I Covered the Epstein Case for Decades. These Are 9 Questions We Actually Need Answered.
We’ve been listening to nonsense about this case for years from the right and left. We know that Trump doesn’t want the files revealed, but the current outrage from Democrats is absurd. The Biden administration had full control of the files for four years, right up to the beginning of this year, and did not release them or make any meaningful progress toward doing so. Now that they know Trump doesn’t want the files revealed, the Dems are just acting like sharks in a feeding frenzy.
Jake Tapper and others have been grilling the Dems on this point, but every time they are asked “Should Biden have released the files?” or “Why didn’t Biden release the files?” they give an off-topic answer and weasel out of answering.
Politics as usual.
I have no idea why the President is so desperate to hide the files, but I’ve never seen any indication that he was involved in any of Epstein’s dark crimes. I’m guessing it’s just a case of Trump’s natural instinct to cover up any embarrassing revelations at all costs, thus making them seem much worse than they are. I don’t think he will be exposed as anything other than Epstein’s very close friend before 2004, something we already know, but he doesn’t care to be reminded of. Trump behaved similarly in the Mueller case, where his only real crime was obstructing an investigation that would have produced nothing significant about him if he had just let it proceed. (Although some of his lickspittles would have had problems, as we know.)
Remember Watergate, where Nixon did nothing wrong until he started covering things up? Nixon could have blown the entire thing off by saying, “Some of my people committed some stupid and even criminal acts without my knowledge and consent. With the aid of an independent investigator, they will be fired and/or prosecuted as appropriate.” If he had said that and actually followed up honestly, he would have served out his term. I used to call this instinct – to cover up at all costs – “the Nixon Syndrome,” but maybe I should rename it.
At any rate, the people who have been studying Epstein for years are arguing that there are good reasons to release almost all of the Epstein files, and those reasons have little to do with Trump.
A quick overview:
No. 1: How did Epstein make his money, and how did he finance his sex trafficking over two decades?
It’s still not clear how Mr. Epstein amassed such a large fortune — or how he was able to fund such a complex trafficking scheme. Treasury Department files detail, among other things, 4,725 wire transfers adding up to nearly $1.1 billion associated with just one of Mr. Epstein’s bank accounts. Were rich and powerful men financing Epstein’s criminal activities, unintentionally or otherwise?
No. 2: Did Epstein really have any ties to spy agencies?
When asked to explain the decision to give Epstein a sweetheart plea deal, prosecutor Acosta reportedly said, “I was told Mr. Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.” Attorney General Pam Bondi said this month that she did not know whether Mr. Epstein was an intelligence asset. The F.B.I. files could help resolve this matter.
No. 3: What are the references to Trump in the files?
Trump has never been accused by law enforcement of any wrongdoing related to Mr. Epstein. Bondi told Trump this spring that his name “appeared” in the Epstein files. So what? The two men were friends. Epstein considered Trump his best friend. Epstein was arguably the closest friend, possibly the only close friend, that Trump ever had. It would be shocking (and suspicious) if Trump’s name didn’t appear repeatedly throughout an investigation of Epstein’s life. Does that mean anything? We don’t know.
No. 4: What about Bill Clinton?
No. 5: Who were the clients implicated in Epstein’s sex trafficking operation?
The lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who joined Epstein’s legal team in 2005 when Mr. Epstein was first under investigation, said that young women and girls interviewed by the F.B.I. claimed to identify several of Epstein’s clients. The names of the victims should be redacted, but the names of clients should be revealed.
No. 6: Who helped Epstein overseas?
The U.S. Marshals Service recorded the names of passengers on Epstein’s planes when they arrived at airports in New York and the Virgin Islands. The Department of Homeland Security released some of those documents pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Herald, but the names were redacted, with the exception of Epstein’s.
No. 7: What did investigators find in Epstein’s safe, computers and other property?
No. 8: What do the videos show?
No. 9: What is in Epstein’s autopsy report?
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It’s not the Democrats who started this, it’s part of the MAGAsphere who did. The crazy conspiracy theorist streamers who Trump coddled in his campaign who believe in the crazy shit like underage sex rings taking place in pizza restaurants turned against him a few weeks ago when Trump’s DOJ told them nothing to see, move along. Trump got pushback and of course the Streisand effect happened when he couldn’t shut up about it. Of course, this created where his supporters have an identity crisis whether to support the cult or support the conspiracy theory, which blew wide open with the WSJ article and going after Murdoch. So now it’s complete disarray, with Trump flailing trying to distract about some bizarre Obama thing now.
Are the Democrats taking advantage now? Of course they are, but after 10 years of total lies and bullshit, who wouldn’t? This is the guy who lies every other word out of his mouth, getting into politics by lying about birther conspiracies and email coverups. He couldn’t even help but do the same just yesterday with made up numbers about a federal building renovation.
I hope his own supporters eat him alive with the same bullshit he pushed, and don’t mind a bit Democrats throwing gas on it. Absolutely, fuck him completely, and hope Murdoch and Trump tear each other apart. He started this era of conspiracy and bullshit, and I don’t give a flying fuck what anyone does to bring him down. I hope he’s miserable for the rest of his life and is eaten alive by his own bullshit in the ultimate irony.
You’re falling into the same hypocrisy as the Democrats. It absolutely doesn’t matter who started it unless you’re a member of the other tribe. Biden never released the files. Trump hasn’t released them.
Besides that, you’re actually defeating your own cause, because starting it was a GOOD thing!
You might better ask “Why DIDN’T the Democrats start it?”
and
Why didn’t they release the files when they had them?
I haven’t changed my position because somebody different is in power. Get the truth out in the open.
Oh, sure the MAGAsphere is infected with delusion about what is in there (or so I think), but truth is the ultimate disinfectant.
Who started it is irrelevant to anyone except the political hacks. It’s time to end it, and let the chips fall where they may. Biden should have done that. He screwed up. Trump should do that. He’s also screwing up.
Are both sides protecting people for partisan purposes? I don’t know.
But I do know there’s only one way to find out.
If either Biden or Trump or any future president released (or will release) any files, it would make 0 difference to the people shouting loud about it. If they get the info they expect, then they’ll keep saying the same thing they already are. If they don’t find the info they expect – their enemies aren’t on the list, their friends are – then they’ll just claim the evidence has been tampered with.
Knowing Garland was AG explains why the Dems never released it…a sloth is fast compared to Garland.
