Wednesday Reads: Could the Jeffrey Epstein Scandal Disrupt Trump’s Agenda?

Good Afternoon!!

How can such a stupid person do so much damage so quickly?

I’ve finally begun to accept that what is happening to our country will not be reversed in my lifetime. When I think about it, I feel so despairing that I can’t bear to focus on it for long. But I know it’s true. How can such a stupid person do so much damage so quickly?

Trump has already done so much damage and he is likely to do much more before we can get rid of him–if we succeed in doing that. He has destroyed the Department of Justice, the Department of Education, and has likely done irreparable damage to the Department of Defense, the CIA, and the office of DNI (Director of National Intelligence). He has also damaged Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and Obamacare.

His insane tariffs are wrecking the economy, and he may soon be able to do even more damage by naming a new Fed chairman who will carry out his orders. Guess who Trump is likely to appoint? According to Bloomberg, it will be Kevin Hassett! The story is behind a paywall. I read the headline on Memeorandum.

He has begun weaponizing the military and with the new funding for ICE in the big ugly bill, he will control a vast private army. He has begun to establish a system of concentration camps.

Have I forgotten anything? Probably.

I can’t cover all of these issues today, but here’s some commentary on Trump’s ongoing destruction of our economy.

This piece by Jonathan V. Last at The Bulwark is truly depressing: LOL Nothing Matters. Inflation is back. The government is nationalizing one private company and blackmailing another. But no one cares because . .

Remember back in 2024 when Americans had to vote for the insurrectionist felon because there had been 14 months of inflation in 2021–22?

Yeah, well inflation is back now.

US inflation climbed to 2.7 per cent in June, surpassing expectations and signalling that Donald Trump’s tariffs are hitting prices. Tuesday’s annual consumer price index figure was up from 2.4 per cent in May and above expectations of 2.6 per cent among analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

How upset are voters about this? They are a solid “Meh.” Trump remains at only -7 net approval, which is a huge improvement from where he was in late April.

Why am I feeling nihilistic today? It’s not just the voters; it’s the markets. We got a bad inflation report this morning and then the markets reacted by . . . betting that the Fed is going to cut rates in September.

Which is, you know, the opposite of what you’d expect in an environment where tariffs are pushing prices higher. Are the markets betting on TACO? Or preparing for Fed Chairman Kevin Hassett? Or going full-nihilist, too?

Trump embracing socialism?

Here is another thing that doesn’t seem to matter: Democrats are freaked out because their nominee for mayor in New York City wants to run a pilot program with five municipal-owned grocery stores, which is “socialism” or something.

Meanwhile, last week the U.S. government became the largest shareholder in the mining company MP Materials. Which is, you know, kind of like socialism? […]

On May 27, MP began a sudden climb. After months of sitting around $25 a share, it moved consistently upward for a month, to almost $40. On June 20 a selloff started and the share price lost a quarter of its value over three weeks. The government announced its purchase on the morning of July 10 and MP went to the moon.

Any of this look to you like someone knew the score?

But that’s just the first layer of corruption.

This morning, Apple announced that it would also contribute invest $500 million in MP stock.

That’s right: Apple, which is currently negotiating with Trump on the 25 percent tariffs the president wants to put on iPhones made in China, decided to do the government a solid and throw some cash behind Uncle Sam’s MP position, thus driving the price higher and forming a shareholder bloc that will, along with the government, be enough to control MP.

And since Apple’s business now depends on what the U.S. government allows it to do, I suspect Apple’s share will be a pure proxy for whatever the Trump administration’s wishes are.

There’s more at the link.

Here’s what Paul Krugman has to say about Trump’s economic policies: Hawks, Doves and Lapdogs: The next Fed chair will be an obedient partisan.

Yesterday’s CPI report looked fairly tame on the surface, but if you look at the details it showed clear signs that Trump’s tariffs are starting to drive up prices. And private surveys suggest that there’s a lot more inflation in the pipeline. For example, look at S&P Global’s Purchasing Managers’ Index for manufacturing, which shows the percentage of firms reporting higher prices. A higher number almost always points to higher official inflation ahead, and right now it’s definitely telling us that tariffs are about to hit hard (see figure at the link)….

The next Fed chair?

Why aren’t we seeing the full effects of the tariffs in official statistics? For the record, I don’t believe Trump officials are cooking the books — yet.

That’s not to say that they won’t at some point, and there’s a good chance that they will. But so far what we’re probably seeing is a combination of ordinary lags and the temporary effects of the TACO (Trump always chickens out) narrative. Buyers get pissed off at sellers when prices rise, so sellers who don’t want to lose market share have an incentive to hold prices down despite higher costs if they think the Trump tariffs will come back down in a few weeks.

I, however, am a TACO skeptic. I think Trump really is a Tariff Man who will keep us at Smoot-Hawley-level tariffs indefinitely, and businesses will eventually realize that and raise prices accordingly.

And then what? Clearly, we shouldn’t expect Trump to admit that his tariffs are raising prices, or even to admit that prices are rising. What we can expect is that he will keep putting pressure on the Fed to cut interest rates. I don’t think he’ll manage to push Jerome Powell out before next May, but as I wrote last week, whoever he picks after that will do his bidding.

Bloomberg has an interesting article about Kevin Warsh, one likely choice — although a newer article suggests that Kevin Hassett, whom nobody suspects of having any independent principles, may be in first place. The article expresses puzzlement over Warsh’s support for rate cuts now, despite above-target inflation, when he was a big advocate of higher rates in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. How did such a monetary hawk suddenly become a monetary dove? But one of the people the article quotes hits the nail on the head.

Read the Bloomberg excerpts at the link.

We are so screwed.

Right now the only hopeful signs I see is that Trump’s policies are very unpopular with Americans, and his association with Jeffrey Epstein could possibly damage him before the midterm elections. I’m probably wrong and Trump is clearly trying to fix the midterms. Anyway, I’ve gathered some stories on the Epstein scandal.

Ewan Palmer at The Daily Beast: White House Freaked Out Over a Question About Trump’s Ties to Epstein.

White House officials were left scrambling after a reporter straight-up asked whether Donald Trump knew if his name appeared in files connected to Jeffrey Epstein, according to Axios.

The media inquiry was posed after reports that FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino had a screaming match with Attorney General Pam Bondi over the Department of Justice’s handling of the files on the pedophile who died in 2019.

Read more at the link. It’s weird that the White House was taken by surprise by this question, since Trump and Epstein were close friends for years.

I was stunned yesterday when House Speaker Mike Johnson actually disagreed with Trump about covering up the Epstein files. Marianna Sotomayor at The Washington Post: Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republicans break with Trump on Epstein.

“I think really only pretty bad people, including fake news, want to keep something like that going,” he added. “But credible information, let them give it. Anything that is credible, I would say, let them have it.”

Sex trafficking, pedophilia, and prison suicide are boring stuff?

Frankly, I have no doubt that Epstein committed suicide. He was looking at years in prison, loss of his status, his fortune, and his fabulous lifestyle. As a narcissistic sociopath, he couldn’t tolerate that. But Wired has found new evidence that the surveillance tape outside Epstein’s cell was manipulated. It may be perfectly innocent, but the MAGA crowd won’t see it that way. The magazine had previously found 1 minute missing from the tape; now it’s 3 minutes. Rich Friedman writes: The FBI’s Jeffrey Epstein Prison Video Had Nearly 3 Minutes Cut Out.

Newly uncovered metadata reveals that nearly three minutes of footage were cut from what the US Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation described as “full raw” surveillance video from the only functioning camera near Jeffrey Epstein’s prison cell the night before he was found dead. The video was released last week as part of the Trump administration’s commitment to fully investigate Epstein’s 2019 death but instead has raised new questions about how the footage was edited and assembled.

WIRED previously reported that the video had been stitched together in Adobe Premiere Pro from two video files, contradicting the Justice Department’s claim that it was “raw” footage. Now, further analysis shows that one of the source clips was approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds longer than the segment included in the final video, indicating that footage appears to have been trimmed before release. It’s unclear what, if anything, the minutes cut from the first clip showed.

The nearly three-minute discrepancy may be related to the widely reported one-minute gap—between 11:58:58 pm and 12:00:00 am—that attorney general Pam Bondi has attributed to a nightly system reset. The metadata confirms that the first video file, which showed footage from August 9, 2019, continued for several minutes beyond what appears in the final version of the video and was trimmed to the 11:58:58 pm mark, right before the jump to midnight. The cut to the first clip doesn’t necessarily mean that there is additional time unaccounted for—the second clip picks up at midnight, which suggests the two would overlap—nor does it prove that the missing minute was cut from the video.

