In the first two posts in this series I described the constant onslaught led by the filthy rich against our democracy, and identified groups of people who supported those attacks. In this post, I offer two thoughts about going forward.
We cannot go back
The guidepost of the Biden Administration and the Congressional Democrats was a return to normalcy. They were convinced that Trump was a blemish on the brilliance of the US, a blemish that would come off with some scouring; that it was a nightmare from which voters had awakened. They believed that the US could resume its position as Leader of the Free World, the greatest economy ever, the center of innovation and progress and a beacon of freedom.
They restored an economy devastated by the Covid shutdown and the millions it killed and damaged. They were fairly successful in restoring the faith of our allies in our stability and worthiness to lead.
They were wiped out in the 2022 mid-terms. Harris promised to continue the restoration project. The voters rejected her. The Democratic Party dream of restoring normalcy is dead.
1. We cannot go back because that is not what the majority of us want. Whatever Trump voters want, it isn’t restoration. Non-voters wouldn’t go to the polls to vote for restoration or to vote against Trumpian chaos and destruction. Harris voters were willing to accept restoration, but even among them a large number, perhaps a majority, wanted much more.
2. We cannot go back because Trump has wrecked the institutions and norms we need for restoration. He has gutted agencies devoted to accumulation of soft power around the world, especially USAID. In the process he is potentially responsible for millions of premature deaths. How do we recover from that?
He attacked our basic research institutions. He made it scary for foreign students to study and do research here. He handed our national health efforts to an ignorant buffoon. He turned the Department of Justice into a stable of third-rate lawyers loyal to himself. We aren’t going to recover from that for a long time.
3. We cannot go back because John Roberts and the Fasces won’t let us. They have wrecked the legal structure of the Administrative State, which sought to replace arbitrary decisions by the President with informed decision-making by independent boards for technical and scientific matters. They have blunted legislative power on purely political grounds. They have formed a protective barrier around the Presidency, so that Trump is effectively beyond the rule of law.
In the process, they have surrendered the the judicial power. Trump is free to do as he sees fit, throwing his tariff tantrums, his prosecutions, his lawsuits, his ICE thugs, and the US military around like a toddler angry at his toys. John Roberts and the Fash Five won’t let District Courts enforce the laws Trump is violating, meaning that the judicial branch is irrelevant.
When our young people think on this, why would they trust the government? How do we persuade them to follow the rules?
4. We cannot go back because no sane national leader would take us seriously. The period of US domination in world affairs is done. There is no going back.
5. We cannot go back because Trump has empowered the stinking worst of us to bully and torment us. They and their vile ideas sit like dead things in the dark poised to spread their deadly poisons.
6. We cannot go back because the filthy rich, the Theists, the Neoliberals, and the Grifters don’t like it and they will figure out how to hold on to as much of their power as they can. Too many weaklings sit in positions of authority, unwilling to protect the democracy that gave them their positions. They are easy prey for the anti-democracy ghouls.
But suppose a Democrat gets elected president, and Democrats take the House and Senate. It’s possible that she would try to rule like Trump, using the powers he asserts and those given him by John Roberts and the Reactionaries. That’s not far-fetched. See this at The Atlantic. Or maybe Roberts and the Revanchists will apply their double-standard to Democratic presidents, leaving the precedents for the next right-wing wannabe dictator.
Where should we go?
I don’t know.
But I do know we need to think about it starting immediately. The Democratic Party has run as the “We aren’t them” party for so long it’s in their DNA. Nothing changes unless we force change.
One possible starting place for a future is Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms. They make a great program, and as the pic on the front page shows, they come with Norman Rockwell images. FDR articulated these ideas in his 1941 State of the Union Address, and expanded on them in his 1944 address:
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
These principles are the precise opposite of the program of Trump and the filthy rich.
Changing the future
If we don’t organize and act together, the forces that put us here will try to restore the social structures that benefit them and no one else. And as Hannah Arendt tells us, participation in the political sphere is one part of what it means to be a full human being. Certainly she participated, as this PBS documentary shows.
There are plenty of people willing to organize against Trump. We also need people to help us see and organize for a better future.
Trump Keeps Demanding that You Stop Talking about His Jeffrey Epstein Problem
“POTUS is clearly furious,” said a person close to the White House, who, like others in this story, was granted anonymity to discuss the mood inside the West Wing. “It’s the first time I’ve seen them sort of paralyzed.”
A senior White House official told POLITICO the president is frustrated with his staff’s inability to tamp down conspiracy theories they once spread and by the wall of media coverage that started when Attorney General Pam Bondi released information from the Epstein case that was already in the public domain.
“He feels there are way bigger stories that deserve attention,” the senior White House official said.
Donald Trump survives (and thrives) via two super powers: his ability to command and redirect attention, and his exploitation of polarization to defy actual truth once he has that attention. And, in asking that question, Ae you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein, he expressed that he believed those super powers were failing.
At the time I only understood that his ability to command and redirect attention was failing, but given what has transpired since we can hypothesize about what brought him to this point.
Epstein is different than past scandals because it is so close to a motivating conspiracy of his base, QAnon. A third of his mob is motivated by an equally strong cult belief, and he relies on that mob to control political opinion and wield credible threats against defectors. Meanwhile, his base is suffering from what I’ll call “Justice deprivation,” (which I’ll return to — I’m sure there’s a better term), meaning they believe in him because he continues to stoke their belief he’ll deliver “Justice.” But they’re getting impatient. The John Durham investigation didn’t quench their thirst for vengeance against the Deep State, and now Pam Bondi has been caught stalling on delivering justice to the pedophiles.
And, Ghislaine Maxwell has a credible threat. This doesn’t mean she has proof Trump raped 15-year olds, though we can’t rule it out. Given how things are proceeding, I doubt we’ll ever learn what it is. What matters is the threat was and is serious enough he recognizes he must neutralize it.
But that credible threat meant that two parallel developments — Maxwell’s attempt to cut her 20-year prison sentence and the bumbling efforts from Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, and Dan Bongino to resolve the Epstein thirst they had stoked — collided in the week before John Sauer had to move forward on defending the prosecution against Maxwell’s appeal. Probably, Bondi’s frantic review of the case files in March was an assessment, as Maxwell was preparing her appeal, of how badly those two risks collided, and (as we’ll see) a creation of a list of names to target.
For a brief moment, the left — which has squandered any effort to be able to command attention, in part because most prefer to yell at Chuck Schumer — managed to piggyback on the right wing mob to be able to command attention and even, in Congress, political risks.
In those weeks, we’ve seen Sauer take an action (the response to her cert petition at SCOTUS) that Maxwell viewed as a threat to her ability to get out of prison. Then, her attorney David Markus publicly conveyed that he believed Donald Trump was reneging on a deal (publicly, that was a reference to the appeal, but this is a world of easy double entendres). Then the initial WSJ story — I can’t prove that it came from Maxwell but everything that happened since is consistent with that and this discussion assumes that’s true — demonstrated to Trump how Maxwell’s threat might play out against the backdrop of his mob’s dissatisfaction with Bondi’s dodge on the Epstein files, which convinced Trump to take steps to address the Maxwell threat, all the while against the backdrop of the second (Iran was the first) defections from his base, as they accused Trump of covering up.
It’s fairly clear the plan was to fire Maurene Comey, freeing up Trump to sell out the victims, create a delay and diversion with the grand jury head fakes, so as to shift Maxwell’s focus on Trump onto everyone else. Markus revealed that she was asked about 100 people in her two-day “proffer,” and the plan is to feed the base with scandals about those 100 people, some of whom will be the most prominent Democrats. That will provide Trump the space and excuse to get Maxwell out of prison.
