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MAGA’s Lucy And The Football

Published by Tom Sullivan on November 13, 2025

MAGA wanted it. Trump promised it. They fell for it.

Jonathan Chait spotlights the Trump con now in play:

Some of Trump’s most devoted worshippers chose the very issue of Epstein’s misdeeds and supposed cabal of elite backers as the fantasy onto which they projected a valiant role for their hero. Trump was meant to courageously release all of the available evidence for public scrutiny. 

MAGA wanted it. Trump promised it during his 2024 campaign. They fell for it.

With the House back in session, Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) provided the final signature needed on the discharge petition filed in September by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and backed by Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California.

Having failed to coerce GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Lauren Boebert of Colorado into removing their names, Trump is lobbying furiously to strip Republican votes in the House and Senate from the bill ordering full release of the Epstein investigation records.

Tokyo Rose Garden claims the Epstein emails released on Wednesday “prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.”

Someone in the White House Press Office needs to coordinate better with the Oval Office. Trump later in the day claimed once again that the Epstein matter is a hoax. Presumably, including the emails that “prove” his innocence.

Chait offers:

Are the Epstein files suddenly real? Or are some of them real (and vindicating) and some of them fake (and incriminating)? All we know is that Trump wants us to stop talking about the subject. That’s usually what you want when the subject includes evidence that you have behaved in a manner beyond reproach.

The more President Flop Sweat and his team of propagandists struggle to cover up the Epstein investigation documents, the more public interest in seeing them will swell. Whatever it is he’s desperate to conceal — whether sexual exploitation of teens or money laundering with Russians — Trump is spinning like a dervish:

“The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects,” Trump posted on Truth Social. 

“Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap. The Democrats cost our Country $1.5 Trillion Dollars with their recent antics of viciously closing our Country, while at the same time putting many at risk — and they should pay a fair price,” Trump continued. “There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!”

Raw Story:

But despite President Donald Trump lobbying hard to try to crush the vote, as more and more embarrassing details about his relationship with the deceased financier and sexual predator continue to trickle out, he is probably unable to stop it in the Senate either, analyst John Heilemann told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Thursday.

“No Republican is going to want to be seen covering up for the most vilified pedophile in recent American history,” said anchor Joe Scarborough. “Then what are these Republican senators going to do when the White House starts saying, hey, kill the Epstein files? We want to keep them away from your voters, your constituents, the people that are going to vote for you in 2026. I don’t think it’s as open and closed of a political situation as some people are suggesting right now.”

“13 Republican senators, sitting Republican senators up for reelection,” said Heilemann. “You’ve got, in addition to that, a bunch of female Republican senators who aren’t up for reelection right now … the words of the Epstein survivors will be ringing in their ears. You have people like Joni Ernst and Thom Tillis, who both are retiring. It doesn’t take that much work to to get to even if … as Ali is reporting, if the threshold on this vote is going to be 60, it doesn’t take that much work to get you to the number.”

“If you start to put together the relatively moderate establishment Republicans, the female Republican senators, and Republican senators who are retiring and may not be totally in love with Donald Trump and kind of are looking for some way to, as they walk out the door, reclaim some of the reputation that they lost by by being overly loyal to him over the course of the first and second terms,” said Heilemann. “I don’t know, I might — maybe I’m a dreamer and obviously things are, It always turns out to be tough to get anything through the Senate on a 60-vote threshold.”

I’m still not confident that the White House won’t respond to a congressional demand to release all the Epstein documents with “the dog ate my homework.” Why should Trump start complying with the law now?

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Open For Griftness

Published by Tom Sullivan on November 13, 2025

The most corrupt administration in U.S. history

Headlines across the country declare the end of the longest government shutdown in history: 43 days. Donald Trump signed the spending package bill late Wednesday night. The deal releases funding for whatever of the government is left after MAGA Republicans had their way with it. The White House is once again open for griftness.

NBC News summarizes:

The legislative package includes a “minibus” of three appropriations bills providing funding through next September and keeps the rest of the government open at current levels through Jan. 30.

It includes full funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, which will keep the program afloat through September. More than 40 million Americans rely on SNAP. Some people told NBC News that they ran out of food as the shutdown cut off money for the program, and the Trump administration fought in the courts against having to shift money around to fully fund it for the month of November.

