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What's Gonna Happen Next with the Epstein Files?

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SUMMARY

The discussion centers on the anticipated delays in the release of the Epstein files, primarily attributed to former President Trump's tactics of obfuscation and slow-walking information. Participants highlight the potential impact of upcoming retirements among GOP members, such as Nancy Mace and Marjorie Taylor Greene, on the balance of power in Congress. The conversation emphasizes that a shift in control could restore checks and balances against Trump, especially as dissatisfaction grows among Republican representatives. The urgency for a congressional flip is underscored, with implications for future elections and the handling of sensitive information.

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BillTre

BillTre

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It'll be more attempts at delaying significant releases.

This guy is a virulently anti-Trump former Republican political strategist.
He has a real world political approach. That usually means what is considered important is winning elections. However, he is very offended by Trump's and the GOP's desertion of democracy.
This video is about the kind of moves he expects from Trump to avoid releasing the files. Don't be surprised when it happens.
 
Trump will never release anything that truly harms him. Slow walking it, obfuscating and making excuses is what he's done his entire life. Only once congress regains it's sense of duty to country will we find answers.
 
Not sure what you mean by mechanism, but here is some information.

Nancy Mace from South Carolina is also going to retire.

After a retirement, the seat is empty until filled by a special election which determines a new rep until the next election. Governor may determine when the special election occurs.

When empty, those remaining in the house determine its Dem vs. GOP counts which determines who controls the house, which determines who controls committees and their actions. Flipping the house will restore some of the checks and balances that should have been holding Trump in check. There are now something like 5 more republicans than democrats in the house now, with one or two seats vacant (not Mace or MTG which are not yet retired.

These people are supposed to be unhappy because they are being ignored by the administration and have no real function, plus (probably) Epstein files, and now (for Rand Paul at least) the high seas murders by the military as narco-responses. All these are influencing at least some of these people.

With Trump's polls and recent elections going so poorly for the Republicans, it is likely that many of the retirees would eventually be replaced by Democrats.

in addition, I saw a report today that up to 20 (yes, twenty!) GOP house members are pissed off at the administration and are considering either retiring or just going against Trump in various ways.
Some of this depends on deadlines for primaries for house seats. All house seats go up for election every two years. The deadlines reveal whether anyone is going to be running against them in primaries. If no one is signed up to run against then in the primary, they are immune to being primaried by Trump. This is one of his MAGA powers over Republican members. Don't know when the deadlines are , but they are probably determined by individual states.

Exciting times.
 
Greg Bernhardt said:
We're up to 5.2 million now!
www.reuters.com

US DOJ to review 5.2 million pages of Epstein files, document shows

The Justice Department needs 400 lawyers from four different department offices to help with the process through late January.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
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I find this nearly incomprehensible. My 1990 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica is only 32,000 pages.

Is someone generating noise, such that guilt is more difficult to find?

hmmm... Is this why AI stocks are going up? Because they are really good at covering up corruption? hmmmm.....
 
IMO the sloppy redaction is an (apparently successful, if I understand the NPR article correctly) attempt to get victims and victim advocates suing the Justice Department to do better. The Justice Department will claim that they can only do better if they slow down - way down. Then they will probably stop altogether claiming that they can't simultaneously comply with an order to 'do better' and also to be 'timely' and ask for an impossible level of clarification from the courts on how they are to proceed.

If the courts don't simply hold them in contempt but instead engage in the hopeless game of 'tell me exactly what I am supposed to do or else I will do nothing' then this process could well outlast DJT.
 
apnews.com

FBI concluded Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t running a sex trafficking ring for powerful men, files show

The FBI pored over Jeffrey Epstein’s bank records and emails. It searched his homes. It spent years interviewing his victims and examining his connections to some of the world’s most influential people.
apnews.com apnews.com

I have never seen such an egregious abuse of lawfare!

