House Democrats just released a small batch of Jeffrey Epstein’s emails, and they discuss Trump. A lot. In one, to Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein called Trump “the dog that hasn’t barked.” He continued, “[name of victim redacted] spent hours at my house with him,, he has never once been mentioned. Police chief. etc. im 75 % there.” This was dated April 11, 2011. Trump was talking about running for president at the time, but I don’t believe he made any attempt to organize a campaign that year.
Maxwell replied, “I’ve been thinking about that.”
In 2011 Epstein was a free man, thanks to the non-prosecution agreement he’d gotten from Alex Acosta, and he’d settled a bunch of civil suits from victims. (See timeline.) In the email he appeared to be wondering why Trump hadn’t yet been accused or sued. Good question.
In another email, to Michael Wolff in 2019, Epstein said of Trump “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.” To stop poaching young women employees from Mar-a-Lago? And isn’t this telling us that Maxwell lied to Todd Blanche to get nicer gail time at Club Fed in Texas? See also Malcolm Ferguson at The New Republic.
Trump’s poll numbers keep getting worse. At some point at least a few Republicans will have second thoughts about protecting him. And I predict there will be ketchup on the walls of what’s left of the White House tonight.
See also Big Coverup Exposed in Bogus Mortgage Fraud Cases by Kavid Kurtz at TPM. It’s a bit convoluted, But here’s an executive summary:
Internal government watchdogs who were looking into the origins of the bogus mortgage fraud claims emanating from the Trump administration were fired en masse, but not before the acting inspector general for the FHFA managed to turn over what appears to be exculpatory evidence to federal prosecutors in the James case.
However, Letitia James says her legal defense team never got this exculpatory evidence. So there’s that, too.
I believe the Letitia James mortgage case includes an e-mail to the bank, clearly stating that she won't be living at the property. At that point, it's nearly impossible to think you'll get a jury to believe she intended to defraud the bank.
Your link to the "coverup" goes to Mediaite (Epstein e-mails)\, not to TPM.
I fixed the link. Thanks for letting me know.
Maxwell is gonna cash in her Get-Out-Of-Jail FREE card before January. Trump would delay if he could, but the last deal with Blanche was to wait until after the USSC decided her case, which they declined just a month ago. Reportedly, her legal team is huddled with the Warden over a commutation. Others in the prison are not pleased with being Maxwell's "bitch."
She's not going to wait for three years, if only because Trump is not a good candidate to last three years. That's not a threat, implied or otherwise – President Lard-ass has obvious medical problems. Maxwell might commit 'suicide', but she might have life "insurance" with her lawyers, a written statement of the known pedophilia with names and places, to be released to the press if she suddenly stops breathing. Want to make that ironclad? More than one source with the evidence and the same instructions.
We've all speculated about when members of MAGA, in Congress or the Administration, would begin to distance themselves from Trump for their political survival. Maxwell's commutation, combined with bribing someone into un-signing the petition to release the Epstein Files, might do it. Look to Vance to engineer a 25th Amendment removal to try to save Project 2025 and GOP power when/if he sees the situation is beyond repair if Trump is retained. (The GOP did this with Nixon. and similar timing. Before the midterms in the hope of retaining power.)
The only thing I would add is that I don't think JD is going to decide anything. Whoever is the puppet-master from inside the billionaire class will be making the decisions on when to dump drumf overboard, elevating JD… (or the more-than-one puppet-masters).
Doesn't matter. For the mid-terms, we just have to stay on-topic: Hold them to account for screwing the pooch and make it clear we're not on the side of the billionaire oligarchs.
I suspect that their tactic is to delay and let the heat heat up, then when there is not a video of a pedophile caught in the act in the middle of 5th Ave the powerful will cry that they are the victims. That, along with a good ol' fashioned cover up with a good dose of psyops/propaganda is what the House preacher and the ghouls leading the govt have planned.
The orange man freed them from shame, so shame is no longer a social regulator in Maga world. The scandal is that the only scandalous behavior is to say that you oppose rapists or kids in cages.
However it shakes out with Trump, I don't believe JD Vance will make it as a successor. He's almost a mirror image of DeSantis, in terms of what he has to offer — no charisma, dry as dust, weird, and as nakedly bigoted. I don't believe the base will take to him in any semblance of how they took to Trump. The billionaires my have no choice but to turn to him, but I believe they'll find out, in similar fashion as with DeSantis, that he just doesn't have it. The GOP will either go full on Nazi at that point, or implode into a rump of its former self.
Interesting point. The GOP desperately needs to groom an 'apprentice' to follow Trump… but who?
I see three power-centers in the GOP now: the Old Suits (lotsa money and experience, no enthusiasm), the Tech Bros (lotsa money, some enthusiasm, no experience), and the true MAGAts (all enthusiasm, no money or experience).
Vance counts as a puppet of the Tech Bro faction; the Old Money won't trust him, and prolly MAGAts won't either.
Nobody who ran against Trump can win a GOP primary, so all the Old Suits (Rubio, Cruz, etc) are out.
The real MAGAt candidates are all just plain crazy; neither the Old Money nor the Tech Bros would trust them to stay bought.
