For these of us with a honest, nonpartisan curiosity (I swear) within the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, it was a very good week: First the Democrats, with a watch to hammering President Donald Trump, launched just a few redacted Epstein emails through which the president’s title featured prominently; then Republicans, presumably with a watch to burying the Democratic leak, launched hundreds extra Epstein paperwork. With this type of tag-team effort, we’ll have the entire story out within the open by Christmas!
A phrase of warning, although, for these liberals who’re relative newcomers to the Epstein saga, for thus lengthy a largely conservative fixation. There’s a darkish conspiratorial thrill that comes with encountering the fact, amply displayed within the newest spherical of disclosures, that so many American elites had been completely comfy being buddy-buddy with a trafficker of teenage ladies. And since each proper and left have pivoted away from the Invoice Clinton-era neoliberal heart, the truth that Epstein had (to cite the left-wing author Jeet Heer) “very banal centrist politics with the identical gestalt as 90% of U.S. elite since Nineties” makes him an excellent image of elite perfidy for each progressives and populists alike.
Nevertheless it’s essential to not let that conspiratorial thrill outrun the precise info. The brand new tranche of knowledge confirms, but once more, the ethical squalor of varied highly effective People. Nevertheless it nonetheless leaves us in need of definitive solutions to the excellent Epstein questions: Did different highly effective males have intercourse with the underage ladies that he trafficked? What had been his connections, if any, to the world of intelligence? And what unrevealed particulars have made Trump so intent, till now, on stopping additional disclosure? (On social media late Sunday, Trump mentioned Home Republicans ought to vote to launch the information.)
I assumed we is likely to be nearer to solutions to the final query once I learn the primary e-mail that the Democrats launched, a 2011 word from Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell shortly after his launch from jail: “I would like you to comprehend that the canine that hasn’t barked is Trump … (VICTIM) spent hours at my home with him, he has by no means as soon as been talked about. Police chief, and so on. I’m 75 % there.”
With the title redacted, this e-mail steered there may effectively be an as-yet-unknown sufferer with whom Epstein assumed that Trump had a sexual encounter. However the hidden title turned out to be the late Virginia Giuffre, probably the most well-known of Epstein’s victims, who had labored for Trump at Mar-a-Lago and who particularly and repeatedly denied that the longer term president had intercourse along with her or another woman, at the same time as she made allegations towards many different highly effective figures.
Simply because she denied it doesn’t imply it didn’t occur, the suspicious reader may say, which is true. There are causes to doubt the reliability of a few of Giuffre’s accusations, so it’s doable she was additionally unreliable in her non-accusations. However nonetheless, these non-accusations imply that this e-mail shouldn’t be the smoking gun proving Trump’s complicity in intercourse crimes. And you possibly can additionally learn it as Epstein speculating that Trump was the one who ratted him out to the Palm Seaside police, which might truly dovetail with a story a few of Trump’s defenders have tried to spin up.
In the meantime, the doc launch additionally features a a lot later e-mail from Epstein, a stream-of-consciousness ramble despatched to himself shortly earlier than his final arrest in 2019, through which the financier appears to explain his operation (“200 {dollars} for a rub and tug … no intercourse … most in thier mid twenties …”) after which says Trump “got here to my home many occasions in that interval” however “by no means obtained a therapeutic massage,” earlier than turning to an extended criticism about how Trump took benefit of him in an actual property deal.
That e-mail suggests, first, that it was regular for Epstein’s associates to have sexual encounters if not sexual activity; second, that Epstein at the very least wished individuals to suppose the ladies concerned weren’t minors; and third, that Epstein had a long-standing grudge towards Trump however most likely didn’t have some secret tape of Trump getting a therapeutic massage or extra.
Wherein case the last word reality could possibly be squalid (highly effective males getting hand jobs from masseuses whom they thought had been over 18) with out being a Grand Guignol conspiracy (highly effective males knowingly trafficking minors to facilitate some form of “Eyes Vast Shut” situation). And one thing comparable could possibly be the case with the intelligence-world questions: There’s proof that Epstein used his connections to help Israel intelligence on numerous tasks, however nothing indicating that he was working a sex-and-blackmail operation on its behalf.
However then the nice query stays: Why didn’t Trump need extra disclosure?
It’s doable that he simply doesn’t just like the embarrassment of getting everybody reminded that he was one of many wealthy creeps within the Epstein circle. Or it’s doable that there’s one thing really delicate associated to Epstein and intelligence that has but to be revealed.
Or it’s doable that there’s some thread remaining right here, and never essentially the plain one, that the president actually, actually doesn’t wish to see get pulled.
