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 wherein the president’s title featured prominently; then Republicans, presumably with a watch to burying the Democratic leak, launched 1000’s 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 therefore lengthy a principally conservative fixation. There’s a darkish conspiratorial thrill that comes with encountering the truth, amply displayed within the newest spherical of disclosures, that so many American elites have been completely snug being buddy-buddy with a trafficker of teenage women. And since each proper and left have pivoted away from the Invoice Clinton-era neoliberal middle, 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.
But it surely’s vital to not let that conspiratorial thrill outrun the precise information. The brand new tranche of knowledge confirms, but once more, the ethical squalor of varied highly effective People. But it surely nonetheless leaves us wanting definitive solutions to the excellent Epstein questions: Did different highly effective males have intercourse with the underage women that he trafficked? What have 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 stated Home Republicans ought to vote to launch the recordsdata.)
I assumed we is perhaps nearer to solutions to the final query after I learn the primary e-mail that the Democrats launched, a 2011 be aware from Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell shortly after his launch from jail: “I need you to appreciate 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 many others. I’m 75 p.c there.”
With the title redacted, this e-mail steered there may properly 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, essentially 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 long run president had intercourse along with her or another lady, 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 isn’t the smoking gun proving Trump’s complicity in intercourse crimes. And you can additionally learn it as Epstein speculating that Trump was the one that 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, wherein 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 instances in that interval” however “by no means bought a therapeutic massage,” earlier than turning to a protracted grievance about how Trump took benefit of him in an actual property deal.
That e-mail suggests, first, that it was regular for Epstein’s mates to have sexual encounters if not sexual activity; second, that Epstein at the least needed folks to suppose the women 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.
Through which case the final word reality may very well be squalid (highly effective males getting hand jobs from masseuses whom they thought have been over 18) with out being a Grand Guignol conspiracy (highly effective males knowingly trafficking minors to facilitate some form of “Eyes Broad Shut” state of affairs). And one thing comparable may very well be the case with the intelligence-world questions: There’s proof that Epstein used his connections to help Israel intelligence on numerous initiatives, however nothing indicating that he was operating a sex-and-blackmail operation on its behalf.
However then the good 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 actually 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 apparent one, that the president actually, actually doesn’t need to see get pulled.