Hmm, Speaker Mike Johnson is the only one I can think of who seems to have threaded the needle. He's a Suit (reliable pawn), but not an Old one; he's been very careful to avoid pissing off Trump, so the MAGAts don't hate him. The Tech Bros might not like him (too "Christian"), but their only leverage would be taking their money to the Democratic Party…
Ew, now there's an ugly thought: the Dem Party is facing a rebellion against AIPAC, which will leave them desperate for campaign money (again). The Tech Bros have no deep affinity for the GOP, and would be glad to flip (back!) to the Dems… for a price.
"Although the Texas Democrats didn’t succeed in stopping the Republicans, their doomed strategy achieved something just as important: It brought national attention to the Machiavellian tactics the GOP was employing to maintain its congressional majority in 2026."
Digby
I can't get the bold to turn off – forgive folks if I continue in the font of the excellent quote above. Her point being, Democrats did not have to win on an issue where they never had the power to thwart the GOP. Bringing attention to it set the stage for Newsome to warn the GOP to break off their steal or California would retaliate. Which they did.
Now apply that same reasoning to ending the shutdown. You are entitled to think differently, but we were never going to get Obamacare subsidies restored. Trump would have vetoed legislation that gave life to the program he's obsessed with ending. The shutdown brought national attention to the pain Trump's signature budget will bring to the poor – millions of them.
You will note that Digby made her point with exceptional clarity – I wish I could do that, but I'll hijack what she said to give clarity to what I was thinking.
The concept if fine but the reality is that what the democrats did in Texas did not cause hardship for the very people those democrats say they represent. Leaving the state of Texas is not the same as bringing the federal government to a halt, getting thousands of federal workers fired and forcing tens of thousands to work for no pay. Not to mention the SNAP benefits that probably won't be reinstated fully for weeks. The democrats need a god damn communication strategy that works and doesn't inflict pain on the very people they claim to represent. There is a huge difference between shutting down the Texas house for a few weeks and shutting down the entire federal government I don't think it is really an apt comparison? The fact that they needed to shutdown the government to get attention for the ACA cuts only reveals how weak the parties leadership and communication strategy is. IMO the shutdown was a stupid idea and may well end up helping the GQP in the end.
I'm thinking that the next 12 months are going to be rather strange. We've seen so much craziness and complete lack of morality that we may feel like it couldn't get crazier or more shocking. However, I think it might be a mistake to underestimate how far this regime may go. With what everybody is referring to as "the Epstein Files" is, I suspect, something more nefarious, more complicated and more far reaching than just the sex trafficking operation at its core. One must wonder why the regime has put so much time and effort into delaying and resisting the public revelations that are sought. An IMMENSE amount of time and effort. I'm prepared to have my skeptical mind blown.
Its not going to come out all at once; and it isn't guaranteed that all of it will come out at all. But I suspect that the regime has invested so much time and effort because the task in front of them is enormous. The way my sick mind looks at it is the following thought experiment. Pretend there is a large convention center putting on an event in total secrecy. The first group of attendees is some number of the top propaganda operatives from all corners of the globe. The second group is a healthy number of script writers for professional wrestling and the reality TV shows like Survivor and Big Brother. The third group is a bunch of highly talented Madison Avenue types with no scruples. They start by going through a bunch of team building exercises so that they can work together without killing each other. Their task? Take the entirety of the "Epstein Files" material, identify all of the most damaging factual elements, and concoct a phony baloney James Bond type of story that is so massive and so complicated that it boggles the mind of 99% of the public, and which ties together in a fictional way ALL of the damaging elements. Well, that's an exaggeration, but maybe that's what they've been doing for the past x number of months ever since Joe Rogan came out in favor of releasing the Epstein files.
I do have an active imagination.
Burying the Epstein Files has been a high-priority bipartisan project for 2-3 decades now. The 'leading men' in Epstein's extensive VHS collection prolly include at least as many Democrats as Republicans; even worse, it prolly includes an appalling percentage of the top judges and prosecutors in the Southern District of New York.
Epstein wasn't just pimping for money; the bigger crime was about suborning the NY (and US) judicial system. This was partly done to protect Epstein's operation, but it also put him in a position to broker even bigger deals ("Hello, Senator, sorry to hear you got caught embezzling campaign money. Would you like some help with that?").
Even worse, it seems very likely that Epstein was a Mossad 'asset', and Ghislaine Maxwell probably counts as an actual 'agent'. Airing that dirty laundry will involve violence, somewhere between a few suspicious 'suicides' and WWIII.
Exactly. Good examples of what's likely involved.
Michelle Goldberg questions why Ghislaine Maxwell is being pampered in prison in a NYT opinion piece. That may be the wrong question to ask. How does a convicted criminal get preferential treatment in Federal prison might be a better question.
Doug may have some insight on that question. Enquiring minds would like to know who could make something like that happen and how?
"How does a convicted criminal get preferential treatment in Federal prison"
I'm pretty sure she's being "pampered" because she has the goods on diaper don. I'd wager she told the deputy AG that she will sing like a bird to congress if she doesn't get released and in the meantime she wanted better living conditions. I've read articles that prison officials have no idea how the transfer was done, they didn't follow any of the normal procedures, the word came from on high. She has the goods!
Sure, but who exactly can make it happen and is the 'responsible' individual? Is it policy or under the table?
It makes it a bit tricky to get to the bottom of things when the fox is running the hen-house (hen-house = DOJ… we have no visibility)