The FBI concluded there was no sex trafficking ring for powerful men in the case where: Epstein was indicted for sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy; federal prosecutors identified 36 victims, some as young as 14; the indictment explicitly included a conspiracy count; Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted on federal charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy for recruiting girls; multiple "victims" testified under oath; the Southern District of New York stated the investigation "remains ongoing" after his death

So the FBI's position is: the thing he was charged with, that his co-conspirator was convicted of, that dozens of victims testified about, that federal prosecutors documented... didn't actually happen.

The real question is why did the FBI persecute this innocent man? And when will the victims who testified against him apologize for their "sensationalized if not demonstrably inaccurate characterizations"?

His estate should be suing all of the "victims."
 
Those files cause serious trouble for quite some people around the world. Norway, France, the United Kingdom, and, I think, Denmark, too, except for one country. Funny, isn't it? That reminds me of an interview I once saw about the differences in the jurisdiction. I don't remember who was interviewed, but the question was: "Would you like to be judged in front of an American court, or a German court?" The answer: "If I were guilty, an American court; if I were innocent, a German court."
 
The US has the dis-"advantage" of an established cabal of Pedo-billionaires in important parts of the government and industry.
 
Grinkle said:
I was quite wrong - I was convinced that if there were anything specifically around Trump that was potentially damaging (as opposed to embarrassing) Harris would have used it in the campaign. Well, there is such stuff, and Harris didn't use it. My guess is she never looked for it. More's the pity - it might have broken through.
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You may be right, but I have a hard time eliminating the possibility that the lame democrats just decided to "go high" when the other guys "go low". I
ts a non-all out approach to politics which I don't appreciate and fells has plagued the democrats for a long time.

Another possibility is that none of these guys knew anything about these issues due to a combination of lack of much interest and the complicit suppression of evidence by various government officials.
 
I think that Harris's consultants told her not to use this argument. It may have weakened her position as a female candidate even more, and MAGAs are immune to this anyway. So, where could she gain voters with it?
 
fresh_42 said:
I think that Harris's consultants told her not to use this argument.
Click to expand...

Maybe she knew about the docs and was advised out of it, but that seems unlikely to me. That would imply that lots of folks knew about the existence of these documents, and none of them, in all of this time, has leaked their existence. To me, that's a stretch. But I acknowledge that is exactly the same line of thinking that led me to a wrong conclusion in the first place (post 19) so perhaps I'm just being stubborn. If she did know and decide not to use it, then she is the kind of person who would let that stay under wraps because she thinks its best for her campaign, and to hell with the 13 YO girl.


BillTre said:
I have a hard time eliminating the possibility that the lame democrats just decided to "go high"
Click to expand...

In 2019, during one of the early Dem presidential candidate debates, I think the only one Harris participated in, Harris really knifed Biden. The discussion was around forced bussing in the 70's, and Biden, iirc, was ambivalent about whether that policy ended up being a net positive for the kids being bussed.

Harris stepped onto a soapbox and said she was bussed as a child in Berkeley and insinuated that Biden was coming from a position of white privilege in the perspective he gave - it was the viral highlight of the debate.

She has no problem going low, is my point.
 
Grinkle said:
Maybe she knew about the docs and was advised out of it, but that seems unlikely to me.
Click to expand...

I do not have the impression that morals play any role in the current USA. My question stands: Who voted for Trump and would have voted for Harris instead, being told about the files by Harris? That Trump is a human failure is obvious even without the files.
 
fresh_42 said:
I do not have the impression that morals play any role in the current USA. My question stands: Who voted for Trump and would have voted for Harris instead, being told about the files by Harris? That Trump is a human failure is obvious even without the files.
Click to expand...
It would be the undecided voters who are neither democrats or republicans.
In addition it might have taken some of the wind out of the MAGAt's claims of democratic involvement in these things. This is a significant group.

To me is seems that the democrats are overrun with consultants who seem to have made a lot of bad decisions.
When I give money to political causes, I try really hard to avoid consultants.
 
BillTre said:
It would be the undecided voters who are neither democrats or republicans.
Click to expand...