The legislation also provides limited protections for federal workers who’ve been under assault since Trump’s inauguration. It reinstates thousands of government employees who were laid off during the shutdown and ensures there are no more reductions in force (known as “RIFs”), at least through the end of January. And it provides back pay for workers who were furloughed or working without pay these past six weeks.

But in a major concession from Democrats, the bill does not include an extension of enhanced subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, after Republicans held firm against extending those funds beyond 2025. That means more than 20 million Americans could see their premiums spike next year.

Spike is putting it mildly. A friend of mine, 29, reports that her ACA premiums will skyrocket from “about $88/month” to “over $750/month” beginning next year, over eight and a half times. “That’s not just unaffordable, that’s cruelty,” she writes. She’ll likely go uninsured. People much older and with the greater medical needs that come with age will be put at even greater risk.

That’s not a problem for Trump and his cronies. Nor, Sen. Cory Booker reminds us, for the money men and businesses dropping contributions into the coffers of “the most corrupt administration in U.S. history.”

A Financial Times team reported back in October:

At least 30 individuals or companies that have collectively donated more than $116mn to Trump’s causes have received benefits or advantages from White House moves, according to FT analysis. Sometimes, the administration acted just days after donations were made.

The donors range from crypto and tech billionaires who have developed close ties to the first family and been granted access to the president, to big insurance firms, tobacco companies and even a manufacturer of bandages from human tissue. Funds were given both before and after his inauguration.

There is no evidence of bribery or illegal conduct, but the volume of favourable outcomes for donors raises the question of whether a culture of quid pro quo exists at the heart of the administration.

It’s not as if pay-for-play is not a Beltway tradition. It’s just that in Trumpish “like you’ve never seen” tradition, the grift is out in the open.

“Past administrations have confronted accusations that money buys favours,” says Bob Bauer, former White House counsel under Barack Obama. “What is unique about this presidency is the open transactionalism that characterises Donald Trump’s governance style.”

FT provides “a number of cases” where Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigations ended where “owners or backers have donated to Trump’s interests, sometimes soon after making their gifts.” Crypto businesses feature prominently in cases dropped by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Then there are the Trump pardons. Many of those pardoned for violence against the Capitol or against the 2020 election process are not rich. In The Godfather fashion, Trump may call on them to do him a service again in 2026 or 2028. Others got their pardons after large donations to Trump’s interests. FT has a long list of those and policy favors benefiting Trump donors.

FT does not even mention the $400 million jet gifted to Trump from Qatar or the Trump Organization’s business ties with the emirate.

He’s demanding $230 million in compensation from the government he heads for alleged harms done to him by legitimately predicated investigations into his wrongdoing. The bill Trump just signed provides for payouts of as much as $1 million to eight Republican senators over their having their phone records (not phone taps) swept up in the January 6 investigation (Salon):

House Republicans are going after GOP senators who stand to collect millions of dollars courtesy of a veiled provision within a bill seeking to end the government shutdown.

The provision would give members of the Senate the ability to sue the government for obtaining their phone records without notification by the Justice Department. In 2023, the department obtained the records of several senators as part of its investigation into President Donald Trump‘s actions on Jan. 6. The provision said that those affected could receive $500,000 per violation.

House Republicans may have complained. But they still voted for the bill including the provision. Sen. Adam Schiff clarified Wednesday evening that the floor is actually $1 million and maybe more. Republican senators could be “swimming in millions of dollars” based on how the provision is written. See above as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes’s mouth hangs open at that revelation.

Tokyo Rose Garden

But it’s not just Trump and his family. In September, a reporter asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt if Trump had asked the Department of Justice to quash an investigation into border csar Tom Homan’s accepting a $50,000 payoff allegedly received from undercover FBI agents.

“Well, Mr. Homan never took the $50,000 that you’re referring to, so you should get your facts straight, number one,” Leavitt replied. We still don’t know what happened to the $50,000 in the bag.

Leavitt’s failed congressional campaign reportedly has skeletons in its own closet (from January):

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt revealed in amended campaign filings on Thursday that her unsuccessful 2022 congressional campaign owes more than $300,000 in unpaid debts, with Leavitt failing to disclose for years that her campaign took in hundreds of thousands of dollars in inappropriate donations and never paid the money back.

