Both the cover-up and the crime are depraved.

July 21, 2025

Much of the US domestic news focused on the unfolding Epstein scandal, which is currently the subject of a massive cover-up by the Trump administration. Ever since the Watergate scandal, it has been accepted political wisdom that “The cover-up is (usually) worse than the crime.” Not so here. Both the cover-up and the crime are depraved.

As we discuss the political ramifications of the Epstein scandal, we must never forget that the underlying crimes are horrific—both in their nature (sex crimes against young girls) and the fact that the crimes persisted for a decade despite widespread knowledge (or suspicion) that sex trafficking of minors was occurring on a large scale.

The Epstein scandal has vaulted to the top of the news over the last two weeks because the Trump administration is attempting a cartoonish cover-up that is fooling no one. And if there is anything that whets the journalistic instincts of otherwise lethargic reporters, it is the possibility of becoming the next “Woodward and Bernstein.”

Moreover, the cover-up here is amateurish and easily disprovable by publicly known facts. Much of the reporting attempting to pierce through the cover-up involves republishing articles and interviews that have been “memory-holed” by a press that grew bored of the scandal.

Determining how best to correct the injustice and break through the cover-up while ensuring that both remain political liabilities for Trump (rather than Democrats) is the tricky bit. More on that in the second part of the newsletter.

Before turning to the Epstein scandal and cover-up, I would like to emphasize the remarks I made in my Substack livestream on Saturday morning. We are about to enter the congressional “summer recess,” when the political news cycle will slow. After fevered efforts to stop the reconciliation bill, it may prove difficult for some to maintain the same level of passion and engagement witnessed during the first six months of Trump's second term.

It is natural to experience ebbs and flows in the political dynamic. The important point is not to confuse a temporary moment of stasis with surrender or defeat. Maintaining peak intensity is simply not possible. We are human, after all. We need rest and renewal to be effective over the long term.

To fight the false sense of a “let down” after the reconciliation bill fight, it is worth noting that our resistance has negatively affected Trump's favorability ratings overall and with respect to his keynote issues in the 2024 campaign.

Simon Rosenberg does an excellent job of summarizing and analyzing the recent spate of polling that shows significant negative shifts in Trump's personal favorability rating and on issues such as immigration and the economy. If you are a person motivated by polls (and not everyone is), I highly recommend Simon Rosenberg’s analysis in Hopium Chronicles, Sunday Hopium - Six Months In The Country Is Not Buying What Trump Is Selling

I frequently urge people to “ignore the polls,” and I continue to believe that is good advice, except in two respects.

First, the strong negative shifts in Trump's polling are seen across the board, i.e., in polling by right-wing organizations and neutral outlets like major media organizations. While we can debate the magnitude of the shift among various cohorts, everyone agrees that Trump and his policies have lost significant public support since November 2024.

Second, the negative shifts in Trump's polling validate our experience. We see Trump as an anti-democratic autocrat threatening the Constitution. So, too, do most Americans. We see Trump's immigration policy as cruel and inhumane. So, too, do most Americans. We see the reconciliation bill as a betrayal of the American people that flies in the face of his campaign promises. So, too, do most Americans.

Third, the efforts by the right wing to counter Trump's negative polling by saying, “Democrats are historically unpopular” is a category mistake that should concern us but not dispirit us. Simon Rosenberg’s analysis doesn’t address the dismal polling regarding favorability ratings for Democrats. For a bracing reminder of the negative polling for Democrats, see The Hill, Mixed Polling Results for Democrats After Trump's Victory. As noted in The Hill, public perception of the “Democratic brand” is lower than at any time since 1992.

As I note above, it is a “category mistake” to compare negative polling for a person (Trump) or his policies to public perception of a party’s “brand.” Asking voters about a real person or real policy and then comparing those responses to views about “Democrats” is an invalid comparison. It’s like comparing the number 3 and the color blue. It is meaningless.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be concerned about the low approval ratings for generic “Democrats.” But we must also be realistic and smart in our analysis. The notion that Democrats are massively out of touch is belied by the narrow margins in the presidential and congressional elections in 2024—which indicated an evenly divided electorate in which the president failed to garner a majority among those who voted.

Digging into the results of the polling in The Hill article, above, shows that some of the unfavorable ratings come from Democrats who believe that their leaders are not being aggressive enough in resisting Trump! That dissatisfaction gets reported as “unhappiness with Democrats,” but (in reality) reflects the feeling that Democratic leaders (like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries) should be doing more to advance the Democratic agenda, not less!

The Hill’s analysis of polling also criticizes Democrats because they have not “coalesced” around a candidate for 2028. That metric is both silly and misleading. Comparing support for a “to be announced” candidate for Democrats against a sitting president is like comparing waffles and nickels. They are not the same thing—as the writers at The Hill know. But The Hill wanted to write a story about Democrats in disarray, so it resorted to comparing waffles and nickels to support its thesis. So far as I know, the Republicans have likewise failed to “coalesce” around a candidate for 2028—a fact not mentioned in The Hill’s analysis.

I address the polling regarding the “Democratic brand” to help readers understand that many of the analyses being written are unfair and misleading. Every political institution in the US is at or near historic levels of unpopularity—including Democrats, Republicans, Congress, the president, and the Supreme Court.

What we must do is to exploit specific weaknesses revealed in polling regarding Trump and his policies. Democratic candidates will offer a competing, positive vision in 2026 while Republicans will be forced to defend every cruel, inhumane, greedy, racist, misogynistic, and antidemocratic initiative by Trump during his first two years in office.

The relevant comparison in 2026 will be how voters think about those issues and the candidates who support or oppose them. If you are still with me and are feeling anxious because of the above discussion, I again highly recommend Simon Rosenberg’s analysis.

