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More Epstein files were released, Nicki Minaj has gone full MAGA, and Jake Paul's got fatherhood on the brain. So we gotta ask ...

Ashlee Buzzard -- accused of killing her 9-year-old daughter Melodee Buzzard -- has pleaded not guilty to the crime.

The 40-year-old entered her plea in a Santa Barbara, California courtroom Friday ... and prosecutors confirmed they'd pursue a life sentence against Buzzard, but not the death penalty. Her next hearing is January 7.

As you know ... Ashlee was arrested for Melodee's murder Tuesday after her daughter initially went missing in October. Authorities say Melodee's body was found earlier this month in Utah in an area where she and Ashlee allegedly traveled together.

2:45 PM EST -- Tea Tyme -- who is accused of killing a man while live-streaming while driving her vehicle in November -- is allowed to walk free ahead of her trial, an Illinois county court determined at a hearing Friday. She was arrested for the incident on Tuesday ... and although she will no longer be held in a cell, there are conditions to her release.

According to court docs obtained by TMZ ... she will have a curfew and will be barred from driving and using social media outside her home.

A preliminary hearing for the trial will take place on June 27.

Prosecutors don't want Tea Tyme -- the TikToker accused of killing a pedestrian while live-streaming back in November -- to be allowed back on the streets prior to her trial ... arguing she poses a threat to public safety.

The Lake County State's Attorney submitted the document to the court Friday ... laying out the allegations against Tea Tyme -- real name Tynesha McCarty-Wroten.

According to prosecutors ... Tea Tyme was live-streaming to 14 people when she ran a red light and struck 59-year-old Darren Lucas.

12 sick men from New Jersey ended up on Santa's extra naughty list after they were busted for trying to meet up with a minor for sex earlier this week.

Middlesex County Prosecutor Yolanda Ciccone announced the successful mission called "Operation Bad Santa" took a dozen dudes aged 23 to 65 years old -- including a middle school teacher and youth program coordinator -- to the slammer after they traveled to a residence expecting to find an underage child for sexual activity. During the multi-agency effort, officers posed as minors on social media and messaging apps, and persuaded the men to meet them at the undisclosed Middlesex address ... where they were consequently cuffed.

The operation involved several police departments, the Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI Newark. It took place between December 8 and December 15.

Here's an easy way to find yourself on the naughty list ... a man in Seattle is in police custody after stealing a patrol car from a Washington State Patrol lieutenant ... and only TMZ has video of the suspect shoving the cop to the ground and taking off in her car.

We obtained footage showing a man casually crossing a busy Interstate-5 in Seattle when a WSP patrol car shows up ... the guy stops in his tracks, paces around, then goes up to the driver side door and yanks the cop out of the car. He pushes her to the freeway pavement, then gets behind the wheel and speeds off.

That's where our wild video ends, but the story doesn't end there ... because an intense police pursuit ensued ... and it ended with WSP officers pinning the car and taking the guy into custody.

Good news, bad news for President Trump ... the bad news is the Kennedy Center Honors award show he hosted saw its TV ratings tank with him at the helm ... but the good news is this means he won't be quitting the presidency to become a full-time M.C.

The ratings are in for this weeks Kennedy Center Honors on CBS ... and it's bad.

Preliminary data from Nielsen shows CBS had "its smallest ever audience" for the Kennedy Center Honors with an estimated 2.65 million viewers ... a sharp, 35% decline from 2024 when the show had 4.1 million viewers.

Obviously, the big difference here is Trump ... he was the first first president to host the awards show.

A cop in Ohio almost ended up on Santa's naughty list after pulling over Santa and Mrs. Claus for speeding ... and the hilarious traffic stop is all on video.

The Fulton County Sheriff's office shared video of one of their deputies pulling over an elderly couple dressed as Santa and Mrs. Clause over the weekend for "flying a little too fast."

When the deputy realizes he's talking to Father Christmas he exclaims, "Santa!!!"

Jolly old Saint Nick was packing heat too ... he told the deputy he had a concealed carry weapon and the deputy replied, "Santa has a CCW? Times are rough!!!"

President Donald Trump's controversial name change of the renowned Kennedy Center has really ruffled some feathers ... a Christmas Eve jazz concert was cancelled in protest at the performing arts center.

Chuck Redd, the host of the Christmas Eve concert, told the Associated Press that he pulled the plug on the event because he was pissed Trump switched the venue's name from the John F. Kennedy Center to the Trump-Kennedy Center.

Redd said, “When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert.”

Alaska Airlines doesn't give in to purr-pressure -- that's what Alexandra Compton found out on a recent flight home for the holidays ... and she told TMZ it might be because they're dog people.

