OMERTA: Some members of Congress were allowed to see the unredacted files on sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and had questions about the shielding of identities in the Department of Justice release. 

  Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, who’s been bucking President Trump on the Epstein issue, said, “In a couple of hours we found six men whose names had been redacted who are implicated in the way that the files are presented.”

  Some names are out. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had dealings with Epstein long after claiming he had cut them off. Also outed is Britain’s ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson. 

  Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime companion and procurer of young girls for Epstein pled the Fifth Amendment yesterday to every question posed to her by members of the House Oversight Committee. She appeared before the committee remotely from prison,  

 Maxwell is serving 20 years in federal prison for feeding teenage girls to the sexually voracious Epstein. Her lawyer, David Oscar Markus, had told lawmakers in his opening statement that Maxwell “would answer questions if she were granted clemency” by President Trump.” The President, who freely hands out pardons and commutations to odious characters, has not ruled out giving it to Maxwell.

  Markus also said Maxwell could clear of any wrongdoing by Trump and former President Bill Clinton. But she won’t do it unless she gets sprung from the joint.

  “She answered no questions and provided no information about the men who raped and trafficked women and girls,” said California’s Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia. “Who is she protecting?”

FIVE RINGS:  The US women’s hockey team remains undefeated in three games after beating Switzerland 5-0. They’ve outscored their opponents by a combined score of 15-1. They’ll face serious competition today against Canada, which is 2-0.

  American-born Eileen Gu, who competes for her mother’s native China, won silver in the slopestyle skiing event. She’s quite beautiful and is reported to be making $23 million a year modeling.

  Skier Lindsey Vonn says she will need several surgeries to repair the broken tibia in her left leg after her crash in the Olympic downhill. She said in a message on Instagram that the torn ligament in her left knee sustained just a week before the Olympics had nothing to do with her crash. “I was simply 5 inches too tight on my line when my right arm hooked inside of the gate, twisting me and resulted in my crash,” she said. “My ACL and past injuries had nothing to do with my crash whatsoever.”

BLOOD SIMPLE: An ominous deadline passed yesterday in the kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie, mother of “Today Show” host Savannah Guthrie. The anchorwoman issued another video plea for the return of her mother.

  The FBI says it has still developed no suspects in the case. 

GETTING WARMER: The US Environmental Protection Agency is on the verge of abandoning its determination that greenhouse gases cause climate change, violent weather swings, and the rise of sea levels, effectively abandoning the effort to fight global warming.

  The notion that climate change is real has long been the target of right wingers, some of them like budget director Russell Vought very close to the climate-denying president. They have railed against “climate alarmism” and called efforts to curb it a “Leninistic plot.”

THE REGIME:

— A federal judge in Washington is weighing whether the private financing for President Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom project is legal in bypassing congressional approval.

  Trump has said private financing is wonderful, sparing taxpayers the expense, but it also allows him to shield donors from being identified and revealing what they get in return.  US District Judge Richard Leon, congressional Democrats, and watchdog groups have asked whether, for instance, companies with business before the government could be favored by Trump for giving to the project. 

— A federal judge in New York delayed the restoration of funding for the $16 billion Hudson River tunnel project to give the government time to appeal. About 1,000 workers were laid off last Friday when money ran out.

  The President froze the money in political retribution against Democrats in New York. Trump has told Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer that he would drop his freeze if Schumer agrees to rename New York’s Penn Station and Washington’s Dulles International Airport after Trump.

— A federal judge in California temporarily blocked the state from enforcing its ban on most federal law enforcement officers from wearing masks during enforcement operations. US District Judge Christina Snyder in Los Angeles said that the ban “unlawfully discriminates” against federal agents because it does not equally apply to state law enforcement officers.

THE SPIN RACK: Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai, a prominent proponent of democracy, was sentenced yesterday to 20 years in prison. His offense was that he peacefully advocated for democracy in the Communist-run city. In a trial without a jury, the 78-year-old Lai was found guilty in December of colluding with foreign forces, in part for meetings with US officials during the first Trump administration for help maintaining Hong Kong’s limited democracy. He was also found guilty of using his newspaper, Apple Daily, to spread “sedition.”  — Four skiers have died at California’s Mammoth Mountain this year, two of them members of the ski patrol killed in avalanches. The latest was a man who fell on an icy slope and slide hundreds of yards as skiers watched from the chairlift.

 BELOW THE FOLD:  — President Trump was up in the wee hours and again early this morning posting a flurry of claims and complaints. 

  In a rant about the new bridge from Canada into Michigan, Trump diverted to Canada’s efforts to make trade deals with China: “Prime Minister Carney wants to make a deal with China — which will eat Canada alive. We’ll just get the leftovers! I don’t think so. The first thing China will do is terminate ALL Ice Hockey being played in Canada, and permanently eliminate The Stanley Cup.”

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