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Notes -
Epstein files are currently being released. DOJ link HERE. Epstein Files Transparency Act PDF HERE.
Some notes from picking a random place to start and going through them one-by-one:
Lots of questionable redactions.
Funniest one so far.Cumstained porno mag. Looks like they decided to redact only her tits. Can they do that under the law? NSFW Link.
There is at least one male whose face is being consistantly redacted. Were there any male "victims"? Not sure what the legal basis for a redaction could be. Doesn't look like Trump to me.
Jeffery is definitely a boob guy.
Some of the ass pics that are in there are unredacted. Interesting choice.
A second redacted male figure. Looks like Epstein himself tbh. Maybe an accident?
Quote from a victim's interview notes: "What doing? Why bringing me dark girl?" "Bringing young girl." "Yeah but not dark."
They are definitely redacting the portions of interviews where they describe what Jeffery did sexually. Understandable, but not sure if legal under the Act.
"Tell girls don't wear heels, just wear casual everyday clothes." Really makes you think.
I'm glad I didn't do a direct download.
Now I'm getting big binders full of thumbnail pics. I hope the corresponding full-size photos are somewhere else in the files.
Lots of pictures of clouds. I think the guy just liked photos.
Did we really need to redact the photos of the other guys in the police photo lineups? Are they victims? Not super relevant but gives you an idea what the culture was in the office when they were putting these together.
Very ominous scrapbook page titled "Looking For a Way Out", with redacted pictures of a girl.
I'm seeing some reports (ex: here) that files in the initial dump that contain unredacted pictures of Trump with Epstein are being removed. Just incredible. The picture itself (as best I can tell) is not even particularly incriminating. It looks to me like it's a copy of this picture of Trump, Melania, Epstein, and Maxwell posing together, under some other photos in a desk drawer. Perhaps the image was taken down for unrelated reasons but I'm seeing a lot of speculation that it's because Trump was in the picture, in whatever capacity.
Second link doesn't work.
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If you look closely there's a picture of some girls in the drawer. That's probably the excuse they'll use.
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Yeah. If it was, then it is a really stupid self own
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Oh look, it's another batch of absolutely nothing. Still no evidence of any conspiracies involving Epstein trafficking young girls to other men. Yet every new revelation is treated like it confirms the narrative.
Well, I guess there was one big revelation: Bill Clinton. Not that he actually did anything bad, but that he appears in the photos at all. This lets MAGA do something it's always interested in: give a pass for daddy Trump by saying "whatabout the Left?" Instead of looking at the evidence and deciding this whole Epstein stuff belongs in the political trash bin, MAGA can now continue being conspiratorial about its outgroup. Democrats are "in a panic". The Epstein files are overall "just a Clinton photo album".
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The mainstream conspiracy narrative is so ridiculous. If the government is under control of foreign blackmail, none of what it releases can be trusted anyway (it's at best selectively-released, if not outright fabricated). If the government is a trustworthy source of information, then it's not under the control of a blackmail cabal in the first place. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
Also, this whole redaction thing is such a troll. If you want to release 50 pages and hide 50 pages, you don't release 50 unedited pages and 50 pages of black boxes; you just release the 50 clean pages and don't mention the other pages you left out (and yes, I do deem the government capable of re-numbering a list, especially with the help of ChatGPT).
Actually, you can. The most straightforward explanation isn't that the entire government is completely controlled and co-opted, but that there are multiple competing power blocs. The foreign blackmail operation has leverage and control over several important people, but their control isn't total - the public can influence those portions of the government exposed to the will of the people enough to shift the balance of power between competing groups in the government. This actually explains the behavior of the government better than both the stupid version of the conspiracy theory you're arguing against and the conventional, no conspiracy at all view.
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I find the whole "release the files" thing so funny.
If you really believe that there exists a DoJ employee who is so moral and ethical that he would neither leak an incriminating document during the Biden admin, nor destroy it during the Trump admin, and so powerful that he could not be fired or forced to do so during either; then you probably believe in the Easter Bunny.