Meanwhile, the Tulsi Gabbard conspiracy theories met with tremendous success at redirecting the focus, at least of the top trolls, from Epstein to transparently bullshit claims about The Black President. Kate Starbird shows that the Epstein focus tailed off by the end of day on Friday July 18, after Tulsi aired her conspiracy theories.
But those conspiracy theories are already creating their own problems. The John Durham investigation already proved there’s no legal there there. And Tulsi recklessly (but effectively) upped the ante, promising even better results than Trump ever promised Durham would provide. Treason, she said.
Trump is still struggling. Perhaps, most lethally for him, he’s not hiding that he’s trying to command and redirect attention — he has said as much three times now. Spectacle fails when you reveal its strings, and Trump, himself, is disclosing them.
What are you hoping Todd Blanche gets out of his meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell?
Well I don’t know about the meeting — I know it’s taking place. And he’s a fantastic man. He’s a great attorney, and people should really focus on how well the country’s doing, or they should focus on the fact that Barack Hussein Obama led a coup, or they should focus on the fact that Larry Summers, from Harvard, that Bill Clinton, who you know very well, and lots of other friends — really close friends of Jeffrey Summers [sic] — should be spoken about, because, you know — Jeffrey Epstein — should be spoken about. And they should speak about them because they don’t talk about them, they talk about me, I have nothing to do with the guy.
[pre-planned exchange about the homeless in which Trump asserts authority to take over DC]
Have you heard about Todd Blanche’s interview with Ghislaine Maxwell? Have you considered clemency for Ghislaine Maxwell?
Well, I don’t want to talk about that. What I do want to say is that Todd is a great attorney. But you ought to be speaking about Larry Summers, you ought to be speaking about some of his friends that are hedge fund guys, they’re all over the place. You ought to be speaking about Bill Clinton who went to the island 28 times. I never went to the island.
Do you maintain you did not write a letter?
I don’t even know what they’re talking about. Now somebody could have written a letter, used my name, but that’s happened a lot. All you have to do is take a look at the dossier, the fake dossier. Everything’s fake with that administration. Everything’s fake with the Democrats. Take a look at what they just found about the dossier. Everything is fake. They’re a bunch of sick people.
[turns back to talk about homeless people]
[Another conversation endorsing genocide of Palestinians]
Would you consider a pardon or a commutation for Ghislaine Maxwell?
It’s something I haven’t thought about.
If [inaudible] recommended it?
I’m allowed to do it, but it’s something I have not thought about.
But you wouldn’t rule it out.
But Markus, Maxwell’s attorney, is doing a good job of shifting the attention. After the first proffer, the WSJ magically came to focus on all those other people, some of the very same people Trump would name the next day (again, Markus revealed that Blanche brought in a list of about a hundred names, surely culled from what they saw in the case files; Maxwell is not being asked what happened, she’s being asked what kind of dirt she has on a pre-selected group of people). And NewsMax and some key influencers are beginning to sell his narrative that Maxwell is the victim. Markus is a formidable lawyer in any context, but he happens to be South Florida’s formidable lawyer, and he knows these players and how they work.
And while Todd Blanche and Pam Bondi are nowhere near as formidable as Markus (indeed, Markus handed Blanche his ass on a cheap plastic plate), they do have the power and the shamelessness to do what needs to get done — the betrayal of victims, the clemency for a monster. Blanche already guaranteed that everything Trump will do going forward, including pardoning a sex trafficker to neutralize the threat she poses to him, will be rubber stamped by a SCOTUS already happy to sanction Trump’s crimes. We can’t probe his motives, even if they’re transparently deprave, SCOTUS already dictated.
That means only political pressure can thwart or impose a cost for Trump’s plan on rewarding a sex trafficker to redirect her weapons.
One question is what Maurene Comey does. She has been silent (and, as far as I know, has not been a source for any story). But there are a number of steps she might take that would either clarify how important her own firing was in making this happen or fuel the response.
I think Trump has also assumed the victims won’t find a way to speak up. That may well be true — after all everyone else is terrified and they have far less power than all the people cowering from Trump — but it may not be. There are a lot of journalists who have fought to tell their stories, and those stories are powerful.
Epstein’s executors are clear they’ll accept subpoenas. And at least for the moment, Democrats have succeeded in forcing Republicans to vote for subpoenas.
I’d love to do a campaign asking every Republican to go on the record about whether they would impeach Trump for a Ghislaine Maxwell pardon — but the moment for that may have passed.
One reason Deputy Attorneys General don’t meet with sex traffickers is because it makes them a witness. And while I think Blanche may one day claim he is protected by dual privileges — those of a top law enforcement officer and those of the President’s consigliere — that’ll be a legally dodgy claim. He has done plenty, already, to warrant a subpoena for testimony about why he has broken every law enforcement protocol to meet with a sex trafficker.
The three judges involved in the grand jury unseal requests seem to smell something is up; Richard Berman, in particular, is acutely aware of how badly the victims have and are being treated. (Note the docket in that case has shifted to non-public filing, which likely means victims have started filing their response to the unsealing request.)
NewsMax, which employs Alex Acosta and is front-running the pardon Ghislaine campaign, could be pressured for coddling pedophiles. And for the moment at least, the twin powerhouses of the Trump bubble, are taking different approaches (silence versus complicity) to helping Trump kill this story.
And until the far right totally gets on board, it is still possible to keep this swamping the news.
All of which is to say there are other sources of attention and power. Trump has a plan forward and a shit-ton of tools (and an exceedingly competent partner in Markus), but cannot be sure he’ll be able to reclaim that attention.
Still, a number of other things are going on, as Trump’s accelerating sprint to consolidate power.
Again, he is disclosing his strings. You don’t shift attention by telling people to avert their gaze, you entice them elsewhere. First Trump started yelling at his influencers for covering Epstein (most of them complied with his orders, but not all), and then he started giving people a list of things to cover instead: Trump’s claimed successes, his Potemkin trade deals, or the Obama conspiracy theory, or Larry Summers and Bill Clinton. You gotta pick, grandpa. You pick your focus and lead the way, you don’t give a multiple choice test!
The diversion — Tulsi’s conspiracy theory — may create its own problems. NYT reports that Tulsi did that without giving Pam Bondi a heads up (in the same way Bondi staged the first Epstein influencer event).
Ms. Bondi was given little warning the director of national intelligence was about to demand she investigate one of Mr. Trump’s most longstanding grievances: claims without evidence that the Obama administration overstated Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election in order to undermine him.
Ms. Bondi, fresh off a nasty fight with a top F.B.I. official over who was responsible for the political mess around the Epstein case, felt blindsided and annoyed, according to several people familiar with her thinking. They said that in reality, however, Ms. Gabbard was acting as little more than a proxy for a president demanding action on his vengeance agenda.
Ms. Bondi’s staff scrambled for a solution that would satisfy Mr. Trump while not committing the department to a tit-for-tat Obama investigation with unpredictable legal and political consequences.
Ms. Gabbard, standing at the White House briefing room lectern on Wednesday, made a series of provocative claims and pointedly said the onus was now on the Justice Department.
Several hours later, Ms. Bondi’s deputies posted an ambiguous, four-paragraph statement on the department’s website that announced the formation of what they described as a “strike force” to look into the Gabbard accusations.