I don’t give a fuck, quite frankly. And don’t give a fuck about the what-about-isms. Spend the last 10 years lying constantly and coming up with birth certificate conspiracy, among many hundreds of others to create and foster this propaganda cult, he can enjoy the same craziness he’s fostered for others. I hope it drives him insane, and it probably will because he can’t stand dissent of any kind, and he’s inevitably going to make it worse by his own stupidity.
Hope the orange chud enjoys it all, he certainly deserves it.
Jake Tapper is a useless idiot for Trump and the Republicans. He loves attacking the Democrats because he knows that the Republicans will simply tell him to fuck off and won’t play his game. The Democrats foolishly took his good government trolling seriously for way too long. Tapper to me looks like he’s always constipated.
The worst of useless idiot Jake Tapper was clearly when he tried going after former Virginia Governor Ralph Northam for wearing blackface with Tapper arguing that Northam should resign because he never disclosed that he wore blackface while on the campaign trail. Can anybody imagine how Northam would have even done this? “I’m glad your all hear to listen to me tonight, but before I start I need to tell you that I wore blackface a time or two in my youth.” Uhhh, yeah, nobody would do that.
The mistake is in assuming useless idiot Tapper is sincere. In their profession there are journalists who measure their success by the number of politicians they force to resign. These journalists even have a term for this: “collecting scalps.” I have no doubt useless idiot Tapper is one of those sleazy journalists. And again, this is why the Republicans told him to fuck off and that they wouldn’t play his game.
In regards to why the Biden Administration didn’t release the files, the answer is pretty obvious really:
1.There is still a criminal trial and there were at the time anyway ongoing investigations.
2.There is no ‘little black book’ that contains the names of clients like Heidi Fleiss had. Epstein was not a prostitute, at least not in the same way that Fleiss was.
While I acknowledge that Americans release far more information than we do in Canada (our government agencies on these things are even known as ‘information and privacy’ agencies), the Biden Administration especially the Department of Justice led by Merrick Garland, who would actually have been the person to decide what files to release and not President Biden, was primarily concerned with following the ‘proper’ procedures.
Being on an Epstein plane by itself so in a flight log, is not by itself proof of anything wrong. It’s completely understandble why Garland would have been concerned about that.
The Republicans have made it clear they don’t care about legal procedures except to protect themselves and their wealthy and powerful friends, and useless idiot Tapper has never had a problem with that, except when he gets to express ‘concern’ while looking constipated. Even though Tapper is a useless idiot, I’m sure he knows all this, so all that he’s really doing is adhering to this double standard of demanding that Democrats play by the rules while Republicans get to ignore and run roughshod over them.
Democrats are finally showing backbone, though probably too late, in recognizing that they’ve never benefited from being boy scouts and useless idiot Tapper can’t handle that and is undoubtedly concerned that if the Democrats tell hiim to fuck off as well that he can’t collect more scalps.
There’s one major flaw in your argument: Tapper is 100% correct! He is asking the correct questions, and the Democrats are failing to answer them.
Except it leaves out that Trump and the Republicans made a big deal on the campaign trail of getting to the bottom of the Epstein case and releasing all the files.
So, the Democrats now holding Trump and the Republicans to this is not only politics but is perfectly rational for an oppostion party.
Useless idiot Tapper is right about Biden, but it’s convenient for him to leave out Trump’s promises because he’s a useless idiot for Trump.
Regarding the ‘whataboutisms’ though. If useless idiot Tapper held him self to the same standard that he holds politicians of whom only the Democrats were willing to participate, he’d have long ago taken his own scalp by demanding that CNN fire him.
Useless idiot Tapper has no moral high ground here.
It’s always upon the ‘responsible’ person in the room for compensate for Trump now. Media has normalized how Trump is Trump, so therefore it’s upon everyone else to be the responsible one and not talk about Trump being utterly fucking insane he is 24/7 because its normalized old news.
Trump rambles about shit that absolutely never happened or there’s direct reference to facts he’s lying about every media opportunity of his life? Ah it’s just Monday lets move on .. the real question is why you’re no angel yourself!
Basically it’s the modern version of this:
It is truly astounding how Trump’s behavior has normalized everything America used to find repugnant: his bragging, his cruelty, his rudeness, his non-stop lying.
Adolf Hitler, in Mein Kampf, says “The great masses of the people… will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.” His theory was that when a known falsehood is stated and repeated and treated as if it is self-evidently true, people start to take the falsehood as fact, rather than critically questioning it or ignoring it.
It’s not I sentence I relish typing, but …
Hitler was right.
By an extension of that principle, one might reason that a man who acts like an asshole once (Michael Richards, e.g.) will have to pay for it, but somebody who is always an asshole can get away with it.
I wonder if the new rules apply only to Trump. When he has left the scene, will the new rules still be in effect, or has he been allowed transgressive behavior only because his following is a cult, meaning his successors (right or left) will again have to abide by the basic rules or decency, diplomacy and civility.
One more thing here. I don’t know if anybody cares about this but I’m interested due to the historical perspective.
These cynical and sleazy journalists who use their job to play their game of ‘collecting scalps’ started up after Watergate when all journalists wanted to be Woodward and Bernstein. There were many sincere boy scout journalists who came out of that, but there were also the sleazy types like useless idiot Tapper who realized they could play this game and have their own fun.
In the early 1990s back when newspapers were more important there was a columnist for the Vancouver Province named Brian Kieran. When a new government was elected in 1991, Kieran was overheard on election night (probably in a bar) saying “I’m going to give this government their six month honeymoon, and then I’m going to start collecting scalps.”
I don’t agree with that. There is always a feedback loop to these things and undisputedly Trump has made this things worse, but, Trump was mainly a beneficiary of this strain in American culture and not the cause.
You can see this strain 30 years ago in Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh and before that in Joe McCarthy and his yellow journalism friends. Trump’s friend Roy Cohn got his start with Joe McCarthy.
Americans have also always found many rogue scam artists like Trump to be ‘charming.’
I agree that Trump’s extreme cruelty is ‘newish’ and that possibly even a small majority of Americans enjoy the cruelty, but before Trump back in 2008 I remember Texas Governor Rick Perry was running for President one issue was Perry having refused to commute the carrying out of a death sentence on somebody who, at the time was believed by many to have been wrongly convicted, and by the time Perry was running for President, it had been confirmed by evidence that the person was wrongly convicted.
I remember there were focus groups on this, and they showed that for a majority if not most people in the focus groups, that this actually improved their impression of Perry.
So, the American people collectively, far from just Trump, have always had this cruelty in them, it’s just that Trump is perfectly happy to not only exploit it, but has found ways to successfully do so.
