Letters from an American - November 14, 2025

Episode Date: November 16, 2025

Get full access to Letters from an American at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

November 14th, 2025, in a transparent attempt to distract from the many times his own name appears in the documents from the Epstein estate, members of the House Oversight Committee released Wednesday. President Donald J. Trump asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Democrats whose names appeared in the documents. He singled out former President Bill Clinton, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers, and Reed Hoffman, who founded LinkedIn and who was a Democratic donor. Although the Attorney General is the nation's chief law enforcement officer

and is supposed to be nonpartisan in protecting the rule of law, Bondi responded that the Department of Justice will pursue this with urgency and integrity. Megan Vasquez and Shana Jacobs of the Washington Post note that reporters have already covered the relationship of Epstein with Clinton's, Summers, and Hoffman for years and that in July, Justice Department officials set an examination of the FBI files relating to Epstein, a different cache than Wednesdays,

did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties. Midas touch noted, in normal times it would be a major scandal for the president to direct his attorney general to criminally investigate his political opponents to deflect from his own involvement in a major scandal and for the attorney general to immediately announce she is doing it. The Epstein scandal and cover-up just got even bigger. Earlier this week, the administration cited the food delivery app, Dorsley, DoorDash as an authority on dropping consumer prices.

Today, the city of Chicago announced a settlement in a four-year lawsuit charging that DoorDash took advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to list restaurants without their permission and mark up food prices. DoorDash will pay $18 million in cash and credits to restaurants, delivery drivers, and consumers. Trump has steadfastly and falsely maintained that foreign countries pay for tariffs. But today he signed an executive order ending tariffs on beef, coffee, bananas, cocoa, and other commodities from certain countries to lower prices after voters said they are concerned about the economy. Representative Richard Neal, a Democrat

of Massachusetts, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said the administration was putting out a fire that they started. and claiming it as progress. Trump has seemed particularly nervous that the Supreme Court might uphold the lower courts that have declared most of his tariffs illegal, reiterating that having to pay back tariff money would be a national security catastrophe.

Representative Jason Crow, a Democrat of Colorado, reminded really American media that Trump has been using tariffs to enrich himself and his family, using them, or the threat of, of them to get golf course deals in countries around the world, as well as using them to punish countries Trump believes are hurting his right-wing allies. In contrast, Trump's administration is rewarding his ideological allies. Bloomberg reported yesterday that Argentina's leader Javier Malay

appears to have received more financial support from the U.S. government than the $20 billion more widely reported. The U.S. withdrew $870 million from its account at the International Monetary Fund shortly before a similar sum appeared in Argentina's IMF fund, just in time for that country to pay an $840 million debt. It is, one Redditor noted, turning into a scandal. News broke today that the Department of Justice is in talks with Trump's former national security advisor Michael Flynn to settle his $50 million claim against the government for damages related to the investigation into his conversations with a Russian operative before Trump took office. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and Trump later pardoned him. A federal judge

dismissed Flynn's lawsuit and the Biden administration fought it, but now the Trump administration appears to have engaged with Flynn over it. Last week, Flynn suggested he might run for president in 28 to keep the MAGA movement going. Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, and Alex Murgessi of ProPublica reported today that Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem's $220 million ad campaign, which she says is a crucial tool to stop undocumented immigration, has funneled $143 million to a company in Delaware called Safe America Media. The company lists the Virginia home of a Republican operative, Michael McElwain, as its address,

and was created days before contracts awarded to it were finalized. One of the subcontractors who fulfilled a Safe America Media contract was the Strategy Group, whose chief executive officer, Ben Yoho, is married to Nome's chief spokesperson at the Department of Homeland Security, Trisha McLaughlin. Noam's top advisor, Corey Lewandowski, who introduced Noam to Yoho, has done significant work for the strategy group, and Noam used the strategy group for her 2022 campaign for South

Dakota governor. Subcontractors are not listed in federal contracting databases. The Department of Homeland Security skipped the normal competitive bidding process for its ad campaign, citing the need for critical communications to the public to go out quickly. Charles Tifer, a former member of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and an expert on federal contract law, told Elliot Kaplan and Murgessi, it's corrupt, is the word, suggesting Noam was hiding her friends as subcontractors. He called for an investigation by the House Oversight Committee and the Homeland Security Inspector General.

That Inspector General, Trump loyalist Joseph Kaffari, survived the January 2025 purge of inspectors general. In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said career officials run its contracting and do it by the book. William Turton and Christopher Bing of ProPublica reported today that FBI Director Cash Patel waived the standard polygraph exams required to obtain top security clearances for deputy director Dan Bongino and two other senior FBI staff members. The exam includes questions about foreign contacts, drug use, whether someone has a criminal history, and mishandling of classified information.

Like Patel himself, former right-wing podcaster Bongino had no prior experience at the FBI. The deputy director has access to the President's Daily Brief, or PDB, which includes some of the nation's most closely guarded secrets, including information from the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. Government officials told Turton and Bing that ascending to the FBI's second highest ranking official without passing a standard background check is unprecedented. A forthcoming book by reporter Olivia Nuzzi, about which the New York Times reported today, says that Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a recovering heroin addict with whom she had a relationship, told her he uses psychedelics, despite claiming to have stopped using drugs decades ago. Tonight, Trump turned against those Republicans who voted in favor of the release of the Epstein files compiled by the FBI during its investigation of the sex

offender. He announced he was withdrawing my support and endorsement of Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green and went after Representative Thomas Massey, a Republican of Kentucky, who introduced the discharge petition, calling him a loser. Green responded that Trump was, coming after me hard to make an example to scare all the other Republicans before next week's vote to release the Epstein files. It's astonishing, really, how hard he's fighting to stop the Epstein files from coming out, that he actually goes to this level. I've supported Donald Trump with too much of my precious time, too much of my own money, and fought harder for him even when almost all other Republicans turned their back and denounced him. But I don't worship or serve Donald Trump.

Tonight, Aaron Rupar of Public Notice wrote, I just don't see how we can pretend even for a moment that anything involving our federal government is remotely normal when the president is covering up his involvement in a child sex trafficking ring. Like, what are we doing here? Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, which was 25 years old yesterday. Congratulations, Josh and the TPM folks, wrote, Investigate Whoever He Wants. Trump's drowning on every front. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson.

It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.