Alexandra -- a 35-year-old bartender now known as '2 Cat Karen' -- got into a standoff with airline staff in Las Vegas when they refused to let her board with her 2 cats in the same carrier.

She tells TMZ ... on December 21 she was travelling from Vegas to Portland to go back home for the holidays on a flight with her cats Phoenix and Blaze. According to Alexandra, the airline caused a fuss over the cats being in the same carrier, but she's travelled with Alaska Airlines in the same carrier many times before.

"A man in charge came down from an office and didn’t even look at the cats," Alexandra told us. "He made the decision I needed to book another seat and get another carrier or I couldn’t fly with them. Because he didn’t look at the cats, it made me think he was a dog person. It was giving he had a golden retriever at home."

Greg Biffle and his wife sent their holiday card in the mail before they died in a fatal plane crash ... and the season's greeting is just now showing up in mailboxes of relatives and friends.

One of Biffle's friends, a restaurant owner in North Carolina named Ron Herbert, says he checked his mail Sunday and found a holiday card from the Biffles.

Herbert shared the card on social media ... and it shows Greg, wife Cristina, his daughter Emma, and their son Ryder in matching outfits -- blue jeans and white shirts -- smiling and laughing in front of flocked Christmas trees.

Tatyana Remley -- an equestrian who pleaded guilty to plotting to have her estranged husband murdered -- committed suicide last week ... and TMZ has video of responders attempting to save her life.

Watch the just-released video ... you can see police huddled over her body while one performs rhythmic compressions on Tatyana's lifeless chest last Thursday. Her body is lying on a walkway adjacent to what seems to be the outdoor seating of a restaurant.

Passersby gawk at the scene as police try valiantly to save her life, but to no avail. TMZ can confirm Tatyana died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head outside a San Diego bar.

12:40 PM PT -- The DOJ has just released a statement on X that the FBI confirmed the letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar is "FAKE."

Jeffrey Epstein may have had a pedo pen pal in Larry Nassar ... and President Donald Trump is also in the mix as a lover of "nubile girls," according to new documents released by the Department of Justice.

The DOJ just dumped a new batch of Epstein Files, in which there's an August 2019 letter allegedly written by Epstein to Larry Nassar while both men were incarcerated in separate federal prisons.

Nassar had been convicted of sexually assaulting hundreds of young female gymnasts and sentenced to life behind bars. Epstein was awaiting trial at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in NYC for allegedly sex trafficking minors ... but he died by suicide the same month -- August 2019 -- he allegedly penned the missive to Nassar.

The letter opens, "We shared one thing ... our love & caring for young ladies and the hope they'd reach their full potential. Our president also shares our love of young, nubile girls."

Perhaps the most famous grandma on TikTok, Epic Gamer Grandma, has died.

Her passing was confirmed by her grandson Culsan in an Instagram post Tuesday. In it, Culsan listed her date of death as December 21.

According to Culsan, his grandmother passed away "holding the hand of her daughter, Pauline."

The woman who went viral for her drunken brawl with bartenders in San Francisco is seemingly letting the cocktail connoisseurs off the hook ... TMZ has learned.

Shireen Afkari has certainly made a name for herself ever since a multi-angled video shows her at a restaurant -- arguing with employees and getting physical with patrons filming her -- and we are now told the bartenders who body-slammed and tripped Shireen have not been arrested by cops.

SFPD PIO Robert Rueca tells TMZ ... there's no investigation into those two men for their actions in the video 'cause Shireen never filed a police report against them, even though footage shows them slamming her to the ground and seemingly tripping her on purpose.

Donald Trump flew on Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet at least eight times ... according to an internal DOJ email written by an assistant U.S. attorney in January 2020.

The email -- which dropped in a new batch of Epstein docs Monday night -- says Trump was listed as a passenger on flights between 1993 and 1996, including at least four trips where Ghislaine Maxwell was also onboard.

One 1993 flight listed Trump and Epstein as the only passengers ... and another flight included just Epstein, Trump, and an unidentified person who was 20 years old at the time, according to the email. Marla Maples, Tiffany Trump and Eric Trump are also listed as passengers.

Hunter Biden may have issued a betrayal of Shakespearean proportions in an interview on "The Shawn Ryan Show" Monday ... he slammed his dad Joe Biden's presidency, calling part of it an "obvious f***ing failure."

In the 5-and-a-half-hour sitdown, Hunter heavily criticized his father's job on immigration and the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan.

Hunter said, “We need vibrant immigration ... but we don’t want immigrants that are coming here illegally, draining us of resources, and being prioritized above people that are actual, literal heroes, that are still recovering from 21, 20 years of endless war -- or anybody else in our society.”

And while he was on the topic of our armed forces ... Hunter admitted the way the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021 "was an obvious f***ing failure."