The Fog of Epstein

Listen To This Story

The proverbial fog of war has nothing on the fog of Epstein. Perhaps this is because Epstein is a war, just one whose weapons, instead of guns and bombs and drones, are lies and evasions and redactions.

Take, for example, poor Howard Lutnick, Donald Trump’s secretary of commerce, who was tripped up by some unredacted evidence in the most recent release of the Epstein files, showing that, in publicly addressing his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein last year, he had completely concocted his “Epstein who?” denial.

It seems Lutnick, unlike Trump, didn’t rate the Full Protection Package over at Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice. Like Lutnick, Trump just never thought his most damning Epstein-related lies and antics would come to light. Unlike Lutnick, Trump was right (so far).

Plenty has been written about the trench warfare over all the evidence one entity or another has sat on, long time passing — in some cases since Trump 1.0’s attorney general, Bill Barr, raided all of Epstein’s cubbyholes before his prisoner’s corpse had a chance to cool; in other cases, for decades.

I’m more interested in, as it were, the Big Picture. That is, what the hell do we really think is going on here? What is this whole circus of a war really all about?

C’mon. Does anyone not think it is about Donald John Trump? Okay, yes, there are the victims — the survivors — and various perps like Andrew and one or another Bill. But they are not why this has morphed into a political fight to the death. It’s being waged to protect — or expose — Donald John Trump by concealing — or disclosing — just what he did and to whom he did it.

Which means, given that a massive operation has been undertaken to make sure those facts never come to light, we are free to use our “common sense” — one of Trump’s favorite expressions — to suss it out. Basic common sense and a little logic. Here goes.

Trump — whose m.o. with women is, in his own recorded words, to “move on them … kissing them … grab ’em by the pussy” — hangs out for years with bestie Jeff and wall-to-wall women and floor-to-ceiling girls. Surrounded, saturated, with zero compunction, and with assumption of complete impunity. And because, unlike a slew of Jeff’s other acquaintances, he’s such a remarkably well-behaved, self-disciplined, and “caring” individual, he doesn’t “do” any of them. Right.

And we know Epstein’s cameras were everywhere, and his m.o. was roll film, get the dirt, use it when necessary.

So our spidey sense tells us there should be plenty of footage of Trump in flagrante delicto — yes, raping one or another of those ambient and ubiquitous girls, Trump himself having told us that his bestie “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

Okay, where did it all disappear to — when the reportedly self-strangling Epstein breathed his last and Barr’s DOJ instantly raided every one of the no-longer-personally-dangerous pedo’s catacombs? Where, indeed? Is it too far-out to wonder whether some of it might have been among the truckload of other boxes of sensitive documents that found their way to Mar-a-Lago before Team Biden took over the DOJ in 2021? Maybe, but it is certainly reasonable to point out that no credible chain of custody has ever been established for all the evidence seized in the wake of Epstein’s death.

It took a reported cast of thousands at Bondi’s DOJ to pore through the files and flag all the stuff that might be dangerous to Trump — who appears in the less-redacted version of the files over a million times. This estimate comes from Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), one of the members of Congress who was allowed to examine that version — while being spied upon by Bondi’s DOJ. 

But — continuing with our common sense attempt to peer through the fog — you couldn’t have a cast of thousands do the actual scrubbing (leaks, anyone?). So it makes sense that it would take a long time for the Special Ops at DOJ to make Trump safe — hence the stonewalling, long delay, and piecemeal releases.

Trump is not just the Big Kahuna but the Whole Enchilada. No use wasting time protecting peons like Lutnick, let alone Democrats, moguls, and foreign dignitaries. Besides, if they scrubbed the records too clean, the cover-up would be too obvious, even for the MAGA faithful. 

So the formula: Leave a lot of dirt on the expendables (some of whom, like Lutnick, were slated for post-release protection), and a little dirt on Trump — just enough to lend a shred of very strained credibility to the whole mendacious enterprise.

But make 100 percent sure Trump is in the clear when it comes to behavior that everything we know about him suggests occurred — any evidence of actions (say, raping a 13-year-old) that would send him spinning off to MAGA hell in a hurry. 

And let people believe that when you put HCl and NaOH together in a beaker, the acid and base just sat there minding their own business. There’s nothing to see here, folks — not anymore. Just move along.

Suddenly, the fog lifts a little and the big picture comes into focus and — politically, at least — the whole circus makes sense.