The House Should Force Me To Release The Epstein Files That I Won’t Release

A lot has happened. Here are some of the things. This is the TPM Morning Memo.

Lol, what?

On the verge of losing a House vote this week calling on the Justice Department to release its Jeffrey Epstein files, President Trump misled much of the political media by declaring in a social media post last night that the House should vote to release the files.

Knowing he will lose the vote — and knowing that the vote itself will not be enough to release the records unless the Senate accepts it and vetoes it — Trump attempted to redefine the setback by withdrawing his opposition to the vote, but without actually releasing the Epstein files.

But who could be fooled by that?

The only reason the House is voting is so Trump’s DOJ — which has left the White House — won’t cough up the records. In other words: Trump will not release the files.

This is not an about-face or a reversal. It’s a sham.

But it gets worse… it keeps getting worse

Trump’s crazy new stance — that he wants House Republicans to vote to demand that he release the Epstein records he refuses to release — comes after the president on Friday ordered the Justice Department to re-investigate everyone’s contacts with Jeffrey Epstein except his own.

While Trump has already broken the Justice Department – ​​stripping it of its independence, capacity and reputation – the demand to weaponize the Epstein case against Democrats will require a new level of Orwellian reality denial from Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.

What’s revolutionary about the new and improved investigation into Epstein is that it was not just career prosecutors, but Bondi and Patel who declared only a few months ago that there was nothing left to investigate. Trump has them recoiling and contorting themselves in a degrading display of bigoted devotion that goes beyond anything we’ve seen from them so far. At this point, the only thing they could do in a more cowardly and loyal manner is to investigate and indict themselves.

Bondi’s immediate public response to Trump’s request: “Thank you, Mr. President. » She turned the investigation over to Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, who now faces his own test of loyalty.

Perhaps the most important news since Friday

The Washington Circuit Court of Appeals — in a troubling and convoluted decision — appears to have reversed course so as not to prevent U.S. District Judge James Boasberg from resuming contempt of court proceedings against the Trump administration in the original Alien Enemies Act case. I’m sorry if you had to read that sentence twice, but you need to read the court’s fragmented decision several times to understand it. Chris Geidner does his best.

It’s a crucial case in the closely watched question of whether federal judges will hold the line in the face of Trump’s attacks on their constitutional role. If a district judge like Boasberg cannot investigate the administration for contempt in a historically significant case where it was blatantly contemptuous, then the battle to maintain an independent judiciary will have been lost before it even begins.

Retribution: Jim Comey Edition

Following Thursday’s court hearing, which signaled that Lindsey Halligan’s nomination as U.S. Attorney may not pass muster with the judge reviewing it, Attorney General Pam Bondi took the almost unbelievable step of attempting for a second time to ratify, after the fact and retroactively, Halligan’s conduct before the grand jury that indicted Jim Comey.

Bondi’s new filing attempts to fill the hole in his previous ratification, when it was revealed in court by the judge that Bondi had reviewed an incomplete transcript of the grand jury proceedings:

Trump’s DOJ simultaneously filed a new declaration from Halligan that attempts to allay concerns that parts of the grand jury proceedings were not recorded or are “missing.” Halligan attests that the gap in the transcript simply reflects the time the grand jury was deliberating:

Halligan’s statement clarifies some, but not all, of what happened during the grand jury proceedings. I had assumed that after the grand jury found the bill false on one of the counts, Halligan would have returned to the grand jury room and presented an alternative indictment on the two counts they ultimately charged Comey with. But, according to her statement, she had no further contact with the grand jury before it returned the two-count indictment.

Combine that with the administrative fumbling (if that’s not too generous a word) for which the judge who accepted the indictment summoned Halligan to court, and what Marcy Wheeler calls “a multitude of problems” remains that I hope Comey’s lawyers find a way to explore and possibly exploit.

Must read

NYT: The collapse of the Justice Department… Sixty lawyers describe a year of chaos and suspicion.

Corruption: Mike Flynn Edition

Former Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn and former Trump White House counsel Stefan Passantino have joined the gravy train of Trump allies seeking taxpayer-funded settlements from Trump’s DOJ, claiming they were victims of politically motivated retaliation. Flynn is seeking $50 million.

Is the Georgia fake voters case back?

Peter Skandalakis, director of the Georgia Prosecutors’ Council, took over the Georgia fake voter case after being unable to find another prosecutor willing to take it on following the disqualification of Atlanta DA Fani Willis — but it’s unclear whether he will continue to pursue convictions of President Trump and his alleged co-conspirators.

Venezuela Watch

• NPR first reported comments made earlier this year by then-Trump Justice Department official Emil Bove, now a 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals judge, that perhaps foreshadowed the administration’s lawless attacks on suspected drug boats:

At a Justice Department conference in February, Emil Bove, then acting assistant attorney general, told the department’s top drug prosecutors that the Trump administration was no longer interested in interdicting suspected drug trafficking vessels at sea. Instead, he said, the United States should “just sink the boats,” according to three people present at the speech.

• The United States killed three people in its 21st illegal strike on suspected drug-trafficking boats on Saturday, bringing the death toll in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific to at least 83.
• The questionable and still-secret OLC memo that justifies the illegal US campaign against drug trafficking boats claims that fentanyl poses a potential chemical weapons threat, the WSJ reports.
• Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, said reports that the OLC memo contained language absolving everyone in the chain of command from criminal liability for the strikes are unusual: “It signals a concern that what they are doing is illegal and that they could potentially face criminal prosecution under U.S. law and international law.” »

Quote of the day

In a reality TV presidency, you need beefs, heels, betrayals, prodigal comebacks and all kinds of intrigue to keep up the contrived manufactured drama. Who knows where this twist ends:

Preach, sister

Rebecca Solnit:

I’m struck by the fact that many people want politics to be about personal feelings, in which case they don’t engage in politics, even though they may be engaged in sabotaging politics. …

[Y]you vote strategically and not expressively; you’re looking at a ballot, not a Tinder/Grindr profile or a confessional, which I say because people often seem to talk as if they need their candidate to be someone who matches them in every way, even if they are just one of hundreds, or even hundreds of millions of voters, or see it as a question of purity, that is, choosing the candidate who is without sin or blemish, for whom they themselves will feel purer by voting…

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