justoffal
Diamond Member
- Jun 29, 2013
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This is one of the best pieces I have read on the matter and why the demand to release the files is ultimately moot. The sheer reckless maddness of the salivating partisans here is beyond comprehension.
Good morning,
I always forget how much I enjoy the Winter Olympics until they're on. The figure skating has been especially good, right? Here's a sample of how we watch in my house.
Me, eating ice cream on the couch: Wow, that was just about the most impressive athletic achievement I've ever seen. Surely gold medal worthy.
My wife, on her phone: Not bad.
Johnny Weir, on TV: What a disastrous skate! She didn't fully complete the rotator on the quad-axle triple lutz, that's a 10-point deduction right there. Her career is likely finished.
I think this week's theme is Hard Truths. Yesterday we talked about the unfortunate (for many people) fact that the fundamentals of President Trump's economy are pretty good, and likely to get better at least in the short term. Boy, did that piss a lot of you off. Today let's keep it going with the Hard Truth that releasing the Epstein files in the way the DOJ did — as mandated by Congress — was a big, fat mistake.
Yesterday, Rep. Nancy Mace, one of the biggest grandstanders in a Congress of grandstanders, wrote a letter to the CIA demanding the spy agency release "all documents, images and passports" related to Epstein in order to prove her theory he was an intelligence asset. Nothing will ever be enough for these people. Lady, it's time to stop now.
Jeffrey Epstein has created a mass psychosis event in this country that will probably end up being more impactful than his living legacy of being a huge creep, pedophile and sex trafficker. It's actually making me feel bad for Trump's DOJ, which was given the absurd and impossible remit of releasing everything related to the Epstein case within 30 days of an arbitrary deadline set by this ridiculous law that Reps. Ro Khanna and Tom Massie got jammed through before Christmas. Make sure you redact just enough personal information to satisfy the law but also not too much that it looks like we're covering for people. Oh yeah, and it’s millions of pages.
That bill, btw, passed the House 427-1. The lone vote against it was Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), who said at the time that he would not vote for a bill that abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America. "If enacted in its current form, this type of broad reveal of criminal investigative files, released to a rabid media, will absolutely result in innocent people being hurt," Higgins said. Can anyone truly say now in hindsight that he was wrong?
Perhaps there is an alternative universe where dumping millions of files of private correspondence and unsubstantiated criminal allegations could be calmly and rationally processed by the public. That is not the world or information environment we live in. Back here in reality, the biggest lesson to me from this whole charade has been just how incapable the American people are of reading or thinking critically. I've spoken to people — real, live, educated humans — who believe that something they read in the Epstein files is true because the government released it. I've spoken to people who believe Epstein was a literal cannibal because he liked beef jerky. Surely jerky is a code for human flesh, right? Somebody I've known for decades texted me to ask if it was true that Epstein performed ritualistic child sacrifices on his yacht. My interest was piqued by that one, so I searched the database and found the document I suspect this person was referring to. It's based on an interview an anonymous "purported victim" of Epstein gave to the FBI in 2019 in which this man said he had witnessed Epstein and others dismember babies on a yacht in 2000. No evidence of said child sacrifice was given. This is the equivalent of walking around Times Square, writing down what all the crazies are muttering to themselves, and putting it in an FBI dossier.
I have no interest in defending Jeffrey Epstein of all people, or any of the cretins who associated with him long after his conviction. But this is turning into the Salem Witch Trials. Take the story of Casey Wasserman, somebody who I had never heard of until last week. Wasserman is a Hollywood superagent who is now in charge of the LA 2028 Olympics. Karen Bass, the mayor of LA best known for being on a junket in Africa while a big chunk of her city burned to the ground a year ago, is calling on Wasserman to resign from his position as chair of the Olympic committee due to his "Epstein connections." He's already put his agency up for sale because of those connections. What are they, exactly? He wrote a flirty email to Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003, before either she or Epstein were accused of any wrongdoing. He doesn't even mention Epstein at all. He's literally just telling Maxwell he wants to see her in a "tight, leather outfit." Embarrassing, sure. Worth ruining this guy's life and reputation over? Put me in the no camp.
The big lesson of the Epstein saga is unfortunately mundane. Rich, powerful people protect other rich, powerful people and will overlook their personal lack of scruples in furtherance of more power and influence. And then lie about it. Wow, no shit? The elite are happy to do business with a sex criminal if it helps get their kid into college, or invited to a cool party? The second big lesson of this is what losers some of these people are, despite being among the richest people to ever walk the Earth. Elon Musk emailing Epstein on Christmas morning (lol) to ask if he's got any ragers on his island coming up. Bill Gates allegedly using Epstein to get antibiotics for an STD he caught (Gates' spox has called this specific allegation "absolutely absurd”). Our elite are mostly liars and losers, but did you really need Epstein to tell you that?
Someone floated the idea to me the other day of a 2028 unity ticket of Tom Massie and Ro Khanna, based on the work they did to get the Epstein files out in the open. And I've liked both of these guys for being iconoclasts willing to go against their parties in Congress. But they are not the heroes they're being made out to be (mostly by the dominant/liberal media).
Take one example. Massie took credit for forcing DOJ to unredact the 20 names listed on one particular file, which Khanna then read aloud on the floor of the House, insinuating these people were connected to Epstein's crimes. But at least four of the names he read belong to private citizens with zero connection to any of this. They were random people selected for an FBI lineup who ended up in the files. So you might not have any love lost for some rich Hollywood agent like Wasserman, but spare a moment for someone like Salvatore Nuarte of Queens, NY, who is just some random dude who was once arrested by the NYPD and somehow got his photo in the lineup. Now his name will forever be tarnished as an associate of Epstein.
Sorry, but that is not justice.
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Carlo Versano is Newsweek's Director of Politics and Culture. He has in-depth knowledge and experience covering a range of topics and stories over a 20-year career in the news business. Carlo joined Newsweek in 2024 after a stint at The Messenger. Before that, he was an Emmy-winning producer at NBC News. He is a graduate of the University of Richmond and the New School. You can get in touch with Carlo by emailing c.versano@newsweek.coThe upper quartile is the median of the upper half of a data set. This is located by dividing the data set with the median and then dividing the upper half that remains with the median again, this median of the upper half being the upper quartile
