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In today's issue:

▪ Day 2 of DOJ's Maxwell interview

▪ Trump squeezes Powell with Fed tour

▪ Dems urge leaders to hold firm on budget

President Trump’s supporters, agitating to view government files on Jeffrey Epstein, are still waiting.

The Department of Justice is meeting again today with longtime Epstein associate and convicted accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell as the Trump administration says it is heeding pressure to try to produce information from the government’s investigation of the disgraced financier.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, following an initial roughly five-hour interview with Maxwell in a Florida courthouse Thursday, said his department "will share additional information about what we learned" from Maxwell "at the appropriate time." Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence on sex-trafficking charges and is appealing her case to the Supreme Court. The DOJ has contested her appeal.

Maxwell's attorney, David Oscar Markus, said his client "honestly answered every question" Blanche posed Thursday and expressed gratitude to the government for trying to "uncover the truth."

The administration has divulged nothing new since a July 6 Justice Department memo saying it had no “client list” to reveal and no Epstein files to make public.

Under pressure and with Trump’s approval, Attorney General Pam Bondi asked courts to unseal grand jury testimony from the government’s Epstein investigation and was turned down by a judge this week. The request is related to just one of multiple grand juries, and additional requests are pending.

The department and the White House, struggling to contain the political firestorm, are trying to widen the government’s search to appease supporters who during the campaign praised candidate Trump for pledging to release Epstein materials if reelected.

The president on social media Thursday repeated his support, with pending court approval, to reveal grand jury information. He argued such a move would disprove what he labeled “the Jeffrey Epstein SCAM.”

Bondi, according to The Wall Street Journal, informed Trump in May that his name appeared in the government’s Epstein files, among numerous other figures.

The president has publicly blamed Democrats and filed a libel lawsuit against the Journal after it described a "bawdy" birthday card it said Trump sent to Epstein in 2003, which the president denied writing.

The Journal on Thursday reported the leather-bound birthday album also included messages from former President Clinton and another five dozen influential well wishers.

"It’s reassuring isn’t it, to have lasted as long, across all the years of learning and knowing, adventures and [illegible word], and also to have your childlike curiosity, the drive to make a difference and the solace of friends,” the Clinton note read, according to the Journal.

A spokesperson for the former president declined to comment, referring the newspaper to a previous statement saying Clinton cut ties with Epstein more than a decade before the financier’s arrest in 2019 and did not have knowledge of the alleged crimes.

Blanche, a former Trump personal defense attorney, this week turned his attention to Maxwell just as House Republicans, responding to constituents, issued a subpoena for her to be deposed by the GOP-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

During her 2021 trial, Maxwell chose not to testify. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) this week suggested she might not be a credible witness.

In the House on Wednesday, the political furor shut down regular business. Johnson, who initially supported MAGA demands and urged Bondi to be more transparent, sent members home for the August recess a day early when efforts to move beyond the controversy failed.

▪ NBC News: Trump critic Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) is winning over MAGA allies with his push for the Epstein files. “They’re trying to beat up on me to keep everybody else in line here, and I think it’s not working,” Massie said of the president and his allies. “I think it’s going to backfire tremendously.”

Democrats, taking advantage of the rift within the Republican Party, have been on the offense, aware that a majority of voters in recent polls disapprove of Trump’s handling of the Epstein files. The minority in Congress is calling on Bondi to testify about the reported heads-up she gave the president about appearing in the Epstein files.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said Thursday he wants to subpoena the Epstein estate for the Journal-reported birthday book.

“I enjoy the hell out of it,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said during a podcast interview while discussing the GOP’s discomfort and Trump’s reaction. “They created this mess. Now they’ve got to clean it up,” he added. “I hope our party gins this up much more.”

CHANGE THE CHANNEL: Two GOP senators on Thursday urged the appointment of a special counsel to probe whether former President Obama was involved in an alleged effort to undermine Trump’s White House bid in 2016, echoing an unsubstantiated assertion by Trump raised this week amid efforts to shift public attention away from the Epstein storm.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.),........

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