The big news today remains Epstein:
--The fact that this is the week after Christmas, when nothing much happens in Washington DC, and that it’s a Sunday, when ditto, doesn’t help, but there are also new revelations:
--Julie K. Brown, a Miami Herald journalist who has been on the Epstein story from the beginning, discovered that her flight itinerary from a trip she took to Florida in 2019 was in the Epstein files. It was attached to a grand jury subpoena. The trip occurred during Trump’s first administration and happened about a month before Epstein was found dead.
Julie K. Brown: "Does somebody at the DOJ want to tell me why my American Airlines booking information and flights in July 2019 are part of the Epstein files (attached to a grand jury subpoena?) As the flight itinerary includes my maiden name (and I did book this flight) why was the DOJ monitoring me?"
--Journalist Chris Bury: "Why was the DOJ tracking a journalist covering Epstein?"
--Reporter Laura Rozen: "Disturbing. Top reporter on Epstein case."
--"Alireza Talakoubnejad: "This is a major scandal in and of itself, beyond whatever else is found in the files about Epstein himself."
--Ed Krassenstein: "The cover up is real!"
People are also continuing to talk about the story that Trump was involved in the killing of a newborn baby who was murdered and dropped in Lake Michigan:
--Some people didn’t think the story was very likely because it took place in Michigan, but others pointed out that both Epstein and Trump had connections to Michigan. Epstein recruited some of his victims from the Interlochen Music Camp in Michigan, and Trump knew people with yachts on Lake Michigan.
--Jo Jones: "I read about the Interlochen/Epstein connection years ago...like a long time ago."
--nugirl: "Trump has wealthy friends in Michigan who own many yachts on Lake Michigan. The Devos family, who he made one the Secretary of Education with zero qualifications."
--Supertanskier: "The most rich and powerful men in the world have done (and likely still do) the most heinous shit, yeah, including child rape and murder."
--Norman Bowley: "We’ll likely never know if this is true or not. But I’ll bet there aren’t 20 people in all of America who doubt that it could be true. That’s the true indictment of the man."
--Washington State Concerned said they had not "seen any denial by Trump."
--Red Rover: "He’s been awfully quiet, hasn’t he? If that was me, I’d be screaming nonstop in my defense."
--FormerFed: "The evangelical lot is awfully quiet. Are they twisting themselves into a pretzel trying to find a way to give this a positive pro-Trump spin?"
--Meidas Touch: "Trump wants you to know his activities with Jeffrey Epstein were a hoax just like his loss in the 2020 election was a hoax."
And there continue to be new revelations with every passing moment:
--One girl was invited to Epstein’s home, where Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell began touching each other and then her. She was upset, and when they asked her to come over again, she thought they were going to apologize. Instead, Epstein told her cameras had recorded the touching and he’d tell if she didn’t come to parties. She was terrified her parents and pastor would find out, so she agreed to go. She met Trump at an Epstein party.
--"Epstein bragged about Trump to women, yet also competed with him. It was like a pissing contest, who had the most women."
--A girlfriend of Epstein’s, Stacey Williams, visited Trump Tower with Epstein. As the two friends talked, Trump pulled her toward him and groped her breasts, waist and buttocks. Epstein stood there acting like nothing had happened. (Trump says her account is "fake." Isn’t it peculiar how many things Trump, et al deny?)
--Note: Trump has said he barely knew Epstein, that he was one of thousands of people who visited Mar-a-lago, that the pictures of them together are because he had his picture taken with everybody and Epstein lived in Palm Beach and was all over the place, and that they had no relationship. They were not friends and they did not socialize together.
--Meidas Touch: "When asked about the Epstein files on December 22, he (Trump) said, ‘I thought that was finished.’ That’s not the language of someone confident in the truth. That’s the language of someone who assumed time would do the erasing for him...The more selective the releases become, the more obvious the protection is. It’s not just that the cover up is worse than the crime, but that the cover up is advertising how serious the crime might be."
--Simon Rosenberg: "Trump’s sleazebag post...reads like a confession to being a major player in the Epstein affair...it likens the Epstein affair and his compromise by Russia...It suggests he is unaware the entire Congress--including every Republican but one--voted to force him to release the files."
