On Thursday, first lady Melania Trump hosted the unveiling of a US Postal Service stamp honoring former first lady Barbara Bush at the White House, with former President George W. Bush noticeably absent.

A number of Bush family members and friends, including Neil Bush and Dorothy Bush Koch, packed the East Room to honor the former first lady, who died in 2018 at the age of 92.

Dorothy Bush Koch, the youngest child of the 41st president and first lady, discussed her mother’s role in transforming the White House into a “true home.”

Melania Trump, who has had few public appearances in Washington during her husband’s first three months in office, praised Barbara Bush’s political and family life.

“Mrs. Bush’s legacy is marked by her respect for tradition while also breaking with convention,” Trump said of her mother.

The other Bush children, George W. Bush and Jeb Bush, did not attend the event.

George W. Bush, who has kept a low profile after leaving office, attended President Donald Trump’s inauguration earlier this year. He sat alongside former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former President Bill Clinton, and former President Barack Obama.

However, he has generally kept Trump, a fellow Republican, at arm’s length, and the two have a history of mutual criticism.

ABC News contacted George W. Bush’s office for comment on Thursday’s event.

George W. Bush did not support Donald Trump in any of his presidential campaigns. In 2020, he stated that he did not vote for Donald Trump or Joe Biden, but rather for Condoleezza Rice, his secretary of state from 2005 to 2009.

He and his father, the late President George H.W. Bush, criticized Trump in a 2017 book, expressing concern about his impact on the Republican Party and conservative values. George W. Bush condemned the brand of politics embraced by Trump and his supporters in a rare public speech that same year, but did not specifically mention Trump by name.

Barbara Bush once said of Trump, “I don’t understand why people are for him.”

Trump’s criticism of the Bush family escalated during the 2016 Republican presidential primary, when he attacked Jeb Bush as “low energy.” He later boasted of defeating the “Bush Dynasty” following his election victory.

Trump has also repeatedly criticized George W. Bush’s response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq War.

“Bush led an unsuccessful and uninspiring presidency. “He should not be lecturing anyone!” Trump said in 2021, following George W. Bush’s 20th anniversary speech in which he warned that domestic terrorism posed an equal threat to foreign terrorists.

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More than a year after New York Attorney General Letitia James won a half-billion-dollar civil fraud case against President Trump, the Trump administration’s Justice Department has launched a criminal fraud investigation against James, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is overseeing the investigation.

U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York John A. Sarcone III told the Albany Times-Union that the investigation was “being handled at this time by the main [Department of] Justice and the Albany FBI field office.”

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

The investigation began after William Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi alleging that James “has, in multiple instances, falsified bank documents and property records to acquire government-backed assistance and loans and more favorable loan terms.”

Pulte claimed James received mortgage deals by falsifying information about multiple properties over several decades. The allegations include listing a home in Norfolk, Virginia as her “principal residence” despite living and working in New York, purchasing a five-family property in Brooklyn with a loan that is only available for homes with four or fewer units, and claiming James’ father signed mortgage documents stating they were husband and wife in 1983.

James has denied the allegations, describing them as “baseless.” On Thursday, James’ office declined to provide comment.

Abbe Lowell, an attorney for James whose firm frequently represents clients who she believes have been unfairly targeted by the Trump administration, has also criticized the investigation.

In a statement to CBS News, Lowell called the allegations “baseless and long-discredited” and said that the investigation “appears to be the political retribution President Trump threatened to exact,” which AG Bondi assured the Senate would not happen under her watch. “If prosecutors are truly interested in the truth, we are willing to confront false claims with facts.”

Last month, Lowell wrote to the Department of Justice, refuting the allegations made in Pulte’s letter. In a letter to Bondi, Lowell described the allegations as “long-disproven” and the investigation as “the latest act of improper political retribution — this time directed at Ms. James — publicly instigated and endorsed by President Trump.”

In February 2024, a New York judge ordered Mr. Trump, his company, and two adult sons to pay the State of New York approximately $364 million. After more than a decade of interest, the figure now exceeds $500 million. Trump has appealed the decision.

The decision followed a lengthy civil trial in which James’ office accused Mr. Trump of leading an effort to obtain favorable loan rates and insurance deals that he would not have received otherwise.

The amount Mr. Trump was ordered to pay reflected the judge’s calculation of how much Mr. Trump and his company profited from the scheme.

Mr. Trump has long been outspoken against the case and James, even suing her unsuccessfully to halt her fraud investigation before the state could file a lawsuit.

Mr. Trump was forced to take the stand during the trial in November 2023, lashing out at James during his hours-long testimony and describing the fraud case as “a terrible, terrible thing.”

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• In a new interview, Bill Gates criticized both Elon Musk and DOGE.
• The Microsoft cofounder said that DOGE is “geographically illiterate.”
• He said that Musk was “involved in the deaths of the world’s poorest children” by cutting USAID.

Bill Gates sharply criticized Elon Musk in an interview with The New York Times published on Thursday, citing the Tesla cofounder’s role in reducing foreign aid as part of his Department of Government Efficiency program.

The Microsoft cofounder described the cuts made to foreign aid, particularly programs administered by the now-defunct US Agency for International Development, as “stunning.”

“He is the one who cut the USAID budget. He threw it in the wood chipper because he didn’t attend a party that weekend,” Gates told the Times of Musk. “The world’s richest man has been involved in the deaths of the world’s poorest children.”

Gates also mentioned an incident early in President Donald Trump’s tenure in which administration officials claimed that the US was sending condoms to Gaza through foreign aid. In reality, the United States had provided contraception to a province in Mozambique, an African country.

“They cut funding for Mozambique’s Gaza Province. “That is really for drugs, so mothers don’t give their babies HIV,” Gates explained. “But the people doing the cutting are so geographically illiterate that they believe it’s Gaza and condoms. Will they go meet the babies who contracted HIV because the money was cut? “Probably not.”

Gates made the remarks while discussing his plans to give away the rest of his wealth over the next two decades before closing his foundation in 2045.

The Gates Foundation has made significant investments in global public health initiatives, with a focus on childhood diseases.

This is not the first time Gates has criticized Musk, or vice versa.

Gates claims Musk has destabilized foreign politics by supporting right-wing causes in the United Kingdom and Germany. He also stated that, while he believes Tesla is having a positive environmental impact, he wishes Musk would be more vocal about the climate crisis.

Musk, in turn, claims that Gates has a “limited” understanding of artificial intelligence.

Musk, DOGE, Tesla, and the White House did not respond to Business Insider’s requests for comment.

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