In severalposts, Ben Wittes has unpacked the series of non-announcements that Bondi has made.
So if the two conspired as government officials—as the Fox News article suggests—to do something nefarious to cook intelligence to get Trump, the statute of limitations for that offense, assuming such conduct even maps onto any known criminal offense, would have lapsed long ago. Ditto the statutes governing false statements and perjury. In other words, it’s completely unclear what the Justice Department—so eager to announce the investigation—might actually be investigating.
I can think of only two possible answers to this question.
Third, the first possibility is that some of the investigations of these matters dragged on for years, and some interviews might have taken place late enough that statutes of limitations have not yet run. For example, Comey gave one congressional testimony as late as September 2020, which would leave a few months yet before the statute of limitations on that. Brennan was interviewed by the John Durham investigation in August of the same year. So it’s theoretically possible that the investigation is limited to supposedly false statements made in the context of interviews made within the past five years.
Fourth, the second possibility—maybe more likely—is that the investigation is premised on a fanciful theory that the supposed “conspiracy” continued past the two men’s service in government. If you posit some conspiracy, after all, the statute of limitations runs five years past the end of the conspiracy, not five years after any of the specific acts that make up the conspiracy.
With respect to any supposed conspiracy involving Brennan and Comey to cook the intelligence on Russia to get Trump, we are operating in the land of fantasy. And when exactly does a conspiracy to commit a fantastical act end? In other words, if one predicates an investigation based on nonsense, it is possible to nonsense one’s way back quite a few years using a theory of conspiracy to nonsense.
Fifth, I actually doubt that either of these things is what is really happening here. What I think is happening is what one might call a ghost investigation.
I’d add another several points about evidence:
First, DOJ and FBI already conducted assessments about some of this evidence, both as they assessed it in counterintelligence reviews and as part of the John Durham investigation. As I’ve shown, Tulsi’s claims include an SVR document that HPSCI not only selectively cited, but which they had to know had been deemed “objectively false;” revisiting that decision would require, among other things, conceding that Jim Comey intentionally threw the election to Donald Trump in 2016. The Durham investigation showed that to try to make an investigation of these files, you have to fabricate things that aren’t even in the underlying Russian spy reports.
Now, think of the witnesses. DOJ can’t pursue this for the same reason it would have been nearly impossible to reopen the Russian investigation; because a credible witness (in that case, Bill Barr) had weighed in definitively. Tulsi’s recent claims conflict with things Kash Patel, Marco Rubio, and John Ratcliffe have had to say, after reviewing the same evidence. As I’ll show, the HPSCI Report right wingers are frothing over actually added an egregious error years after Kash sort of got the same assertion correct.
And that would also mean that the FBI and CIA Director would be natural, irreplaceable witnesses. Want to create a shitshow? Invite John Brennan to call Kash Patel as a hostile defense witness to both what happened in 2017 and what has happened more recently.
Will Sommer has been tracking what he calls “hype-debt” among Trump’s rubes.
But as I dove into the MAGA internet to get a sense of whether this distraction was working as intended, I was surprised to discover that not everyone was buying it. Yes, it’s only been a few days. But my sense is that Trump is racking up a sort of hype-debt within the party, as he tries to refocus his base away from one disappointment by setting them up for an even bigger one when Obama fails to face a military tribunal.
Take Liz Wheeler, a conservative pundit who received one of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s fateful Epstein binders back in February, and has since become one of the most vocal critics of Trump’s attempt to shut down questions about Epstein. On Monday, demonstrating why she was trusted to participate in the binder photo-op in the first place, she gushed that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had published “new evidence” of a scheme by senior members of the Obama administration to undermine Trump’s first term. (That was, coincidentally, a day after the infamous Wall Street Journal story on Trump writing a note to Epstein). Gabbard’s moves against Obama, she wrote, marked “the first glimmer of what I would call real justice.”
But even Wheeler couldn’t miss the contradiction here. If Obama and his aides committed treason, why don’t they actually get, y’know, arrested? Can a Trump Justice Department that can’t manage to release the Epstein documents without stepping on a series of rakes really pull off the criminal prosecution of an entire past presidential administration?
Wheeler said the only way to fulfill Trump’s new commitment to his supporters would be actual prosecutions.
Though he was also one of the first to catch NewsMax prepping the way for Maxwell’s clemency.
Meanwhile, Republicans are the only ones who buy this. In Gallup’s latest, Trump has started closing in on his all-time lows — his support immediately after leading an assault on the Capitol — among support from Independents. And that’s as the effects of his tariffs builds.
It seems likely that Trump’s defense attorney will pull of some kind of non-Trump Epstein distraction. What’s not yet clear is how much backlash that will elicit. Or whether Trump will reclaim his ability to grab attention.
Todd Blanche’s Unsealing Request in Florida Was Designed to Fail
I know, right? Todd Blanche’s unsealing request in SDNY is also designed to fail.
But I want to look at how the denial went down in SDFL. Not only did Judge Robin Rosenberg make sure to get DOJ to reaffirm it knew it was asking her to do something it could not do, but she made a point of saying that the request to unseal two grand jury dockets — one from 2007, the year of the Jeffrey Epstein plea deal — is not related to the SDNY dockets, because DOJ is not conducting any investigation in those SDNY dockets.
The original request acknowledges this won’t work
Blanche’s original request to unseal — he names two grand juries, one (05-02) before the Alex Acosta plea deal and one (07-103) the same year — differs from the SDNY ones in several ways.
First, SDFL’s US Attorney, Hayden O’Byrne, signed and filed the court filings. Blanche adds language to say that DOJ would work with SDFL to make redactions of victim-related information if the grand jury transcripts were released.
Second, Blanche acknowledges that he’s requesting transcripts “associated with grand jury investigations,” as opposed to indictments.
Third, Blanche includes a paragraph noting that under 11th Circuit precedent, SDFL can’t release grand jury transcripts.
The Department of Justice recognizes that this Court is bound by Pitch v. United States [citation omitted] (district courts lack inherent, supervisory power to authorize the disclosure of grand jury records outside of exceptions enumerated in Rule 6(a)(3)). Nevertheless, the Department raises this argument due to the significance of the matter and to preserve it for any potential appeal.
Pitch is a 2020 decision in which the 11th Circuit rejected a historian’s effort to unseal grand jury transcripts about the investigation into a 1946 lynching, during a period when J. Edgar Hoover was reluctant to bring cases on lynching.
Judge Rosenberg asks how Blanche thinks this could work
In response, Judge Robin Rosenberg (an Obama appointee) instructs DOJ to clarify a few things. First, she asks whether DOJ thinks this request falls under any of the exceptions under Pitch, that 11th Circuit precedent.
The rule of secrecy is subject to exceptions, but in this Circuit, there are only five–that is, there are five, limited exceptions under which a district court may authorize the disclosure of grand jury materials. [citation omitted]
It is unclear from the Petition whether the government is arguing that any of the five exceptions applies to its request.
[snip]
In supplemental briefing, the Government shall clarify whether (1) it concedes that this Court must deny the Petition under binding Eleventh Circuit precedent, but that it nonetheless seeks an order from this Court so that it may file an appeal; or (2) it argues that an exception applies that would permit this Court to grant the Government’s Petition, together with legal argument in support of same.
She then asks whether there’s any reason to believe that a grand juries from 2005 and 2007 arose out of the one in SDNY, which is the only way she could transfer it.