This idea that this is something new is similar to the notion that Americans are always ‘losing their innocence: Americans lost their innocence during the Civil War’, “Americans lost their innocence after Pearl Harbour”, “Americans lost their innocence during Vietnam, “Americans lost their innocence due to Watergate”…
“You can see this strain 30 years ago in Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh and before that in Joe McCarthy and his yellow journalism friends. Trump’s friend Roy Cohn got his start with Joe McCarthy.”
Agree with this. “When they go low, we go high” is a nice sentiment, but turns out it meant shit honestly. Everyone knows who set the tone after the Reagan/Bush Sr. era was over and they were pissed their trickle down scam was mitigated somewhat. So comes Gingrich/Limbaugh’s obstructionism, 9/11 > Patriot Act era, Tea Party, and MAGA.
Right-wing propaganda has a pretty good track record the past few decades.
Tapper is a useless idiot…no argument there.
Re: Indy’s remark about “you are lynching niggers,” I simply prefer the recent framing “whatabout-ism,” & the observation that the concept is not new is moot. What does seem to be a key point you’ve been making is, let me characterize it as camouflaging the things that might be important by hiding them in a forest of things that are both nothings & yet they cry out to grab our attention. We have created the greatest tools ever devised to make the most of this tactic. We are on the verge of yet another giant leap in the same direction. We will all be able to make the most perfect miss the point arguments about things that don’t matter instead of what existential crises we’re confronted with. This we call Empowerment.
Correctly interrogating the Democrats doesn’t make him a pawn of Trump. It just makes him correct. Asking hard questions is his one and only job, and he needs to hold everyone’s feet to the fire.
If embarrasing the Democrats on this issue happens to benefit Trump, so be it. They deserve it. He’s doing his job correctly.
And he has been highly critical of Trump on many, many issues, including this one. Tapper has criticized the Trump administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, stating that they were playing the public for fools.
1.Journalists, especially American journalists, rarely ask hard questions because they’re too ignorant to understand the topics their reporting on. What they regard as ‘hard questions’ is usually nothing more than idiot ‘gotcha’ journalism.
2.The flaw in your argument here is in assuming that useless idiot Tapper is sincere. He isn’t, this is all a game to him.
If he were sincere, he would acknowledge that whatever the Biden Administration did on this, given that Trump on the campaign trail promised to release everything, that it’s perfectly valid for the opposition party to hold the government accountable for its promises.
That is the correct job for the Democrats, and no amount of whataboutism on the Biden Administration changes that.
Not “a game,” but “a job,” which is essentially the same thing. It’s not a journalist’s job to follow his own sincere passions. It is his job to pursue the truth, wherever it is found. I don’t know how Tapper and Kornacki vote, which means they’re probably OK at what they do.
I know that David Souter was probably our greatest justice, because he made all of his decisions based on the Constitution and precedent, even when the result was contrary to his personal beliefs. He pissed off everyone on both sides, just like Tapper. As I see it, anyone in that sort of position who pisses off both sides is probably doing his job correctly.
Let me repeat my original point and add some exclamation points. The big flaw in your argument is that Tapper is 100% correct!!! He is asking the right questions and getting evasive answers.
1.If useless idiot Tapper had any integrity he would have resigned from CNN in 2016 when they helped elect Trump. To believe useless idiot Tapper has any integrity is laughable. Seriously, tell me you’re a moron without telling me you’re a moron.
2.The other point in this is that Trump is not merely the President, but is seriously impliacted in the Epstein case. Do you seriously not believe that if Congressional Democrats had demanded releasing the Epstein files that useless idiot Tapper would not have called the Democrats out for ‘playing politics’ with legal issues?
The two differences since Biden was President that, whatever the credibility of the hypocrisy charge against the Democrats are both fully valid points:
A.Trump promised the Epstein files would be released. The Democrats have a completely legitimate role as the opposition party to demand that Trump live up to his promises.
B.Trump is now the President which, whatever the case before, makes the importance of releasing the Epstein files, and Trump’s refusal to do so, to the point of engaging in constant deflection, far more important.
If you and useless idiot Tapper can’t see the validity of these things, that’s your and his problem and not the problem of the Democratic Party and not the problem of those who disagree with you on this.
There are valid points there, but I’m sure you know you’re just throwing up smokescreens that have nothing to do with the issue, which is that there’s only one valid question to ask a Dem who wants the files released
“If releasing the files is so important, why didn’t you do it in the four years you controlled them? You had them earlier this year and showed no interest in them at all.”
As far as I know, Tapper is the only guy on point.
I don’t know what the answer is, but it is the only question at the heart of the matter.
1.I agree it’s a valid issue about the Democrats as far as it goes, however, these other issues or their significance came up after the election.
2.I’m not shocked as useless idiot Tapper pretends to be with politicians playing politics, and given the validity of those additional issues, the hypocrisy of the Democrats does not equate to them being entirely insincere.
3.In a similar way, I don’t demand that useless idiot Tapper live up to his own claimed high standards and that what he says on this is completely insincere because he didn’t resign from CNN in 2016.
Completely disagree, useless idiot Tapper is not a sincere journalist, he is a sleaze playing a game. Real journalism and what Tapper does have little to nothing in common.
It’s interesting to me in that I post on political boards where people recognize these problems of journalists only interested in pursuing sensationalism through stupid ‘gotcha questions’ or, more narrowly of ‘collecting scalps’ and this includes people who complain about the serious journalism in the U.K, which I regard as the gold standard, or the closest things will ever get to it.
If you watch the BBC for even a few minutes though, you can see the difference in British journalists asking tough questions and what passes for ‘tough questions’ in the U.S, with the British journalists not only asking far more probing questions, but questions that go into far greater depth on an issue than (most) American journalists would even dream of. The reason for this is that British journalists actually have knowledge and expertise of what they’re reporting on, while American television journalists anyway get their jobs because they have nice hair or are attractive.
I think the fact that he annoys you is, ipso facto, proof that he is doing his job correctly.
In reality we are agreeing, but with a different perspective. I am arguing that he is right. You are complaining that he is right.
I would let this go because it’s your board and you’re determined to be right on this.
The problem is you are failing to distinguish and, in fact, don’t recognize the need to distinguish between genuine journalism that, yes, roots out corruption, dishonesty and hypocricy, and journalists like useless idiot Jake Tapper who abuse those necessary functions of journalism to ‘collect scalps.’
This isn’t actually that hard a distinction, and, we can look at useless idiot Tapper’s behavior in the Governor Northam blackface non scandal to see the distinction.
