If you’re like many of us, you’ve been asking yourself why President Donald Trump has become so fixated on the Jeffrey Epstein files. And why he’s throwing things against the news media wall, looking for a diversion that sticks.
One of my friends noted the coincidence of Congress acceding to Trump’s demands for his budget bill to be passed in time for him to sign it on Friday, July 4th … and the announcement on Monday, July 7th, that there’s no “there” there with regard to Epstein. Did he hold something over members besides a threat to primary them?
Then there’s the adjournment of the House of Representatives until September.
IF we are not to fall into the clutches of authoritarianism so tight we might not extract ourselves, September had best be not long enough to ignore the issue.
That’s Bill Kristol’s argument today in The Bulwark:
On the one hand, coverups are hard, and Trump, Bondi, and Patel may not be up to the task. And they have lots of patriotic subordinates who may balk at going along. One presumably already has.
On the other hand, in the past, coverups failed and possible coverups unraveled because there was a special counsel, with the weight of the Justice Department and the federal government behind him, seeking to uncover the truth.
There are no special counsels here. The White House has weighed in against one. There are no honorable figures at the most senior positions in the Justice Department or elsewhere resisting the coverup either. Trump controls the federal government and all its apparatus of criminal investigation and law enforcement in a way his predecessors didn’t. So it’s possible Trump could get away with it.
As a general rule, coverups are difficult in free societies with democratic governments. They are routine for authoritarian governments. The Epstein coverup will be an indicator of how far we are down the road to authoritarianism. The success of such a coverup would take us much further down that road.
On the other hand, the failure of the attempted coverup would show resistance to a government based on lies on behalf of the strongman. And the failure of the coverup, either in terms of the material coming out or Trump paying a significant political price for the coverup, would in turn encourage further resistance to authoritarianism.
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com