President Richard Nixon was forced to resign because the existence of tape recordings containing damaging conversations regarding Watergate came to light. The existence of such tapes was initially vehemently denied, but when the truth came out, Nixon really had no choice but to resign or face impeachment which would surely have resulted in a guilty verdict and removal from office.
We have been down this road before but this time it is the existence of Epstein’s client list and the infamous birthday book that are the center of the largest scandal that is currently facing the Trump White House. We seem to be past the denial phase given that the sitting Attorney General, Pam Bondi, initially said it was ‘sitting on her desk’ and multiple witnesses have stated that the birthday book exists. Now, we have moved into the obfuscation phase. And if it smells like a cover up, and it quacks like a cover up, what we have now is a cover up.
There is one stark difference now between what happened to Nixon and what is going on in the Trump administration. Nixon’s own Republican party were the ones who went to Nixon to deliver the ultimatum. The current Republican party are so spineless cowering before Trump that they would rather throw hundreds of Epstein victims (young women and girls) under the bus than expose the powerful people whose names appear in those documents. Which is exactly why Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed the House a day early before a vote could be taken on the floor of the House to force the release of the documents in question.
No doubt some Republicans will make the argument that the documents should not be released to protect the victims. That, of course, is bullshit. They could simply redact the names and identifying details of the victims and then release the documents. They don’t want to release the documents to protect the victims. They don’t want to release the documents because there are likely a lot of very wealthy, powerful people who will have egg all over their faces and be subjected to a lot of penetrating questions. There is absolutely no other reason not to release the documents.
The fact that Pam Bondi apparently told Trump that his name appears in those documents (we don’t know the context at this point) and the fact that Todd Blanche, Trump’s former defense attorney now working for the DOJ, went to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s associate, should be raising even more red flags. The fact that now Maxwell is willing to testify to Congress (Trump controlled Congress, by the way) and she has already been convicted of perjury should cause everyone to take anything she says with a grain of salt. She is not interested in anything other than saying enough of the right things to ultimately get a pardon from Trump while at the same time potentially damaging some of Trump’s political enemies (e.g., Bill Clinton).
The only way the White House is going to be able to put this behind them is to allow the files to be released. Anything other than that will just be an open festering wound. And, ironically, there are some in the MAGA world that are stoking the fires around this scandal and calling for the files to be released.
If I were a conspiracy theorist, I could easily conjure up a scenario in which J.D. Vance, with the backing of Peter Thiel, see this as a real opportunity for MAGA to really take control of the government at the expense of Trump. If Trump gets booted, Vance is next in line. Of course, who would ever think something like that is possible amongst all these honorable people?
Whether there is a conspiracy or not, the bottom line is simply this – if the Epstein client list, files and birthday book are not released, it will send a very strong message that it is perfectly OK for very powerful men to exploit young women and girls because there is no accountability for doing so. It seems a bit ironic given the GOP and many Christian nationalists protecting these individuals are the same people constantly banging the drum about ‘family values.’ Then again, given they’ve all fallen in line behind a convicted felon who constantly lies and who was successfully sued for sexual assault, I guess it all makes sense in a warped kind of way.
Immigrants are not the major threat to this country. Corrupt, wealthy, powerful people are, and we are seeing it unfold right before our eyes.
