Tuesday, July 8, 2025

The Epstein files fiasco

 In a blow to conspiracy believers, the Department of Justice and the FBI have announced that Jeffrey Epstein really did kill himself and that the long-sought-after client list did not exist. A memo first obtained by Axios said that there was no evidence of blackmail by Epstein, the trial evidence against Epstein would not have exposed “any additional third parties to evidence of wrongdoing,” video of the New York jail where Epstein died would be released, and no new charges would be brought against “uncharged third parties.” It’s almost like the online grifters have been lying and making stuff up all along. 

But the scandal goes beyond the biggest dud since Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone’s vault. 

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Back in February, Attorney General Pam Bondi released what was touted as the “first phase” of Epstein files to be declassified and told Fox News the “list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients” was “sitting on my desk right now to review.” Bondi was behind the much-ballyhooed release of binders of Epstein information to right-wing media personalities. 

After his acrimonious breakup with Donald Trump, Elon Musk tweeted that Trump was “in the Epstein files” and that was the “real reason they have not been made public.”

Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, now the heads of the FBI, were among the online conspiracy theorists who pushed the idea that “Epstein did not kill himself” for years, yet cracks in their claims started developing long before this week. Back in May, the duo appeared on Fox Business and confirmed that the evidence showed that Epstein “killed himself.”

All of these people lied to you until they could not extend the lie any longer. As the late Herman Cain used to say, “They think you are stupid.”

And there’s no question that they lied, by the way. They either lied before when they said they had the client list or they’re lying now when they say they don’t. There is no way to reconcile the two claims.

The revelation that the Epstein client list was a myth leaves MAGA with a few choices. First, they can believe what seems to be the truth, that the list never existed, and they were conned by people who claimed that it did. The lie generated anger, clicks, and votes. 

The more likely option is that the conspiracy nuts will weave this new information into the broader fabric of their conspiracy theories. Are Bondi, Patel, and Bongino compromised by the “Deep State?” Are they lying to protect Trump? 

It seems that many Trump allies are already taking the second option to varying degrees. Some, like Laura Loomer (who was last seen allegedly being tricked into eating dog food), are focusing their ire on Bondi, while others are wondering about Trump’s involvement. After all, Trump allegedly told Bondi to release the Epstein files, and Trump could fire her, Patel, or Bongino at any time if he was displeased. 

The Epstein saga played into the QAnon/Pizzagate conspiracy theory that a cabal of pedophiles (all Democrats, of course) secretly inhabited the high places of society. Over the years, conspiracy nuts have alleged that the Biden Administration and/or other Democrats were involved in a cover-up of Epstein’s death, but let’s look back at the facts: 

  • Alexander Acosta was the US attorney who approved Epstein’s plea deal in 2008. Donald Trump later appointed Acosta to be his Secretary of Labor in his first Administration. 

  • Jeffrey Epstein died in 2019 in a federal lockup at a time when Donald Trump was president and his allies headed the Justice Department. 

  • Two presidents, Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, were directly connected to Epstein.

In the detective business, that would constitute means, motive, and opportunity, but I tend to subscribe to Occam’s Razor, the idea that the simplest explanation is correct (at least in the absence of evidence to the contrary). The simplest explanation here is that Jeffrey Epstein was faced with a humiliating trial and the prospect of life in prison and killed himself. Epstein was a con man and a pervert, but it seems that his sex trafficking was for his own evil pleasure rather than for peddling influence or blackmail. 

The answer is in the DOJ press release noting the conviction of Epstein’s partner in crime, Ghislaine Maxwell. The release states, the minor victims “were groomed and abused by Maxwell and Epstein, both of whom knew that their victims were in fact minors.” Similarly, court documents for Epstein’s case don’t point to network of blackmail clients. 

Epstein was the client. 

But what about people like Prince Andrew, you might ask. The prince was tied to Epstein through numerous visits and testimony by Virginia Giuffre, who claimed that she was forced by Epstein to have sex with Andrew when she was underage. Andrew appears in a photograph with Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s partner in crime. Giuffre made similar claims about Alan Dershowitz. 

The FBI and DOJ did not go into detail about either Andrew or Dershowitz, but both have denied wrongdoing. Apparently, the investigation did not find enough evidence to support Giuffre’s claims. 

As to the photograph, its authenticity is in doubt. Maxwell claimed the photograph was fake, and Andrew said he had no memory of it. In any case, the photograph is not necessarily evidence of criminal activity. Those who would condemn Andrew based on the picture should consider that Donald Trump is also pictured with Epstein in more than one photo.

