Epstein also mention Trump.
Some files have not been made public despite a law mandating their release. These include what appear to be more than 50 pages of FBI interviews, as well as notes from conversations with a woman who accused Trump of sexual abuse decades ago when she was a minor.
NPR reviewed multiple sets of unique serial numbers appearing before and after the pages in question, stamped onto documents in the Epstein files database, FBI case records, emails and discovery document logs in the latest tranche of documents published at the end of January. NPR’s investigation found dozens of pages that appear to be catalogued by the Justice Department but not shared publicly.
The Justice Department declined to answer NPR’s questions on the record about these specific files, what’s in them and why they are not published. After publication, the Justice Department reached out to NPR, taking issue with how its responses to questions were framed. Department of Justice spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre reiterated DOJ’s stance that any documents not published are privileged, are duplicates or relate to an ongoing federal investigation.
Following NPR’s reporting, the House Oversight Committee’s ranking member, Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., released a statement about the missing files.
Shalom Baranes was born soon after his parents fled Libya amid antisemitic sentiment there, coming to the United States as a child with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, now known as HIAS. He rose to prominence as an architect in Washington, D.C., where he has designed both private and government buildings, including the Pentagon, that trend toward the modern.
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Trump’s new White House ballroom architect is a Jewish immigrant who has advocated for refugees
Shalom Baranes is a prominent architect in the D.C. area
An excavator works to clear rubble after the East Wing of the White House was demolished on Oct. 23, 2025. Shalom Baranes, inset, has been chosen to lead the reconstruction. Photo by Eric Lee/Getty Images; Shalom Baranes Associates
(JTA) — After parting ways with the first architect hired to carry out his vision for the White House’s East Wing, President Donald Trump has picked a replacement — turning to a firm run by prominent Jewish architect who once called on Trump to keep the country’s doors open to refugees and immigrants.
Shalom Baranes was born soon after his parents fled Libya amid antisemitic sentiment there, coming to the United States as a child with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, now known as HIAS. He rose to prominence as an architect in Washington, D.C., where he has designed both private and government buildings, including the Pentagon, that trend toward the modern.
The White House confirmed on Friday that it had chosen his firm, Shalom Baranes Associates, to continue the East Wing project, centered around the ballroom that Trump wishes to construct. Trump clashed with the first architect on the job over the ballroom’s size.
“Shalom is an accomplished architect whose work has shaped the architectural identity of our nation’s capital for decades, and his experience will be a great asset to the completion of this project,” a White House spokesman, Davis Ingle, said in a statement on Friday.
The firm did not immediately publicly confirm its attachment to the project, and Baranes did not reply to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment.
Baranes’ selection stands out in an administration that has typically favored partisan and ideological loyalists. Baranes is a repeated donor to Democratic candidates who has openly advocated against one of Trump’s signature policies, his efforts to limit refugee admissions.
In 2017, two months into Trump’s first term, Baranes penned an op-ed for the Washington Post about the new president’s travel ban. Trump had declared a ban on migrants from seven mostly Muslim countries and refugees from around the world soon after taking office, igniting wide opposition including from Jewish groups.
“The anti-immigrant sentiment I feel today is nothing new to me,” he wrote. “When my Jewish parents arrived in the United States just a few years after fleeing persecution in an Arab regime, it was as difficult for them to be accepted here as it is for Muslims now.”
Baranes laid out his criticism gingerly while saying he hoped the travel ban would be short-lived.
“As I watch the news and see families struggling to leave their countries and escape tyranny, I wonder who among them will make it to our shores and become part of the next generation of researchers, teachers, inventors, real estate developers and, yes, architects,” he wrote. “My hope is that the Trump administration will take actions to ensure that the travel ban is indeed temporary, so that good, hard-working individuals fleeing tyranny can find a new home as I did — and that each of them will be given the same opportunity to help build this great nation that I had.”
Among the Jewish groups to lobby against Trump’s travel ban was HIAS, the organization that had helped Baranes and his family come to the United States. HIAS declined to comment on his selection as White House architect but said through a spokesperson that the organization was working to respond to Trump’s crackdown on refugees, which the president renewed last week after an Afghan refugee shot and killed a member of the National Guard in Washington.
The ruling could come just before the National Capital Planning Commission, the central planning agency of the federal government, plans to vote on the project. The 12-member commission, the majority of whom are Trump-appointed allies, will hold the public hearing on March 5.