1.A scalp collector, as opposed to a journalist genuinely concerned will mischaractize or lie about the person who scalp they are trying to collect, as useless idiot Tapper did when claiming that Ralph Northam should have disclosed that he had worn blackface in his youth on the campaign trail in that not doing so is somehow, not just a scandal, but a reason for resignation.
2.A scalp collector will be obsessed about the story as useless idiot Tapper was for somewhere around two weeks to the point where for many other media useless idiot Tapper himself because a story: ‘what is Tapper up to?’ In my case, because I was already familiar with the concept of people who abuse journalism to play their own game of collecting scalps, I already knew what useless idiot Tapper was up to. I admit/acknowledge that once I realized that useless idiot Tapper was a fake journalist or an abuser of journalstic practices that I stopped watching him and haven’t seen him since.
3.A scalp collector will insist the person whose scalp they are trying to collect resign from office. I realize that CNN hosts are in the somewhat unusual position of being both a journalist and an editorialist, which really is an uncomfortable fit, but it isn’t the place of a journalist to call for a person to resign. This is regarded as the journalist inserting themselves into the story. And, of course I haven’t watched, but as far as I know, useless idiot Tapper has not called for Trump, Vance, Speaker Johnson or Senate Majority Leader Thune to resign, despite their criminal activity or being a political accomplice to criminal activity.
I’ll also add on this, not that this is a probing question, but a genuine ‘hard’ journalist would not have said after the fact that the Republicans were playing the public for fools, but would have asked in real time “Trump promises to release all the Epstein files, given that it’s known that Trump and Epstein had a long standing relationship friendship, will Trump commit to releasing all the files that contain his name?”
All of your generic points about journalism are merely obfuscation.
The point here is that any good, objective journalist interviewing a Democrat about the Epstein files must ask this question:
“If releasing the files is so important, why didn’t you do it in the four years you controlled them?”
That is not a gotcha question. It is the only relevant question to determine the sincerity of the interviewee.
This is not me insisting on being right. It is, in fact, 100% right, and undeniable.
They will not answer, of course. They will come up with some rambling talking points.
After that, the only valid follow up question is this:
“Perhaps you didn’t hear me. If releasing the files is so important, why didn’t you do it in the four years you controlled them?
And just keep repeating that until they either answer the question or walk away.
Although that is obviously the correct question, Tapper is the only major figure who has asked it. To me, that means he’s the only interviewer who has demonstrated any integrity.
There is only one reason to object to that question, and it is tribal. You would have to believe that one must only ask hard questions of the people you disagree with, and not of the people on your team.
Of course, the Dems have no answer that I know of. What can they say?
“Because Garland is a wimp, and Biden had no idea what was going on and probably didn’t even know he was President some days”
“Because we were protecting Bill Clinton” (or some liberal pedophiles, as the crazies would have us believe)
I don’t know the answer to that question myself, but I sure as hell would love to hear somebody answer it honestly and spin-free.
I think the honest answer is probably this. “At that time we had no idea that Trump was so opposed to their release, and now it seems certain that he must be covering something up.”
Good luck finding the honest man to say that, Diogenes. You’re gonna need a bigger lantern.
Oops, I failed to complete the first point, I meant I would have let this go, but I didn’t want my silence to seem like agreement.
Or the answer could have been it wasn’t a priority, it was only the conspiracy theorists that made it a priority during election season. This is the manhours the FBI haphazardly put in, and who knows if victims names or anything else will be released for their efforts:
“pressured the FBI to put approximately 1,000 personnel…on 24-hour shifts to review approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records in order to produce more documents that could then be released on an arbitrarily short deadline. This effort…was haphazardly supplemented by hundreds of FBI New York Field Office personnel, many of whom lacked the expertise to identify statutorily-protected information regarding child victims and child witnesses or properly handle FOIA requests. ”
Seeing what other requests take with regards to Cybersecurity, UFOs, and other interesting documents, FOIA requests take a long ass time to process and it’s probably even worse for victims.
The answer is pretty clearly, one side ran on an entire conspiracy of it not being released, insinuating something to hide and then said there was nothing to see there. So they’re going to be zinged for it by the Democrats because it’s a taste of their own medicine for “just asking questions” about the conspiracies they fostered and claiming to be the party of “transparency” – so of course they would.
Maybe the better question would be why they insinuated a conspiracy the entire time and made it such a big deal? Maybe the better question would be, why did you spend a shitload of taxpayer money and FBI hours half-assing what’s essentially a FOIA request for no reason?
That’s why it’s disingenuous questioning. Should we ask the Trump administration to dedicate money and man hours to scour archives to release all information regarding Elvis’ death too? Probably not, but since they spent the better part of the last year claiming the equivalent that he faked his death and then said there’s nothing to it, that’s why they’re getting the smoke now. And it’s well deserved.
If it wasn’t a priority, the follow up is “why not?” The right-wing lunatics are not the only ones who want to see what’s in those files. I don’t know anyone of any political persuasion who isn’t curious, and more important, there is absolutely no reason not to release them (redacted to protect the victims, of course). That is true now. It was true in January.
As somebody who doesn’t care for Donald Trump, I have one more question. Is there stuff in there highly damaging to Donald Trump? If so, why did they keep it a secret and allow him to become President again? Is it because nobody at DOJ or FBI ever thought of that? I don’t think so.
I think it’s probably that there’s nothing in there about Trump that’s more significant than a birthday card given by one hound to another on a milestone birthday. Embarrassing, perhaps, but nothing more. (And not even that embarrassing. We’ve all probably done something silly like that.)
That said, I am very curious about whether Epstein was doing any spying, how precisely he acquired such immense wealth, and the identify of the clients identified by the victims. I don’t care who flew on Epstein’s plane around the states, but if the US Marshal’s office really has the passenger logs INTO the Virgin Islands, I would be very interested to see that. In addition, if they have records of the helicopter passengers from St. Thomas to Epstein’s island, I would like to see those as well.
All of those things were just as important a year ago, when Biden’s team had the records.
—————
Let me depart from that for a minute and indulge in total speculation. I think there really is material in there that will hurt some Dem favorites as much or more than Trump, and Biden’s DoJ didn’t want that to come out.
Maybe I’m just being one of the crazies.
Or maybe not.
I’d say the probability is about 50%.
But there’s only one way to find out.
The most likely explanation is that ‘Federalist Society contributor’ Merrick Garland supported Trump and the Congressional Democrats were more concerned with January 6.