If there is anything incriminating in there, it's going to come together weeks from now. It's going to be a reference that correlates to a hint that leads to a receipt that pulls on a thread that leads to an angle. It's going to be some clue so small that they forgot to redact it, and it's only going to make sense as a piece of circumstantial evidence, a piece that completes a puzzle we haven't taken out of the box yet. But probably it won't be that either.
It's not going to be something that MSNBC can broadcast in real time.
It was clear that nothing much would come of it.
If there was solid material evidence that Trump had fucked 13yo's, then the Biden administration would have gone after him. They certainly tried to get him for everything else in the book (some of which was fair, other stuff less so).
Still, Trump campaigned on releasing the Epstein files, which played well with his base but was an unforced error on his part given how much he hung out with this guy. Likely all the photos of him hanging out with Epstein were already leaked, as was his creepy-as-fuck birthday card.
The Democrats forcing the DOJ to release the files was just them cashing in on that. It was clear that either he would have to release the files with him being in them, or redact everything which mentioned him. Both would harm him, somewhat. Unsurprisingly, he did not want the photos of him and Epstein going through the press again, so he redacted everything. But less than 5% of the electorate is going to take that as "this proves that he did not know Epstein".
That's some messed up thinking right here. Of course he knew Epstein, nobody ever tried to prove he didn't - he himself admitted many times he knew Epstein, and they had interacted socially many times up to 2000s, and then he personally banned Epstein from his clubs after learning about him recruiting there, which is pretty hard to do if you don't know him. Pretending as anybody is arguing that "he did not know Epstein" is just insane. There's a big distance between not knowing somebody at all and being best friends for life. And there's a very long timeline here, spanning decades, for the duration of which Epstein met very many people - pretty much everybody there is to meet. And of course there would be photos, that's the whole point of it. The whole business of "being connected" is having photos of you with celebrities, and being in the same parties as important people are. Implying that this means everybody who ever been in the same room as Epstein is now complicit in his crimes is bullshit.
While you’re absolutely right - do you think that means anything if the press/democrat influencers want to make hay out of it?
Oh, they will try to make hay out of anything. If Trump would fund research that cures cancer, they would declare that he finances dangerous experimentation with poisonous chemicals that kill living tissue and prevent growth, and plans to inject millions of people with them to enrich his friends. There's always a way to frame something in a bad light. The antidote for it is pulling back the curtain and expose the game.
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I keep seeing this argument from "moderates" on both sides and I have no idea why when there's a very obvious explanation: because the collateral damage would have brought down a bunch of bigshot Democratic politicians and donors too like Bill Clinton. That's why the top congressional bigshots kept their heads down and the release was largely led by gadflies Ro Khanna and Tom Massie.
Same reason Dems never really pressed the Dennis Hastert scandal even though one would think that the opposing party's Speaker being exposed as a serial pedophile would be a great issue to campaign on. Everything falls into place if you operate under the assumption that most high level politicians from both parties are pedophile rapists, or at least pedophile rapist adjacent.
So all the fierce fighting between Trump and the Democrats is just kayfabe, then? Harris and Trump were laughing about the electorate seeing them as opponents while raping some kids?
And why would a cabal of kid-fuckers end up in charge, anyhow? Unlike being a lizardman (possibly), being a pedophile does not convey an intrinsic advantage at winning primaries. You could perhaps convince me that being a child-rapist is the kind of dirt which will keep a politician firmly in the hands of his blackmailers, who might therefore favor him over less controllable candidates. But such blackmailers would want to compartmentalize their assets, having them all go to Epstein parties seems terrible opsec.
Or it could be that child rapists pursue political careers at higher rates than baseline because they hope that political influence will shield them from law enforcement. But this would be stupid, because being a politician also means that a lot of people will dig for dirt on you, and they do not know if some elite pedo cabal even exists.
Even more if you consider that even Epstein himself was not into 6yo's, but rather girls at puberty. In any country in which you have extreme poverty, you will also likely find underage prostitution. Plenty of these countries are also corrupt as fuck and will likely have little moral outrage over tourists fucking slum girls. Nobody is running for Congress to fuck 12yo's.