Because the Florida Proceedings appear to have been initiated many years prior to the New York Proceedings, any argument that the Florida Proceedings nonetheless arose out of the New York Proceedings must be accompanied with an explanation and with legal argument in support of the same.
[snip]
Alternatively, if, under applicable law, there is no legal basis to transfer the Petition, the Government should clearly state the same.
Basically, Rosenberg was just forcing the government to concede that they were asking her to do something she could not.
SDFL attempts to claim Rosenberg has the authority
The response from SDFL (it’s not clear who is behind this response; O’Byrne signed it with an electronic signature) answers Rosenberg’s questions in reverse. First, SDFL claims that Rosenberg should transfer the case, because the petition arises out of those much later indictments.
This Petition to Disclose (filed July 18, 2025) arises out of two highly publicized judicial proceedings in the Southern District of New York: the indictment and criminal prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein [citation omitted], and the subsequent federal criminal indictment, trial, and conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell in the Southern District of New York [citation omitted]. Indeed, the relief sought in this petition is ancillary to the relief sought in those cases.
Then, SDFL answers Rosenberg’s first question — conceding she has no authority to release the grand jury materials, but then citing irrelevant precedent claiming she could anyway.
Consistent with its petition, the government recognizes the Eleventh Circuit precedent holds that no exception outside those expressly enumerated under Criminal Rule 6(e)(3) authorizes a court to publicly disclosure grand jury materials. [citation to Pitch omitted] The government also recognizes that, in this circuit, only an en banc decision or the Supreme Court may overrule that decision.
That said, decisions from other circuits support public disclosure of grand jury materials under “special circumstances,” including when a matter possess historical interest by the public.
Rosenberg notes that the New York proceeding is irrelevant
After reviewing the posture of the case, Rosenberg responds in the same order she posed the question. She notes that the exceptions SDFL cited are not among those under which she would have the authority under Eleventh Circuit precedent to release the transcripts.
The Government’s Petition to unseal the grand jury transcripts is not based on any of the exceptions in Rule 6. Instead, the Government makes two arguments outside Rule 6. First, the Government argues that disclosure is proper because “many of the rationales supporting grand jury secrecy under Rule 6(e) no longer apply to this investigation because of Jeffrey Epstein’s death.” Supp. Br. at 5. It further argues that “the public’s strong interest in th[e] historical investigation into Jeffrey Epstein constitutes a special circumstance justifying public disclosure.”
[snip]
Contrary to the Government’s stated basis and the Second and Seventh Circuits,1 the Eleventh Circuit has directly held that a district court “do[es] not possess … the power to order the release of grand jury records not covered by Rule 6(e)(3)(E).
[snip]
The government does not assert that disclosure is appropriate under any exception in Rule 6(e)(3)(E).
[snip]
The Government concedes as much in its Petition.
1. A district court is bound by the decisions of its intermediate appellate court. That is, this court, the Southern District of Florida, is bound by the decisions of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
I assume Rosenberg provided that elementary language about precedent for readers who don’t know how this works, but I can’t help but hear some scolding at DOJ for trying to confuse the issue.
She then denies the request to transfer the case, in significant part because Blanche is not asking to transfer the grand jury proceedings to support an ongoing investigation in SDNY.
The Government’s request for transfer does not arise out of a judicial proceeding; the Government does not seek the disclosure of evidence for itself. Indeed, the Government provided the evidence sought to be unsealed with the Petition. Consistent with the fact that the Government does not need the evidence, it has not filed the Petition for the purpose of prosecution4 the New York Federal Proceedings — the trial-level proceedings concluded years ago. Similarly, the Government has not filed the Petition because unsealing the evidence is necessary for the proper litigation of the New York Federal Proceedings.
[snip]
Further, the text of the Petition sources the need for the Petition in the Government’s recent public memorandum summarizing its investigation into Mr. Epstein. Pet. at 1 (“[T]he Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a memorandum describing an internal [sic exhaustive] review undertaken of investigative holdings relating to Jeffrey Epstein.”) Because that memorandum resulted in great public interest, the Government filed the instant Petition. Id. {[T]here has been extensive public interest in the basis for the Memorandum’s conclusions.”) As such, the request to unseal arises from the Government’s internal investigation, from its public statements about that investigation, and from great public interest in the investigation, but it does not arise from the New York Federal Proceedings themselves. The Government has not filed the Petition in response to a pleading, objecting, strategy or ruling in the New York Federal Proceedings, and it does not state that it will use the unsealed evidence in furtherance of any case-related objective. The trial proceedings have concluded.
And with that, she denied the request and ordered that this case “should be directly assigned to the undersigned,” just in case anyone else in the District tried to poach the case, I guess.
At one level, I think by forcing the secondary briefing, Rosenberg forced DOJ to concede that they knew they were making a request she had to reject. She’s not going to take the fall for this.
More interesting, though, is that second grand jury, the one from the same year that Epstein signed a plea deal eliminating any possibility of further charges for him or his co-conspirators (including Ghislaine Maxwell) in SDFL. Todd Blanche is claiming that it pertains to Jeffrey Epstein personally. I’m not sure whether it does or not.
Update: Per the Office of Professional Responsibility summary of the Alex Acosta investigation, there was a 60-count indictment in SDFL in May 2007. It’s possible the prosecutor needed to get a second grand jury after the first expired. Or it could be something else.
In May 2007, the AUSA submitted to her supervisors a draft 60-count indictment outlining charges against Epstein. She also provided a lengthy memorandum summarizing the evidence she had assembled in support of the charges and addressing the legal issues related to the proposed charges.
Update: I failed to note that Seamus Hughes found this docket.
Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe Reveal Putin “Was Counting on” a Trump Win
It’s funny, reading the two rehashes of the 2017 ICA that John Ratcliffe and Tulsi Gabbard released in the last weeks.
There are parallels and common judgments between them (probably in part because the CIA one was limited to “CIA materials provided to congressional oversight investigations”). Both say the confidence level for the judgment that Putin “aspired” to help then-candidate Donald Trump win the election was too high. Both say John Brennan big-footed the process in a problematic way. Both complain about the short timeline. Both complain that “the highest classified version of the ICA had been shared with more than 200 US officials;” neither acknowledge that that was neither anticipated nor, presumably, the fault of Obama appointees, who were long-gone by the time Trump’s appointees disseminated it that broadly (and in fact other documents Tulsi released suggest that ICA drafters intentionally planned a less-classified version to be disseminated at that level, to avoid the problem Trump’s appointees complain about). Both complain about how the Steele dossier was added as an appendix, though (as I’ll show in a follow-up) they’re inconsistent about how they claim it was.
But there are differences. the document from Ratcliffe — who released the first of the SRV documents contemporaneously with the HPSCI report that obsessed about them — doesn’t appear to mention them at all.
The two reports treat three pieces of intelligence on which the “aspired” judgment was based differently (the CIA one may not treat one of the HPSCI complaints at all). As I’ll note in my main post on the HPSCI report, CIA treats one document that HPSCI considers problematic as reliable but compartmented in a way that made inclusion problematic.
Perhaps the most interesting detail you get from reading both in tandem pertains to one phrase in a document about which “a senior CIA operations officer observed, ‘We don’t know what was meant by that’ and ‘five people read it five ways,'” basically, about whether that phrase hade been read the correct way. As of a few weeks ago, in Ratcliffe’s report, the CIA was still trying to protect this intelligence, but not Tulsi. She declassified most of four pages of discussion about the phrase, with information about the access — the source was well-established, had authoritative access to something but second-hand access to this information, but for some reason the CIA was not able to clarify what the source meant by the phrase. The HPSCI Report complains that the ICA didn’t note that this person had an “anti-Trump bias” (emphasis original).
