Hey everybody. Happy Friday. Thanks for being here.
Our top story today. The Nvidia scandal may have found its first casualty inside the U.S. government. Nvidia’s CEO resigned yesterday over his affair with an alleged Chinese spy. Now the administration is turning on Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary who could have blacklisted her company and didn’t. The treasury secretary blamed him on live TV and the president’s allies are talking about firing him. We’ll break it all down.
We’ll also get into a new report tying JD Vance to a sweetheart oil deal for one of his donors, Stephen Miller cracking down on lobbyists two years too late, the president running back his greatest hits while his presidency falls apart, and Thomas Massie’s second Epstein bill gathering enough signatures to force a vote.
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Let’s get to it.
1. Trump Cabinet Turns On Itself
Quick recap. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had an affair with an alleged Chinese spy. She runs a company called Megaspeed. The government suspects she used it to smuggle Nvidia chips into China.
That matters because those chips are the engine behind advanced AI. The U.S. restricts their sale to China for a reason. In Chinese hands, they can power AI for China’s military, its surveillance state, and cyberattacks against the United States.
Now, the Commerce Department has a tool built to prevent exactly this kind of scenario. It’s called the entity list. American companies can’t sell to anyone on it without a government license. But Megaspeed somehow never made the list.
This administration dropped the ball. Big time. But who is the most responsible? According to reports, President Trump’s aides warned him about the affair, but he refused to do anything about it. In fact, he continued to stay close with Huang, even publicly backing him to stay CEO after the story broke.
But as we all know: the boss never takes the blame. Especially when it comes to this president. That means somebody else has to be the fall guy. And this time, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is on the chopping block.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Scott Bessent and other senior officials confronted Lutnick for failing to stop the chips. They accused him of stalling. Whenever anyone pushed him to act on Megaspeed, he had the same excuse. Beijing would blow up the trade talks.
Then Bessent went public with his concerns.
I’m surprised Bessent seemed so nervous. The blame game should be second nature to him by now. I mean, he’s blamed Biden for just about every one of his own economic mishaps. But now he’s having to point fingers at another cabinet secretary. Not behind closed doors. On live television. That can’t feel good.
So why is Lutnick taking the fall? The entity list was his department’s responsibility. And nobody in the cabinet was closer to Huang. Huang said it himself last year: “Howard is the person I talk to most in the administration.” Now the president’s allies are already floating his firing.
But here’s the bottom line. Now that everything has blown up, the GOP is circling the wagons around Trump and pointing the finger at someone else. We saw the same thing with Susie Wiles, who took the blame for the blatant corruption that voters rebuked. More on that later.
Lutnick messed up. But don’t be fooled: the President’s hands are just as dirty.
2. Vance Caught In Donor Payback
Reuters has the story. John Addison managed gasoline at a company named Vitol, which is the biggest energy trader in the world. In 2022 he gave 300,000 dollars to the super PAC that carried JD Vance to the Senate. The generosity didn’t stop there. In 2024 he and his wife gave five million to a MAGA PAC.
In December, flight records put his jet and Air Force Two on the same tarmac in Montana. Vance was visiting the Yellowstone Club, where Addison is building a house on a 16 million dollar lot. That day, Vance posed a hypothetical: if the US were to control Venezuelan crude, how fast could it be sold?
A week later, American forces took Maduro. Right after that, Addison got a phone call from Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Addison says he figured Wright just wanted an update on the oil market. He was wrong. Wright wanted to talk about Venezuela. So how did the energy secretary know to call him? Addison told Reuters that JD Vance had vouched for him.
Within days, Vitol and one other trading house had special licenses. No competitive bidding. Soon after, Addison was next to the CEOs of Exxon and Chevron, pledging to help the president move Venezuelan oil around the world. Venezuela has exported more than 200 million barrels this year. An energy finance professor puts the traders’ cut at three dollars a barrel or more. Hundreds of millions. Addison retired in March and now chairs Wright’s energy advisory board. No wonder.
Everyone denies the Montana meeting. Addison calls it made up. The Energy Department says Vance and Wright never discussed Venezuelan oil. Vitol says it had no advance knowledge of the raid.
Even before this, Addison’s hands weren’t clean. In 2024, Vitol paid California 50 million dollars to settle a gasoline price manipulation case, and Addison was named as the most senior executive in the alleged scheme. No admission of wrongdoing.
It’s pretty ironic. Just this week, the President pulled Vance off the Iran War and told him to go find corruption in blue states. The same week, Reuters reports the vice president’s early donor got a no-bid contract for a country’s oil.
3. Miller Memo Exposes Trump Swamp
The Times and Politico got their hands on the memo. Stephen Miller, in his first week as chief of staff, has ordered that no White House staffer can meet a registered lobbyist on White House grounds without approval from the lawyers. Lobbyists will now have to go through the Office of Public Liaison first. A White House official insisted the policy is “much stricter” than before, but wouldn’t say what prompted the change.
It’s a good change. But the fact that it needed to be made says a lot about how the administration has behaved. We know just how bad the problem was. Just last week, Calley Means went on Joe Rogan and laid out how Wiles ran the White House with donors in mind. Her daughter, a partner at a lobbying firm, was the conduit: “if you’re a special interest and you want to get something done, the secret’s out. You pay Susie’s daughter, and it was openly discussed when they had a client.”
Wiles herself came from a lobbying firm which has made a killing over the last two years: CBS counted 186 million dollars, with single year totals not seen since the disclosure law passed in 1996. The Times notes the firm had clients who gave to the super PAC and the ballroom and benefited from policy decisions in exchange.
