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Notes -
New poll on Trump and Epstein:
This, along with Operation Warp Speed, is the only time they are willing to break with Trump. The heart and soul of the thing seems to be conspiracy beliefs.
Trump said:
Maybe the reason Trump doesn't understand why it keeps going is because he doesn't have an inferiority complex about class that drives him into fantasy about elite pedophile rings.
My take on the whole Epstein thing:
I've posted here on several occasions arguing that anyone who knows anything at all about prisons would know that most of the Epstein murder conspiracies would be impossible without cooperation from practically the entire Department of Corrections. I'm disinclined to make those arguments in detail again, so suffice it to say that I think Epstein's death was clearly a suicide. One other reason for this is that it makes sense: He lived a life of wealth and privilege and was about to spend the rest of his life in prison. He achieved a notoriety that would make it difficult for him to lead a normal life even if eventually released. He had already been on suicide watch. His life was already over, and he finished the job. Even if he had dirt on people it would be pointless to use. No prosecutor could have offered him a reduced sentence for it at that point, and in any event, that's not the way ratting people out works. Epstein was the ringleader; no DA is giving a mob boss a deal to rat out soldiers whom he ordered to murder people, and no US Attorney is pleading down a sex trafficking charge in exchange for uncorroborated information about a rape that happened decades ago, especially considering the source of that information.
That out of the way, it also seems unlikely that Epstein was actively pimping out the girls the way it's has been implied in the media. Over 100 girls have come forward, and only a few have claimed they had sex with anyone other than Epstein. You'd think that with how often Bill Clinton's name has been thrown around at least one person would name him, but no one has. You'd think with how close Trump is to the whole thing someone would have made a credible accusation, but all we have is a Jane Doe lawsuit that nobody took seriously, even in a media environment that would use almost anything as ammunition against Trump. The allegations are so incredible, it's not clear that a real person is behind the anonym. What seems likely is that Epstein was using his wealth to attract underprivileged girls and runaways, and keeping them as a sort of personal harem. It doesn't seem likely that he was running a brothel to hold wild sex parties for the rich and famous.
The upshot is that I think Trump is actually being honest about this. There are no Epstein Files, at least not the kinds of files that the conspiracy theorists assume exist, i.e. unequivocal records of certain powerful people engaging in sex acts with trafficked minors. I do, however, think it's likely that there are some records that don't mean anything that could be seized on by conspiracy theorists as "evidence". Stuff like evidence that Trump visited Epstein's island, or that one of Epstein's girls had appeared in a Trump-related beauty pageant, or something like that that doesn't really mean anything but doesn't require too much of an imagination to lead to the conclusion that Trump was either partaking in sex with Epstein's girls or complicit in some kind of business arrangement. If nothing else, it seems likely that Trump's name came up often enough in the investigation that it will turn into a lot of smoke Trump doesn't want to have to deal with.
So that's my take. The question I have, though, is why Trump proceeded the way he did. He had to have known that either no "Epstein files" existed, or that if they did exist his name was likely to come up a little more often than he'd be comfortable with. I know politicians make campaign promises they can't possibly keep all the time, but why even talk about this? Especially, why talk about it after you've been elected and Epstein is out of the news? Is Pam Bondi really stupid enough that she'd go out on a limb like this before she'd spoken to the president about it and before she had reviewed the files herself? It seems that if a journalist asked about the Epstein files it would be easy for her to say that it wasn't an active investigation and she accordingly didn't know anything about it, or that they'd start looking into it when DOJ priorities allowed, or whatever. Not that that really mattered, because nobody cared at the time. Even after Elon said something about it, it disappeared from the news within days.
The Trump administration could have just let this one die, but instead they had to make the unforced error of issuing an official statement that the files didn't exist. What the hell were they thinking? And now all the boneheaded statements made in the past implying its existence come back to bite them. And Trump keeps making matters worse by making fun of the people who are calling for their release, and saying he may release some of them (i.e. the ones that don't implicate him), and going back to denying their existence. And now Republicans aren't even sure how to handle it.
The other day, Ro Khanna (possibly the slickest Democrat in the House) tried to slip an amendment into the crypto bill calling for a House vote on the release of the files. It was blocked, with only one Republican on the Rules Committee voting for it, but the die is cast. You can bet your bottom dollar that an Epstein Files amendment is going into every piece of GOP-sponsored legislation from now until the end of the term. This is going to keep coming up, at least until the Republicans break ranks from Trump. It's a win-win for Democrats. This is much better than if Biden had just released the files himself. If Trump were in them and Biden released them during the election season, it would have been seen by the Trump base as fake news and more lawfare the Dmocrats are throwing out there to rescue a dying campaign. Now that the onus is on Trump, it looks different. Going into the midterms, every GOP rep in a competitive district is going to have to wonder whether they get primaried for defying Trump or primaried for caving on the Epstein thing. They're going to be getting a lot of calls.
Having had time to think about this, I'm leaning towards nothing existing at all. Even if Trump was somehow implicated, it's hard to see how it could do him real damage considering how eager his base is to buy his explanations. He'd just say that he released it because it didn't implicate him, and that would be it. The story would blow over in a week. But if there's nothing to release, that's a problem. He can't possibly deliver, and all the while it will look like he's hiding something. I don't know how this ends, since we're in uncharted waters here, but I suspect it will be entertaining.