The vast majority of that debt, about $200,000, is owed as refunds to contributors who appear to have donated above the legal limits. Those excessive contributions went unreported for years — until Thursday — when Leavitt’s campaign amended every campaign filing she had ever made with the Federal Election Commission.

As of last month:

Leavitt’s campaign reported $326,370.50 in debt as of Sept. 30 — a balance that hasn’t changed since her campaign first disclosed the debt in January after years of failing to disclose any debt, as first reported by NOTUS.

Racketeer roll call count off now.

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Corrupt Trumper O’ The Day

Published by digby on November 12, 2025

Who would have predicted that guy would be a terrible FBI director?

On Halloween morning, FBI Director Kash Patel had a big announcement to make: “The FBI thwarted a potential terrorist attack,” he said in a 7:32 a.m. social-media post that referenced arrests in Michigan.

There was one problem: No criminal charges had yet been filed and local police weren’t aware of the details. Two friends of the alleged terrorists in New Jersey and Washington state caught wind of the arrests and moved up plans to leave the country, according to court documents and law-enforcement officials familiar with the investigation. 

Justice Department leaders complained to the White House about Patel’s premature post, saying it had disrupted the investigation, administration officials said. 

In his nine months on the job, Patel has drawn flak from his bosses in the Justice Department and from his underlings at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where he has fired dozens of agents deemed hostile to Donald Trump or to conservative ideals.

But the Halloween announcement wasn’t the biggest controversy to envelop the director that week. Patel hit the news for taking an FBI plane to attend a wrestling event where his girlfriend, a country western singer, performed, and then to her home in Nashville. A former FBI agent, Kyle Seraphin, publicized the trip and called the taxpayer funded travel in the middle of a shutdown “pathetic.”

After that, Patel visited a Texas hunting resort called the Boondoggle Ranch, according to flight records and people familiar with the trip, which hasn’t been previously reported.

Patel’s travel has frustrated both Justice Department officials, who complained to the White House about it, and the White House itself, which had told cabinet officials months ago in writing to limit their travel, particularly if it was overseas or unrelated to Trump’s agenda, according to an administration official. Details about Patel’s trips to visit his girlfriend and an August trip to Scotland have been passed around the White House in recent days, officials said.

The FBI director is required by law to take the bureau’s private plane instead of commercial flights in order to have access to secure communications. If the travel is personal, the director is required to reimburse the government for the cost of a commercial flight—typically far less than the actual costs of private-jet use.

Patel has defended his travel, dismissing his critics as “clickbait haters.” A spokesman for the bureau said the director has taken only about a dozen personal trips since assuming the role in February, and had taken steps to cut down on travel costs. In a written statement, Patel said the bureau has achieved historic success on violent crime and drug trafficking. 

He’s having the time of his life:

After Patel left government, he pounced on the man he would later succeed, Chris Wray, for using a government jet for an Adirondacks holiday. “Chris Wray, hey, you don’t need a government-funded G5 jet so you can fly off to the Adirondacks for vacation,” Patel said during a September 2023 appearance on the X22 Report podcast. 

That has fueled critics of Patel’s recent travel itinerary. The Justice Department’s Gulfstream G550 took nine trips to Las Vegas—where Patel lived before running the FBI—and seven others to Nashville, according to a Wall Street Journal review of flight records. 

On a late October Friday, he took the FBI private jet to State College, Pa., for a Real American Freestyle Wrestling event where his girlfriend, country music singer Alexis Wilkins, was performing the national anthem. The next day, the same FBI plane traveled to Nashville. 

That Sunday, the FBI jet landed in San Angelo, Texas, where Patel visited the Boondoggle Ranch, owned by the family of a Republican donor and friend of Patel’s, C.R. “Bubba” Saulsbury Jr. The plane stayed in San Angelo until Wednesday. The government was shut down, and much of the FBI workforce was working but not getting paid.

What a guy. I feel so safe.

According to the article, Trump is sometimes a little irritated but he loves the Kash loves him. So he’s not going anywhere.

What’s Happening At The Beeb?

Published by digby on November 12, 2025

This is just sad:

The BBC is prepared to formally apologise to Donald Trump as part of its efforts to resolve his billion-dollar legal threat over its editing of one of his speeches, the Guardian understands.

