Keir Starmer was dubbed 'morally bankrupt' on Thursday night after blaming MI5 for failing to vet Peter Mandelson properly.

Fighting for survival amid a revolt over his handling of the scandal, the Prime Minister criticised the 'vetting carried out independently by the security services' on the disgraced Labour peer, suggesting the process needs to be looked at.

But his comments provoked a furious backlash as critics pointed out Sir Keir had already approved and announced Mandelson as the new ambassador to Washington before he was subject to in-depth national security vetting.

MI5 did not carry out checks on Mandelson - it was the job of the Cabinet Office, with limited input from spies.

On Thursday, in a desperate bid to hold on to his dwindling authority, the PM sought to present himself as a victim of Mandelson's lies, claiming he had honestly believed his assurances that he 'barely knew' Jeffrey Epstein.

The eruption of "Signal-Gate" revealed the organizational structure and command-and-control nodes of left-wing activists operating within encrypted messaging apps to unleash pressure campaigns against federal agents in Minneapolis. This structure is very revealing and, according to some security experts, is deeply rooted in revolutionary tradition.

Anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement checkpoints have sprung up across the sanctuary city of Minneapolis in recent weeks. These makeshift checkpoints on city streets are operated by left-wing activists who track traffic in and out of specific areas, searching for ICE vehicles, and there are reports from Fox News that some agitators even have the ability to check license plates.

The lawyer leading President Donald Trump's effort to investigate the "weaponization" of the Department of Justice is leaving his role. Trump had tasked Ed Martin to look into prosecutors who launched investigations into Trump or his allies.

A Justice Department spokesperson told NBC News that Martin would continue to serve as pardon attorney in the Justice Department.

"President Trump appointed Ed Martin as Pardon Attorney and Ed continues to do a great job in that role," the spokesperson told NBC.

The Washington Post reported Martin's return to his former role as a demotion. Among the targets of Martin's work with the Justice Department's "weaponization working group" was Jack Smith, the special counsel who obtained indictments against Trump over his handling of classified material and his role in instigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.

Who is Ed Martin?

After Trump returned to the White House last year, he appointed Martin as the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. However, the appointment caused concerns among lawmakers, including Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C.

Trump reversed his decision and instead named Martin the pardon attorney and director of the weaponization unit, which Attorney General Pam Bondi established following a presidential executive order. The president later picked Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, a former prosecutor, for U.S. attorney for D.C.

Before joining the Trump administration, Martin was chair of the Missouri Republican Party and president of the Eagle Forum, a conservative advocacy group. According to The Post, he helped fund the rally at which Trump spoke on Jan. 6, 2021, before supporters disrupted the certification of Electoral College votes at the Capitol.

What is the 'weaponization' group investigating?

The Trump administration created the weaponization group to investigate those connected to the Jan. 6 select committee who did not receive pardons from former President Joe Biden. Biden had issued preemptive pardons after some raised concerns that the incoming Trump administration might retaliate against committee members and their staff. The committee referred Trump to the Justice Department for investigation.

Martin has said that lawmakers who received preemptive pardons could become part of the investigation.

"I can tell you we're investigating how the pardons were granted," Martin said. "It was not like anything in the history of America."

Martin also investigated Smith, the special counsel, as well as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who oversaw Trump's felony conviction in 2024.

In November, The Post reported that Martin had used inappropriate tactics to launch investigations of Trump enemies, including Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. Schiff has not been charged with a crime.

On Sunday, CNN reported that the Justice Department was refocusing Martin's investigations, with the goal of producing results in the next two months.

Since Bondi created the group last year, it has failed to deliver on its promises. However, the attorney general has discussed her dedication to Trump's allegations of political weaponization since he appointed her to the position.

"I took office with two main goals: to end the weaponization of justice and return the department to its core mission of fighting violent crime," Bondi said in October.

The former prime minister's nomination to return to the post has elicited warnings from Washington.

