An Open Letter To Epstein Truthers
Your instincts were on point. But Trump was a snake before you took him in...
If nothing else, recent developments in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal have revealed a lot about prominent people who (until a few days ago) claimed to care about the truth of the matter.
They’ve had to choose between fidelity to the facts and fealty to Donald Trump, and the ones who’ve chosen Trump—from FBI Director Kash Patel to grifting stooges like Charlie Kirk—revealed repugnant moral priorities. On a generous read, they decided they care more about preserving Republican power than about justice for pedophiles. That would not be without precedent. An overlapping group of Republicans rallied to endorse Roy Moore in a 2017 special Senate election, even after his history of grooming and sexually assaulting teenage girls came to light.
Alternatively, they never cared about the facts of the Epstein matter at all, and only pretended they did because they thought it might help them smear Democrats. Now that the scandal implicates Trump, they’re behaving exactly like the cover-up artists they promised to root out.
Shame on them. But that shame doesn’t attach to every American who believed them. Millions of people comprise what you might call the Epstein-truth movement and they aren’t all opportunistic Trump loyalists like Kirk. Not even close. The movement is too big for things to be that clean cut.
So this is my earnest and open appeal to actual Epstein truthers. If over the past months or years you’ve become convinced that the federal government buried secrets about Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation to protect elites, ask yourself: Did you believe that because you don’t trust the government, or because the case set the stage for a climactic moment when Trump might swoop in and expose the truth? Did you latch on to the Epstein scandal because you care about bringing predators to justice, or because it helped you bludgeon political enemies, whether they were friends with Epstein or not?
If the answer is the former, read on. We have more in common than you think.
U AND NOT Q
A quick caveat: We probably don’t have similar ideas about how deception and elite corruption work. Once upon a time we might have, but 20 years into a career covering politics on the ground, I’ve come to see these machinations differently. When official stories don’t add up, I’m not inclined to imagine shadowy cabals or wide-ranging, sophisticated coverups.
But that’s not because I assume politically connected people are virtuous. That they don’t frequently try to violate the public’s trust behind the scenes. Elites do bad things all the time, they try to cover them up almost as often—they’re just pretty clumsy about it most of the time. Sometimes their coverups “work” in that they spare themselves the embarrassment of full exposure, but along the way they get caught in lies and obstruction and come out looking foolish and guilty all the same. Most villainy isn’t storybook villainy; most heroism isn’t storybook heroism.
If you can imagine the world the way I see it, even just for argument’s sake, we can close the gap between us considerably.
Because if political conspiracies are real, just bumbling and unsophisticated, then you can appreciate the frustrations of those of us who’ve watched Trump perpetrate scheme after scheme, coverup after coverup—often in the most ham-handed ways—only to be told we have “Trump Derangement Syndrome” for pointing it out.
It’s not altogether different from the dismissiveness you’ve encountered from journalists and politicians who laugh off the idea of a deep state or who never gave the Epstein scandal a moment’s thought until three weeks ago.
But if you look squarely at Trump’s conduct these past couple weeks, how he’s reversed himself and changed his story and tossed off bizarre, inconsistent deflective allegations, you’ll see the very Epstein coverup you believed was happening all along. It’s just happening now, and in clumsier fashion than you originally imagined.
FALSIFYING FLAGS
If past administrations covered up the full truth of the Epstein matter intentionally, to protect powerful Epstein clients, what would that have looked like in practice? Probably something like this: Orders from on high to agents and prosecutors to identify and then shelve any evidence incriminating sufficiently powerful men, whether it was Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, or Donald Trump.
Now think about what’s happening in the moment. Trump has reneged on his promise to release the Epstein case file. He wants you to believe releasing grand jury testimony (a tiny fraction of the evidence, none of which pertains to him) would constitute an act of radical transparency, when in fact it would put lipstick on the coverup.
Then consider this whistleblower allegation, first brought to light by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), suggesting Trump’s DOJ leadership has tried to identify and segregate contents of the Epstein files that pertain to Trump himself.
According to information my office received, you then pressured the FBI to put approximately 1,000 personnel in its Information Management Division (IMD), including the Record/Information Dissemination Section (RIDS), which handles all requests submitted by the public under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Privacy Act, on 24-hour shifts to review approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records in order to produce more documents that could then be released on an arbitrarily short deadline. This effort, which reportedly took place from March 14 through the end of March, was haphazardly supplemented by hundreds of FBI New York Field Office personnel, many of whom lacked the expertise to identify statutorily protected information regarding child victims and child witnesses or properly handle FOIA requests. My office was told that these personnel were instructed to “flag” any records in which President Trump was mentioned.
Emphasis added.
Just as you suspected, only clumsier. Your instinct that the powerful might seek to bury or destroy evidence of their involvement with Epstein was completely correct. The only difference is it’s happening right now, led by someone who said he’d release the files rather than close the case. It was misdirection; he was lying—quite possibly to gain control of the files and make sure they never saw the light of day.
HOME, HOME ON DERANGE
The next bridge to build would be to persuade you that Trump Derangement Syndrome isn’t a form of derangement at all, even if some of his detractors have been driven to hysterics by his knack for avoiding accountability.
It isn’t a stretch to say Trump’s political career has played out as a series of schemes, many of which have been exposed to some degree or another, but none of which has repulsed enough of his supporters to end his candidacies or drive him from office.
Trump calls it a hoax, but he really did know about and encourage Russian government cybercrimes meant to help him defeat Hillary Clinton. There may have been insufficient evidence to charge him with a crime, but it was still cheating, still a form of elite scheming. (If a coworker stole your emails and published them online, all to beat you to a promotion, you’d want to get the cops involved, and you’d have a hard time moving on if he got away with it.)
Trump describes it as a “perfect phone call,” but he really did upend an American alliance, and treat weapons paid for by we the taxpayers as his private property, to extort the government of Ukraine for personal political gain. Republicans chose to acquit him in his Senate trial, but the articles of impeachment were true and damning.
Trump claims to be the rightful winner of the 2020 election, but really he lost and then schemed with fellow elites to overturn it.
Trump and all of his most loyal servants promised to release the Epstein files, but when the time came, he refused, only for incredibly damning material implicating him to breach containment anyhow.
These were all elite conspiracies, they were all clumsy, and in most cases Trump got caught. But he still got away with all of it. If impunity for the elites involved with Epstein upset you, these things should, too. But you have to be willing to accept that Trump’s the king of elites, and the one with the most skeletons in his closet.
Your suspicions may have been off a bit, but you weren’t wrong to smell a rat. There really is someone covering up a bunch of government secrets you have a right to know. His name is Donald Trump.
Most under explored aspect is Steve Bannon’s 15 hour interview recordings with Epstein. Why is no one bringing that up?? Michael Tracey’s substack has all the details. It’s crazy
These are good talking points for a loosely attached MAGA in your life. Even though I live in Texas, where the not from Texas community believes everyone to be a rabid MAGA, most people are not loyal to Trump the man at all. They are underexposed to different viewpoints than what saturates their media world. There is absolutely zero effective rebuttal to Republican propaganda. Hearts have been hardened against Democrats based on blatant falsehoods. Whenever something creates a crack in the propaganda bubble, it is imperative to undermine Trump with those facts.
I think the rank and file Republicans in Texas voted for Trump based on the same theory of the case that Democrats thought would be sufficient to elect Hillary. Namely, that while Trump is icky, at least he is not as bad as those horrible, no good, dangerous, possibly criminal, etc. Democrats. (Never mind that Democrats haven't been in real power in Texas since the 90's. Yet, somehow we are responsible for everything that goes wrong while Republicans are responsible for everything that goes right.)
The Epstein matter provides yet another opportunity to flip some Republicans. So the real issue is whether Democrats will try. We cannot wait for national Democrats to exploit this opportunity. They have had a decade of demurring. To this day, national Democrats keep declining to get loud and confront Republicans with the kind of rhetorical and political beatdowns they keep delivering to us.
They seem more interested in tamping down popular will in the Democratic Party. Which is just another way of saying they are undertaking to control us rather than trying to beat Republicans. This is not that different from what Trump is doing in regard to Epstein.