--In her interview with Vanity Fair, Susie Wiles called Epstein and Trump a couple of "young, single playboys" even though that was a total lie. Trump was 50 years old and married during most of the time he associated publicly with Epstein.
--Meidas Touch: "That word, playboys, did more damage than a thousand leaked photos ever could. Because it revealed the mindset: minimize, normalize, sanitize. When the defense starts rewriting reality it’s not because the facts are friendly."
--"The DOJ is now an arm of Trump’s mob syndication and they are protecting his criminal regime at all cost."
--The law for conspiracy against the United States reads: "’Once a conspiracy is established, only a slight connection to the conspiracy is necessary to support conviction.’ That is, to prove a conspirator is guilty, prosecutors need not show that he participated from the start, was acquainted with all the other conspirators, knew all the details, or was involved in all the misconduct."
Here’s a deposition one of the Epstein victims gave:
--"In June 1994 while performing my duties as a recruiter of adolescent women to attend Mr. Epstein’s parties, I met a 13-year-old adolescent woman, the Plaintiff in this matter, at the Port Authority in New York City who said that she had come to New York City in the hope of starting a modeling career. I persuaded the Plaintiff to attend a series of parties of Mr. Epstein that took place during the summer of 1994. I told her that, if she would join me at the parties, she would be introduced to people who could get her into the modeling profession and she would be paid for attending. It was at these series of parties that I personally witnessed the Plaintiff being forced to perform various sexual acts with Donald J. Trump and Mr. Epstein. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Epsein were advised that she was 13 years old. I personally witnessed four sexual encounters that the Plaintiff was forced to have with Mr. Trump during this period, including the fourth of these encounters where Mr. Trump forcibly raped her despite her pleas to stop. I personally witnessed the one occasion where Mr. Trump forced the Plaintiff and a 12-year-old female named perform oral sex on Mr. Trump and witnessed his physical abuse of both minors when they finished the act."
In some ways, the worst things in the files aren’t the grotesque sexual details, they’re things like one of the trafficked girls saying she couldn’t come at a certain time to have sex with one of Epstein’s buddies because she had soccer practice.
--It reminded me instantly of the passage in Nabokov’s LOLITA, where Humbert has gone on and on trying to convince you that the child Lolita was a willing and enthusiastic partner in the sex and then says that the only thing that he remembers was the sound of Lolita crying "every night, every night, every night." (Note: Among all the heinous crimes Epstein did, he also sullied a brilliant novel by calling his plane "The Lolita Express" and writing lines from the novel on the bare skin of his victims. The novel is all about the terribleness of the crime of pedophilia and how it destroys its victims, and it didn’t deserve this any more than "Catcher in the Rye" deserved to be blamed for John Lennon’s death.)
--There’s also another passage in the files that will chill your blood: "A 15-year-old victim was forced into sexual acts with Epstein and others and then attempted to escape by swimming off the Little St. James Island. Epstein and others organized a search party that located her and kept her captive by, among other things, confiscating her passport..." (How desperate would you have to be to try to swim to the mainland from an ISLAND?)
--It’s easy to lose sight of the victims in amongst all the gory details, but we have to remember that’s what this is all about.
In ICE/Gestapo news:
--A 15-year-old American-born kid in Waukegan, Diego Rosales, was waiting for the school bus when three masked men in body armor jumped out of SUVs and demanded, "Where were you born?" When he said, "Waukegan," they left.
--People who have been interned at Alligator Auschwitz filed a lawsuit saying that they and other prisoners, including minors, had been subjected to torture and inhumane treatment
--Illinois’s Secretary of State warned car rental agencies they could be held responsible for ICE illegally swapping out license plates, which hopefully will make them more reluctant to rent cars to them.
--The Border Patrol showed up at a house saying they had a warrant, but one of the people they were trying to arrest pointed out that it did not have a judge’s signature, it was just a blank warrant form, and the Border Patrol ended up leaving.
--In good news, a US judge ruled that Trump can’t ban lawmakers’ surprise visits to ICE facilities--and the National Guard troops under Trump’s command left Los Angeles before the court deadline.