Then there is the fact that such a conspiracy would require some way to disincentivize defectors. Probably one in ten politicians would have a late onset of conscience on their deathbed and be willing to spill the beans to make amends.
Or the thing that they did not make a very good job of covering up Epstein. Do you think every last cop who was investigating him was in the pedo cabal? If not, how did they make sure that none of the cops would leak incriminating videos of senior politicians raping kids, especially once they found out that their case would not go anywhere? Whistleblowers have martyred themselves to get much less juicy stuff out to the public.
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There's plenty of well-placed progressive democrats who would be happy to bring down the old guard.
More to the point, we, uh, know who Trump cheated on his wives with. His type is well known, and it doesn't seem like 'young teens' were his thing.
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Bill Clinton hasn't been a "politician" by that and pretty much nothing short notarially authenticated tape of him committing a felony could "bring him down" in any way. That's the person who fucked interns in White House and lied under oath and got away with it without any "bringing down" happening. Imagining that some words from Trump - which would automatically be dismissed by 100% of the Left as lies no matter what he says - could "bring down" anybody on the left, let alone a figure like Bill Clinton, is complete nonsense.
It wouldn't be "words from Trump" that would bring down Bill Clinton, proof that Bill Clinton is a pedophile rapist would bring down Bill Clinton.
Democratic leadership (and we should distinguish between the leadership and the voters on this, I'm sure your average Dem voter would happily sacrifice Bill and most of Congress to bring down Trump) would rather Trump be in charge than for their top brass and donors to wind up in prison for being pedophile rapists. It's a big club and you ain't in it.
They just wouldn't release this proof, if it ever existed (which it likely does not), but instead destroy it (which they likely did long ago, if it ever existed, which it probably didn't from the start). We know for a fact about many recent cases where evidence of crimes was destroyed (e.g. Clinton records, or IRS records of prosecution of Tea Party NGOs, many such cases) and absolutely nothing happened (except for some noise in the press, but there's always noise in the press). In fact, just recently we learned the videos from Jan 6 about pipe bombs just "disappeared" and... nothing. It is trivial and safe to disappear any evidence if you are in control of the government. Moreover, there had been ample evidence of both Clinton committing perjury, and Clintons having deep - much deeper than Trump ever had - links with Russia (among many other foreign interests, if anything, they are very equal opportunity corruptionist) and exactly nothing happened.
And this is not unique and not specific for Clintons alone. In fact, we just this week learned Fulton county illegally certified 315K votes - something that people were prosecuted for trying to look into - and mark my words, exactly nothing will happen to people who had done it. In Minnesota, billions were stolen under Waltz watch (and likely with his active enablement) - do you think anybody from his team will suffer any serious consequences (like jail and expulsion from politics)? Neither do I. I could add examples here ad nauseam, but I think my point is clear - it's only in movies once you publish something that looks incriminating a top political figure, they are instantly overthrown and the closing credits roll in. In reality, in most cases very little happens, especially when we talk about somebody of Clinton's caliber. There are too many people invested in it.
So summarily we would have some murky indications (because anything else had already been long destroyed) against the massive coverup machine which had already achieved numerous coverups. The premise that they did not release supposed dirt on Trump that they supposedly had, because they feared - while holding absolute control over the government - that this machine will fail to protect somebody as unassailable as Clinton - is completely laughable.
And you think this big club can't manage to release dirt on Trump without bringing Clinton down? After all they have done so far?
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Agreed. We've already had the Bill Clinton Sex Scandal, and approximately nothing came of it. And Monica Lewinsky wasn't the only case, there were several others as well. The reaction to this is already being demonstrated by a few comments on here to the extent of "so what? nobody cares, Clinton is irrelevant".
If anyone does care, it will be "yeah we knew Bill was a horndog, everyone knew that, so there are photos of him with pretty young women? And?"