As often happens with conspiracy theories, the story took on a life of its own as online and on-air grifters blew the truth out of proportion and made up their own facts. By the time Epstein died, the legitimately bizarre case had captured the public imagination and, to a nation whose distrust of media and government was off the charts, the simple truth was too simple to be acceptable.

It will be interesting to see whether there is any accountability for those who propagated the lie. In particular, Bondi knowingly misled the American people to the end. 

Speaking for myself, I never got on the “Epstein didn’t kill himself” train. Suicide always seemed to make more sense, as well as to fit another principle, Hanlon’s Razor, which advises, “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” The possibility that the guards could leave Epstein alone long enough for him to end his life was believably stupid. It was more believable than the notion that assassins could penetrate a jail, kill a prisoner in an isolation cell, and escape undetected. Did you ever notice that the conspiracy crowd typically seems to think that the government is completely incompetent except when their conspiracy theories require the government to be unbelievably cunning, efficient, and successfully secretive? 

As Mark Twain is wrongfully believed to have said, “It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled,” and that is certainly the case with the Epstein files fiasco. It will also hold true for MAGA as Trump’s policies lead to disaster in other areas. 

As always, when blatant liars are revealed, my recommendation is to remember the people who claimed that the Epstein files would be a bombshell that would ripple through government and Hollywood with evidence that well-known politicians and actors were “pedos.” Take special note of those who still cling to the fiction. At the very least, these people were gullible and passed along misinformation uncritically. At worst, they knowingly passed along lies for their own benefit and to sway the election for Donald Trump. Either way, they should not be trusted. 

The real takeaways of the Epstein files are in who should not be believed and that Deep State conspiracies should be taken with many grains of salt. 


From the Racket News


Tuesday, July 1, 2025

The injunction against national injunctions

 The Trump Administration got a relatively rare win last week in a Supreme Court decision regarding Trump’s attempt to reverse the Constitution’s birthright citizenship clause. The most interesting part of the decision was that the Supreme Court did not rule on birthright citizenship even though that issue was the basis for the case. Hot takes saying that the Court allowed Trump to ignore the birthright citizenship precedent are wrong.

The case before the Court was focused on a far more narrow question: whether lower court judges have the authority to issue nationwide injunctions that bind areas outside their jurisdiction. The question of nationwide injunctions has been a bugaboo in conservative legal circles for far longer than Trump has been on the scene.

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Nationwide injunctions can be traced back to the 1960s when there were a number of nationwide injunctions related to the Civil Rights movement, but the judicial tool really became common in the modern era of the Obama and Trump presidencies. The practice seems to have evolved as an answer to presidents increasingly ruling by Executive Order as a means of bypassing a divided and gridlocked Congress.

While I’m not a fan of nationwide injunctions, I’m also not a fan of making it tougher for Americans to fight abuses of power and a government that continues to encroach on the Constitution. The right to judicial redress is particularly important when the issues at hand include the very status of Americans as citizens, the ability to fight wrongful deportation, and the possibility that they will be subjected to indefinite detention without due process.

Into that mix comes Trump v. CASA, a case that challenged Trump’s Executive Order that denied citizenship to people born to illegal aliens. The Fourth Circuit of the US Court of Appeals ruled against the Administration, adding to a string of Administration losses, and applied a nationwide injunction against enforcement of the Order. The question that the Administration brought to the Supreme Court was whether the lower courts had the authority to issue a nationwide injunction to stop implementation of the Order.

As Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority in the “partial stay” granted by the Court, “The applications do not raise—and thus the Court does not address—the question whether the Executive Order violates the Citizenship Clause or Nationality Act. Instead, the issue the Court decides is whether, under the Judiciary Act of 1789, federal courts have equitable authority to issue universal injunctions.”

The Court decided that question by finding, “Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts,” while at the same time referring the question of the constitutionality of the Order back to lower courts, saying “The lower courts should determine whether a narrower injunction is appropriate….”

Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh joined the majority.

While I do find Trump’s Executive Order blatantly and egregiously unconstitutional, I also find it hard to argue with Barrett’s contention that “When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”

It is true that nationwide injunctions are not specifically permitted by the Constitution or by statute, but the question is whether the greater wrong is in permitting the Administration to abuse its authority under the Constitution or allowing courts more leeway in stopping executive abuses of power. Trump’s Order is unlawful on its face, while it can be argued that nationwide injunctions are implied even though they are not explicitly authorized. The same can be said of the very concept of judicial review, which was not explicitly granted to courts in the Constitution but was established in the landmark case, Marbury v. Madison (1803).