But the judge’s verdict won’t be the end of the saga.
“I know it will be appealed. Whichever side wins, the other side will appeal,” said U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon last month. “So this case is going to go to the DC Circuit, for certain, and, maybe, perhaps even to the Supreme Court. Who knows?”
Renderings briefly posted Feb. 13 before being removed reveal the scale of a proposed 89,000-square-foot White House ballroom.
At issue is a lawsuit the National Trust for Historic Preservation filed in December against Trump and several federal agencies, asking to halt construction on the 90,000-square-foot ballroom. The non-profit group argued that Trump should have sought Congress’s authorization before the demolition of the East Wing.
Trump’s team has countered in court that the president did not need approval from lawmakers because the project is not using taxpayer dollars and instead is being funded by private donations.
Trump’s project has gone through various changes since the White House first announced its plans in July, including financing, seating capacity and cost. The price tag jumped from $200 million to $400 million, and the ballroom is now expected to accommodate 1,000 people.
Detailed renderings reveal the scale of the proposed 89,000-square-foot White House ballroom. The images by Shalom Baranes Associates—later removed from the National Capital Planning Commission’s … Show more
The National Capital Planning Commission/Shalom Baranes Associates, Architects
What is the court considering?
Judge Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush, said there were many “novel” issues at play in the case. He is considering whether the president has the authority to demolish the East Wing and construct the ballroom using a deliberately complicated funding setup with private money while circumventing Congressional authorization.
During last month’s hearing, Leon said he also wanted the Trump administration to clearly state what the “dividing line” was between what is permitted and what is not permitted in terms of future construction and demolition in the White House complex.
Detailed renderings reveal the scale of the proposed 89,000-square-foot White House ballroom. The images by Shalom Baranes Associates—later removed from the National Capital Planning Commission’s … Show more
The National Capital Planning Commission/Shalom Baranes Associates, Architects
“I do think if the plan was to just bulldoze the entire White House and build something completely different in its place,” it would exceed the scope of presidential authorization for “alteration and improvement,” said Jacob Roth, an attorney for the defendants.
“I would hope so,” Leon responded, while also noting that the administration had taken a “pretty expansive interpretation of the language.”
Roth also described the Executive Mansion as the “core site.” He said Congress declared in 1961 by statute that the site was “an important thing to preserve.”
The Iran-Contra Affair was a political scandal in the 1980s involving secret U.S. arms sales to Iran, which were used to fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua, despite Congress prohibiting such support. This covert operation raised significant questions about presidential power and congressional oversight in U.S. foreign policy. ebsco.com Encyclopedia Britannica
1985 After a brief stint as a Labour councillor in Lambeth from 1979 to 1982, Mandelson stood down and worked as a television producer. But, in 1985, he returned to politics after being appointed Labour’s director of communications by Neil Kinnock.
Mandelson In March 1990 he resigned from his role after he was selected as the Labour candidate for Hartlepool, which was a safe seat at the time.
1990–1991 conflict between Iraq and a 42-country coalition The Gulf War was an armed conflict between Iraq and a 42-country coalition led by the United States.
April 1992 Mandelson is elected to parliament as the MP for Hartlepool at the 1992 general election, which Labour loses. While in the House of Commons, he forms friendships with Blair and Gordon Brown.
May 1994 After Labour leader John Smith unexpectedly dies, Mandelson backs Blair to lead the party, which caused a rift between himself and Brown. Blair wins the leadership contest against John Prescott and Margaret Beckett.
Convinced that there was no political room for workerism at the end of the 20th century, Mandelson trusted a young Tony Blair and was his court advisor during the nineties, waiting for the administration of John Major fell due to maturity after seventeen uninterrupted years of Conservative Party governments.
All of this would have been impossible without Mandelson, who led the successful 1997 election campaign and later held the position of “minister without portfolio,” basically responsible for coordinating all members of the government and assisting the prime minister in the way a chief of staff would do in the United States.(2)
May 1997 After Labour’s landslide victory at the 1997 general election, Mandelson, who had been one of Blair’s most loyal supporters, was appointed as minister without portfolio.
July 1998 Mandelson is promoted to trade and industry secretary under Blair’s first cabinet reshuffle. October 1998 Columnist Matthew Parris reveals that Mandelson is gay during a live broadcast of Newsnight on BBC Two. Details about his Brazilian partner, Reinaldo Avila da Silva, are soon published by the media.
December 1998 Mandelson is forced to resign as trade and industry secretary after details come to light about an undeclared, interest-free loan of £373,000 from his ministerial colleague Geoffrey Robinson to buy a home in Notting Hill. At the time, Robinson’s business dealings were being investigated by Mandelson’s own department.
October 1999 After less than a year of political exile, Mandelson returns to government as Northern Ireland secretary.
Vladimir Putin began his first term as prime minister in 1999 and brought with him very different ideas about his country’s relationship with Ukraine. He initially flirted with the idea of joining NATO but eventually decided to focus on reasserting Russia’s standing within the world. January 2001 Mandelson is forced to resign for a second time amid allegations that he attempted to help the Hinduja brothers with their application for British citizenship. They had made a £1m donation to the Millennium Dome, which Mandelson oversaw in his earlier minister without portfolio role
June 2001 Mandelson is re-elected as Hartlepool MP, where, at the election count, he declared himself “a fighter, not a quitter”.
The 9/11 attacks on September 11, 2001
In 2001 an international coalition led by the USA invaded Afghanistan to destroy terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda when the Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden. British forces went in alongside US troops. At the height of the conflict there were more than 130,000 NATO troops on the ground. By July 2021, nearly all NATO countries had fully withdrawn.
Sir Tony Blair met Jeffrey Epstein in Downing Street while he was prime minister after a recommendation by Peter Mandelson, newly released papers from the National Archives show. Epstein visited Blair on 14 May 2002, after the suggestion by Lord Mandelson
2003–2011 war after an American-led invasion
November 2004 After nearly a decade in parliament, Mandelson resigns his Hartlepool seat to take up the position of EU trade commissioner.
October 2008 Mandelson returns to mainstream politics after being appointed business secretary by the then-prime minister Brown, an appointment made possible by being appointed to the House of Lords. After the recent revelations about Mandelson’s emails with Epstein, including allegations he leaked market sensitive information, Brown expressed his deep regret at the appointment.
The 2008 financial crash, also known as the global financial crisis, was primarily caused by the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble and the subsequent subprime mortgage crisis, leading to widespread bank failures and a severe global recession. It peaked with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, triggering panic in financial markets worldwide.
2010 Mandelson’s ministerial career comes to an end after Labour loses the 2010 general election. Ed Miliband was asked at a leadership hustings whether there was a place for him in his shadow cabinet. “All of us believe in dignity in retirement,” he replied. In November, he founds a policy consultancy, Global Counsel, with Benjamin Wegg-Prosser. Its past clients have included the Qatari Free Zones Authority, the Chinese fast-fashion brand Shein and social media platform TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.
Muammar Gaddafi was killed on October 20, 2011, during the First Libyan Civil War after being captured by National Transitional Council forces in Sirte, Libya
Tony Blair is facing fresh questions over his role as a Middle East peace envoy after claims that he has used the position to promote lucrative business deals for clients of an investment bank that pays him £2million a year. As a representative of the Quartet –the UN, the EU, the U.S. and Russia – the former prime minister is tasked with fostering peace between Israel and Palestine.
The Maidan protest movement. Ukraine’s pro-European trajectory was abruptly halted in November 2013, when a planned association agreement with the EU was scuttled just days before it was scheduled to be signed. The accord would have more closely integrated political and economic ties between the EU and Ukraine, but Yanukovych bowed to intense pressure from Moscow. Street protests erupted in Kyiv, and Lutsenko and Klitschko emerged as the leaders of the largest demonstrations since the Orange Revolution. Police violently dispersed crowds in Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (“Independence Square”), and, as the protests continued into December, demonstrators occupied Kyiv’s city hall and called on Yanukovych to resign. Russia, in turn, offered to cut the price of natural gas and purchase $15 billion in Ukrainian bonds to prop up the country’s faltering economy (Brittanica)
On 22 February 2014, Yanukovych fled for the safety of Putin’s Russia. On the pretext of rescuing his ally, Putin ordered Russian Special Forces into Crimea and began an audacious military coup. On 27 February, Russian armed forces without insignias seized the building of the Supreme Council of Crimea and the building of the Council of Ministers in Simferopol. Crimea belonged to Russia (https://www.history.co.uk/articles/putin-s-gamble-russia-s-2014-invasion-of-crimea)
December 2024 Mandelson is appointed US ambassador by Keir Starmer. He had been a reportedly important part of the Starmer operation and maintained a particularly close relationship with his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney.