And Tulsi declassified what the intelligence said (even though she hadn’t in the less classified version of the ICA she had released a day earlier).
Putin had made this decision [to leak DNC emails in July] after he had come to believe that the Democratic nominee had better odds of winning the U.S. presidential election, and that [Trump], whose victory Putin was counting on, most likely would not be able to pull off a convincing victory.
The HPSCI memo goes on to complain that Brennan included this. It invents a number of other readings this could have meant, besides that Putin wanted to help Trump win. Maybe Putin expected Trump to win, in July 2016 when no one else did? Maybe Putin counted on a Trump win at the RNC? They even tried to undermine the intelligence by claiming that all the things Putin did to tamper in the election could have served the other goals he also had.
None of the confirmed activities — leaks, public statements, social media messaging, and traditional propaganda — corroborate the ICA interpretation of the fragment, because these activities were all consistent with Putin’s objectives to undermine faith in US democracy, without regard for candidate Trump’s fate.
Putin approved the DNC leak because he was counting on Trump to win, the fragment said, and HPSCI Republicans want to believe that maybe Putin just wanted to undermine faith in democracy.
Well, anyway, as I said, Ratcliffe didn’t declassify any of that. He did send analysts back to review the underlying intelligence, and here’s what they said.
The DA Review examined the underlying raw intelligence and confirmed that the clause was accurately represented in the serialized report, and that the ICA authors’ interpretation of its meaning was most consistent with the raw intelligence.
And Ratcliffe also backs the quality of the source behind this claim.
The DA Review does not dispute the quality and credibility of the highly classified CIA serialized report that the ICA authors relied on to drive the “aspired” judgment.
So between them, Tulsi and Ratcliffe provided us something genuinely new. According to a reliable but ambiguous intelligence fragment, CIA got intelligence that said Putin approved the DNC leak “because he was counting on” Trump’s victory.
Update: I’ve fixed the quotation mark in the title: just the “counting on” is a direct quote.
Open Thread: The Impossible Possible
[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]
One of the more effective messages about activism I’ve seen this year is this post by Robert Reich:
(If the embedded video doesn’t appear for you, click on the link at the date.)
It might seem childish but the message is that simple: we are incredibly strong together.
Community members express distress over their frustration with the current White House and Congress. Some ask what will change and when; others ask what they can do to effect change.
Take action, but know that you are stronger when you act with others. Organize others or work with others already organized.
~ ~ ~
What organizations, you might ask. Here’s a few to get you started:
This link is home to Indivisible Project, a registered 501(c)(4), and Indivisible Action, a Hybrid Political Action Committee.
Indivisible is currently working on communications focused on the Epstein files. Check their page for more specifics about activities in which you can participate: https://indivisible.org/epsteinfiles
Women’s March Network
Women’s rights are people’s rights; this organization focuses on organizing and training feminists to defend women, fight fascism, and free the people. It’s the heir to the 2017 Women’s March that first protested against Trump’s first term.
Sister organization Women’s March – a 501c(4) organization – has ongoing Free America study sessions. See https://www.womensmarch.com/initiatives/free-america-study-sessions
Yes, MoveOn is still actively pursuing progressive issues through MoveOn.org Civic Action, a 501(c)(4), and MoveOn.org Political Action, a federal political action committee.
In fact they’ve organized a march for this weekend on July 26. Find details in their Events list: https://www.mobilize.us/moveon/
Organizations near you
These aren’t the only groups organizing and mobilizing. There are more near you.
— Your county Democratic Party organization is working on both organizing responses against fascism, but preparing for the next election. That next election could be a special election depending on where you live, and those races could really use your help. With enough special election wins for House seats, the GOP could lose control of the House.
Some states like mine are currently preparing for a Senate race. Primary candidates are emerging; throw support behind one now, and/or help the local and state party prepare for the mid-term election. We need every Democratic senate seat and then some if Trump’s Project 2025 agenda is to be stopped.
And of course the local Democratic Party is working on state and local races. These are extremely important as backstops to lawlessness at federal level. Who’s going to run in 2026? What can you do to help them now?
— Other state-wide progressive organizations are also working to organize and mobilize. Don’t just read their emails, find out what they’re working on and what they need to achieve discrete goals. What are those progressive organizations in your state? Share their contact information in comments below.
— Follow the work of those who are organizing language against fascism, because our message is stronger when we are on the same page, singing from the same choir book.
Subscribe to Jason Sattler’s (a.k.a. LOLGOP) at The Farce.
See also Gil Durán and Dr. George Lakoff’s work at the FrameLab.
(Both of the above are hosted on Ghost, thank goodness.)
~ ~ ~
What I try to tell young people is that if you come together with a mission, and its grounded with love and a sense of community, you can make the impossible possible.
— John Lewis
Let’s make the impossible possible. Let’s fight fascism together, and build a better future in the process.
This is an open thread. Bring all your comments unrelated to Trump’s Epstein scandal here.
Tulsi Gabbard Teams Up with Russian Spies to Wiretap and Unmask Hillary Clinton
I joked the other day that it’s as if Trump offered his cabinet members a free condo for whomever best distracted from his Epstein problem.
Tulsi Gabbard is, thus far, winning the contest for the sheer shamelessness of her ridiculous claims.
She has manufactured claims of sedition out of her conflation — whether deliberate or insanely ignorant — of voting machines and the DNC server, built on top of President Obama’s perfectly reasonable request to document all the ways Russia tampered in the 2016 election. Then, she released a different report — a 2020 GOP HPSCI report complaining about Intelligence Community tradecraft in the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. The HPSCI Report not only exhibits all the tradecraft failure it complains about, but it conflicts in some ways with her original propaganda.
In a presser at the White House yesterday (skip ahead to 12:30), Tulsi went one better, presenting the contents of the HPSCI report without context, focusing closely on a section that cites a cherrypicked selection of Russian intelligence reports purportedly (but not certainly) based off documents stolen from Democrats, the State Department, and a think tank.
Tulsi stood at the podium of the White House press room and delivered Russian intelligence, with an occasional “allegedly” thrown in, without explaining clearly that’s what she was doing.
In so doing, the Director of National Intelligence effectively teamed up with Russian spies, parroting analysis those Russian spies did on documents stolen from Hillary and people associated with her, without masking Hillary’s identity as required by intelligence protocol. This is precisely the kind of (then unsubstantiated) abuse that first animated right wing grievance back in 2017, outrage over the possible politicized unmasking of political adversaries, carried out by the head of intelligence from the White House podium.
They have become the monsters they warned about.
The SVR documents
Let me explain the documents. By 2016, there were actually two parallel Russian hacking campaigns targeting Hillary (and others). One, starting in 2016 and conducted by Russia’s military intelligence (GRU, often referred to as APT 28), obtained and caused the dissemination of documents during the election — the hack-and-leak campaign that Trump exploited to win the election. But starting years before that, Russia’s foreign intelligence service (SVR, often referred to as APT 29) targeted a number of traditional spying targets, including the White House, DOD, and State, some think tanks viewed as adversarial to Russia, and the DNC.
Here’s a report on APT 29’s hacking campaigns published in September 2015, which I wrote about here. Here’s a more recent history that includes those earlier hacks. I’ve been told that the interactions between APT 29 and APT 28 hackers inside Democratic servers was visible, but reluctant. APT 29 had and still has the more skillful hackers.
