I mentioned yesterday the importance of keeping up with stories that are absurd in their substance but real in their consequence. Along those lines I wanted to give you a brief update on the Jeffrey Epstein story. If you’ve been following it closely this may not be news. But I know not everyone is doing so. And while I said that it’s important for political journalists to keep track of these stories, that doesn’t mean that you (a non-journalist) have to.
So a few points.
The first is that Donald Trump really does appear to be seriously considering issuing a pardon to Epstein confederate, procurer and one-time girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell. I’m not saying he will. But I think it’s a real possibility. All the standard signs are there. He’s going into full “finding the real killers” mode, and getting “the truth” from Maxwell is central to that. The question has all the standard will he or won’t he drama. But this isn’t our first rodeo. We’ve been at this long enough to know the signs when Trump is warming to an idea and when he’s laying the public groundwork for it. We have the standard lines like, I haven’t decided to but I totally have the power to pardon her if I want. We’ll see. Everybody agrees I’m “allowed.” We’re seeing all the standard lines in the progression.
We’re also seeing Maxwell — in the still Trump-loyal parts of the MAGAsphere — being rebranded as an Epstein victim rather than his accomplice. If you know the details of the case, this is quite a stretch. Maxwell appears to have been the main person helping Epstein procure and groom teenaged girls and then keep them silent. She also personally engaged in the sexual abuse of minors along with Epstein. Federal prosecutors also accused her of a long pattern of lying about her various crimes.
Given that Maxwell is the only person currently doing time for involvement with Epstein’s crimes and as central to them as any person still alive, it’s hard to imagine how pardoning or commuting her sentence could possibly be a political plus for Trump or how anything she said to receive a pardon would possibly be credible. If you’ve been wondering about this I don’t think you’re missing anything. I think Trump is totally on his own on this, pursuing a crazy plan that most or all of his aides probably realize is nuts. But what are they going to say? And perhaps as important, maybe Trump doesn’t have any better options?
But there’s one part of this that perhaps provides a very limited — though I think deficient — logic to making a corrupt deal with Maxwell. My own sense is that most Trump/MAGA diehards who are upset about this don’t actually care all that much if Trump is implicated in Epstein’s wrongdoing. Or certainly they don’t care that much if he was in deep with Epstein but without specific and convincing evidence that Trump abused teenaged girls. That may not be great. But that’s not what they’re truly upset about. They’re upset that Trump is — in their minds at least — finally in a position to mete out the cleansing retribution against Epstein’s “elite” accomplices (who they’re sure are various Democrats, globalists, etc) that they’ve been hungering for. In theory, if he’d cleanse the stables and punish the elites they’d probably cut him some slack on also being one of the abusers. But obviously there’s some stuff he doesn’t want revealed. So he can’t finesse this. Or at least it’s pretty hard and he’s still trying to figure out how to do it. Presumably the idea is to get Maxwell to exonerate Trump and accuse various globalist/Democrat baddies … but just absolutely still don’t look at the evidence seized from Epstein’s homes.
How does that work?
I should add that maybe there are globalist/Democrat baddies. I’ve always been skeptical about the Epstein meta-story — providing young girls for abuse to the world’s wealthy and powerful, a big blackmail operation, a list, videos, etc. But anything’s possible. And even if it wasn’t a big organized operation maybe some prominent Trump enemies will get burned by this. I have no idea what’s in the black box. I’m just not ruling anything out. But how does Trump serve up the globalist/Dem baddies without outing himself? I have no idea. I’m not sure Trump has any idea. But he knows that a Maxwell pardon must be part of it. It’s the biggest cudgel he has. They just need to get him out of this jam.
Now, a final point. I’ve said several times that the extremity of Trump’s reaction and the level of apparent panic it’s driving must be in some degree proportionate to whatever he’s keeping secret. But what if it’s not? One long time TPM Reader put this to me over the weekend. He basically said: think how long and hard Trump fought to keep his taxes secret. And yet when they finally came out it was pretty underwhelming. So maybe this is just Trump’s reflex? He doesn’t want anyone in his business and he just goes to war even if there’s not that much reason to do so.
This was an interesting point and I gave it some thought, especially because I would like there to be something really damaging in there about Trump. I don’t think that’s driven my thinking. I pooh-poohed the idea that there was anything truly damaging for Trump in the Epstein story for years … right up until that televised Cabinet meeting earlier this month when he shut down the question to Attorney General Pam Bondi, and really everything that’s happened since. That convinced me. Still, it’s important to understand your own biases and motivations.
So is this TPM Reader and friend right?
It’s a worthwhile cautionary note. But I don’t think this is the same as the tax return issue. Yes, Trump fought that for years. But that almost entirely amounted to saying “no” over and over again. Yes, he fought it in court. But that’s what Trump does. He fights things in court. He’s got plenty of money for lawyers. That didn’t require any real exertion on his part and, critically, it didn’t involve doing himself much political harm other than the general suspicions that his opponents had of him from all the way back in 2015. And in any case there’s always going to be a limit in what you’re going to find in anyone’s tax returns. It’s information you’re giving to the government! You’re not going to find: bribe from Saddam Hussein; miscellaneous payments for sex to underage girls.
The key is that the reaction is just very different. Trump has sustained a lot of damage from the last few weeks. It’s spurred a major fracture in his MAGA coalition, almost unheard of criticism from core supporters in the MAGA cinematic universe. It’s not too much to say that the story has completely consumed Washington, D.C. as well as the Congress and executive branch. At least for the moment it’s stymieing his whole agenda. This is hurting him a lot and I don’t think he’d be allowing himself to sustain this level of damage if he didn’t see what’s in those files (or what he fears is in those files) as a big threat.
Of course, it’s possible he doesn’t know for certain what’s in the files but he knows what he did. He can’t take the risk of finding out. You could turn my life upside down and review all my private notebooks and I have perfect confidence you wouldn’t find any evidence I ever played Major League Baseball. I’m 100% innocent. Trump clearly doesn’t have that confidence about this.
I still can’t imagine what could be that bad or frankly what he’s worried about. I really have a hard time believing any of this is happening. But it is happening. And I’m going to stick to thinking the black hole is there because of the gravitational force I see it exerting.