September 2025 After a batch of Epstein files are released, which showed emails from Mandelson to Epstein suggesting his 2008 conviction for soliciting a child for prostitution was wrongful and should be challenged, he was sacked as ambassador to the US.
Feb 4 2026 Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, shot dead on Tuesday, appealed to ‘a nostalgia for a past that is remembered as more secure
February 2026 This year more files were released that revealed Mandelson was passing information to the convicted sex offender while he was business secretary, including market-sensitive information that sparked the criminal investigation. The news led to McSweeney quitting his role for advising the prime minister to appoint Mandelson. Global Council entered administration and on Monday Mandelson was arrested.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has recently faced increased public scrutiny surrounding his past dealings with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and the allegations by the late Virginia Giuffre.
Here is how Andrew’s friendship with Epstein and the financier’s sex trafficker girlfriend Maxwell unfolded:
– 1990s
Andrew previously told BBC Newsnight he first met Epstein through ‘his girlfriend back in 1999’.
Andrew. Pic: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
In March 2011, the prince’s then-private secretary Alastair Watson, who spent nine years in the role, wrote to The Times newspaper saying Andrew met Epstein in the ‘early 1990s’.
Ghislaine Maxwell went on trial – Jeffrey Epstein’s network was “never touched
Andrew later said he saw Epstein ‘infrequently’, adding ‘probably no more than only once or twice a year’.
During Maxwell’s sex trafficking trial, jurors heard Andrew flew on Epstein’s private plane with a 14-year-old girl in the mid-1990s.
– 2000
Andrew and Maxwell are seen on holiday with Epstein at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Epstein and Maxwell attend a party at Windsor Castle hosted by Queen Elizabeth II to mark Andrew’s 40th birthday, the Princess Royal’s 50th, the Queen Mother’s 100th and Princess Margaret’s 70th.
Flight records from May show him confirmed as a passenger on Epstein’s private plane.
– 2001
Virginia Giuffre claims to have had sex with Andrew ‘three times, including one orgy’, with the first encounter allegedly taking place in Maxwell’s London townhouse.
Ms Giuffre also claimed to have had sex with Andrew at Epstein’s New York flat and at an ‘orgy’ on his private island Little St James in the Caribbean.
Andrew. Pic: Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images
– 2008
Epstein admits to prostituting minors and is sentenced to 18 months in prison.
– 2009
Epstein’s former housekeeper Juan Alessi testifies that Andrew had ‘daily massages’ at the paedophile’s Florida home.
– 2010
Epstein is released from jail. Andrew is photographed with Epstein in New York’s Central Park.
Footage emerges years later, reportedly shot on December 6 2010, showing him inside Epstein’s Manhattan mansion, from where he is seen looking out from a large door of the property, waving a woman goodbye after Epstein leaves to get into a chauffeur-driven car.
– 2011
Andrew quits his role as UK trade envoy after the fallout from the Central Park photos.
In February, he tells Epstein ‘we are in this together’ despite later claiming he broke off all contact with the paedophile in December 2010.
Ms Giuffre reportedly hands the photograph of her with Andrew to the FBI.
– 2015
Buckingham Palace denies Andrew has committed any impropriety after he is named in US court documents related to Epstein.
A woman, later named in reports as Ms Giuffre, alleges in papers filed in Florida that she was forced to have sex with Andrew when she was 17, which is under the age of consent in the state.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Andrew, in his first public engagement since he was embroiled in the allegations, responds by saying: ‘I just wish to reiterate, and to reaffirm, the statements that have already been made on my behalf by Buckingham Palace.’
In January, Andrew is reported to have sent an email to Maxwell asking for help in dealing with Ms Giuffre.
Prince Andrew and Virginia Giuffre. Pic: Shutterstock
– 2016
As part of her civil suit against Maxwell, Ms Giuffre testifies that Epstein paid her 15,000 dollars (£11,180) to have sex with Andrew.
Ms Giuffre also testified about a sexual encounter with Andrew in the bath of Maxwell’s home in 2001, saying: ‘He was adorning my young body, particularly my feet, caressing my toes and licking my arches.’
– 2019
Newly released legal documents show Johanna Sjoberg, another alleged Epstein victim, claimed Andrew touched her breast while sitting on a couch inside the US billionaire’s Manhattan apartment in 2001.
