Two Impressions on the Epstein Files

[It has occurred to me, given little NPR’s recent reports that the Trump Regime’s Justice Department has failed to release an Epstein victim’s witness statements allegedly describing that victim’s encounters with President Donald Trump, that the mighty New York Times had to be a bit disgruntled at being scooped.  I share a bit of the Times’ chagrin. 😉  What follows was substantially completed before NPR’s recent publication, deferred for other posts.  In entering it now, I’m supposing:  Better late than never.]

You certainly don’t need a recitation of the facts surrounding the evil perpetrated by the late Jeffrey Epstein and those who collaborated with him.  Nor do you need a rundown on the continuing rank hypocrisy and obstructionism – most glaring under the Trump Administration, but certainly not confined to the Trump Administration – of the various law enforcement agencies over many years who have professed sympathy for Epstein’s victims while mostly doing nothing to enable them to obtain justice.  Only two impressions. 

At the time this is typed, in excess of 3 million of what has been reported to be between 5 and 6 million records in the Trump Regime’s Department of Justice’s investigative files on Epstein have been released, and the Department has announced that it will not release the last 2 million.  It’s hard to see how release of these last remaining records can be compelled; Congress could pass a law, but it’s already done that, and the Regime clearly couldn’t care less.  I have also seen it reported that President Donald Trump’s name appears in the files over 1000 times.  Although it is undisputed that he maintained a relationship with Epstein over quite a span of years, the President has vigorously denied that he ever engaged in any illicit activities with Epstein’s underage female victims (or, let’s call them what they were:  girls).  At the same time, it’s clear that Mr. Trump’s toadies at the Department of Justice will follow whatever he orders.  The crux of it is that Mr. Trump – his own savviest media advisor – knows – he knows – that stonewalling on this issue is terribly politically damaging.  If the President was confident that he would not be hurt too badly by the files’ full disclosure, one can tenably surmise based upon his past behavior that the last 2 million records would have been released by now.  So I ponder:  what is the one thing that a man might fear who has been able to maintain the rabid support of his base despite his audio-taped indication that he could “grab [women] by the p—y,” despite his negligently causing hundreds of thousands of unnecessary COVID-related American deaths, despite his inexplicably obsequious relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite his 34 felony convictions, and despite his incitement of an traitorous attack on our nation’s Capitol?  What is the one revelation that a man, who has politically survived his undisputed commission of so many detestable actions with his core base intact, might fear would finally turn his rabid supporters against him?

I’ll leave that one to you.

As to the second impression:  I never thought I’d say this; anyone who knows me or reads these notes may well understandably consider me oblivious, paranoid, senseless as a goose, or dumber than a rock – or all of the above, plus dozens of other similar apt descriptions — but neither you nor I have probably generally considered me to be … naïve.  But I was.  All these years, I scoffed at conspiracist groups who maintained that the world was being run by a global cabal of elite pedophiles.  The Epstein files that have been released seemingly indicate that there does indeed exist an international group of wealthy business and government elites across the political spectrum who have and do indeed believe that they are entitled to abuse and destroy the lives of the vulnerable for their own pleasure.  Although it is still uncertain which of the powerful men coming into Epstein’s orbit exploited the women trafficked by Epstein, it seems clear that given the number of men named and the number of Epstein victims that have come forward, that many, many men were involved.  While these conspiracists were clearly wrong with regard to some vital particulars – the pedophilia cabal they warned against obviously does not include all of the globally politically and financial powerful, it is certainly not limited to left wing elites, and (wait for it) Donald Trump is most certainly not the man who is going to bring it to justice for the victims — arguably one must concede that this particular conspiracy theory was not entirely without a grain of reality.

I never believed it.  One or two megarich and powerful monsters, sure; we have constant evidence of the evil in the world.  But the kind of concerted and broad ring that Mr. Epstein appears to have developed and serviced?  I never thought that such could actually exist.  I was confident that these conspiracists were entirely wacked out, howling at the moon about global pedophilia rings while standing in a Los Angeles parking lot waiting to prove that the 1969 lunar landing was a hoax or scanning the sky for Italian lasers altering voting machines.

It would appear that their claims of the existence of an international pedophilia ring weren’t entirely wrong, after all.