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Developments in the Epstein scandal over the weekend

After considering reader feedback about reporting on the Epstein scandal, I have concluded that it would be wrong to stop discussing the scandal, as some readers have urged. The underlying crimes against women should not be swept under the rug. Trump was, for a time, a friend and frequent social companion of someone who ran a significant sex trafficking operation involving minor girls. That is a newsworthy story that deserves comment.

Refusing to discuss relevant developments because the scandal does not involve government policies or actions is wrong. We must not compound the injustice of a decade’s worth of callous disregard for the victims by saying that it is not politically convenient to discuss those issues.

Fresh attention has been brought to the crimes because of the cover-up by Trump, AG Pam Bondi, and FBI Director Kash Patel. Indeed, the cover-up is likely a new crime! As noted below, it appears that the FBI is being used to identify and conceal Trump's involvement in Epstein’s activities.

We learned on Friday and over the weekend that the administration employed over a thousand FBI staff to scour approximately 100,000 documents for references to Donald Trump in Epstein’s files. Those references were collated into a spreadsheet that was widely available to many of the reviewers. The spreadsheet was not secure (hosted and available on Microsoft SharePoint). The review operation has all of the hallmarks of being run by someone with zero experience in conducting major document reviews.

For an excellent summary of the amateurish document review and related cover-up, I highly recommend an article by Allison Gill on her Substack, Mueller She Wrote, The Epstein Cover-Up at the FBI.

Gill makes a strong case that (a) a summary of Trump's involvement with Epstein exists; (b) the summary was not secure and multiple people had access to the document (or were able to view its contents; and (c) someone with access could have copied the document.

Gill invited people involved in the review to contact her on a confidential basis. At least two people did. Based on information from those people, Gill writes:

But here’s what caught my attention: the files were stored on a shared drive that anyone in the division could access. Normally, access is only granted to those working on a project, but because of the hurried nature of the exercise, the usual permission restrictions were not in place.

Additionally, the internal SharePoint site the bureau ended up using to distribute the files toward the end did not have the usual restricted permissions. This left the Epstein and Maxwell files open to viewing by a much larger group of people than previously thought.

So, this is a “cover-up” where many people had access to the “smoking gun” summary of Trump's involvement.

Will the “summary” be released? At one level, it doesn’t matter. If it is leaked, Trump will claim it is a fraud, but he will be dogged by its revelations for the remainder of his presidency. If it isn’t released—the likely outcome—Trump will spend the rest of his time in office defending his refusal to release the document, in much the same way that Nixon resisted the release of the Watergate tapes.

As I wrote on Friday, the Epstein scandal is not a political advantage for Democrats, but it is a huge political liability for Trump and his supporters. Democrats must act responsibly and ethically in seeking to pierce the cover-up and in attempting to bring the perpetrators of sex crimes against minor girls to justice.

A good start is being made in the House, where Reps. Ro Khanna (D) and Thomas Massie (R) are collecting signatures for a discharge petition that would force a floor vote on releasing the Epstein files. It appears likely that Khanna and Massie will be able to force the vote. Reps. Massie, Khanna Seek House Vote on Public Release of Jeffrey Epstein Files | U.S. Representative Thomas Massie

The Epstein scandal appears to be rattling Trump. He spent Sunday in a frenzy, posting bizarre statements and memes on Truth Social, including, for example, a long-ago debunked video of a woman in a bikini catching a cobra as she was sunbathing and “a deranged AI-generated video depicting Barack Obama’s arrest and imprisonment.” See Daily Beast, Trump Posts Frenzied Truth Social Rampage on Six-Month Anniversary in Office.

While I would prefer not to cite The Daily Beast for news items, the New York Times failed to mention that Trump posted a fake video of Barack Obama being forced to the ground, handcuffed, and arrested in the Oval Office (not to mention the woman in the bikini catching a cobra). Let’s all say it together, “What if Joe Biden had done the same thing?” Would the Times have ignored it? Or would the Editorial Board of the Times call for the invocation of the 25^th Amendment to remove Biden from office?

But I digress. Trump was more unhinged than usual on Sunday, likely because he is ramping up his performative craziness in anticipation of more harmful revelations about his relationship with Epstein.

While the political dimensions of the cover-up cannot be ignored, remember that Epstein’s sex trafficking operation victimized over a thousand young girls. He didn’t do it alone. It is time to open the Epstein files to ensure that the perpetrators are held accountable and brought to justice.

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Concluding Thoughts.

Jill and I rushed out of the house on Saturday morning immediately after my livestream to take our granddaughters to see Lilo & Stitch. Because the movie has been out for several weeks, there was only one showing—at 10:30 am. The theater is located at a nearby mall, where Jill and I have participated in a half-dozen #TeslaTakedown protests.

As I rounded the corner into the parking lot, I saw the familiar faces and signs on the corner rallying for democracy and protesting Elon Musk’s illegal DOGE rampage. I honked and waved—and felt the twinge of guilt that I was not on the corner with them.

I want the steadfast, hardy souls who were at the Topanga Mall on Saturday, less than forty-eight hours after Make Good Trouble rallies, to know that we see you. Your constancy and dedication serve as an example and inspiration to us all.

And the same to everyone who was back on street corners and town halls on Saturday and Sunday. You are making a difference. People are noticing. Hearts and minds are being touched.

Thank you!

Talk to you tomorrow!

Daily Dose of Perspective

The image below is of the Sagittarius Starfield, a bright swath of stars in the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way. There are thousands of stars packed into this tiny section of the sky. A current estimate of the number of stars in the Milky Way is 300 to 400 billion. And yet, the Milky Way is mostly empty space, with an average distance between stars of 5 light years (29 trillion miles).

As Douglas Adams wrote, “Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.”