Americans knew lobbyists and beltway bandits were calling the shots in the White House. It’s one of the reasons so many of them turned out to rebuke the administration last Tuesday. But you shouldn’t need a blue tsunami to make the White House put the people first.
For two years, they were doing the opposite. There’s no telling just how many shady deals were made and how many millions changed hands. In many places, the damage has been done. The good news is that things are starting to change. Oversight Democrats can’t undo the past. But they can bring some accountability for the people who turned the White House into K Street.
4. Blanche Breaks With Trump
This past week, Trump ran back all of his favorite soap operas on Truth Social. Voting machines rigged yet another election. Democrats coming after his tax returns. And a migrant caravan is once again barreling toward the border. Maybe the greatest hits help him tune out a crumbling presidency. Or maybe he’s just running out of new material.
Yesterday, Trump reached his latest stop on memory lane, ranting: “Will the Seditious Six ever be prosecuted? What they did was a great violation to our Country and its Constitution!”
Here’s a reminder of what happened. Last November, six Democrats, formerly of the military or intelligence community, released a 90-second video telling service members they can refuse illegal orders. That’s the law. In fact, it’s what every one of them was taught.
But Trump dodged the military, so he clearly never learned. The president called the video “seditious behavior, punishable by death,” later resharing a post calling for the six to be hanged. Although he walked back the comments, Trump still pushed the DOJ to prosecute them. It got nowhere. A grand jury rejected the case, unanimously.
Trump still won’t let the case die. Once a grudge, always a grudge with this president. That makes it Todd Blanche’s problem now. And Blanche was quick to push it off his plate. When asked about the post at a press conference, he said, “There’s no ongoing investigations, criminal investigations, into words that incoming senators or congressmen have said.” Then he added: “Free speech is allowed.”
Well, would you look at that? Blanche is brushing off his dear old boss. That’s less surprising when you look at the mess inside his own department. Yesterday, we talked about how his team is jumping ship while his legal battles pile up. Blanche can’t afford another case. Especially one that has already spectacularly failed.
While Blanche ducked responsibility, Senator Elissa Slotkin went on the offensive. One of the original targets, she wrote: “There is no clearer telltale sign of a disassembling authoritarian leader than when he tries to prosecute those who simply speak up against him.” Then she dared them to come after her again: “So I say to President Trump and his Attorney General: Bring it.”
And look, Trump can take as many trips down memory lane as he wants. But reruns don’t get any better the second time. A grand jury gave him an answer once. Now his own attorney general is giving it to him again. And the people he’s targeting? They aren’t even flinching.
Maybe it’s time for Trump to find some new material. Starting with the problems Americans actually care about.
5. Johnson Cornered On Epstein Vote
Here’s a reminder of where things stand. Last year, Representative Massie pushed for the first Epstein Files Transparency Act. It passed through Congress and the president signed it. But that was practically an empty promise. The Justice Department released about half of the files, many of them redacted, and then called it a day.
Massie wasn’t satisfied, so he worked with Representative Ro Khanna on a second bill. It allows survivors, state attorneys general, and members of Congress to sue Todd Blanche and his department to force compliance. It also gives state prosecutors the files they would need to charge Epstein co-conspirators under state law.
On Wednesday, Massie announced the discharge petition hit 218 signatures. That means once seven legislative days pass, any signer can force it to the floor. And the Speaker can’t do anything about it.
When asked about Epstein transparency, Speaker Johnson wasn’t pleased. In fact, Massie posted the clip with the caption “Speaker of the House crashing out.” Have a listen for yourself:
“A political stunt”? That’s the best he’s got? Because 218 House members saw the vote for what it truly represents. A chance to break open one of the biggest cover-ups in American history. And a chance to finally get justice for its victims.
But Mike Johnson has already shown how far he’ll go to avoid a vote he doesn’t want. Twice this week, Republicans pulled a fast one on the floor and Democrats were caught off guard both times. One of them killed Massie’s push to impeach Pete Hegseth. I wrote all about it in my column this morning.
So here is another chance for Democrats to make this administration uncomfortable. They should expect every trick in the book from Republicans. And they need to be ready for it.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
Chris Van Hollen announced he’s challenging Chuck Schumer for Senate Majority Leader. The Maryland senator announced his run Thursday, days after Democrats swept to power in the midterms. It sets up the first contested race for the job in decades. Van Hollen said “the American people called for change” and that the moment requires new leadership. He’s pitching himself as a new face for the party and has knocked Schumer’s ties to special interests. But the split goes back to spring 2025, when Schumer came under fire for siding with Republicans on a spending vote. So far, Van Hollen has at least two backers: Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed. Schumer insists he already has the votes. He’s running on his midterm record, calling “55 seats and counting” an amazing result. The secret-ballot vote is set for early December.
Incoming Democratic investigators are going after Trump’s top fundraiser. On Wednesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, and Rep. Robert Garcia sent a letter to Meredith O’Rourke. She has raised more than 800 million dollars for Trump’s pet projects, including the White House ballroom. The lawmakers say her operation “reeks of potential corruption.” They point to companies like SoftBank and Lockheed Martin that gave big and later got favorable treatment from the government. A spokeswoman for Trump and O’Rourke called the accusations “absurd, baseless and full of hypocrisy.” O’Rourke’s asks run from 5 million to 50 million dollars. Trump hands her names to call, often people who just met with him. He even nicknamed her the “princess of darkness.” The White House has signaled it won’t cooperate with subpoenas. But O’Rourke isn’t a White House employee.