Grabbing pussies and mocking disabled persons was obviously insufficient. I am not convinced that rumors about undisclosed files would have made a difference. I think you underestimate the strength of patriarchal (=biblical?) structures in the US. Her handicap was her pronouns. Gossiping about files that no one has seen is counterproductive, aka "typically female".
 
fresh_42 said:
Her handicap was her pronouns.
Click to expand...

I view this as probably a factor, but also not the right thing for Dems to focus on. Harris had no clear vision to offer beyond not being Trump. When asked what she would do differently from Biden, she famously replied "there isn't a thing that comes to mind". Not very politically courageous, especially when, afterwards, the narrative is that she was doing as Biden wanted her to do - 'no daylight'. Doing what your boss wants regardless of your own convictions is exactly what Dems criticize R's across the board of doing - she needs to be called out for the same behavior.

In an interview I heard a snip of a few months back, she was asked if it was a mistake to not have chosen Pete B (I can't spell his last name and won't butcher it) as her running mate. What she said was 'It would have been too risky'. What a lame response. She lost. She can't even acknowledge that if she had more visible convictions with some courage to go with them she'd have been a stronger candidate. Still talking about how conservative choices were the correct ones after she has lost is just hopeless imo.
 
I think, but I could be wrong since I'm not living in the USA, that there are very few political subjects that really matter. The average American doesn't seem interested in foreign affairs, leaving us with purely domestic subjects: the famous gas prices, inflation, law and order. You cannot even address gun laws! Law and order is traditionally occupied by republicans, regardless of being correct or not. Difficult. You cannot even lie about gas prices. It is a point I never understood, particularly in a country that so heavily defends independent market mechanisms. Remains inflation, better addressed as costs of living. Well, Harris could have foreseen Trump's attacks on the Fed and based economic arguments on this. Fear is (obviously and unfortunately everywhere) always a strong decision maker.

So, in any case, there have been very few arguments for her to use besides not being Trump.
 
fresh_42 said:
I think, but I could be wrong since I'm not living in the USA, that there are very few political subjects that really matter.
Click to expand...

I'm deliberately going from memory and not Googling to give you at least one data point from someone living here. All of the below was not fact checked prior to this post, so the statements are only factual in the context of 'to the best of my own recollection'. I'm giving examples of where Trump won on the issues that mattered to voters, of course, imo. I'm not saying I agree with his policies.

Immigration / border control mattered to voters. Trump had very specific do-differents around this issue, Harris had nothing specific.

Government waste mattered to voters. Trump had very specific do-differents around this issue, Harris had nothing specific.

The economy mattered to voters. Trump said he was going to bring manufacturing back to the US. Harris said we need an econonmy that is fair for all, and she would support an initiative to provide 20k in Federal assistance to first time home buyers. I didn't believe Trumps policies would bring back manufacturing to the US, I didn't and don't think the US really wants to revert to a manufacturing based economy from a service based economy, but that said, 20k in welfare assistance for first time home buyers is about as un-inspiring an economic policy as one can possibly come up with - it just doesn't compete with arguing that tariffs will bring manufacturing back to the US in terms of being compelling / attention-getting, even for me who really disagreed with the policy (and still do disagree with the policy).
 
This is the common problem for anybody arguing against right-wing politics: they use fear, and they ignore facts.

Immigration is such a fear. Fact is that large parts of the American economy are based on "illegals". Fact-check is a blunt sword against fear.

Government waste? Who could have wasted more than Trump? He just "wasted" on corruption for his áalready wealthy clients. Draining the swamp? He owns the swamp!

Tariffs mean limiting trade and increasing consumer prices. They hurt both sides, according to a study I found. Moreover, they are short-term methods; "bringing back jobs" requires long-term strategies.

But as I said, you cannot fight fear and demagogues with logic. I don't even need to look at the USA to observe this day by day.

However, back to the topic. How should the Epstein files change anything that his already disgusting behavior didn't change? How come that people who appear in those files get into rough waters everywhere but the USA?
 

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