The Epstein Circus Will Shatter Our Last Delusions

Do we want to know how the world really works, or is it too disgusting to countenance?

From the Washington Post:

The newly released documents from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate show that the convicted sex offender texted with a Democratic member of Congress, Del. Stacey Plaskett of the U.S. Virgin Islands, during a congressional hearing with Michael Cohen, and that those text messages may have influenced the congresswoman’s questions of Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer.

The Post story went on to describe exchanges from February 2019 in which Virgin Islands delegate Stacey Plaskett asked for guidance on questioning in the middle of the Cohen hearing. When Cohen mentioned Donald Trump's executive assistant Rhona Graff, Epstein texted the quasi-congressperson. “Cohen brought up RONA - keeper of the secrets,” he wrote, to which Plaskett replied, “RONA??” and, “Quick I’m up next is that an acronym.” YouTube is already flooded with videos, some darkly funny, like the Washington Post’s own effort at time-coding the puppetry act. Note the “Miss Rhona” dance around the unknown last name:

The list of high-ranking politicians from both parties who traveled with or took money from Epstein — Donald Trump and Bill Clinton included (what was the latter’s “humanitarian” visit to Siberia with him about?) — boggles the mind. A character like Epstein can only thrive in a world where law enforcement and intelligence are fully intertwined with financial and sexual corruption, to the point where one has to entertain the idea that significant numbers of politicians are compromised, perhaps even in a form of systemic blackmail. That isn’t an easy thing to believe. In the words of the disgraced and disgraceful writer Michael Wolff, whose ostentatious presence at the middle of this story casts doubt on all of it, Epstein represents “the kind of insiderism that is mostly just a figment in outsiders’ fantasies.”

Except, as Wolff accurately notes, “Epstein is real.” This is certainly a momentous story about something. For a long list of reasons that includes Wolff’s insistence that it’s true, I find it difficult to believe “the central issue is Trump’s relationship with this monster.” More likely, full exposure of the Epstein saga would tune the public into a generation of indefensible official bargains and power plays, which is why the Trump administration’s summer turnaround on releases has justifiably come at big political cost. Trump campaigning last year compared Epstein to the Kennedy assassination. “Kennedy’s interesting because it’s so many years ago. They do that for danger too, because it endangers certain people,” he said, adding, “But I’d be inclined to do the Epstein. I’d have no problem with it.”

With his own Director and Deputy Director of the FBI on record questioning Epstein’s cause of death, and Trump’s daughter on record calling for “more transparency,” the sudden about-face had to involve heavy leverage somewhere. That doesn’t mean the Democrats’ braying about this issue hasn’t been ridiculous and hypocritical. If the Epstein rabbit holes are as deep for other members as they are just for Plaskett, we may have to put the whole system on suicide watch. It’s that bad: