It Really Is A Cover Up

A memo from the Justice Department reopens claims that it’s hiding the truth to protect powerful people.

Despite multiple requests, to date I haven’t focused on the Jeffrey Epstein allegations. The waters have been so polluted by MAGA-hyped conspiracies that making sense of any of it has always seemed futile.

Indeed, it reads like a internet fever dream: presidents, princes, billionaires—all somehow connected to Epstein’s trafficking of minors, but still no hard evidence of crimes sufficient to bring anyone but Epstein himself and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell to justice.

Focusing on a now dead man’s crimes—Epstein allegedly killed himself in prison, though the cameras supposedly weren’t functioning when it happened—in order to bring his many associates to account usually resulted in a dead end. And that served to drive home the idea that the wealthy and powerful can get away with horrific acts and face no consequences.

It’s always been a too depressing state of affairs, a case with no new facts to go on.

One thing has always piqued my curiosity, though. Donald Trump’s name appears multiple times on Epstein’s call and flight logs. He was friends with Epstein for a long time before distancing himself. Trump himself has a public history of sexual assault, and there are credible allegations of rape of a minor against Trump and Epstein together.

So how would the White House handle all the potential evidence once Trump was back in office?

It turns out, by issuing a quite unbelievable and outright denial, and seeking to close the case forever. Maybe they haven’t heard of the Streisand Effect, which says a cover-up only increases the visibility of the thing you don’t want people to talk about.

Before we get to that dramatic denial, let’s set the stage.

Epstein files, Part One

Back in February, the Justice Department made a big deal about releasing “Part One” of the Epstein files. That was suspect from the get-go, however, because it was given only to a group of 15 right wing influencers including Twitter accounts DC Draino and Libs of TikTok, as well as conspiracy theorists Mike Cernovich and Jack Prosobiec.

This move was best understood as a bone to the far right, which had salivated for years over the idea that the Epstein files would be made public and wind up destroying high profile Democrats whose names appeared in them.

But that release turned into a big nothingburger, as the MAGA influencers loudly complained. The binders contained no new names, and most of the other information was already public. Bondi sought to explain this was just the “first phase” of the release containing declassified files previously leaked but never published in any formal capacity by the government.

But wait! There’s more to come! As MAGA influencer Mario Nawfal breathlessly wrote,

Attorney General Pam Bondi has confirmed that thousands of Epstein-related documents are still being secretly held in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) and will be transferred to the DOJ in Washington, D.C. by February 28.

With the first wave of files already in motion, the scope of who knew what—and when—is about to expand even further.

The cover-up is unraveling. Who’s next?

But like all promises by this regime, that “expansion” never happened. And the cover up then came from within the Trump White House.

The Epstein Client List

What everyone wanted to see was clear: who were Epstein’s clients, the ones who traveled on his plane and to his island where the sex trafficking and other crimes occurred?

Four months ago, Bondi insisted Epstein’s client list was “sitting on her desk” right then:

Fox Host: The DOJ may be releasing a list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients? Will that really happen?

Bondi: It’s sitting on my desk right now to review, that’s been a directive by President Trump. I’m reviewing that, I’m reviewing JFK Files, MLK Files, that’s all in the process of being reviewed because that was done at the directive of the President from all of these agencies.

Keep this statement in mind, because we’re going to come back to it later.

Bondi wasn’t alone in implying the release of incriminating material was forthcoming. Trump’s attorney Alina Habba declared on Piers Morgan’s show, “It’s incredibly disturbing. We have flight logs, information, names...that will come out.”

“Tens of thousands” of videos

This next part reads like a spy thriller. Online sleuths, and others insisting there was a cover-up underway, started to get creative. One of them managed to surreptitiously record Bondi admitting to something no one had yet confirmed existed: a trove of “tens of thousands” of Epstein videos.

Per the Associated Press,

In April, Bondi was approached in a restaurant by a woman with a hidden camera who asked about the status of the Epstein files release. Bondi replied that there were tens of thousands of videos “and it’s all with little kids,” so she said the FBI had to go through each one.

After conservative activist James O’Keefe, who obtained and later publicized the hidden-camera video, alerted the Justice Department to the encounter, Bondi told reporters at the White House: “There are tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children or child porn.”

Here’s that moment where she admitted to the existence of the tapes, catching many off-guard.

It wasn’t clear where these video files had come from or who had had custody of the files all this time. The government said only that the FBI was reviewing them. The Associated Press noted in its reporting, however, that

police who searched his Palm Beach home in 2005 found computer keyboards, monitors and disconnected surveillance cameras, but the equipment — including video recordings and other electronic items — was missing.

But not to fear! In good time, all this evidence would be made public. In fact, FBI Director Kash Patel even went on Fox promising this: “I’m not going to withhold information from the American public, ever,” he told Brit Hume of Fox when asked about the Epstein files. Patel added, “But I’m also not going to rush to get it out there in a format in which they can’t rely on it.”

In June, however, his tune seemed to shift. Patel went on Joe Rogan’s popular podcast and declared if there were really were videos of someone committing actual felonies on children, he would make them public. The implication was that no such videos exist. Per the AP,

Though not asked explicitly about Bondi, Patel dismissed the possibility of incriminating videos of powerful Epstein friends, saying, “If there was a video of some guy or gal committing felonies on an island and I’m in charge, don’t you think you’d see it?” Asked whether the narrative “might not be accurate that there’s video of these guys doing this,” he replied, “Exactly.”

In short, Patel cast doubt on the very existence of the videos that Bondi had let slip to an undercover reported and then was forced to publicly admit to.

So which of them is lying?

Yeah, that was all B.S.

Now that the Justice Department and the FBI have had ample time to review everything in the case, officials are singing quite a different tune. As reported on Sunday by Axios, the Trump administration has rather miraculously

concluded they have no evidence that convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein blackmailed powerful figures, kept a "client list" or was murdered, according to a memo detailing the findings obtained by Axios.

It’s curious they put “client list” in quotes. Do they mean there is not a single document that is a “client list” or do they mean the identities of the clients cannot be ascertained from the available evidence?

The memo also asserted that, contrary to earlier pledges, officials won’t disclose anything further from over ten thousand downloaded videos and images. And, due to insufficient evidence, they won’t investigate any “uncharged third parties.”

Newsflash: Trump is likely one of those “uncharged third parties.”

Regarding the question of Epstein’s death, the government now asserts it has both raw and enhanced video of the common area, copies of which it will be releasing, around the time of Epstein’s death showing no one going into or out of the area. This, they claim, makes it impossible for Epstein to have been murdered by a third party.

This of course raises an obvious question: if they’ve had that video of the common area all along, why not release it right away to quell the rumors and speculation around his alleged suicide? Why wait till now to say you have proof?

This group of officials should get no benefit of the doubt on anything because they’ve already torched their own credibility.

To sum up:

1. Bondi claimed to have had the Epstein client list on her desk back in February, but now her own department says no such list even exists. Did it vanish? Was she lying then, or is she lying now?

2. Bondi only came forward publicly about the over ten thousand videos and images depicting sexual acts against children when she was caught on tape talking about it privately. And now we’re to believe none of those videos has any adult other than Epstein himself in it, despite all the video surveillance equipment police witnessed in their 2005 walk-through of his Palm Beach home?

3. To prove their assertion that Epstein died at his own hands, the government suddenly has a tape of the prison common areas showing no third party access to Epstein… but this is the first we’re hearing of it?

The MAGA right, which for years consumed wild Epstein conspiracies from Patel and his current deputy Dan Bongino, is going ballistic over all this, for once justifiably. This really does have all the trappings of a massive cover-up, given the contradictory statements by Bondi and the dissembling by Patel. Trump truly is getting his money’s worth with loyalists Bondi and Patel in charge.

Meanwhile, Ghislaine Maxwell is still serving a 20-year sentence—apparently for trafficking nobody to anyone.