Trump in photo with young woman: Aha, we told you he was a paedophile! Bill in photo with young woman: Who cares, that was years and years ago, now let's get back to how these files prove Trump raped 13 year olds on his best buddy Jeff's private sex slave island
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There's another very obvious explanation: Democrats don't actually care. The Epstein files are largely a conservative populist fixation, and Dems really only got interested when they realized it might be a wedge between Trump and his base.
Practically speaking, the files are probably more useful unreleased. People hoping for a smoking gun are likely to be disappointed, since all we're likely to get is more confirmation of what we already knew: Trump is a creep, Epstein was friends with a lot of celebrities, etc... There probably isn't a photo of Trump fucking a thirteen year old, but as long as he insists on holding stuff back you can insinuate that there might be. And Trump's narcissism is such that you can expect him to balk at releasing everything even if he can easily weather the resulting storm.
There's a good possibility that releasing a huge batch of files will likely lead to some investigative reporting putting together more circumstantial evidence of something or other.
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I still think if they had an honest-to-god killshot on Trump that somebody would have pushed it through even if there was reverberations through senior Democrats. Especially if it was legacy ones rather than current ones.
I legitimately can't even imagine what a killshot on Trump would be. Even if they had 4k video of Trump violently raping a 14-year-old girl Republicans would just become pro-sexual privacy in this specific instance.
We've had the "I was
1413 when Trump and Epstein raped me" case, and it's gone nowhere because the alleged victim never showed up, the lawsuits were mediated through various men so everything was at second and third hand, and even the journalists going in to the story hoping for a juicy scandal piece got so frustrated with the roadblocks that they gave it up.More options
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This is one of those moments where you should probably take honest stock in your model of the world, because it's really far out there. I could imagine some defenses these days along the lines of the video not being real; AI gen has gotten good or whatever. But there is not even a single cultural/theoretical/whathaveyou hook that is remotely likely to take hold as a defense in society if it is widely believed that such a video is real. It's not like Clinton, where the left was already trying to lean hard on "consent of adults is the only thing that matters" in order to help the gays.
I think Quantumfreakonomics' model of the world has been proved accurate so far. If you described the 'grab em by the pussy' video to 1,000 people before it was leaked and asked them what effect it would have on his campaign, most would have surely have guessed it would be terminal. But a whole process of justification and exculpation follows that is not that easy to imagine ahead of the event. Supposing Trump raped a 14 year old on tape, as you say, people would say it's AI ... they'd think it was out of context roleplay ... they'd say she lied about her age ... they'd think it was invasion of privacy or propaganda and refuse to watch ... they'd think Trump has let himself down again, but on a national level he's still a force for good etc. I don't think we can be confident it would bring him down at all, although it's impossible to run this experiment so I suppose we'll never know unless it happens.
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It's easy for me. The bullet would have had to go just an inch to the left.
I find this comment to be in especially bad taste.
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I always found it a bit weird that they didnt bring any corruption case from his real estate business. Its hard to imagine he hasnt done it, in places with lots of Dem politicos, who may feel differently about him now and can be promised immunity and something like hero status - but no, they went with obscure campaign finance law. I dont get it.
If they tried getting him on real estate corruption, then they'd have to prosecute everyone in New York from the mayor's office on down. Yes, it's sleazy, but c'mon: you've been telling us for years that he's sleazy and corrupt.
The Letitia James effort rebounded on her (if the bank involved didn't prosecute, how bad a crime was it really?) and it's amusing that she got dinged for fibbing on a mortgage application after making such hay out of Trump doing likewise. But again, everyone expects that doing business in New York involves a lot of, um, differently ethical practices.
As to Mar-a-Lago and the golf courses, those are probably okay from a legal standpoint (that's not to say there isn't or wasn't any corruption involved, but the golf courses do seem to be straightforward 'buy 'em and develop 'em' deals). As to failed projects like the Atlantic City casino, yeah possibly dodgy there, but again - par for the course for such deals. It seems to have been involved in a lot of financial troubles, but if it was possible to get him on such properties, that would have happened already from disgruntled creditors.
This is almost more important than everything else - Trump being sleazy and corrupt is already priced into him as a candidate. If you provide more examples of it, the base is going to say “so what?” - they already know all this.
