Mea Culpa
Jeffrey Epstein's victims should not be treated as a footnote to this story.
Karoli and I recorded this week’s podcast yesterday afternoon, and we spent a great deal of time talking about the Republicans’ Epstein problem: specifically, the fact that a good portion of their base believed Trump when he promised he would expose the names of the men who took part in the pedophile’s trafficking of young girls.
This may end up being bigger than Watergate, and not just because (as the Wall Street Journal confirmed this week) Trump’s name is in the Epstein files. It’s the clumsy attempts to cover it up, and the complicity of Speaker Mike Johnson who recessed the House early in order to prevent votes on Epstein-related motions (the first true bipartisan actions we’ve seen in this Congress).
Needless to say, I’ve been gleeful about their predicament - so much that I donned the Blue Wave Cat Lady t-shirt Karoli gave me last summer, when I was so certain Kamala Harris would win. And you can see me being downright giddy about Trump’s Epstein problem throughout the podcast.
But after we wrapped the episode, I caught an interview on Jen Psaki’s show with one of the women who had been victimized by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell - and yes, I felt ashamed that in all my focus on the politics, I had neglected to acknowledge the very real damage these monsters had inflicted on all those girls.
Of course, the unrelenting focus on this story is triggering for the survivors. We should do more to center them in our reporting on it.
I don’t know if anything will come out of the hours that Assistant Attorney General (and Trump defense lawyer) Todd Blanche has spent in a Florida courthouse talking to Maxwell… but it doesn’t take a genius to guess that they will make some kind of deal where she reveals who some of their clients were. And none of those she mentions will be named “Trump.”
Will that quiet the rebellion of House GOP members who want to see the entirety of the evidence? I hope not, and not just because Trump is vulnerable. Maybe there is not enough of a case to be made to prosecute all the rich and powerful men who took part in this - but we should know the truth of who they are and let the chips fall where they may.
And never lose sight of the very real damage that was done to very real women.
This Week’s Podcast
Karoli and I did manage to talk about things other than Epstein yesterday: That Hunter Biden interview, the brutal South Park episode (on the heels of the Skydance-Paramount merger, which completed just as we completed the episode), and how the Supreme Court continues to allow Trump to usurp the powers of the other two branches.
We also brought up how the term of acting US attorney Alina Habba ended with the court in New Jersey appointing experienced DOJ prosecutor Desiree Grace to replace her… who Pam Bondi subsequently fired. At the time of the recording, Grace had indicated that the firing from DOJ did not affect her court appointment. But soon after, the Trump administration found a legal loophole that would enable them to keep her on as an acting AUSA. Because this regime doesn’t believe in letting a little thing like the law get in their way of weaponizing the law.
Three More Things
Jen Rubin wrote a great piece today on the courage and tenacity of journalist Julie Brown, without whom we might never have learned of the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
Karoli found Hunter Biden’s honest and profanity-laced interview an inspiration for some honesty (and profanity) of her own.