However, figures at the corporation are also minded to be robust in defending its journalism in the face of allegations from Trump that it made “false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements” about him.

The BBC’s leadership is facing a looming deadline over how to reply to Trump’s legal threat to file a case in a Florida court. It follows the editing of a Trump speech in an edition of Panorama, which was a significant factor in the resignation of director general Tim Davie and Deborah Turness, its head of news.

Trump being the defamation king is really rich considering the trashy all, insults and defamation he hurls on a daily basis at anyone who looks at his sideways. Now he’s using his personal law firm, the Department of Justice, to harass and prosecute his enemies as well.

But here we are. He’s reaching across the pond now to try to bend the BBC to his will and it looks like he’s going to succeed:

The BBC’s top executive, Director-General Tim Davie, and its news CEO, Deborah Turness, resigned Sunday amid a growing scandal over this and other alleged editorial misjudgments.

Here’s what they did:

The issue has become a major story in the U.K. where Prime Minister Keir Starmer told lawmakers at the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions session in parliament on Wednesday: “I believe in a strong and independent BBC. Some would rather the BBC didn’t exist … I’m not one of them.” He added, however, that “where mistakes are made they do need to get their house in order.”

Starmer was responding to Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrat party, who asked whether the government would urge the BBC to fight Trump’s lawsuit. Davey said “a great British institution is under attack from a foreign government … Trump has underlined press freedom in America and now he’s trying to do the same here.”

Asked Tuesday night whether he would sue, Trump told Fox News: “Well, I guess I have to you know, why not? Because they defrauded the public, and they’ve admitted it.”

“I think I have an obligation to do it, because you can’t get people, you can’t allow people to do that,” he said, before comparing the action to his lawsuit against CBS for a “60 Minutes” interview with his then-presidential election rival Kamala Harris. CBS paid $16 million to settle the case.

Trump complained that the BBC’s edit of his speech “made it sound radical” when it was “a very calming speech.” The saga centers on a “Panorama” documentary that aired before last year’s election. In it, two parts of the speech were edited together to give the impression that Trump said: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”

In fact Trump initially said: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.” He said later: “And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

It was a bad edit but frankly didn’t change the fact that Trump pumped up that crowd, told them to go to the Capitol and said he’d be there with them. “Fight like hell” is a figure of speech but in that environment it was actual fighting words. If Trump had ever had to stand trial for his attempted coup, I think any jury would have understood exactly what happened there.

The BBC did edit it improperly although it’s very hard to say that it adds up to a billion dollars worth of damages. If the suit goes forward I’d really love to see that trial.

Meanwhile, it appears the BBC is under siege for “liberal bias” generally which just figures. That seems to be the way of things. I watch quite a bit of BBC and it does not have a liberal bias. I don’t think Britain really understands what that might look like. But with Donald Trump on their tails and people at the top resigning, it’s possible they’ll end up pushing it to become more like Fox News. The Murdochs will no doubt be pleased. So will Donald Trump.

Trump’s New BFF

Published by digby on November 12, 2025

Trump said earlier that “he has a tough past, we all have tough pasts.”

Here’s Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s tough past via Wikipedia:

Born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to a Syrian Sunni Muslim family from Daraa and the Golan Heights, he grew up in Syria’s capital, Damascus. Al-Sharaa joined al-Qaeda in Iraq shortly before the 2003 invasion of Iraq and fought for three years in the Iraqi insurgency. American forces captured and imprisoned him from 2006 to 2011. His release coincided with the Syrian Revolution against the Ba’athist dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. Al-Sharaa created the al-Nusra Front in 2012 with the support of al-Qaeda to topple the Assad regime in the Syrian civil war. As emir of the al-Nusra Front, al-Sharaa built a stronghold in the northwestern Idlib Governorate. He resisted Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi‘s attempts to merge al-Nusra Front with the Islamic State, leading to armed conflict between the two groups. In 2016, al-Sharaa cut al-Nusra’s ties with al-Qaeda and launched a crackdown on its loyalists. 

I’m assuming he may have literally killed American troops in Iraq, something that would have had the right wing in a full blown hysteria not all that long ago. Today, they don’t care. In fact, they are happy to see their Dear Leader calling his a good friend and spraying him with perfume in the oval office.

We should never, ever, in a million years take these assholes seriously about anything except their desire for power again. It’s literally all they care about.