Unlike GRU, SVR did not use most of the files it stole in a hack-and-leak campaign. Russian spies analyzed the documents and wrote reports on them, like normal spying. But then someone — some other spying service, probably — spied on their spying efforts. And that entity shared what they found, including both the things SVR stole and the reports that Russian spies wrote about those stolen files, with the US Intelligence Community. And starting at least by 2018, right wingers have been obsessed with those stolen files and Russian intelligence reports, using them to feed one after another investigation into Democrats.
This gets a bit confusing, because we’re seeing the results of that obsession out of order. We first saw a right wing campaign based off them when John Ratcliffe, then the Director of National Intelligence, released a report about one particular analytical report, then released background documents; both were used as part of the effort to undermine the Mike Flynn prosecution in advance of the 2020 election. That particular report — allegedly claiming that in July 2016, Hillary endorsed a plan to focus on Trump’s ties to Russia to distract from the Clinton email investigation — served as the animating force for the Durham investigation, though Durham had to fabricate new details in the intelligence to do so. For years, Chuck Grassley has been frothing to release a classified appendix of the 2018 DOJ IG Report on the Clinton email investigation that pertained to the SVR documents, which Pam Bondi released the other day. Yesterday’s propaganda presser was based on the release of a 2020 critique of the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment of the 2016 hack (there were earlier versions in which Kash Patel was involved), written by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI).
We’re surely not done. There’s a classified annex to the Durham report in which he tries to justify treating Russian intelligence product as true. And yesterday, Grassley and House Intelligence Chair Rick Crawford asked to get more of the SVR files, this time focused on Barack Obama.
So, these documents were addressed at length by Michael Horowitz (it’s not yet clear how prominently they figure in earlier HPSCI work), then packaged up as part of Trump’s reelection bid in 2020, then further fluffed up by Durham in his failed prosecution effort and, on top of these recent releases, will no doubt feed the frothers indefinitely. But this order matters, because right wingers kept forgetting what they learned in earlier iterations of this obsession.
The 2018 classified annex
The DOJ IG classified annex considers FBI’s treatment of two kinds of files from that SVR collection: first, report(s) claiming that Loretta Lynch was trying to cover up the Clinton investigation and Jim Comey was trying to exacerbate it (Comey only appears in one), and, also, a set of files that might have raw State Department documents stolen by Russia that could be used to investigate Hillary.
The reports became important to Horowitz’ discussion of the Clinton email investigation because Jim Comey claimed in June 8, 2017 congressional testimony that one reason why he decided to make the prosecutorial decision on the Clinton investigation is because he worried that the two reports on Lynch might leak.
The raw intelligence became a focus because early on, alleged Trump adversary Peter Strzok sought to review the raw collection, a request that ultimately fell through the cracks, which Grassley uses to claim the investigation was not diligent enough.
A several page section of the report describing the collection — eight thumb drives, along with a set of data provided via other means — makes clear that, on top of normal concerns about allowing the FBI to review stolen US person data, the hesitation to access the data arose from the large number of privileged files, from the White House, from State, and from Congress, in there.
Thumb drives 1-5: These thumb drives included files stolen from US victims, including the Executive Office of the President, the State Department, and the House of Representatives, probably including a number of unknown US victims. The FBI did analyze these files, which helped them to identify where the Obama ones came from, that the Russians had obtained “advance intelligence about a planned FBI arrest of a Russian citizen,” and network maps of classified US government systems. Two drives, drives 3 and 4, “focused primarily on State Department communications,” as did much of the content of the other thumb drives. The FBI never comprehensively reviewed these files because of concerns about Executive and Congressional privileges tied to the victims. The FBI has queried them, three times:
In early 2016, FBI queried the drives using some approved keywords, apparently to understand Russia’s targets.
FBI later conducted a second set of limited queries, without reading the actual content. It did, however, create a “word cloud” of what was in the US victim data, which FBI treated as an index.
In August 2017, FBI OGC permitted an analyst working with Mueller to query the word cloud index on Clinton and clintonemail.com.
Thumb drives 6 and 7: These drives appear to include Russia’s reports about their hacks; victim data was included as attachments. The FBI permitted analysts to review non-victim data for foreign intelligence and evidentiary purposes, but not any content from the Executive Office of the President, State, or Congress.
Thumb drive 8: This data was never uploaded until 2018 and by the time of this report (also 2018) had never been reviewed. It was believed to include data redundant to what was on drives 1-5, including privileged material.
Post-8 data: This data appears to have come to the FBI via a medium other than a thumb drive. Their source filtered out certain kinds of victim data before passing it on. It also was unlikely to have the privileged sources of information — from EoP, State, and the House of Representatives — that presented concerns about the data on thumb drives 1-5. The FBI was permitted to review this data under the same rules as applied to Thumb drives 6 and 7 — that is, they could review the non-victim information.
Staring in August 2016, Andy McCabe started asking to access all eight drives. While the Obama White House told the FBI in October 2016 that their request for access was overly broad, they never got around to negotiating that access because the FBI was too busy working on the Russian investigation and exploiting Anthony Weiner’s laptop. White House Counsel Neil Eggleston circled back on this issue in his last day on the job, January 19, 2017.
Ironically, the most aggressive attempt to access these files up to the IG Report came from an analyst on the Mueller team — no doubt someone who has subsequently been fired. The IG Report describes that this person likely exceeded search protocols prohibiting searches on victim information, including on Clinton and clintonemail. Now, however, Trump will undoubtedly use Tulsi’s propaganda campaign as an excuse to read emails stolen from Barack Obama, waiving any privilege concerns (indeed, that should be understood as one goal of the task force Bondi set up yesterday, to collude with Russian spies to spy on President Obama).
For the purposes of understanding how Tulsi colluded with Russian spies yesterday, the most important detail from the classified annex is that the FBI didn’t treat the two Loretta Lynch reports as credible — the report describes that FBI considered them “objectively false.”
[W]itnesses told us that the reports were not credible on their face for various reasons, including that they contained information that the FBI knew to be “objectively false.”
One reason they likely believed that is because one of the two Lynch reports said that Comey was deliberately trying to stall the investigation.
Comey is leaning more to the [R]epublicans, and most likely he will be dragging this investigation until the presidential elections; in order to effectively undermine the chances for the [Democratic Party] to win the presidential elections. [brackets original]
It also revealed that the FBI never found the underlying stolen documents on which the reports were purportedly based — at one point, the DOJ IG Report notes that it wasn’t clear “if such communications in fact existed.”
The FBI didn’t believe these documents were credible.
But if you do believe the reports are credible — if you treat the reports as “true” — then it is not just “true” that Jim Comey was stalling the Clinton email investigation to help Republicans, but Russia believed that Comey was stalling the Clinton email investigation to help Republicans win the election.
HPSCI’s Jim Comey problem
The HPSCI report includes these SVR files, years after the FBI determined at least two of them were not credible, as “true” statements of Putin’s belief. I’ll write up the entire report separately; parts of it are quite rigorous and interesting, while the section on the Steele dossier was riddled with errors and this part — the part that relies on these SVR reports — was sort of an exercise in desperation to find as many reasons to discredit the claim that Putin tried to help Trump get elected as possible. This section is the mirror image of what the report alleges John Brennan was engaged in with the 2017 ICA Report, intelligence analysis that came to a conclusion and then found intelligence to back that conclusion. They include the SVR reports to argue that if Putin really wanted Trump to win, he would have released all these reports.