At a minimum, Garland bent over backwards to go easy on Trump and other Republicans while going hard on Democrats.
If all that Trump did was send that ‘silly’ birthday card to Epstein then why is he threatening to sue his friend and long time supporter Rupert Murdoch over it?
I think it’s pretty obvious that Trump is a pedophile if not a child rapist.
“If it wasn’t a priority, the follow up is “why not?” The right-wing lunatics are not the only ones who want to see what’s in those files. I don’t know anyone of any political persuasion who isn’t curious, and more important, there is absolutely no reason not to release them (redacted to protect the victims, of course). That is true now. It was true in January.”
Probably because it’s untangling several laws there for specific reasons for some data, such as unsealing the case, that a judge can’t grant out of the blue. It takes money and manhours for redactions, and you can’t just release victim names and photos, much less potential illegal images. The DOJ under Biden was pretty clearly meticulous, since they took their sweet ass time on Trump’s own cases. Turns out dotting all the I’s and crossing all the T’s to make a case doesn’t matter a whole lot when a felon can just be elected and cancel the law. Also, I don’t even know that any FOIA requests were denied, is there evidence they were?
Personally I rather the FBI work on actual cases of merit with taxpayer money than conspiracy theories that make media headlines, but this is the regime of wasting money on deporting gardeners, deploying the national guard senselessly, giving tax breaks to the rich, paying for bombs to kill off starving people, and wasting a hundred million in bombs to set back a foreign country’s weapons program a couple months. So it’s not surprising they’re redirecting the FBI’s resources to this stupid shit.
Maybe when they’ve released what they got after the next unqualified FBI redaction crunch and accidentally exposes some victim to be harassed by the lunatics as a crisis actor, we’ll just have a big bonfire of vaccines and the tons of wasted foreign aid to the starving, led by the Qanon Shaman out in the middle of DC. Then the both sides media can ask why Obama and Biden let it happen.
Scoopy excels at empty rhetoric..likely an English major.
David Zazlav runs WB and bent the knee because he’s a nine figure earned and wanted his corporate and personal tax breaks, and Tapper is an eight figure earner and the same. That’s really all you need to know: follow the money.
Wait a few months, they’ll be full on in Mamdani is a satanic Stalin-ist mode soon enough. Any dissent to corporate media executives, investors, and talent profiteers infinite quest for consumption, wealth, and power is going to be crushed in full propaganda mode.
The NYT is certainly aiming hit pieces at Mamdani.
Indy: While I don’t necessarily agree with all the details in your characterization, let alone predictions of thing that have not happened yet, I certainly agree with your approach of “follow the money” as a good place to start. Economics doesn’t explain everything, but it’s a healthy chunk of the things amenable to our ability to explain coherently.
Continuing your way of looking at situations, I’d like to suggest the Ellisons’ takeover of Paramount rife with corruption on both parties of the “merger” & the FCC to boot, is a milestone in the current calvacade of cave-ins by the rich & powerful, but unprincipled.
Adam: Second your motion thanking Merrick Garland for his lifetime achievements in surrendering the U.S. to MAGA. We really put WW2’s capitulation by France to shame. We’re now the greatest in that who ever was.
I would say this is a very political issue that is used by all sides and it more interesting to all people that want to use it for political issues. I’ve seen both nutjobs from the right and nutjobs from the left want the files released, both sure that it will cripple the opposition. You know, the same moronic bullshit that we hear all the time.
I would guess the reason they don’t want to release the names is probably pretty straightforward. A lot of big names would probably be under attack from all sides and many of them may not have really even done that much. I don’t know much about this affair either as there are sexual crimes going on all the time so this one doesn’t really stand out. Only important to those that think it will hurt the opposition, none of these people care one bit about any possible victims, all have 100% selfish motives. People in power don’t want to have all their names dragged thru the mud and so they always agree it is best to keep things secret. Of course these people will still use it for political purposes whenever they can because they are all basically lying pieces of worthless shit when you get right down to it.
I expect the Epstein files incriminate both sides of the aisle. Shutting down the House to avoid a vote on the release is a pretty sure sign,
And for some reason, you’re still providing cover for Trump. There is actually significant evidece that Trump participated in Epstein’s activities (including the birthday letter released by the Wall Street Journal of all papers) including the Steele Dossier the vast majority of which has not been discredited. On the balance of probabilities I think rapist Trump certainly participated in sex parties and likely raped under age girls.
The scenario about to play out is pretty simple: the DOJ will make a deal with Maxwell to make claims about Bill Clinton, going back to the usual well again. Whether or not the claims are true won’t matter, she’s going to want her freedom. Her and her lawyer will be smart enough not to implicate Trump for a pardon, whether or not who did what is true, they’re going to play the game.
What’s bizarre is MAGA’s obsession with the Clintons. I don’t know that anyone on the left, except maybe some very old guard wealthy nostalgic Democrats who give a flying fuck about Bill Clinton in 2025. I don’t know many who even give a fuck about Biden. They don’t seem to get their side is the only one who belong to a cult and buy merchandise of a person, and tie Trump to their personal identity more than anyone on the other side does.
Maybe it will work and the conspiracy cult will take their sacrifice and nod their heads and move on. Maybe it won’t. I just know the play here once again is obvious, and once again what actually happened doesn’t matter.
If I were advising Maxwell, here is what I would say:
Agree that you will do anything Trump wants, including lying for him, as soon as you get your pardon. Play hardball, insist on the pardon first. Have your lawyer tape all of your conversations with DOJ. Then move to a country that will not extradite you, and do absolutely nothing you promised. Expose the entire sordid deal that DOJ made with you, and tell the absolute truth about everything else from then on. Enjoy the rest of your life away from the spotlight, knowing that you have done one very good thing, as partial penance for the horrible things you have done in the past. If you believe in God, do as many kind things as you can for the rest of your life, and hope that He will forgive you for the sins committed in your life with Epstein.
I doubt she’s a very ethical person and has been a noted liar in her past dealings. She’s very unlikely to have a Snowden moment the way she’s lived her life and having no problem with it, and that’s fine with Trump as long as he gets what he wants: testimony he’s innocent (whether he is or not) and implicating people Trump want implicated.
Based on Trump’s mob boss dealings with Zelensky to try to fabricate against his enemies, and Trump trying to coerce people to come up with votes in 2020, it’s pretty obvious what she’s going to have to do to get pardoned.
Totally unrealistic.