Buckingham Palace said the allegations are ‘categorically untrue’.
Epstein is found dead in his jail cell on August 10, having killed himself after being charged with sex trafficking.
Later that month, a pilot on Epstein’s private jet, David Rodgers, claims Andrew was a passenger on past flights with the financier and Ms Giuffre.
Mr Rodgers said in a testimony released in August that Epstein, Andrew and the-then 17-year-old travelled to the US Virgin Islands on April 11 2001.
Pic: US Department of Justice
Buckingham Palace describes the evidence statement as having ‘a number of inconsistencies’, and said Andrew was on a different continent in some cases.
In her posthumous memoirs, Ms Giuffre claims American broadcaster ABC did not air an interview in 2019 after the royal family ‘applied pressure to nix the interview’.
Following Epstein’s death, a statement from the palace says Andrew is ‘appalled by the recent reports of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged crimes’.
Speaking for the first time since 2015, Andrew releases a statement on August 24 saying: ‘At no stage during the limited time I spent with him (Epstein) did I see, witness or suspect any behaviour of the sort that subsequently led to his arrest and conviction.’
In November, BBC Newsnight reveals Andrew has spoken about his relationship with Epstein in a ‘no holds barred’ interview.
In the interview, Andrew said he had ‘no recollection’ of ever meeting Ms Giuffre and added he could not have had sex with her in March 2001 because he was at Pizza Express with his daughter Beatrice on the day in question.
He added he ‘did not regret’ his friendship with the sex offender but admitted he should not have gone to see him in New York in 2010 to break off their friendship.
The television sit-down was widely criticised and dubbed a ‘car crash’, with commentators questioning Andrew’s responses and condemning his unsympathetic tone for victims and seeming lack of remorse over the friendship.
Four days after the interview, the then Duke of York released a statement confirming he was ‘stepping back from public duties for the foreseeable future’ with permission from Queen Elizabeth II.
Andrew also said he ‘deeply sympathised’ with all of Epstein’s victims and added he was ‘willing to help any appropriate law enforcement agency with their investigations, if required’.
In December, Ms Giuffre implores the British public to ‘stand up beside me to help me fight this fight’ and ‘not accept this as being OK’, in clips released ahead of a BBC Panorama interview.
– 2020
In January, a US prosecutor claims Andrew has ‘provided zero co-operation’ over the Epstein sex trafficking inquiry.
Speaking at a news conference outside Epstein’s New York mansion, US attorney Geoffrey Berman said Andrew’s lawyers had been contacted by prosecutors and the FBI who requested to interview him as part of the investigation.
Ms Giuffre, writing on social media a few days later, urges Andrew to ‘do the right thing’ and talk to FBI investigators.
In June, Andrew’s lawyers said he offered to assist the US department of justice ‘on at least three occasions this year’ in its investigation into Epstein.
Just a few hours later, prosecutor Mr Berman – who was leading the investigation into Epstein at the time – said Andrew had ‘yet again sought to falsely portray himself to the public as eager and willing to co-operate’ although he ‘has repeatedly declined’ requests to schedule an interview.
Speaking in a documentary, Ms Giuffre claims Andrew played a ‘guessing game’ about her age and compared her with his daughters during the alleged March 2001 encounter at Maxwell’s home.
A former Epstein employee tells a Netflix documentary he saw Andrew frolicking with a topless Ms Giuffre in a pool on the paedophile’s island.
– 2021
In August, Ms Giuffre starts legal action against Andrew, saying it was ‘past the time for him to be held to account’ for allegedly sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager.
Lawyers for Ms Giuffre filed a civil suit seeking unspecified damages at a federal court in New York, where documents claim she was ‘lent out for sexual purposes’ by Epstein, including while she was still a minor under US law.
Andrew is named as the only defendant in the 15-page suit, brought under New York state’s Child Victims Act, though Epstein and Maxwell are mentioned frequently throughout.
In December, Maxwell is convicted in a New York court of helping Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls.
– 2022
In January, a US judge rules the civil case against Andrew can go ahead, in what is a huge blow for the royal whose lawyer had argued it should be thrown out.
Andrew’s status as a member of the royal family is left in tatters after Queen Elizabeth II strips him of his honorary military roles and he gives up his HRH style in a dramatic fallout from his civil sex case.
He is also stripped of his remaining royal patronages.
