The new Epstein Files are no smoking gun

The House Oversight Committee released some Jeffrey Epstein emails this morning, and, sure enough, Donald Trump is in the Epstein Files. Like a malignant ghost that haunts the President’s dreams, Epstein has risen from the great beyond to point his bony finger at Donald Trump, saying, “it was you all along.” Or has he?

In an April 2, 2011 message to his associate and fixer Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein wrote “i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.” Then, the word VICTIM appears in a black box, followed by “he has never once been mentioned. police chief, etc. im 75% there.”

Never mind that the late financier who didn’t kill himself never seemed to use punctuation or capitals in his personal communication. This message does appear to be damning, if kind of vague. “I have been thinking about that…” Maxwell said, but what, exactly, remains unclear.

The VICTIM in the note is Virginia Giuffre, who earlier this year said Trump had committed no improprieties for her. And The White House, naturally, has issued a blanket denial. “The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club decades ago for being a creep to his female employees, including {Virginia} Giuffre,” said Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt in a statement to the press. “These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again.”

Also in play now is the Master of Whisperers, the journalist Michael Wolff, who in 2015 warned Epstein, before a Presidential campaign debate that CNN was “planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you — either on air or in scrum afterwards.” “If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?” Epstein responded.

“I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff said. “If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable P.R. and political currency.”

Like the rest of you, Cockburn finds this very juicy. But he also doesn’t necessarily see these emails as some sort of smoking gun that reveals the President to be a malignant pedo.

They’re a trickle, not a torrent, and are really more revealing of the power dynamics behind Trump’s first election than they are of any shenanigans at Mar-a-Lago or on Epstein Island.

As Wolff told Epstein, “of course, it is possible that, when asked, he’ll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.”

“Political correctness” is now called “woke,” but that’s very prescient. “Democrats continue to carelessly cherry-pick documents to generate click-bait that is not grounded in the facts,” said a Republican on the House Oversight Committee. In last year’s interview with deputy attorney general Todd Blanche, Maxwell said of Trump that she “she never witnessed the President in any inappropriate setting in any way. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.” Angel Trump or Devil Trump? Cockburn honestly can’t guess anymore. Only the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein knows for sure.