In a page and a half, the HPSCI report cites one after another of these reports.
In September 2016, Russian spies claimed that President Obama found Hillary’s health to be “extraordinary alarming.”
Russian spies claimed it had communications showing Hillary was suffering from “psycho-social problems” and even (Tulsi parroted there in the White House) “was placed on a regimen of ‘heavy tranquilizers’.”
Russian spies claimed Hillary had Type 2 Diabetes and deep vein thrombosis.
The claim — which John Ratcliffe noted could “reflect exaggeration or fabrication” in his report in 2020 — that Hillary had a plan to link Trump and Putin to distract from the Clinton email investigation.
Russian spies claimed Hillary traded financial funding for electoral support with religious organizations in post-Soviet countries.
US allies in London, Berlin, Paris, and Rome doubted her ability to perform the functions of President.
European government experts assessed that Trump’s only chance of winning was allegations about the Clinton Foundation.
The HPSCI Report includes in three bullets the allegations laid out in the two reports described in the IG Report, split up across two pages, as if they represent three reports.
[snip]
Not only do they ignore that the FBI viewed at least some of these reports as “not credible,” nor address the question of whether these reflected real intercepts at all.
But they don’t mention that the first of those two reports (probably the January 2016 one) also claimed that Jim Comey was going to stall the investigation to help Trump win.
If you believe the reports were “true,” then you believe that Jim Comey had a plan to help Trump win — much like what he did do — and that Putin shared that same belief.
It was bad enough that a bunch of right wing Congressmen desperate to create a propaganda document to help Trump get elected in 2020 exhibited such shoddy tradecraft.
But yesterday, the Director of National Intelligence stood at a White House podium and repeated one after another Russian intelligence report about which multiple entities have raised serious questions as to its accuracy.
In the guise of complaining about politicized spies exercising inadequate due diligence, Tulsi Gabbard just parroted these Russian intelligence reports — reports that either rely on intercepts of an American citizen or just make shit up — uncritically.
This was Russian spy product, delivered from the White House, from the head of US intelligence.
DOJ Denied Jeffrey Epstein Blackmail … But Not Ghislaine Maxwell Blackmail
WSJ has confirmed not only that Donald Trump’s name is in the Epstein files — and that Pam Bondi told him that on some unidentified date in May.
When Justice Department officials reviewed what Attorney General Pam Bondi called a “truckload” of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein earlier this year, they discovered that Donald Trump’s name appeared multiple times, according to senior administration officials.
In May, Bondi and her deputy informed the president at a meeting in the White House that his name was in the Epstein files, the officials said. Many other high-profile figures were also named, Trump was told. Being mentioned in the records isn’t a sign of wrongdoing.
The officials said it was a routine briefing that covered a number of topics and that Trump’s appearance in the documents wasn’t the focus.
They told the president at the meeting that the files contained what officials felt was unverified hearsay about many people, including Trump, who had socialized with Epstein in the past, some of the officials said.
The detail that Trump was told means that Trump lied when ABC asked him about it on July 15 (as you watch the video, watch how Karoline Leavitt’s head swings around as Trump is asked).
On July 15, an ABC News journalist asked Trump, as he took questions from reporters at the White House, what Bondi told him about the Epstein files: “Specifically, did she tell you at all that your name appeared in the files?”
“No, no, she’s—she’s given us just a very quick briefing,” Trump responded. He also said Bondi had “really done a very good job” on the Epstein review.
DOJ, FBI, and the White House have now all issued statements that don’t address the issue. The Bondi/Blanche one that appears in this ABC piece emphasizes that there was nothing left to investigate — something totally contradictory from Blanche’s plans to do a proffer with Maxwell.
In a statement, Bondi and Blanche said, “The DOJ and FBI reviewed the Epstein Files and reached the conclusion set out in the July 6 memo. Nothing in the files warranted further investigation or prosecution, and we have filed a motion in court to unseal the underlying grand jury transcripts. As part of our routine briefing, we made the President aware of the findings.” [my emphasis]
Consider how that emphasis compares with the full, most tortured paragraph, in the July 7 release.
This systematic review revealed no incriminating “client list.” There was also no credibleevidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.
As I wrote at the time, this very short paragraph was sandwiched between two actually credible sections stating that much of the material would implicate the victims and that Epstein killed himself (was allowed to kill himself) in prison.
So yesterday, DOJ and FBI released (or rather, made available to Axios without yet, apparently, releasing it via normal channels) a two-page unsigned notice (which may be on letterhead created for the purpose).
It included two main, credible conclusions:
Much of the material that FBI has depicts victims and any release of that material would retraumatize the victims.
FBI concluded (and Trump’s flunkies agree) that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. DOJ released two files (one unaltered, one enhanced, both with titles that do not even mention Epstein) showing that no one entered his cell the night he killed himself.
But there’s also a short, broader conclusion that is less sound.
This systematic review revealed no incriminating “client list.” There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties. [my emphasis]
Emphasis on credible?
Of course there’s a client list; one version of it was already released. There are also the names or descriptions shared by victims of the men who abused them. And while there may be no evidence in the FBI files that Epstein did blackmail Trump or anyone else, he had blackmail material on them.
DOJ’s current story emphasizes the third sentence: There wasn’t enough to open an investigation against uncharged third parties (whom we now know to include Trump). DOJ is less interested in talking about what was always clearly a dodge: no, there’s no client list, but there are people who, the evidence shows, raped one or some of Epstein’s victims, and that list could be released.
The second sentence looks a lot different, just a few weeks later.
There may be no credible evidence that Epstein blackmailed people.
But all this has been proceeding as Ghislaine Maxwell seeks a way out of prison. All this has been proceeding as the WSJ gets stories about Trump using his signature as pubic hair. All this has been proceeding as Trump’s defense attorney claims to be representing the interest of the country by meeting with Ghislaine — all while ignoring the victims.
That paragraph always looked like misdirection.
But now DOJ is misdirecting even from two of the three sentences in that paragraph.
Timeline
February 16, 2017: Alex Acosta nominated Secretary of Labor.
July 18, 2025: Todd Blanche files to unseal grand jury materials; Trump sues WSJ.
July 21, 2025: Mike Johnson dodges week of work to give Trump “space” to fix his Epstein problem.
July 22, 2025: Blanche announces he’ll meet with Maxwell; Oversight votes to subpoena Maxwell for deposition.
Judge Richard Berman Had to Remind Todd Blanche to Think of Jeffrey Epstein’s Victims
In response to his motions to unseal grand jury testimony in the Epstein and Maxwell dockets, Judges Richard Berman and Paul Engelmayer (who got the case on reassignment from Alison Nathan, who is now at Second Circuit) gave Blanche a homework assignment.
[T]he Court cannot rule on the motion without additional submissions.
[snip]
The Second Circuit has identified the following as a non-exhaustive list of factors for district courts to weigh in considering applications for disclosure:
the identity of the party seeking disclosure;
whether the defendant to the grand jury proceeding or the Government opposes the disclosure;
why disclosure is being sought in the particular case;
what specific information is being sought for disclosure;
the current status of the principals of the grand jury proceedings and that of their families;
the extent to which the desired material — either permissibly or impermissibly — has been previously made public;
whether witnesses to the grand jury proceedings who might be affected by the disclosure are still alive; and
[whether there is an] additional need for maintaining secrecy in the particular case in question.
The letters are largely identical. They both ask, for example, whether Blanche bothered to notify the victims.
