This is from Brian Beutler’s Off Message Substack, and it’s actually about Ghislaine Maxwell, but I think you’ll take my point.
Look at this week’s warning about Trump and the files from the New York Times editorial board. They rightly caution that Trump has manipulated the public at every step of the process, and that his manipulations will continue. You shouldn’t trust any information Trump clears for release, according to the Times, given:
- Trump’s long friendship with Epstein and his jokey statements about Epstein’s perversions
- The creepy cartoon birthday card Trump drew for his pal
- Trump’s use of Epstein file conspiracy theories for campaign advantage, only to pretend the whole thing was a hoax once he was responsible for disclosure
- Pam Bondi’s gleeful displays of fake transparency to MAGA podcasters, followed by her ham-fisted stonewalling after informing Trump that he’s in the files
- And finally, Trumps machinations, intimidation and threats to (unsuccessfully) block a Congressional vote, and, thus, to keep the files secret
All of that, but not a single word about Ghislaine Maxwell. How is this possible?
Trump’s treatment of Maxwell—a convicted sex trafficker— is by far the most glaring, brazen, and openly corrupt part of the current moment involving the president. It should be a show-stopper. It should be sending reporters into the faces of every Trump ally and causing them to fall over each other with incredulity at every Oval Office press availability. But in the warped reality surrounding Trump, it’s being taken, by all of us, as some strange, lower-priority, given.
When the politics of the Epstein fiasco began to tighten on Trump over the summer, he dispatched the Deputy Attorney General to Florida to privately interview Maxwell. We now know, thanks to Epstein’s emails, that Maxwell lied about how much Trump knew about Epstein’s and her own abuse. DAG Todd Blanche, formerly Trump’s personal attorney, left the receipts from the Epstein estate out of the chat.
Whether by intention or error, he failed to get the truth out of Maxwell.
(“Mr. President, when will you order Todd Blanche to re-interview Maxwell given the evidence contained in Jeffrey Epstein’s emails, and why haven’t your ordered it already? Don’t you want to know the truth?”)
Immediately after her jailhouse interview, someone in the Trump Administration moved Maxwell from a high-security federal prison in Florida to a much more comfortable one in Texas. Maxwell is a sex offender and under Bureau of Prison rules not eligible for minimum security incarceration. But she’s also getting special meals, private access to the gym, visit time with a dog, and other privileges like unlimited toilet paper, according to a whistleblower. According to experts, the only people authorized to issue the special waiver allowing Maxwell to be treated unlike virtually any other sex offender are the BOP director and the Deputy Attorney General.
(“Mr. President, you claim you didn’t know about Maxwell’s transfer. But now that you know, why haven’t your ordered the Bureau of Prisons to return her to maximum security?”)
(“If you won’t order her return, why not? Why should she stay in a prison the rules say isn’t fit for a sex offender?”)
(“Maxwell was your friend for many years. Sir, why is your Administration giving her special treatment?”)
In July, 2020, Maxwell was arrested and charged with six felony counts including conspiracy, perjury, and sex trafficking minors as young as 14. In the face of these alleged abominations, Donald Trump, the President of the United States, would only say of Maxwell, “I wish her well.”
(“Mr. President, in 2020 you said repeatedly that you wish Ghislaine Maxwell well. Why would you wish someone charged with trafficking 14-year-old girls well?”)
(“Sir, Maxwell said in her jailhouse interview that she likes you and admires your achievements. And you’ve said you wish her well. Why are you and a child sex trafficker saying such friendly things to each other through intermediaries?”)
I would just like to point out that every one of these questions could be addressed to Greg Abbott, because Ghislaine Maxwell is as noted here in Texas, in that nice cushy federal pen that she was moved to in order to curry favor – and hopefully a pardon – from Donald Trump, and also because Trump is Greg Abbott’s daddy. All of these words are equally true for Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton, and pretty much every Texas Republican on the ballot. But we’ll focus here on the big three for simplicity’s sake.
Because these guys don’t bother talking to the mainstream media, the questions will need to be brought to them in a different way. What I envision is all of the current Democratic candidates for Senate, Governor, Lite Guv, and AG calling a press conference about this and taking turns lambasting Abbott, Patrick, Paxton, and Cornyn for acquiescing to all this happening in our state and demanding that they do something about it. That would take a lot of coordination and stagecraft and would require figuring out who gets to speak and so on, but I think we would all agree it would get a lot of attention. Hype it up beforehand, livestream it everywhere, and make some noise. The media, as Beutler notes, doesn’t know how to handle this situation. But they would know what to do with an event like this. I know this is all blue-sky stuff, but why not try?
The Epstein files also need to be woven into the economic disparities/class warfare narrative. It’s the 1% saying to the rest of us not only can we rig the system to socialize our risks and privatize our rewards, we can also use some of your daughters as our playthings, and you can’t touch us.
Was there any actual evidence that Epstein was ever any good at financial advice? I’m not prone to conspiracy theories, but the idea that he was somebody’s intelligence asset sure does make quite a few puzzle pieces fit.
My feeling about Epstein and Trump especially is that besides being a child rapist, trafficker and blackmailer Epstein became good at hiding assets overseas for his rich friends. That might be what all the crazy huge money movements were about. Since there is no statute of limitations on tax fraud it may be that this is what Trump is worried about.
To expound a bit more on my theory, I think that hiding cash overseas for his super-rich friends and clients is likely to be the main way Epstein made his money. As long as everyone is preoccupied about the sex crimes there is no spotlight on the tax evasions, if they occurred, and so these men are safe for now. According to my theory Epstein had a lot of dirt on a lot of important people, but the most dangerous knowledge he possessed was where the cash had been hidden and for whom, and that is why he had to be finished off.