The White House just botched the distraction from its Epstein scandal.

A declassified report, intended to add fuel to a debunked theory that Hillary Clinton cooked up the Trump-Russia connection in 2016, actually reveals that a critical document in the plot was the likely invention of Russian spies.

The 29-page annex to the special counsel’s 2023 report includes alleged communications made by Clinton that several Republicans have claimed were intended to “smear” Trump with Russian collusion. But the documents outline that, despite having spent considerable time and resources to prove the connection was real, special counsel John H. Durham could not do so.

The foundational document includes an email, dated July 27, 2016, and allegedly sent by a Soros Open Society Foundations staffer, that claimed the Democratic presidential candidate had signed off on a proposal to tie Trump to Russia in an effort to distract from the fact that she sent and received emails during her time as secretary of state from a private server.

“HRC approved Julia’s idea about Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections,” the email reads in part. “That should distract people from her own missing email, especially if the affair goes to the Olympic level. The point is making the Russian play a U.S. domestic issue.”

Durham concluded that the purported communication was most likely manufactured.

Trump administration officials, however, were quick to hype the supposed findings of the release. FBI Director Kash Patel bragged on social media that the annex included “evidence that the Clinton campaign plotted to frame President Trump and fabricate the Russia collusion hoax,” and CIA director John Ratcliffe said in a statement that the documents proved there was “a coordinated plan to prevent and destroy Donald Trump’s presidency.”

Amid rising intraparty tensions over Trump’s apparent ties to the pedophile and alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, the president has wildly alleged that investigations into his presidential campaign’s ties with Russian assets were the invention of President Barack Obama. Several of his allies have followed suit, calling for investigations as to whether the forty-fourth president committed “treason.”

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee met with the U.S.-backed aid organization that’s been setting death traps for starving Palestinians.

Huckabee said Friday morning that he and special envoy Steve Witkoff visited Gaza to “learn the truth” about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, whose aid sites have become the locus of mass casualty events on a near-daily basis.

The United Nations reported Thursday that at least 859 Palestinians have been killed while attempting to receive aid at GHF sites between May 27 and July 31, mostly by the Israeli military.

Huckabee seemed pleased after receiving a briefing from the Israeli military and meeting with GHF workers on the ground. “GHF delivers more than one million meals a day, an incredible feat!” Huckabee wrote in a post on X.

But GHF has now been implicated in hundreds of Palestinians deaths, as the widespread famine in Gaza worsens.

“Israeli forces are not only deliberately starving Palestinian civilians, but they are now gunning them down almost every day as they desperately seek food for their families,” said Belkis Wille, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch. “US-backed Israeli forces and private contractors have put in place a flawed, militarized aid distribution system that has turned aid distributions into regular bloodbaths.”

GHF’s funding sources are opaque, but Trump said Friday that Israel had agreed to match a $30 million donation, according to Reuters.

GHF has also been criticized as systematically ineffectual. Anthony Aguilar, a retired 25-year U.S. Army veteran and Green Beret who’d been working for the group as a security contractor described GHF as “an enterprise that has failed from the beginning.”

“It’s abhorrent. If it weren’t so tragic, it would be comedy. It’s not comedy, because it is absolutely tragic,” he told Mother Jones. Aguilar also alleged that his fellow contractors used nonlethal and lethal munitions in unauthorized ways, cheering as they fired blindly into a crowd of Palestinians.

For his part, Huckabee doesn’t seem all that interested in easing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza—seeing that it would require him to acknowledge Palestinians’ humanity. Earlier this week, Huckabee said that France’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state was “like letting the Nazis have a victory after World War II.”

And for all of Trump’s too-little too-late statements about the starvation in Gaza, he seems to feel about the same. After Canada issued a statement backing a two-state solution Thursday, Trump lashed out in a Truth Social post, threatening a prospective trade deal between the U.S. and Canada.

Laura Loomer is feeling emboldened, as the Trump White House this week further deepened the impression that it farms out personnel decisions to the far-right provocateur.

Loomer, who seems to enjoy ready access to the president’s ear, on Thursday unveiled a tip line to help fire more Trump officials. “Know an Obama-Biden holdover inside the Trump admin who needs to be exposed for their misdeeds?” she posted on X. “Contact the Loomered Tip Line.”

“I guess you could say that my tip line has come to serve as a form........

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