In Cracks in MAGA news:
--When Tucker Carlson hosted neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes on his podcast show, he opened a rift in MAGA between people who think the right should embrace Nazis and those who think they shouldn’t. It’s had all sorts of ramifications, with people choosing up sides and members of organizations quitting over it.
--The Turning Point USA convention was a battle royal, with everybody calling everybody else names. Ben Shapiro blasted Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and Steve Bannon, and called them all frauds and grifters. Tucker Carlson yelled at Ben Shapiro. Steve Bannon called Ben Shapiro "a cancer, and that cancer spreads" and accused him of trying to take over Turning Point USA.
--Nearly the entire legal and economics team at the Heritage Foundation has resigned because of head Kevin Roberts’ embrace of Nazis and Nazi ideas. Roberts defended Tucker Carlson’s having Nick Fuentes on his show. Two trustees have also resigned. In all, at least 30 people have resigned or been fired.
--At Turning Point USA, well-known podcaster Jack Posobiec was seen sitting next to Myron Gaines, another podcaster, who was wearing a cookie monster shirt which shows Cookie standing in front of an oven, with the pro-Holocaust slogan, "Let ‘em cook." MAGA was quick to condemn Posobiec for associating with him, but Megyn Kelly came to his defense.
--The Bruiser: "This should end Jack Posobiec. MAGA."
--The Daily Wire: "These people are complete losers. It’s not cancel culture to want them nowhere near your events."
--Reason: "Today, the divisions on the right are not just between pro-Trump and anti-Trump conservatives (or pro-Trump conservatives and never-Trump former conservatives.) There is now a schism WITHIN the MAGA coalition over how big the tent should be and what exactly it should stand for."
In Trump ballroom news:
--The plans still haven’t been submitted for review by the board that oversees the National Register of buildings, but the numbers keep changing. First Trump said the ballroom would cost $200 million, then $300 million, now $400 million. He also keeps expanding the size of the ballroom.
--Rumors are flying that the ballroom is not really a ballroom, but something more sinister. Some people think he is actually planning to build a data center like the ones Israelis built. One reason they think that is that Trump fired his original contractor and has hired new contractors who have built data centers. A second reason is that the plans call for increasing the power capacity by 500%. A third is that the Pentagon is heavily involved.
--The administration also says they aren’t just building a ballroom. They’re doing an update of the entire White House infrastructure.
--rugbymom: Speculation is that Trump has demanded something large enough to house the entire administration in there before noon on January 20, 2029, and prevent the US military or anyone else from extracting them or forcing them out and keep running the government. And that if there were to be a successful impeachment removal or 25th Amendment vote before then, same thing, he wants protection from actually being forced out.
In other news:
--Trump signed an executive order downgrading marijuana from a Schedule 1 to a Schedule 3 drug, which will open cannabis up to more medical research. MAGA is reportedly very unhappy with this decision.
--Jared Kushner’s private equity firm says it’s dropping out of the plan to back Paramount Skydance’s hostile takeover bid for Warner Brothers’ Discovery. (Translation: they were trying to do it on the sly, but people found out and there was a huge outcry.)
--Mt. Etna erupted today, spewing plumes of ash and lava, while skiers blithely slalomed down the slopes below.
In good news:
--Four Republicans joined House Democrats to give Hakeem Jeffrey’s discharge petition to vote in January on extending ACA by three years the necessary 218 votes. (It’s not likely to succeed, but it might produce a compromise and an extension of some kind. And if not, it will make it even clearer that it’s the Republicans who are raising people’s health insurance rates.
--A federal judge canceled Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s January trial on human smuggling and will instead hold a one-day hearing on whether he’s been vindictively and selectively prosecuted by the government.
--Paul Wagner: "The judge says the evidence is in Abrego’s favor."
--Oregonian Seth Todd, who protested ICE wearing an inflatable frog suit (even though ICE agents pumped pepper spray into his suit) was just named Portlander of the Year.
Best comment of the day, from Bill Kristol:
"Forest and trees re the Epstein documents.
Trees: Controversy about particular documents.
Forest: Virtually none of the key documents, ones we know exist, the ones the victims and knowledgeable observers have been demanding to see, have been released. So the cover up continues."
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis