Odds and Ends — 12 July 2025

Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, AI, and Debt:

BlockFi bankruptcy administrator and DOJ agree to dismiss $35M lawsuit

Defi Tokens Are Soaring, Leaving Behind OG Coins Like LTC, BCH and XMR

Coronavirus and Public Health:

COVID cases likely rising in half of states, CDC estimates

Texas Flooding:

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1943767077799477614
- atrupar

FEMA Didn’t Answer Thousands of Calls From Flood

Two days after catastrophic floods roared through Central Texas, the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not answer nearly two-thirds of calls to its disaster assistance line.
The lack of responsiveness happened because the agency had fired hundreds of contractors at call centers.
The agency laid off the contractors on July 5 after their contracts expired and were not extended, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, who has instituted a new requirement that she personally approve expenses over $100,000, did not renew the contracts until Thursday, five days after the contracts expired.

Politics:

Emil Bove Would Not Rule Out Third Trump Term

Emil Bove, a top Justice Department official who previously served as President Trump’s criminal defense attorney, declined to rule out the possibility of the president running for a third term and did not denounce the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol in a questionnaire submitted to a Senate panel considering his nomination for a lifetime appointment as a federal judge.

Only a corrupt Senate could confirm Bove.

https://twitter.com/JamieBonkiewicz/status/1943682319673446828
- JamieBonkiewicz

———— The Epstein Coverup ————

FBI’s ‘Raw’ Jeffrey Epstein Prison Video Was Modified

The United States Department of Justice this week released nearly 11 hours of what it described as ‘full raw’ surveillance footage from a camera positioned near Jeffrey Epstein’s prison cell the night before he was found dead. The release was intended to address conspiracy theories about Epstein’s apparent suicide in federal custody. But instead of putting those suspicions to rest, it may fuel them further.
Metadata embedded in the video and analyzed by Wired and independent video forensics experts shows that rather than being a direct export from the prison’s surveillance system, the footage was modified, likely using the professional editing tool Adobe Premiere Pro.
The file appears to have been assembled from at least two source clips, saved multiple times, exported, and then uploaded to the DOJ’s website, where it was presented as ‘raw’ footage.

https://twitter.com/rekdt/status/1943762760229118240
- rekdt

https://twitter.com/MikeDrucker/status/1943770977512624632
- MikeDrucker

https://twitter.com/MeachamDr/status/1943680161120997395
- MeachamDr

Dan Bongino May Resign Over Jeffrey Epstein Files

Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino has told people he is considering resigning amid a major clash between the FBI and Justice Department over the continued fallout from the release of the Jeffrey Epstein memo.

https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1943736675877658637
- AOC

Case Closed on Epstein? Not So Fast

Take a closer look at what the Justice Department memo says—and doesn’t say—about the sexual predator’s “client list.”

https://twitter.com/SarahLongwell25/status/1943817625986891882
- SarahLongwell25

'MAGA's mad': Far-right activists said to be upset 'Trump made them look stupid'

———— Autocracy R Us ————

https://twitter.com/NewsHour/status/1943805242543390807
- NewsHour

'This is a big deal': Legal experts aghast after DOJ bombs Ábrego García hearing

Trump's Deportation Stormtroopers

He's building a police force larger than most armies — and domestic gulags to boot…
We have been a brutal deportation nation long before our Trumpian 21st Century gambit. What’s different now, it seems to me, are four things: the sheer scale of it; the frantic pursuit of quantity over quality; the relative paucity of resources for courts and judges; and the fact that the enforcers are anonymous, masked, and unknowable — and will soon be on every street in America.
ICE will now have more resources than all but 15 countries’ military budgets, and is set to grow from an annual budget of $10 billion to $150 billion over four years. This is a ramp up of mind-boggling size and speed.