The Don Steps Up His Payback

Published by digby on November 12, 2025

President Donald Trump has engaged in many televised rants since he entered politics. In fact, most of his appearances could be classified as such. But one of the most stunning he’s ever given came in his Nov. 2 “60 Minutes” interview with Norah O’Donnell. Trump spoke in his usual stream of consciousness style, but there was one extended riff that was substantially cut in the televised version and was only evident to those who read the full transcript published by CBS or watched the full interview that Trump eventually posted online. Fittingly, it focused on retribution against his enemies. 

O’Donnell barely got a word in edgewise as she tried to pin him down on one simple question: Did he order the criminal investigations into former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James and former National Security Adviser John Bolton? 

After minutes of obfuscation, Trump answered that he hadn’t ordered them to be investigated because their guilt was so obvious to the “honest people” he has working for him — a lie which was gently fact-checked by “60 Minutes” by showing Trump’s apparently accidental Truth Social post telling Attorney General Pam Bondi it was time to make a move. Within days, the Department of Justice indicted Comey. James and Bolton soon followed. 

Comey, of course, famously opened the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, James won a major lawsuit against Trump for business fraud and Bolton is a harsh critic of Trump’s intelligence and abilities as president. 

In the interview, Trump railed against all three, repeatedly calling Comey a “dirty cop” and James a “dishonest person,” while suggesting that Bolton is crazy. The president brought up his two impeachments, referred to Democrats as “scum” and recounted a bizarre story about then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi learning that his infamous call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had been taped. “She said, ‘You made me go into this mess,’” Trump claimed. “She screamed at all these people that made her do it, bad people like Schiff, et cetera, et cetera. So what happened is, she went nuts and just to conclude, and they said, ‘Let’s do it anyway.’”

In fact, Pelosi actually resisted impeaching Trump until the transcript emerged. (There was no tape of the call.) She told an interviewer that, at that point, “what the president did vis-a-vis the president of Ukraine just removed all doubt that we had to act.” 

Trump sounded like a Mafia don throughout this part of the interview, even saying that he “beat the rap.” The entire exchange was chilling, and it’s both unfortunate and telling that CBS News — now under the leadership of Bari Weiss, who is notorious for promoting right-wing views — did not air that portion. 

From the moment he announced his third presidential bid, Trump made it clear he was bent on revenge. His intentions were never secret. In fact, he famously proclaimed “I am your retribution” to ecstatic crowds throughout the 2024 campaign — and he meant it. 

Notably, though, the cases brought by his Justice Department against Comey, James and Bolton do not involve the so-called crimes Trump has repeatedly named, such as filing false changes, making up evidence and tampering with witnesses. If they are such corrupt, dishonest officials, one would have thought the department would have followed Trump’s specifications to the letter. Instead, Comey and James were indicted on picayune charges that appear to have little merit, and Bolton was charged with the crime for which Trump himself was investigated. 

Last week, MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian reported that the department is actively investigating another of Trump’s designated enemies, former CIA Director John Brennan, over the 2017 Russia probe — which was already investigated by John Durham, a special counsel appointed in 2020 by Trump’s own Attorney General Bill Barr. (Durham found no wrongdoing.) Another target, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., has been in Trump’s crosshairs since his first impeachment, in which Schiff served as a House manager. The senator is reportedly being investigated for mortgage fraud, but the prosecutors can’t find enough evidence to indict.

The Comey case looks to be in real trouble. The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District in Virginia resigned in protest over the pressure to indict Comey without evidence, followed by others who were either fired or resigned. Last week the judge in the case admonished the acting U.S Attorney Lindsey Halligan — one of Trump’s former personal lawyers — in what was apparently a train wreck of a procedural hearing. The government, according to the judge, appeared to be “indicting first, investigating later” — a damning assessment.

The case involving James is a similar mess, as Halligan has fumbled about with a couple of inexperienced prosecutors brought in to replace other attorneys who were fired or resigned because they believed the case was without merit. Last week, James requested the case be dismissed on the basis of vindictive prosecution. 

Bondi, though, remains determined to follow the president’s orders for revenge. 