The Court also directs the Government to state in the memorandum whether, before filing the instant motion, counsel for the Government reviewed the [Epstein/Maxwell] grand jury transcripts and whether the Government provided notice to the victims of the motion to unseal.
The victims have been included in the proceeding today both because of their relevant experiences and because they should always be involved before rather than after the fact.
In his unsealing memo, Blanche cited the DOJ/FBI memo attempting to shut all this down, focusing on whether there was evidence to predicate a case.
On July 6, 2025, the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a memorandum describing an exhaustive review undertaken of investigative holdings relating to Jeffrey Epstein (the “Memorandum”).1 The Memorandum detailed the steps taken by the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation to determine whether evidence existed that could predicate an investigation into uncharged third parties.
It took Judge Berman, in his paragraph instructing victims to weigh in by August 5, to also mention the later reference in the DOJ/FBI letter”
See Gov’t Motion at 1 n.1. (This is a 2 page, undated, unsigned U.S. Department of Justice and Federal bureau of Investigation memo. According to the Government, “Epstein harmed over one thousand victims. Each suffered unique trauma. Sensitive information relating to these victims is intertwined throughout the materials.This includes specific details such as victim names and likenesses, physical descriptions, places of birth, associates, and employment history.”)
Todd Blanche — the President’s defense attorney — was focused on declaring uncharged third parties free of criminal liability. Berman had to remind him that DOJ claimed this is about victims.
A SDNY AUSA, Jeffrey Oestericher, who is representing the government in some of the high profile immigration cases, has joined these dockets. Sadly, Blanche won’t have to do this homework assignment himself. Because I bet that after firing Maurene Comey, it will take some time to do the victim notification that DOJ did not do.
Remember, too, that Blanche said he was making a similar request in SDFL, but thus far it has not been identified yet. For all we know Aileen Cannon could be intervening here without public notice!
Incidentally, the 2019 transcript is worth perusing for the victims’ statements, as well as the way that Comey spoke of the victims and vice versa.
I would also like to note that, as the government has previously mentioned, this dismissal in no way lessens the government’s resolve to stand up for the victims in this case, both those who have come forward and those who have yet to do so. We agree with your Honor’s sentiment that those victims should be respected, and we appreciate your Honor’s recognition of that.
[snip]
[Brad Edwards] And on behalf of all of victims, I would like to thank your Honor for the fairness with which they’ve been treated, and the United States Attorney’s office for the way in which you have handled this investigation, and especially how you have treated the victims in this case.
[snip]
[David Boies] I want to, as prior counsel have, commend both the Court and counsel for the Department of Justice for the consideration and respect and attention that they have paid to the victims. We believe that that is not only right, as a matter of human dignity, but we think that is exactly what the law requires and intends.
Update: This, from Lawrence O’Donnell, notes that the only one Trump has said anything nice about was Ghislaine Maxwell.
Republicans Will Reward Emil Bove for Sending Innocent Men to a Concentration Camp
John Thune has invoked cloture for Emil Bove’s nomination to the Third Circuit. And while Lisa Murkowski voted against cloture and Susan Collins say she’ll vote against his confirmation, it nevertheless remains virtually certain that Republicans will confirm him.
Consider what that vote to confirm says Republican Senators believe qualifies a man for the job:
He helped Trump avoid accountability for attacking the Senate in a bid to stay in power.
He fired a bunch of people who prosecuted the people who attacked the Senate, effectively firing the people who upheld rule of law.
He helped Trump avoid accountability for stealing over a hundred classified documents and store them in a broom closet.
He helped a really corrupt Democrat who allegedly put his own pocketbook and Turkish interests above safety considerations to avoid accountability as part of a quid pro quo deal meant to undermine New York self-rule.
He gave the order that doomed 233 men, many of them innocent of any crime, to spend four months in a concentration camp.
It’s the last one that really alarms me.
The Republican Party is preparing to reward Emil Bove with a lifetime seat on an appellate court because he sent hundreds of men to a concentration camp, many based on little more than their tattoos.
If you have Republican Senators, please call them and let them know you see what they are doing.
Update: ProPublica has a new profile of the men Bove sent to CECOT. For each man, they describe circumstances of his detention, whether he had any criminal charges, and whether he had tattoos (as a majority do).
Trump’s Defense Attorney Todd Blanche Will Meet with Sex Trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell to Make a Deal for His Client
Trump Defense Attorney Todd Blanche and Pam Bondi just announced that Blanche will meet with Ghislaine Maxwell and discuss potential cooperation deals with her.
Statement from @DAGToddBlanche: This Department of Justice does not shy away from uncomfortable truths, nor from the responsibility to pursue justice wherever the facts may lead. The joint statement by the DOJ and FBI of July 6 remains as accurate today as it was when it was written. Namely, that in the recent thorough review of the files maintained by the FBI in the Epstein case, no evidence was uncovered that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties. President Trump has told us to release all credible evidence. If Ghislane Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say. Therefore, at the direction of Attorney General Bondi, I have communicated with counsel for Ms. Maxwell to determine whether she would be willing to speak with prosecutors from the Department. I anticipate meeting with Ms. Maxwell in the coming days. Until now, no administration on behalf of the Department had inquired about her willingness to meet with the government. That changes now.
Justice demands courage. For the first time, the Department of Justice is reaching out to Ghislaine Maxwell to ask: what do you know? At @AGPamBondi’s direction, I’ve contacted her counsel. I intend to meet with her soon. No one is above the law—and no lead is off-limits.
That day, Maxwell’s defense attorney, David Markus, insinuated that Trump was reneging on a deal.
In a statement Monday, an attorney for Maxwell hinted at the swirling controversy surrounding the Trump administration’s decision not to release any further records related to investigations of Epstein.
“I’d be surprised if President Trump knew his lawyers were asking the Supreme Court to let the government break a deal. He’s the ultimate dealmaker—and I’m sure he’d agree that when the United States gives its word, it should keep it. With all the talk about who’s being prosecuted and who isn’t, it’s especially unfair that Ghislaine Maxwell remains in prison based on a promise the government made and broke,” wrote David Oscar Markus.
The next day, Tuesday, WSJ moved forward with a story implicating Trump in “daily secrets” with Jeffrey Epstein.
The following day, Wednesday, Pam Bondi fired Maurene Comey, the prosecutor who would be competent to assess any cooperation offered from Maxwell.
Friday, in a false show of transparency, Todd Blanche (filing under his defense attorney identity) moved to unseal grand jury transcripts that DOJ has in a form it could release immediately.
Yesterday, the Speaker of the House ceded his majority for a week to give Trump “space” to cover up his pedophile problem.
My belief is we need the administration to have the space to do what it is doing,
And today, Trump’s Defense Attorney Todd Blanche announces he will meet with Maxwell soon to make the kind of deal that could excuse releasing her early. Probably, he’ll ask her to implicate someone like Bill Clinton.
Absent that deal, it seems clear, the WSJ will continue to publish stories implicating the President in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking.
Update: Markus, in his Tweet about the deal, does Trump a real solid by suggesting Trump is taking action to “uncover the truth.”
I can confirm that we are in discussions with the government and that Ghislaine will always testify truthfully. We are grateful to President Trump for his commitment to uncovering the truth in this case.” David Oscar Markus We have no other comment at this time.
Update: Oversight just agreed to subpoena Maxwell for a deposition in a voice vote. This could complicate Blanche’s plans.
Timeline:
February 16, 2017: Alex Acosta nominated Secretary of Labor.