The footage was released at a moment of political tension. Trump allies had spent months speculating about the disclosure of explosive new evidence about Epstein’s death. But last week, the DOJ and FBI issued a memo stating that no “incriminating ‘client list’” exists and reaffirmed the government’s long-standing conclusion that Epstein—whom the US government accused of committing conspiracy to sex traffic minors and sex trafficking minors—died by suicide. That announcement triggered immediate backlash from pro-Trump influencers and media figures, who essentially accused the administration of a cover-up.

In response to detailed questions about how the video was assembled, WIRED sent a request for comment to the Department of Justice at 7:40 am on Tuesday morning. Just two minutes later, Natalie Baldassarre, a public affairs officer for the DOJ, replied tersely: “Refer you to the FBI.” The FBI declined WIRED’s request for comment.

Read more at Wired.

It’s possible that Ghislaine Maxwell, who procured young girls for Epstein to rape, could reveal whether Trump was involved in Epstein’s crimes. Unfortunately that’s unlikely, since she hopes to win a pardon or commutation from Trump. Janna Brancolini at The Daily Beast: Epstein Pimp’s Family Kiss Up to Trump: ‘Ultimate Dealmaker.’

Ghislaine Maxwell’s family is turning to the tried-and-true method of flattering President Donald Trump in a bid to get the convicted sex trafficker sprung from prison.

Trump with Ghislaine Maxwell

Maxwell, 63, is serving a 20-year jail sentence after being convicted in 2021 of luring and grooming young girls for the late financier Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring.

Earlier this year, her lawyers filed a petition with the Supreme Court arguing her conviction was invalid, saying her prosecution in New York was barred by a 2007 non-prosecution agreement the government made with Epstein in Florida that also covered his co-conspirators.

A federal appeals court and the Department of Justice have both smacked down that argument, leading the family to now co-sign a flattering statement about the president.

Her siblings shared a statement from Maxwell’s attorney David Oscar Markus that said, “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.”

“These are sentiments with which we profoundly concur,” the family added.

The family members didn’t sign the statement individually—perhaps because the family has long been associated with scandal.

Read more details at the link.

Two more interesting articles about the Epstein controversy and the MAGA faithful:

Will Sommer at The Bulwark: The Five MAGA Factions Waging an Epstein Civil War.

Zack Beauchamp at Vox: Why Trump betrayed his base on Jeffrey Epstein And why he’ll get away with it.

There’s one reporter who really knows the Epstein story and what’s in the files: Julie K. Brown from The Miami Herald. Here is a piece she wrote in March: The Epstein files: What is public, and what is still secret?

Opening up two decades of government files related to sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein isn’t going to be as simple as inserting them into three-ring binders or putting them on the internet.

After hyping the release of Epstein documents as “breaking news” on Fox News, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday distributed binders filled with material to a group of conservative social media pundits. But the big reveal, designed to promote President Donald Trump’s new culture of transparency, fell flat.

When the group opened the binders, they discovered 200 pages of dated material, most of which had long ago been made public. To make matters worse, some of the material was overly redacted — the same material had already been available on the internet in unredacted form.

Bondi, a former prosecutor and Florida attorney general, said she had been misled by the FBI into believing she had all the documents. She then accused federal agents of withholding thousands of pages, and ordered the agency to turn over the rest by Friday morning. But the 8 a.m. deadline came and went without any word on the files.

FBI sources told the Miami Herald Friday that they worried releasing the documents without a careful review — one that would likely take weeks or months — would jeopardize the hard-won 2021 conviction of Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell is appealing her conviction and 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking.

Sources also said that the files are voluminous. There are 22 files containing over 500 pages in the FBI vault, a portal on the FBI’s website accessible to the public. The bulk of those 11,000-plus pages are heavily redacted, and Justice Department prosecutors have fought their release for years. While Bondi pointed fingers at the FBI in New York, many more files exist in other jurisdictions. One critical source of evidence against Epstein was in the discovery for a Florida civil case brought by Epstein’s victims against the FBI in 2008. That case spanned a decade and included tens of thousands of pages of material that sheds light on how federal prosecutors

mishandled that early case. Not all the FBI documents connected to that case — or the federal criminal case — in Florida have been made public.

“Going through those files would be an enormous, enormous effort. They contain the names of victims, witnesses and other personal information,” said Paul Pelletier, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice. “There was tons of discovery in the New York case alone. There’s no prosecutor in their right mind who would be able to corral all the evidence in the Epstein case over 20 years in a week and be able to release it carefully and accurately.”

Read the rest at The Miami Herald. For anyone who’s interested in the truth, Brown is the one to trust.

I don’t know if I’ve enlightened anyone with this collection of reads, but I hope I’ve helped some.

What’s on your mind today?