Nevertheless, the partial stay does not permit Trump and his cronies to run roughshod over the Constitution. I think it’s likely that the question of birthright citizenship will come back before the Supreme Court. The big question is what route it will take to get there. New lawsuits are already being filed that take the Supreme Court’s decision into account.

Among the possibilities of alternative strategies to fight the Executive Order are to flood courts in every district with individual lawsuits by aggrieved Americans whose citizenship is at risk or to certify a class of first-generation citizens born to unlawful immigrants. The majority opinion seems to specifically endorse class-action lawsuits over nationwide injunctions.

The language of the 14th Amendment is crystal clear: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” The fact that illegal immigrants can be prosecuted is proof that they are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.

If the Supreme Court follows the law as written and the precedent established in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1897), Trump’s Executive Order will eventually be struck down. The risk is that we have a patchwork of immigration rulings in the meantime, in which some states honor birthright citizenship while some states with MAGA judges deny this fundamental right.

While MAGA may cheer the idea of overturning birthright citizenship with an Executive Order, they should bear two sobering thoughts in mind. First, what can be done by Executive Order can be undone by Executive Order. The on-again/off-again status of millions of American citizens would cause all manner of chaos.

Second, establishing a precedent of eviscerating a constitutional right by Executive decree is not a road that anyone should want to go down, but gun owners should be more hesitant than most. It’s easy to imagine a future president implementing an Order stating, the Second Amendment “has never been interpreted to extend [gun ownership] universally to everyone born within the United States.”

A common theme among MAGA policies is that they seem to make the assumption that Democrats will never hold power again. Whether this is a sinister calculation or simply a failure of imagination, it is almost certainly wrong, and the precedents being set by the Trump Administration will be used to the opposite extreme by some future president. Be careful what you wish for, because the expansion of government power can be a monkey’s paw of unintended consequences.

I disagree with the timing of the Court’s CASA ruling more than the content. It seems to me that it would have been better to delay the day of reckoning for nationwide injunctions until there is a case that is a less flagrant example of unconstitutional abuse of power. While I have problems with nationwide injunctions, it is difficult to imagine a case in which a nationwide injunction is more justified.

There have been abuses of judicial power, but the best time to fight these abuses is not when we have a power-hungry executive running amok. Nationwide injunctions have been around for decades. There was nothing imperative about ending them (or at least restricting them) in June 2025. It would not have been the first time that the Court delayed making substantive changes for political reasons. Experimenting with major changes to the legal framework of the Republic is dangerous in this time of national crisis.

I do think the Supreme Court is still an independent body. The Court has ruled against Trump a great many times, but it is also true that the same Court has rendered some spectacularly bad decisions that give Trump (and any other future president) way too much deference and authority. (Trump v. United States, the presidential immunity decision, I’m looking in your direction.)

In the South, there’s a saying that even a blind squirrel can find a nut occasionally. It’s also true that the Trump Administration is going to be on the right side of the law at times. That’s especially true when the question is narrowly tailored, and that’s why Trump won here.

The Supreme Court did follow the law, and in this narrow situation, the law did favor the Trump Administration. If they pursue the larger question of birthright citizenship, I’m confident that MAGA will find that Trump’s appointees to the Court are not rubber stamps. I’m not, however, as confident as I’d like to be.

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THE WORST OF BOTH WORLDS IN IRAN: In the days since the US strike on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, there have been indications that the result was less than “obliteration.” Both a preliminary assessment by the US and an Iranian assessment intercepted by US intelligence found that damage was less than originally claimed and that the nuclear weapons program was only set back by a matter of months. The obvious course would be to conduct follow-up strikes, but Trump was so quick to claim victory and push a ceasefire that follow-up attacks are now politically difficult.

As a result, we may have the worst of both worlds. Iran continues to have a viable nuclear weapons program, and now they have a blood feud against the US as well, after we have directly struck their homeland. As the program is rebuilt and dispersed, it will likely become harder to kill in the future.

History shows that the partial destruction of the Iraqi nuclear program in the 1980s and the Stuxnet attack on Iran merely shifted weapons production to a higher priority. It seems likely that the recent incomplete US and Israeli strikes will have the same result.

And no, this is not Nobel Prize-worthy diplomacy.

From the Racket News