Gates is also said to have told staff he had affairs with two Russian women while married to French Gates. A spokesperson for the Gates Foundation said that Bill Gates, left, “took responsibility for his actions” over ties to Jeffrey Epstein. AdvertisementAccording to the Journal report, Gates apologized for bringing foundation executives into meetings with Epstein. A spokesperson for the Gates Foundation told HuffPost that Gates “took responsibility for his actions” in the meeting. Advertisement“This was a scheduled town hall with employees, which Bill does twice a year,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

Democrats stayed in their seats as President Trump delivered a rambling one-hour and 47-minute speech to both houses of Congress on Tuesday night. “First of all, I think the bar is in hell for Donald Trump,” he began. So that‘s first.”Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) R) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MI) shout during U.S. President Donald Trump's State of the Union address. And look, okay, Democrats didn‘t stand up for this. But the fact is, Donald Trump is killing Americans.

Defend Truth. Defend Democracy. With the administration challenging the Court and Congress, independent reporting is the only thing standing between you and the noise. Your membership funds the courage to ask the hard questions. Don't let the truth be sidelined, join HuffAlready a member?

FBI Director Kash Patel ordered the ouster of at least 10 employees involved in the investigation of President Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, four people briefed on the matter told CNN. Patel disclosed the seizure of the records in a statement Wednesday. The FBI director briefed Wiles on the seizure Wednesday, according to a source familiar with the matter. Subpoenaing information for those around Trump was part of the normal process of such an investigation. Patel himself was compelled to testify before a grand jury in 2022 as part of those investigations, CNN previously reported.

“Half of all of working Americans still do not have access to a retirement plan with matching contributions from an employer. The White House official said that Trump’s proposal “can largely be implemented with existing administrative authorities.” Translation: without Congress. Federal workers currently have a 401(k)-style plan known as the Thrift Savings Plan, with a diverse mix of very low-cost funds. When he was a senator, Secretary of State Marco Rubio proposed a plan to grant non-federal workers access to the TSP. Auto enrollment, for policy experts, is a key feature needed to make meaningful progress in closing the gap in retirement savings for those least likely to amass them on their own.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal authorities are barred from conducting an “unsupervised, wholesale search” of electronic devices that they seized from a Washington Post reporter’s Virginia home while investigating allegations that a Pentagon contractor illegally leaked classified information to the journalist, a magistrate judge ruled Feb. 24. U.S. Magistrate Judge William Porter said he will independently review the contents of Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s devices instead of allowing a Justice Department “filter team” to perform a search. The Post sought an order requiring the government to immediately return the devices to its reporter, but Porter denied that request. The FBI began investigating after the Post on Oct. 31 published an article containing classified information from an intelligence report, according to the government. The Post reporter co-wrote and contributed to at least five articles that contained classified information provided by Perez-Lugones, authorities said.

Feb 25 (Reuters) - Swiss private bank Edmond de Rothschild said on Wednesday its board would "monitor the situation" after U.S. Department of Justice files showed CEO Ariane de Rothschild kept up years-long contact with late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as she sought to reassure clients and staff about the firm's financial strength. Ariane de Rothschild this week wrote to clients of the bank and employees to reassure them about the strength of the group, a spokesperson told Reuters. U.S. Justice Department files released last month showed de Rothschild kept up a years-long personal correspondence with Epstein before his 2019 arrest. After the files were released, a spokesperson for the bank told Reuters that Epstein was a business acquaintance of de Rothschild from 2013 to 2019. ($1 = 0.7728 Swiss francs)(Reporting by Fabiola Arámburo in Mexico City, Tommy Reggiori Wilkes, Editing by Franklin Paul and Lincoln Feast.)