All of this is taking place as the Justice Department is purging lawyers and FBI agents they see as enemies of Trump. Dozens of experienced prosecutors and investigators are gone, leaving the department a hollowed out shell of its former self. “The cumulative damage done to the once-respected Justice Department is so profound that it may not regain any semblance of its former self in our lifetimes, warn career law enforcement officials,” investigative journalist Carol Leonning wrote in an Oct. 30 guest essay for the New York Times. “It’s impossible to discount as hyperbole the alarm that these longtime civil servants are sounding from inside the house.”

Leonnig is the author, with Aaron C. Davis, of “Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America’s Justice Department,” which revealed that Trump was “destabilizing the institution’s foundations — and weakening its resolve with his brand of bare-knuckle attacks” throughout his first term. During the Biden administration, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s gentlemanly leadership, which aimed to restore all the genteel norms and rules of the pre-Trump era, resulted in delaying necessary investigations, empowering Trump’s comeback and laying the groundwork for his ability to “beat the rap,” as well as his campaign of retribution.

The president’s enemies list grows every day. Speaking at a Federalist Society event last Friday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche — another of Trump’s former personal attorneys — urged young conservative lawyers to sign up for the administration’s “war” against “rogue activist judges” who are “more political, or certainly as political, as the most liberal governor” or district attorney. Evidently, the administration would now like the purge to extend to the courts. 

Donald Trump has always sought vengeance; it’s fundamental to his warped worldview. He always believed the Justice Department should be his own personal law firm engaged in helping him do it. He’s gotten his wish.

Salon

More Epstein Emails

Published by Tom Sullivan on November 12, 2025

Does Donald Trump have enough blankets for his coverup?

My first post this morning (below) already mentioned the Epstein files and Donald Trump’s efforts at coverup. But just before I posted, this dropped:

The documents are here.

The Independent:

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released email exchanges between Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and author Michael Wolff discussing Donald Trump.

In one email, apparently sent by Epstein to Maxwell, the convicted sex offender wrote: “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is [T]rump..” A victim “spent hours at my house with him, he has never once been mentioned, police chief. etc. im 75% there,” Esptein added.

In response, Maxwell wrote: “I have been thinking about that…”

Trump has repeatedly emphasized that their friendship dissolved in the early 2000s and has called the renewed interest in the Epstein files a “hoax” cooked up by the Democrats.

Trump did not send or receive any of the emails and has not been accused of any wrongdoing. The Independent has requested comment from the White House. He has said publicly that he had a falling out with Epstein because the disgraced financier “stole” young women working at his Mar-a-Lago spa too many times — including Giuffre.

But a 2019 email from Epstein to Wolff suggests that Trump knew about Epstein’s “girls.”

“Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop,” Epstein wrote in January before his death in August.

In a third email exchange, Wolff advises Epstein that CNN plans to ask him about his relationship with Trump. Epstein asks for advice on how to answer. Wolff replies the next afternoon:

“I think you should let him hang himself. If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt. Of course, it is possible that, when asked, he’ll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.”

Settle in. This opera ain’t over by a long shot.

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Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

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Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Will Trump Release The Epstein Files?

Published by Tom Sullivan on November 12, 2025

The House to vote on releasing them in December

“How do you know?

Speaker Mike Johnson has called members of the House of Repesentatives back to Washington. Members will vote, today if they can get there, on the budget agreement from the Senate and end the longest government shutdown in history. And then? What happens with those pesky Epstein files?

Politico:

The monthslong bipartisan effort to sidestep Speaker Mike Johnson and force the release of all Justice Department files on the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein is kicking into high gear this week, setting up a December floor battle that President Donald Trump has sought to avoid.

The cascade of action is set to begin Wednesday evening, when Johnson will swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva right before the House votes to end the government shutdown, ending a 50-day wait following the Arizona Democrat’s election. Shortly afterward, Grijalva says she will affix the 218th and final signature to the discharge petition led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to force a vote on the full release of DOJ’s Epstein files.

And then?

The completion of the discharge petition, a rarely used mechanism to sidestep the majority party leadership, will trigger a countdown for the bill to hit the House floor. It will still take seven legislative days for the petition to ripen, after which Johnson will have two legislative days to schedule a vote. Senior Republican and Democratic aides estimate a floor vote will come the first week of December, after the Thanksgiving recess.

And then?