Nouri al-Maliki, a two-term Iraqi prime minister viewed in Washington as being too close to Iran, has been nominated for a third term, prompting US warnings of diplomatic and economic repercussions and sparking accusations of foreign interference in the Arab nation's sovereignty.

So, who is Nouri al-Maliki and why has his likely return to power got Washington's attention?

An early member of Iraq's Islamic Dawa Party, an opposition group under Saddam Hussein's regime, al-Maliki spent 25 years in exile in Syria and Iran before returning to Iraq after the 2003 US-led invasion. He rose steadily through the political ranks, eventually becoming prime minister in 2006. He served two consecutive terms until 2014 - the longest tenure since the invasion - and previously held other cabinet positions.

The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman has accused the Western authorities of covering up global child trafficking linked to the late sex offender.

The Western authorities shielded Jeffrey Epstein's child trafficking scheme, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said, calling newly unsealed US Justice Department files "pure hell."

The DOJ published the final tranche of Epstein files last week, including 3,000 personal emails, tapes, photographs, and documents seized from his estate.

Among the documents was a diary belonging to one of Epstein's victims, a teenage girl who alleged that he used her as a "human incubator" to have his child.

According to the diary, the girl gave birth around 2002, aged 16 or 17. She claimed that Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, now serving a 20-year sentence, oversaw the birth, after which the newborn was taken, never to be seen again. Other files suggest Epstein may have fathered multiple children with his victims. Media reports previously claimed that he hoped to seed the human race with his DNA to create a "superior gene pool."

Zakharova wrote on Telegram on Friday, noting that the teen's diary particularly shocked her:

"I'm reading the Epstein files every day with incredible effort. It's pure hell. Why did his accomplice [Maxwell] only get 20 years?!!!! Why wasn't an international investigation launched, given the international trafficking of children?"

The death of Jeffrey Epstein has always been extremely suspect, if only for the sheer number of odd coincidences that occurred the night of August 9th, 2019.

There are three theories: One, he actually killed himself. Two, the DOJ - headed up by Bill Barr whose pedocentric-author father hired Epstein to teach at Dalton in the 70s - had him murdered while in custody. Three, Epstein was smuggled out of jail and replaced by a mask-wearing homeless dude, with skeptics pointing to different nose and ear shapes on the body vs. photos of Epstein when he was alive.

Now - despite former FBI director Dan Bongino insisting "There's video clear as day, he's the only person in there and the only person coming out. You can see it," the DOJ just released new documents revealing that surveillance footage from the night of Epstein's death captured an orange-colored shape moving up a staircase toward the isolated, locked tier where his cell was located at around 10:39 p.m. the night he died, or whatever.

The below transcript is from Prof. Alexander Dugin's latest talk on the Radio Sputnik Escalation Show:

Radio Sputnik, Escalation Show Host: So, the US Department of Justice has finally published the Epstein lists: 3 million files that journalists are now actively sorting through. Some things look terrible, others comical, especially when individual names appearing in these materials are taken out of context. They found Zhirinovsky, Lenin, and even characters from films and cartoons.

Alexander Dugin, last year you mentioned that your name appeared in one of the correspondences. To sum up this whole story, how should it be interpreted, given that the news is spreading rapidly in both Russian and foreign media?

Alexander Dugin: In my opinion, I would not underestimate the significance of what is happening. A global network of pedophiles involved in torture, rape, murder, even cannibalism and "black masses" has now been exposed. This network included the elite of both American parties: from George Bush Sr. to Barack Obama, the Clintons, and Bill Gates. Their own participation as well as that of many European leaders in this structure has been confirmed. Many of them are now resigning because belonging to this group, being part of Epstein's inner circle, and visiting his island are, in principle, a total discrediting for any politician, public figure, person with scientific ambitions, thinker, philosopher, economist, or businessman. In essence, belonging to this criminal network, being acquainted with Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and other figures in their circle in any capacity, is tantamount to a full admission of criminal activity.