On the New York Times article itself, I heard what I thought was a generally better journalist who pointed out that Epstein working for the CIA doesn’t necessarily mean anything other than Epstein had so many connections to people who not only wouldn’t normally wouldn’t connect to each other but that the CIA had a hard time connecting to. It could very well be that Epstein simply worked as a messenger for the CIA and didn’t even know himself the significance of what he was passing on.
That journalist also made a big deal of Epstein not having any education in finance which was becoming a much more significant thing in banking and finance around the time he started working in finance (as opposed to the old boys club where people (I.E men who didn’t know anything were hired) simply because they were friends with people who had management jobs in the firms. The Wiki article on Epstein makes him sound like an self educated financial genius which I think would go a long way to explaining much anyway of his wealth, whereas that journalist claimed that Epstein wasn’t actually regarded as having a sophisticated knowledge of finance.
I have no idea myself but I lean towards what wiki says because I can’t believe he would have been hired and promoted many times because he procured young girls for the senior executives.
I’m sure some will accuse me here of defending Epstein, but there was an episode of the British T.V show Yes, Minister in which one minister was found in his MI5 files to have engaged in seeking out prostitutes. When the titular minister in the show asks his civil service permanent secretary where he found the time to do that, the permanent secretary replies “I find that people who are particularly active in one area of life tend to be active in all areas of life.”
I suspect this was the case with Epstein and that he was not doing all the other things to cover for his pedophilia and other sex crimes.
So, given that, he most likely was also a patriot who wanted to help the CIA and that he was a self taught financial genius, which is known to be an area with occupations where people can become extremely wealthy without engaging in illegal activities (likely corrupt, but not illegal.)
Seriously doubt he was financial savant. What is known is that he made rich people feel “special.” Also explain the elaborate video camera setups he had in his various homes…
I expect the Epstein files will be released the day after the Kennedy assassination files are finally released
Thanks, everyone. I don’t think it’s fruitful, but thanks. You all made good points.
The main flaw in the discussion has been that everyone keeps making the same mistake that our notions of duty & division of responsibility etc, are the way we learned about during our lives. These things are not laws of nature. They’re made-up ideas about what was right & wrong during our era, in wherever we’ve lived our lives, or places we paid close attention to.
For instance, I don’t know that journalists have ever thought their job was what they said to us that it was. I believe what we were led to believe was their rationale for doing what they did was always a fantasy mostly intended to safeguard their job security. This puts Scoopy’s assertions that truth has a high place in the calculation in doubt. Likewise, the importance of informing me, & informing the public are somewhere between merely false & outright bullshit.
I didn’t need to know about the “Biden cover-up.” I agree generally with Scoopy’s takes on Kamala’s campaign fuckups. Virtually no one on the Dem side understood how deep the problems are in the way the left-of-center has governed. The quest for perfection led to catastrophically “compromise” laws & continual self-destructive drawing of lines both in politics & in society (ie social media).
Being the “grownup” is *not* what a grownup should do. You have to face the battle as it is, not as you fantasize it to be. The most reponsible action Tapper could have taken would’ve been to not pursue that story. There are many true things that are not the best use of our collective attention. This was one of those things.
There’s nothing Scoopy can say that will make me respect the unscrupulous dog that Tapper is. The only difference between him & Tucker Carlson is which hill they are firing down on the clueless Dems from. Dems are starting to get the right end of the stick, but they have been too slow to learn. They are not the ones who will carry us out of this ditch, because they are too conflicted. They believe lots of things about “people” & changing of habits that are unrealistic & will be so at least for the lifespan of today’s newborn. They believe the dream is to reduce our energy use to zero, rather than as close as possible to non-polluting & low-contributing to climate change; but other than that, the ideal should be lots of it, as cheap as can be. Housing in California & other blue places has the same kind of problems bc of wrong-headed perfecting for the wrong values. Trying to only build “affordable” units only leads to overall shortage, exacerbating the very problem those few units that are actually built over the timeframe that that effort takes that those units were meant to solve. Local activists want recognition of their work, but what they did amounts to spitting into the wind. They stood in stout defense of stagnation where shortage demands growth. They were unknowingly part of the problem, not merely only a small part of the solution.
Meanwhile, we are arguing over “journalists doing their job” when our best answer to what that job is, is find & report on the truth. But that is not what we need from them. As has been mentioned, their idea of how to do their job of “fair-&-balanced” has been severely broken for at least a decade. Longer, I believe. It’s been mentioned here that some journalists think it’s their job to know things & to use that knowledge as a digging tool. I agree with that. The conventional wisdom is that a reporter needs to find relevant people to talk to, to slice & dice the issue from multiple angles, & then direct quoting those people is always “true” bc the quotes are a faithful representation of what they said. This is a wrong job.
Obviously, the Right is Rotten. Less obviously, so is the Left. Only, they are not mirror images. They are heads & tails. The ways they led to the (partial, so far) destruction of what America pretended to be & the world mostly believed in, are different, but part of the same tapestry. It was bound to happen, for lots of reasons, not least bc things do change, over an 80-year span. But the major cause, IMO, is that “education” is ineffectual as propaganda. Our makeup is 90% low-information. Every time we try to educate our way out of a paper bag, only the choir gets the message. That’s never going to work if we want “everyone” to have their agency in how everything we do gets done.
Which is to say, the only good we ever do is putting Steverino in his place. Problem is, Steve-o won’t ever take the hint. And he’s the only one who should matter to us. Scoopy & Adam, I love you both. But, you guys can “mostly agree” & agree to disagree on but a small corner of the debate, & yet that’s a dead end. No offense.
Yellow journalism is as old as journalism.
The difference is yellow journalism is slanted by its intent. Fair & balanced, but short on insight, is slanted by accident. The only real answer possible for the former is to criminalize it. My answer to the latter would be public awareness. Only, that’s too much to ask & my Plan B is Eat, Drink & Be Merry, for tomorrow we are dust.
I don’t know if there is any evidence available, or that there ever will be any available, but I would be very surprised if Donald Trump did not have sex with some of the underage girls that Epstein was making available. But I would be very surprised if there were not some Democrats involved with that as well. All that said, none of this changes the fact that, even aside from the Epstein matter, Trump is the most corrupt and immoral President in U.S. history. Nobody is even close.
South Park shows the President in bed with Satan. I think it’s outrageous for them to depict sex with the most evil force in the history of existence.
And Satan wasn’t very nice either.