It's like the 34 FELONIES!!! thing: oh, you're telling me he was convicted of 34 different crimes? yeah, that's bad. Wait, it wasn't 34 different crimes, it was 34 technicalities of the same case? about paying hush money to a porn star?
I don't think Trump should be committing adultery, and I don't think he should be messing up what was campaign funds from what was private money, and I don't think he should be paying hush money at all. But the best sense I could make out of it was that the prosecution was because he didn't pay her out of campaign funds, but some more convoluted way? So I'm still not entirely sure what I am supposed to be shocked about.
They're telling me for years he's a big awful terrible, evil rapist, now the bad thing is "he paid a hooker to keep her mouth shut"? That's rather a step down in gravity of offence from "and he raped this woman! and this woman! and that woman over there!"
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Why? Whats forcing them to be fair about this?
They can't be forced to be fair, but it's the same problems that I think Mamdani is going to run into with his campaigns of reform; yeah, very nice, guys, but that's not how we do things here. Inertia, layers of bureaucracy, people protecting their own little fiefdoms, nobody wanting to get off the gravy train of bribes and backhanders, and about seventeen firms of sharks dressed as lawyers just hoping for a nice, drawn-out, billable hours in the hundreds if not thousands, lawsuit to drag through the courts for years.
Corruption is hard to measure, says this post, but here's a ranking of cases taken:
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His corruption was probably entangled with democratic machine power networks, so to go after him you would need to at least go after the local democrats he bribed.
Yes, this would run off of some democrat he bribed. I think thats an advantage: it means they can just entice one such guy to come clean, instead of having to really investigate. I think there likely are cases that implicate only one official, maybe one who wants to retire anyway, and then you just need to make him a good enough offer to flip. Including extensive immunity so nothing more in that vicinity will need to be investigated.
cc /u/HereAndGone2 sure, this is not the way things are done normally, but you only need one.
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And, to the point- Democrats really need local machines to win elections. Call it fraud, call it 'turn out the vote', doesn't really matter- democrats simply will not win competitive elections if the (often corrupt)local machines don't feel like it, and making them feel threatened is bad for that effort.
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Lots of pictures of Bill Clinton in there. So far no smoking gun that he actually did anything illegal but... he really did seem to be there a lot, and often posing next to women of questionable age.
That will be "it's different because he's Our Guy" and "The GOP/Trump is hiding all the really incriminating stuff".
I don't think anyone cares about Bill Clinton. One of the major differences between Trump supporters and... everyone else, including Trump supporters when dealing with anyone other than Trump, is that the former have some overriding devotion and loyalty to Trump, and will thus forgive (or rather, deny the existence of) any fault, no matter how egregious. For everyone else, their supporters' relationship with them is far more instrumental because all of these guys - including senior leadership - are fundamentally replaceable to both the party and the voters.
Like, when Hastert got tagged as a pedo, nobody was saying "I'm going to reevaluate my conservative politics because of this" or "actually molesting children isn't that bad" or even "he didn't do it". This was because Hastert was not a load-bearing component of American conservatism. You could think Hastert was guilty and still be a Republican. Clinton (or even a prominent Democrat who actually holds office right now) being involved in sex crimes would be distasteful, but few would have a problem feeding them into the woodchipper. Trump, by contrast, is Trumpism. You can't hold Trump accountable without the movement self-immolating. And because normie conservatism has been completely hollowed out by the Trump cult of personality, you're stuck with him even if you privately refused to drink the Kool-Aid.
I mean, plausible. That plus the heel-dragging and the current admin's habit of comical denialism encourages this kind of suspicion.
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I don't think the current Democrats will waste much time on defending Clinton.
I mean, it is known that he was fucking around. Few Americans would have trusted him with their 16yo daughters even in the '90s. And especially with Hillary gone from the political stage, he serves no purpose for the Democrat party.
"Yes, we ran a sex pest presidential candidate who probably fucked underage girls in coercive settings in 1997. The GOP ran one in 2024, so by all means let's talk about why this is bad."