The discharge petition tees up a “rule,” a procedural measure setting the terms of debate for the Epstein bill’s consideration on the House floor. This gives the effort’s leaders greater control over the bill, which will still require Senate approval if it passes the House.

Senate Republican leaders haven’t publicly committed to bringing up the Epstein measure if the House passes it. Republicans expect it will die in the Senate, but not before a contentious House fight.

It is more than clear that despite Donald Trump’s campaign promise to release the documents, he has no intention of letting the Epstein files see the light of day. Just as he had no intention of handing back the trove of secret documents he removed from the White House and stored unsecured in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom.

Johnson will do whatever Trump tells him. He may allow a vote as he has promised, but not before he and Trump try to strongarm Republican members into voting no. With Grijalva’s vote, Johnson has a mere two-vote margin.

Massie claims more Republicans will vote yes than signed onto the original petition. But he expects a failed, “last, desperate effort” by the White House to thwart the discharge petition. from Trump officials to undercut the discharge petition.

Johnson argues, Politico adds, that the vote is unnecessary:

“The bipartisan House Oversight Committee is already accomplishing what the discharge petition, that gambit, sought — and much more,” Johnson said at a news conference last month.

All “credible information” would be released to the public as part of the panel’s monthslong probe into the matter, he said, while precautions are taken to protect Epstein’s accusers.

And then?

Who at the Justice Department decides what’s credible or whose names are redacted? FBI Director Kash Patel? AG Pam Bondi?

We already know Trump’s name appears in the documents. Convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has already done her part from prison to exonerate Trump from participation in Epsteins’s child sex ring. During her softball interviews with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Maxwell repeatedly insisted that she had never witnessed any sexually inappropriate behavior by Donald Trump. Given her history, Maxwell’s idea of “sexually inappropriate” may not match yours.

Her cooperation was rewarded. Someone in the DOJ subsequently authorized an unprecedented transfer for Maxwell from a maximum security prison in Florida to a “club fed” women’s facility in Texas. This week, a whistleblower revealed that there she receives extraordinary special treatment.

According to a letter directly to Trump from Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Maxwell is waited on “hand and foot.” One prison official reports being  ‘sick of having to be Maxwell’s bitch‘:

Raskin’s letter said Maxwell has received customized meals personally delivered to her cell, after-hours time in a private exercise area and access to a service puppy.

Raskin said Maxwell was also afforded private meetings with visitors arranged by the warden, complete with snacks. The guests were allowed to bring computers, which Raskin described as “an unprecedented action” that risked Maxwell having “unmonitored communications with the outside world.”

Maxwell is reportedly preparing a written request to Trump for a commutation. With her warden’s help.

Whatever is in those documents, or Trump thinks is in them, nothing about the Epstein files release is going to go cleanly. Trump is desperate to protect himself and/or others.

Given all the White House pardon activity and the concierge treatment for Maxwell, I’m not confident that reopening the House, swearing in Grijalva, and voting to release the Epstein files will actually shake them loose. I half expect a “the dog ate my homework” incident. 

In a different context, a friend the other day referenced the end of Three Days of the Condor (1975). Robert Redford’s character uncovers a secret government plot and ultimately decides that his safety lies in telling The New York Times what he knows.

Cliff Robertson asks Redford ominously, “How do you know they’ll print it?”

UPDATE: What does digital flop sweat look like?

The fact that Trump is calling Mace and Boebert today pleading with them to remove their names from the Epstein petition at the last minute tells you everything you need to know about how incriminating the info in the files is to him and his cronies.

— Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social) 2025-11-12T18:05:44.122Z

* * * * *

Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

No King’s One Million Rising movement 
50501 
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink 
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Trump The Genius

Published by digby on November 11, 2025

This interview with Laura Ingraham last night is something else. He is so out of touch these days he might as well be from Mars.

Some excerpts:

Ingraham: You said as many as 600,000 Chinese students could come to the US. Why, sir is, that a pro-maga position when so many American kids want to go to school and there are places not for them and these universities are getting rich off Chinese money?

Trump: If we were to cut that in half, which perhaps, makes some people happy, you would have half the colleges in the United States go out of business.
Ingraham: So what
Trump: I actually think it’s good to have outside countries.
Ingraham: They’re not the French
Trump: You think the French are better? I’m not so sure. Maga was my idea. It was nobody else’s idea. I know better than anybody else what Maga wants