Wow, this was certainly intense. Having lived long enough now to have acquired at least a drop of wisdom, I am once again forced to return to Occam’s Razor. The reason that Biden didn’t release files is the EXACT same reason that Trump won’t – this thing a political nuclear bomb. No one comes out unscathed – not even the people who think they’re innocent. Why? Because modern politics is a massive network of contacts and relationships and even though Epstein was at the center, the people he lured in were undoubtedly the very rich and powerful. And should a list of his ‘clients’ ever be released, virtually every US politician or business leader would likely be implicated in some fashion, irrespective of how innocent their association was.
If some senator had sat down for a friendly discussion with a wealthy donor who was eventually revealed to be on the Epstein list, then their entire relationship would be bought into question. Now, instead of a single senator, imagine EVERY senator. And EVERY member of the Supreme court. And EVERY Congressman/woman. The chaos that would erupt would be catastrophic to the United States.
The democrats might as well go as hard as they can to win some public favor with the disenchanted MAGA loons, because, politically, they have very little to lose. No matter how many times they peck away at this, the Epstein files will NEVER see the light of day – even if they proved Trump was innocent. The crater they would leave would swallow every branch of the government. Simple as that really.
I think you are essentially correct.
I’d leave that as the default explanation until proven otherwise.
I wonder whether the Democrats are now demanding full disclosure because they truly want the files released, or if they feel safe to do so in the knowledge that the files won’t ever be released, thus allowing them to gain political capital by pretending to want it. Given the sordid and cynical nature of politics, I’d guess the latter.
It’s interesting that there have not been more leaks from people who have reviewed the files. Christopher Wray must have a good idea of what is in there, as must many of his subordinates, but … crickets.
Alan Dershowitz, as Epstein’s lawyer, has seen the names of some of the clients, those accused by the victims in legal proceedings. Dershowitz has asserted that no current officeholders are named. His deliberate and calculated use of the word “current” as a qualifier strongly implies trouble for one or more former officeholders.
(Could the lunatics be right about Bill Clinton?)
British welcome for Trump says it all:
If anybody is further interested and to take this in both a less charged and more historical direction, this Epstein situation is not new in the world, but has significant parallels to a situation in Belgium 30-40 years ago relating to serial killer, rapist and pedophile Marc Dutroux.
He initially received a light sentence in 1989 for the abduction and rape of five young girls, just a five year sentence and three years served, which, even by European standards at the time was very lenient.
He was rearrested in 1996 on charges that resulted from crimes he (and several accomplices) committed after he got out of jail in 1992.
The high profile nature of the rearrest brought to the Belgian public both Dutroux and his first sentence with many Belgians believing the criminal and justice system must either have been incompetent or engaged in a coverup.
When one of his accomplices said that Dutroux hosted a party that had been attended by government officials and police officers it led to the view that he was procuring girls for political officials and other elites and this so outraged Belgians that in 1996 a protest in Brussels was held attended by 250,000 Belgian (in a country with a population of just over 10 million.)
A public inquiry into the case found that Dutroux and others had been protected by and from the authorities but downplayed the extreme allegations (the elite engaging in pedophilia.)
I don’t know if journalists reporting on Epstein knowing about this case would alter their reporting, but certainly I think they should be aware simply because they should know of parallels.
The only thing I can find on this with a quick google search is a Guardian story from 2019 entitled “Is Jeffrey Epstein the Marc Dutroux of America?”
In a similar manner on the importance of American journalists lacking institutional knowledge but on a different case which hasn’t been brought up here, is the Stephen Colbert situation.
CBS leaks that Colbert’s show lost $40 or so million (and apparently up to $150 million over three seasons) and all the naive reporters (who like to believe they’re cynical or skeptical) automatically believe it. I can cut them a little slack here because it has been reported in separate respected media (like Variety) and previously that ad revenue for late night network television has dropped significantly over the last number of years (roughly cut in half.) However, prior to that, up to, say, around 2015, it had been previously reported that late night television was the largest profit center for the networks. So, would revenue being cut in half result in losses of a late night show in the $40-50 million range?
1.I used to be an accountant and I’m aware that financials aren’t ‘set in stone’ as many people rather naively believe but that accountants have to make different choices on both the revenue and expense side, but especially on the expense side, that can result in very different bottom lines. Both generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and government regulations/laws accomodate this by mandating that the books have to be kept in the same way year after year so can’t change how the numbers are derived to either minimize or maximize income in any given year.
A television show’s income statement is based on the internal accounting of the network and so there are a number of easy examples here. The most obvious is the allocation of the network overhead (the most obvious being the wages of the CEO and executives and directors of the network) to every program on the network. How was this done? No reporter who reported on this knows and I doubt that most of the reporters even know that network overhead is a line expense in internal accounting. Different accounting for this can lead to very different bottom lines for each program.
On the revenue side, CBS themselves acknowledged that the claimed $60 million revenue for the show was based only on advertising revenue and left out anciliary revenue that has increased in recent years (like revenue from youtube) I would tend to agree that the ancillary revenue probably isn’t that great and certainly hasn’t made up for the loss in advertising revenue over the last number of years, but people covering this should have asked about it as an example of a tough question.
2.Anybody with institutional knowledge of Hollywood should know the line ‘in Hollywood the most creative people are the accountants.’ The most famous situation of this is when agents negotiated for their actor clients a percentage of the profit (net income) of the film and were told the film lost money. According to the Warner Brothers, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix lost $167 million. Any article that covered this network claimed Stephen Colbert money loss should have mentioned this famous example of what is known as ‘Hollywood Accounting.’. Agents for actors have responded to this by since demanding that their clients receive a share of the revenue of the film and not the net income as that number is publicly available and can’t be fudged as the studio doesn’t determine the revenue reported.
4.The supposedly cynical/skeptical reporters justified their naively posting CBS’s claim at face value and accepting it as fact by claiming that even Colbert and his people never denied the show was losing money. But, that actually really isn’t true either. While it is true that they did not directly deny it, the did point out a couple counter claims:
A.There had been ongoing negotiations prior to this announced cancelation and at no time did CBS demand significant wage cuts. The main direct expenses for late night shows are the salaries of the host and the writers with Colbert himself apparently making $15 million a year. If Colbert had been told $5 money was the most CBS would pay him in a new contract, that would have cut any likely real losses significantly and maybe even brought the show back to profitability.
B.Colbert himself joked about the claimed losses by saying something like ‘we may have lost $24 million but not $40 million.’ This was a subtle denial of the claimed losses, a refernce to the $16 million CBS paid Donald Trump for the absurd 60 Minutes lawsuit settlement, and I think a subtle reference to the ‘Hollywood Accounting’ that CBS accounted for the payout by placing this $16 million expense as an expense item of Colbert’s show.