Oh, I expect plenty of hypocrisy on this about Bill from the Democrats. I don't think he was fucking 17 year olds, but given that he had no problem fucking Monica Lewinsky when she was young enough to be his daughter, that's a very damn low bar.
The hypocrisy was the feminists going on about "so long as he keeps abortion legal, I'd strap on the kneepads and give him a blowjob myself". Sexual harassment and power differentials and age gaps are bad - except when it's Our Guy.
Sort of the reverse that happens with Republicans as seen by the Democrats: X was Literal Hitler when in power or running for office, give it a few years and now X is the only good responsible statesmanlike Republican, Y is Literal Hitler.
Clinton was the greatest guy, this is why we should elect Hillary because she was as good as co-president during his terms, give it a few years and it's Bill who? Oh that guy, nobody cares about him anymore.
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And nobody's gonna bother coming after him anyways, realistically.
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The consensus around my more liberal acquaintances is that Bill Clinton is basically a Republican, really, and even if he weren't, it's old news. Why are you even bringing it up?
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lib here, literally don't give a fuck about Bill Clinton, he can rot with the rest of them. Furthermore, nobody I know irl cares about him, and no prominent lib politicians or media figures I've seen care about it either. Everybody I've seen comment on it is saying if he's guilty he can hang. You're making up libs in your head and getting mad at them.
Yes, because Bill Clinton is no longer useful, and neither is Hillary. This makes him (and her) easy to sacrifice in a pretend display of principles that costs nothing and therefor means nothing.
Literally no one will ever say "Damn, I was a Clinton supporter, but now I see they're pedo scumbags! As a penance for all the votes I put to the pair of them, I'm going to abstain from my usual D vote next cycle."
No one is ever even going to say "Damn, Our Guy was more into the pedo creep than Their Guy. That's an L for us, dawg."
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I don't think that's even what libs feel, they just see Bill Clinton as yesterday's guy, doesn't matter to the coalition anymore.
There are no principles involved, on any side, it's all "can we use this to smear Their Guy?". That's the problem. "Their Guy was hanging around with noted bad apple thirty years back, that proves he's a bad apple as well! Our Guy was also hanging around with said bad apple? Who cares, that was ages ago".
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Sorry if this is a dumb question, but what exactly are you implying here? What should I be thinking?
Or
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Casual everyday clothes are more attractive (at least in this, uh, particular context) than Dressing Up.
Ok? I don’t understand, why would that make me think?
They're telling the girls not to wear anything that will make them look older or less innocent. The implication being that the girls being underaged was the entire point, rather than a "mature looking 17 year old claimed she was legal" situation.
As others have pointed out, "tell them to wear everyday clothes" rather than getting dressed up in Full Escort Kit would be a way of maintaining the illusion that 'these are just ordinary girls hanging out and if one finds you interesting, that's because of your sparkling repartee, not because these are professional hookers'.
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Or, they want the guests to have the fantasy that they're actually picking these girls up and not using prostitutes.
Or it could also just be to reduce suspicion that they were prostitutes, to not be so obvious about it. Seems likely that not everybody knew what was happening. A fig leaf of plausible deniability.
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The whole 'girls are more attractive in casual nightwear than in expensive lingerie' thing gets debated, along with a bunch of 'Do women spend money on expensive lingerie for their own appreciation or since men actually value it' corollaries. Somebody who's actively in the business of selling sex (albeit with young girls and potentially correlated preferences) expressing a strong preference for one side is informative for that debate, I guess
Definitely this. Epstein was into very young girls, which likely means he was into innocent virgins, "I did not even realize men could be attracted to me", cute panties with animals printed on them etc.
Anything which signals "I know how to make myself attractive, get laid and have had a lot of sexual experience" would likely not be his kink.
I do not think we can learn a lot from his preferences, especially compared to observing what porn gets produced, which directly tells us the preferences of men who pay for porn, which is still not a great but a much better sample. Empirically, both the "young, cute, innocent" niche and the "oversexed slut" niches exist, plus a ton more besides.
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