Today’s trying-to-ignore-the-forest-for-the-trees scramble…Republican lawmakers’ response to the lewd letter in Jeffrey Epstein’s birthday book depicting the outline of a girl and (obviously) signed by Donald Trump is either they don’t care. Or they are denying the signature is Trump’s.
And even something about Biden and an auto-pen.
For this absurdness to be true, someone would have had to have slipped the letter into the book when it was bound in leather in 2003.
But Trump and his loyalists, including WH press secretary Karoline Leavitt, are insisting the letter is a hoax.
Is shouting hoax the only tool in the toolbox? I think we need to redefine the word as used by all these folks. Hoax = uncomfortable truth.
As we are discovering, material in the 238-page book reveals that the friends of the convicted sex offender described him as a “super-rich” man who liked “having sex with very young girls.”
But this wasn’t regarded as a failing. More like a celebration.
“Everyone in Jeffrey Epstein’s circle knew. They knew that Epstein was a predator. They believed that his pathology defined him. And they joked about it, encouraged it, and egged him on.” The Bulwark
This week an in-depth article in the New York Times Magazine detailed how top bankers at JPMorgan Chase ignored the many red flags around Epstein’s financial activities to keep him, and his money, as a valued client.
It was only after Epstein was arrested the second time, federal prosecutors charged him with sex trafficking, and he died in his jail cell that JPMorgan filed a report retroactively flagging 4,700 transactions totaling more than $1.1B as suspicious.
According to Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), that money included hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions involving women in Belarus, Russia, and Turkmenistan, and two Russian banks.
All of these sordid details reveal a cultural system in which wealthy white men can laugh about the horrific and illegal abuse of children—female children—comfortable in the knowledge the system will never hold them to account.
Another photo in the BD book complete with giant check signed by DJT…
“Jeffrey showing early talents with money + women!” “Sells ‘fully depreciated’ [redacted] to Donald Trump for $22,500.”
The person who wrote the caption went on to bemoan that although he had brokered the deal, he didn’t get “the money or the girl.”
Laugh riot.
Remember when Republicans used to be the self-proclaimed party of morality?
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