Should say, “If Colbert had been told that $5 million was the most CBS would pay him in a new contract.” Sorry for the error.
IMO, CBS retribution on Colbert is but a chapter in the historic milestone story of the Paramount takeover by the Ellison family, with its hearty helping of corruption by both the government & the rich individuals at the financial helm. It’s only natural that the guilty parties would all lie about what’s really going on. This story itself is but one volume in the multi-book series of craven capitulation by greedy rich people who don’t want to sacrifice one dollar of their ill-gotten gains, to include Columbia, Musk, Zuck, Bezos, & all of the other tech titans who bent the knee. In short, all of these things are of a piece.
It’ll be interesting to see whether they try to control Matt Stone and Trey Parker. The harder they try, the more outrageous Matt and Trey will become, which means that the only way to rein them in is to pay off their $1.5B, write it off as a loss and dump them.
Giving those two guys a long-term contract just before the merger was a nice little time bomb planted by Paramount.
Of course, South Park makes a fortune and Colbert’s show lost money, so maybe it really is all about the Benjamins.
Another thought:
The evidence suggests that Colbert’s show really was losing vast sums. It was a bleeding arm on the Paramount body. My question is whether there were ways to stanch the bleeding without amputating the show.
They could have produced the show more cheaply. Colbert employs a band. When Jon Batiste was there, it was arguably the best jazz band in America. But why pay the cost of a primo band when it only plays for the studio audience during commercial breaks (with occasional exceptions)? Damn, I used to get so upset when the show would return from a commercial and I would catch only the tail end of a really great piece. Furthermore, all of that great music was producing no revenue. They issued no albums – nothing.
If Paramount + included all of Jon Batiste’s numbers from the commercial breaks, I would absolutely subscribe to it. But what did CBS do with all that great music? Is it lost forever?
They could have run the show like a business. Colbert’s job was, and still is really, to crush Fallon and Kimmel. Steal their guests; steal their advertisers; whatever it takes. Colbert and his producer should run the show as if any money lost came out of their own pockets. Johnny Carson knew how to do that. But those three network guys are all pals. They work the same days, same hours, with the same guests. They even appear on each other’s shows. The top NBC stars are allowed to go on the other two shows, etc. Basically all three shows were contentedly and complacently losing money. How long were the networks going to allow that to continue? I would not be surprised to see dramatic changes at the end of Fallon’s and Kimmel’s contracts as well. (Although if they get down to only the Tonight Show, the last man standing might turn out to be profitable. Fallon is signed through 2028, so NBC just has to hope for the best. Kimmel has only a few months left, and I expect him to get the axe.)
Those three all use basically the same format. Not one of them has tried anything interesting like Craig Ferguson. Ferguson ran a funnier and better talk show than those three, and at a tiny fraction of the cost. Colbert has something like 200 people working on his show. Craig ran a better show with – what? a third of that? a fourth?
I think Stephen Colbert is wonderful. He’s funny and smart, and I agree with his position on Trump. But if I were the CBS executive in charge, I would have axed his show. CBS is a business, man. Paramount is a public corporation, with shareholders to report to. The new merged company will be as well.
(But I would also have tried to find a way to retain Colbert in some other, presumably more profitable, format. I probably would have offered him a production deal where he gets X amount of money to produce a show, 11:30 or otherwise. From that he would pay all salaries and expenses and keep the rest for himself. If he uses up all the budget on salaries and expenses, he makes zero, and he might even lose money if he exceeds the budget, because anything above that would have to come out of his pocket. )
The biggest problem in dealing with artists is that they basically have no concept of how business works. They just want a big salary and an unlimited budget, and if they don’t get it, they rail against the “greedy corporations,” or claim they are being targeted for their political views.
In 2017, Colbert took in about $135 million in ad revenue, which was enough to generate a decent profit on costs estimated at $110 million. Last year, the show took in about $85 million in ad revenue, and costs have gone up, not down. This has turned a show that used to be about $25 million a year in the black into one that is about $40 million per year in the red. The red ink began about four years ago, and has gotten worse every year. Moreover, the decline in ad dollars is accelerating, and there is no reason to believe the trend will slow or reverse.
Last year, the network late-night shows drew an estimated $220 million in advertising revenue, compared to DOUBLE that in 2017 (according to Guideline, an advertising data firm).
Jimmy Kimmel himself, the most business-savvy of the three, declared last year, “I Don’t Know If There Will Be Any Late-Night Shows On Network TV In 10 Years”. He continued, “Maybe there’ll be one.” He was right, except that the snowball just started rolling downhill faster than he expected.
I expect that Kimmel will also be cancelled when his contract is up next May (the same time as Colbert’s).
Fallon is signed through 2028, and he may be able to run a profitable show as the last man standing, depending on how the ad dollars shake out.
I consider this a real shame because I like Colbert’s and Kimmel’s shows and find Fallon’s to be a total yawn-fest.
Yeah, I really liked Craig. Yes, some good points about late night shows. But something like it could be said about TV more broadly. With every Boomer gone, another nail drives into the coffin of TV as we knew it.
There’s a reason TV commercials are so often prescription meds & such that interest mainly old folks.
OTOH, while I don’t matter, I’m enjoying overseas TV more than our domestic supply. Even when in foreign languages, like Shogun & Pachinko. I’m acclimated enough to subtitles not to be disrupted too much. American eyeballs on the whole ain’t gonna follow my lead, not soon, at any rate.
That said, por que no los dos? Both things are true. TV is a business, & the rich people at the helm have no scruples. Sometimes business reasons give cover for personal gain.
Weren’t the Epstein files sealed by a judge until this year? I don’t think Biden had the opportunity. *Overtly* breaking the law is a Trump thing.
In a nutshell, Biden never released what he could, and never petitioned the courts to release what he couldn’t.
Biden’s, Trump 45’s and Obama’s DoJ never petitioned the courts to unseal the documents from the 2008 grand jury, where Dershowitz claimed names were named. The reasons were “protecting individual’s reputations.” This is one of the things that incites the right-wing base. “If there are pedophiles, why were we protecting their reputations?”
(The “correct” answer is “That’s how our laws work.” The right-wing response is “There are greater laws than ours.”)
———- Frankly, I would be happy with only one set of documents. The US Marshals office allegedy has a record of the passengers who flew on Epstein’s plane TO THE VIRGIN ISLANDS.
Then everyone will turn into Frank Reynolds on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: “I was on the sex island – but only for the snorkeling.”