Therefore, in my opinion, this is extremely serious. First, the most important thing is that the modern Western elite is so immoral that no one in the West has the moral right to lecture their own society or dictate to it what to do, and when it comes to other nations, these degenerates — the pedophile, liberal, globalist elite — simply have no right to open their mouths. In my opinion, it is simply immoral to engage in any negotiations with them or to sit next to people who are tainted by the "Epstein list." People who respect their dignity are forbidden from finding themselves in the same situation as those who openly trample on that dignity. It is a matter of honor: the people on the Epstein list have completely lost any sense of being respectable or ability to interact with decent people. There is a harsh term in Russian criminal slang — byt' zakontachennym — "to be finished," "to be utterly discredited." People who have participated in child abuse are totally discredited in every respect. And that is the first colossal conclusion. Now they are trying to hush up this scandal a little, but it will have truly tectonic consequences.

Where the West's very own Epstein Filth meets the West's very own Russia Rage.
"Not many people know zis" - as Franz Liebkind, the demented Nazi hobby playwright character in "The Producers" - would have said, but Jeffrey "suicide-just-on-time" Epstein really was a terrific Beluga whale. Or maybe a giant, shapeshifting, hypnotic killer squid. Or just Charlie Sheen.

Impossible? Totally absurd? Absolutely delusional? Mais pas du tout (and pardon my French, please)! Because deep down, you see - You do see it? Right, right? - all of these things (and whatever is the appropriate category for Charlie) are the same. Namely, manifestations of Russia! Or, as we also say in the Bonkers West, RussiaRussiaRussia. And so was Jeffrey Epstein, at least according to a clearly coordinated, "the-memo-is-out" wave of desperate nonsense released by Western propaganda outlets, such as the British Telegraph, the New York Post, the Daily Mail, and the Polish government. Ukrainian and Russian-exile info-warriors, meanwhile, are falling over themselves to jump on the bandwagon. Or, perhaps rather, the (evil) clown car.

The allegations about Russia are so ludicrous that their substance does not merit discussion. Because there is no substance: What we are really seeing is a squalid spectacle of propagandists clutching not at straws but pure nothing, recycling each other's unfounded and evidence-free claims and resorting to sad, silly tricks so transparent they make you oscillate between laughing, weeping, and a pure unadulterated feeling of cringe. Meduza, for instance, click-baits with the headline "Who are the Russians named in the latest Epstein files? Vladimir Putin, for one" and then admits that "there's no evidence in the released files that a meeting between Putin and Epstein ever took place." That sort of beyond-despair BS.

Norway has launched an investigation into former Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland on suspicion of aggravated corruption stemming from his contact with disgraced US financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Jagland served as prime minister from 1996 to 1997. He was secretary-general of the Council of Europe from 2009 to 2019 and chaired the Norwegian Nobel Committee from 2009 to 2015.

In a statement on Thursday, Norway's anti-corruption agency, Okokrim, said it asked the Foreign Ministry to lift the immunity granted to Jagland as a former diplomat. Okokrim chief Pal Lonseth said the probe would focus on whether Jagland received gifts or favors in connection with his positions.

The veteran politician is mentioned multiple times in a trove of files from the Epstein Estate released last week by the US authorities.

A dishonest mindset now prevails among European leaders, Sergey Lavrov has told RT in an exclusive interview.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said Western politics is increasingly shaped by a dishonest mindset, with European leaders failing to learn from past mistakes.

Lavrov made the remarks to RT on Wednesday, ahead of Diplomats Day, addressing a question from interviewer Rick Sanchez about whether those connected to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein were the same as the figures behind the 2014 Western-backed coup in Ukraine.

"Regarding the specific persons, specific personalities, we can't probably make generalizations like that," Lavrov said. "But the fact that what we call the Deep State... they are said to be able to decide the fates of the world," he added, noting that he does not quite believe it.