The morning after President Donald Trump declared a “war on fraud” during his State of the Union address, senior Justice Department prosecutor Colin McDonald told the Senate Judiciary Committee and said he would steadfastly follow the department’s tradition to focus only on the evidence. “You are now placed in a highly politicized division,” one of the Democratic senators on the committee, Mazie Hirono, warned. “We already know that the president considers the Department of Justice to be his law firm, Pam Bondi to be his lawyer. The Justice Department already has multiple offices that investigate criminal and civil fraud cases, leading some lawmakers and legal experts to question whether creating the new division is necessary. Vance, who Trump said in his speech would lead the “war on fraud,” said Wednesday that the effort would be a “whole government approach” that included other federal departments, including the Treasury Department.

The above YouTube video from CNN via Scripps News shows FBI Director Kashyap Patel partying and guzzling beer in the locker room at the Olympics with the U.S. Hockey team, which had just won a gold medal. Patel used an FBI jet to get to Milan and claimed he was on a business trip. Members of the House Judiciary Committee have said Patel has misused the FBI Gulfstream G550 jet for other personal trips, including to travel to Scotland for a golf vacation, fly to Pennsylvania to watch his girlfriend sing at a wrestling match, to fly to a hunting ranch in Texas and to visit his elderly parents in Florida. Dick Durbin, Ranking Member on the House Judiciary Committee, says (pdf) Patel’s misuse of FBI jets is interfering with the FBI’s ability to respond to high-profile crimes, like the shooting at Brown University. Durbin has asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate Patel’s misuse of FBI resources for personal reasons.

She made the statement in response to a question about the presence of ICE at the polls as an intimidating factor, per Arizona’s Democratic Secretary of State Adrien Fontes. Advertisement“She came out with a very strong statement and she acknowledged, flat out, that anybody saying that ICE would be at the polling places was spreading disinformation,” Fontes told HuffPost. “You’re damn right we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November,” former Trump advisor Steve Bannon said on his podcast on Feb. 4. “She’s the absolute wrong messenger to guarantee to us that ICE is not going to be at polling places,” Fontes said. “I was encouraged by the pledge that ICE agents would not be in and around polling places,” Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, told HuffPost.

And for all of these reasons, I say tonight, members of Congress, the state of our Union is strong. The women’s team, which also won an overtime thriller against Canada, declined the invitation to the State of the Union. Trump had already delivered a longer speech in 2025, but that was not technically a State of the Union address. Trump has a flair for placing these touching moments in his State of the Union speeches. We wired the globe with our ingenuity, we captivated the planet with American culture, and now we are pioneering the next great American breakthroughs that will change the entire world.

LOADING ERROR LOADINGFormer Harvard President Larry Summers will resign from his teaching appointments at the end of the academic year over the fallout from his ties to the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Summers, who was the former U.S. treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, will also relinquish his university professorship, Harvard’s highest distinction. Summers has faced intense scrutiny since revelations in November showed him in contact with Epstein over the course of years. “DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT.”Rosie Couture, a Harvard student and organizer with the activist group Feminist Generation, had previously called for Summers’ resignation last year. “Harvard students showed the nation that survivors and feminists have the power to win justice,” she added.

A woman signs a banner in honor of Nancy Guthrie, US television journalist Savannah Guthrie's abducted elderly mother on February 12, 2026. - Rebecca Noble/ReutersAs the search for Nancy Guthrie stretches into its fourth, desperate week, her family has offered up to a million dollars for information leading to her return. She may already be gone,” Guthrie said in her video Tuesday announcing the reward. An appeal to the inner circleIn the weeks since Guthrie’s disappearance, thousands of tips have poured into the investigation’s hotline. Then, the Guthrie family offered their million-dollar reward.

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Estimated read time: 1-2 minutesBOSTON — Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers will resign ​from teaching at Harvard University at the end of the academic year, the New York ‌Times reported on Wednesday, amid the continuing fallout from his ties ⁠to the late convicted ​sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Summers ⁠has been under fire since the U.S. House ‌Oversight Committee released ‌documents detailing an ongoing personal correspondence between Summers ⁠and Epstein. No evidence ⁠of wrongdoing by Summers has surfaced. Summers, also a former president of Harvard University, has been on leave from the university since November and will not return to teaching, the New York ‌Times reported, citing a spokesperson for ​Harvard. Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters on Wednesday.