The development came after more than 150 veterans joined forces to express their outrage, writing to the late Queen to demand the removal of the honorary military positions.
Buckingham Palace says in a statement that Andrew ‘will continue not to undertake any public duties and is defending this case as a private citizen’.
In February, court documents show Andrew and Ms Giuffre have reached a ‘settlement in principle’ in the civil sex claim.
The documents show Andrew will make a ‘substantial donation to Ms Giuffre’s charity in support of victims’ rights’, and has pledged to ‘demonstrate his regret for his association with Epstein’ by supporting the ‘fight against the evils of sex trafficking, and by supporting its victims’.
Commentators say while he ‘at last’ appears to have got the tone and language right, it is unlikely he will ever return to public royal life, with one branding him ‘reputationally toast’.
Calls are renewed for him to lose his dukedom after he pays millions of pounds to a woman he claims never to have met.
– 2024
Allegations against Andrew resurface in unsealed documents as part of Ms Giuffre’s civil claim against Maxwell – with claims such as him being involved in sex tapes, as well as resurfaced allegations of his participation in an under-age orgy.
– 2025
Ms Giuffre dies aged 41 in April.
Buckingham Palace announces Andrew will stop using his titles and honours, including the Duke of York.
Ms Giuffre’s posthumous memoirs claim Andrew’s ‘team’ tried to hire ‘internet trolls to hassle’ her.
The Metropolitan Police said it would look into claims Andrew had passed Ms Giuffre’s date of birth and social security number to his taxpayer-funded bodyguard in 2011 and asked him to investigate.
Questions are raised about whether Andrew should have the right to continue living at the 30-bedroom Royal Lodge mansion in Windsor.
A copy of the leasehold agreement, shared with the Press Association by the Crown Estate, which oversees the royal family’s land and property holdings, shows Andrew signed a 75-year lease on the property in 2003.
It reveals he paid £1 million for the lease and that since then he has paid ‘one peppercorn’ of rent ‘if demanded’ per year.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer says there should be ‘proper scrutiny’ of Andrew’s rent-free mansion.
It later emerges that the Public Accounts Committee is seeking further information about the peppercorn rent lease arrangement.
After speculation around whether Andrew will leave the Royal Lodge, Buckingham Palace announces the King has begun a process to remove his titles, style and honours.
Notice has also been served to surrender Andrew’s lease on the lodge and it emerges he will move to new accommodation on the private Sandringham estate.
The King formally strips his brother of his prince title and HRH style in November.
Andrew is also struck off the official roll of the peerage.
He is accused by US legislators of ‘hiding’ from them after he ignored a request to sit for a transcribed interview about his links to Epstein.
He is further stripped in December of his prestigious Order of the Garter and Royal Victorian Order honours.
Later in the month, photographs of Andrew emerge among releases of images from the so-called Epstein files, including one which appears to show him reclining across the legs of five people with his head near a woman’s lap.
Emails also come to light which increase scrutiny on Andrew.
One email sent from Balmoral signed ‘A’ asked Maxwell in August 2001: ‘Have you found me some inappropriate friends?’
Andrew does not join the royal family for the traditional Christmas Day church service on the King’s Sandringham Estate.
– 2026
Further photographs and emails are released as part of the Epstein files, revealing more about Andrew’s contact with the sex offender.
Photos appear to capture him crouched over an unidentified woman, while emails appear to show him exchanging messages with Epstein about a ‘beautiful’ Russian woman and inviting him to Buckingham Palace in an August 2010 exchange.
Members of the royal family start to comment publicly about the files, with the Prince and Princess of Wales saying they have been ‘deeply concerned’ by the ongoing revelations and the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Edward, said it is ‘really important, always, to remember the victims’.
Thames Valley Police say they are assessing claims Andrew shared confidential reports from his role as the UK’s trade envoy with Epstein.
The King makes clear his ‘profound concern’ at allegations over Andrew’s conduct and that he will ‘stand ready to support’ the police if approached over the claims.
On February 19, Thames Valley Police announce Andrew has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
Note from Andrew Lownie, question:
In December 2019, Donald Trump, interviewed on television, would deny knowing Andrew, in spite of extensive photographic records of their public meetings going back twenty years, including the visit to Trump’s Palm Beach home in February 2000. In October 2000 both of them had attended Heidi Klum’s Halloween costume party, at which Trump was quoted as saying of Andrew, ‘He’s not pretentious … He’s a lot of fun to be with.’
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