I've started to read up on this whole Epstein thing, and your take in your first 3 paragraphs seems much more realistic than the crazy conspiracies. WAY too much of this whole affair is sourced from Virginia Giuffre, a serial accuser and known liar.
A mix of incompetence and disinterest. Trump only has an implicit, gut-feeling on his base which is good enough for him in most ways, but has limitations. That's why he messed up on H1-Bs in December, and it's why he messed up now. He probably didn't really think this whole Epstein thing was that important so he let his lieutenants (Bondi and Patel, among others) hype up promises they couldn't keep, and now its blown up in his face. He's trying to backpedal like a malfunctioning ChatGPT doing a slurry of outgroup hate that usually works -- mentioning the Steele Dossier, Hillary, Obama, Biden, Russia investigation, Comey, etc, etc. I don't think this will actually do much to dent the Trump coalition in the long term -- there will be a few defections and disillusionments, but not a critical mass since the human brain is quite adept at rationalizing away cognitive dissonance. However, it's sure been good pickings for hilarious blatant hypocrisy, e.g. example 1, example 2, example 3, example 4, example 5.
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One of the parties implicated in this affair recently blew the dicks, assholes, and/or parinea clean off 3,000 people in multiple countries with devices the targets willingly put on their own bodies.
Given that display of competence and coordination, it feels like your assessment of what is or is not possible in this case may be overly conservative.
Was Mossad actually implicated in this? Or is it just that Epstein was Jewish and had friends who were Zionist Jews (a viewpoint shared by the majority of Jews in the world)?
I haven't actually seen anything beyond Epstein himself bragging about it (while also being a pathological liar) and being tangentially connected to people who may have been but were not confirmed to be connected with the intelligence community. All second and third-order connections.
It's all second and third order connections, but it's a suspiciously large number of second and third order connections.
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Why would we rule this out? Prison guards are notorious for accepting bribes and the typical theory names the Clintons, who have rather more connections than the average person. Ditto for the royal family, the mossad, and other commonly-pointed-to culprits.
The prison system is not very invested in enforcing the formal 'rules' of the system when it involves protecting criminals.
Consider, for a moment, the mechanics of what you're suggesting. Suppose you're a normal guy working a normal job and you don't know anyone particularly important or noteworthy. And then one day I show up at your door wearing a suit accompanied by two guys with the build of John Fetterman and I tell you that you need to commit a high-profile murder for a certain amount of money, possibly with the veiled (or not so veiled) threat that if you don't comply you or your family will be harmed. Do you say "Yes sir" and do it, not knowing if it will work or you'll end up spending the rest of your life in prison? Not knowing if I'm even going to pay the money you're offered? Will you believe me when I tell you that the Department will have your back and make sure the whole thing is covered up? Will you believe that I actually represent Bill Clinton or Mossad or whoever? Or will you go straight to the police, or your supervisor, or the media about how someone you could identify if necessary offered you money to kill Jeffrey Epstein? Now multiply this across the dozens of people necessary to carry this out, from the COs, to the technicians, to the prison staff, to the investigators with the Inspector General, to the medical examiner, to Bill Barr, to the US Marshalls, and practically every other link in the chain. Do you really think that none of these people would say anything? You don't think that anyone would have simply refused to participate, and at least come forward after Epstein's death? For what it's worth, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas don't seem to be living the high life these days. both were prosecuted for falsifying records and fired from the department, and Noel was working as a medical assistant in a care home the last time she was in the news.
But beyond that, what exactly did Epstein's death accomplish? Why go through all of that trouble? The worst case scenario here would be that Epstein makes public statements accusing everyone from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump to The Man in the Moon of bangin underage girls on his private island. But as I mentioned earlier, there would be no motive for him to do so at that point other than spite. If the Powers That Be were so influential as to have corrupted the entire DOJ, they could have easily written off any accusations as the uncorroborated ramblings of a condemned man with an axe to grind, and said they weren't sufficient to be used as evidence in any criminal prosecution, and they would have been right. The only thing he could have offered would have been context and authentication of other evidence. If the goal was just to embarrass these people, then he doesn't need to provide the kind of evidence that can hold up in court, hence it doesn't matter whether he's alive or dead. He could have sworn affidavits and videotaped interviews where he lays out everything in detail. He was meeting with his attorneys nearly every day after he was arrested, yet the assassins didn't plan for this possibility? Why go after Epstein and not go after other target who would be much easier to get to, like:
These people are so powerful that they can make the entire DOJ come to heel, running the gantlet of risk that comes when any one of dozens of links could blow their cover at any time, yet they don't bump off any of the other people who could be gotten rid of more cleanly, or who could have made the story go away with little fanfare?
Being harmed by revelations isn't an all or nothing thing. Fingering well-connected people probably would have some effect, even though since they are well-connected they won't be harmed as much as people who aren't well connected.
My point is that it would have been of no tangible benefit to Epstein. The prosecutor wasn't in a position to cut any deals, regardless of what information was provided.
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It's confusing, because it makes more sense if this is a foreign relations thing... but then why not just say that and only release the names of U.S. citizens and their role in the files? All the people want isto know who to send to the guillotines. We aren't supposed to be the world police according to Trump, so just leave the foreigners out of it. If that is impossible (I highly doubt, given the descriptions of the physical media involved), that would be ... troubling.
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