Who cares? The files haven’t been released and they should be. It doesn’t matter if Democrats didn’t release because they wanted to protect Bill Clinton or other Democrats, or because of “norms”, or because they were saving them to see if Trump became president again, or some other reason.
He’s worried about becoming irrelevant to MAGA.
He’s worried about people like MTG who care more about MAGA issues than making sure the MAGA caudillo never goes to prison.
And he’s worried about losing his status as the man the world revolves around.
I think you’ve nailed it.
The Democrats do not use the DOJ as a tool of political retribution.
I know, I know. This is an ideal that causes Republicans to do the “confused dog sideways head” gesture.
Yeah. I don’t know what’s in there and I doubt it would actually sink him, but whatever is there, from how out-of-character he’s acting it’s something he really doesn’t want to get out.
That would have hurt Trump and Republicans, and pandering to & protecting the Republicans have been the top priorities of the Democrats for decades now. As demonstrated by their handling of the Jan 6th coup attempt, they consider shielding the Republicans to be more important than their own lives. The Democrats would never release the files if they thought it would harm Trump.
That’s not not how argumentation works. It’s not possible to prove that someone did not have intent to something. How about you volunteer some proof that they were “out to take Trump” down instead of just repeating it as fact?
If Biden wanted Trump “taken down’“ then he’d have fired Merrick Garland early in the administration for doing next to nothing to hold Trump accountable. If Biden wanted Trump “taken down” then Trump would be in jail, and not just his cronies, minions, and mini-mes who attempted insurrection. Trump got treated with kid gloves; by rights he should’ve been at the end of a rope years ago.
What you saw is weak token gestures toward accountability from an administration that was mainly focused on fixing all the damage to the economy and institutions from the Trump admin. Biden chose to focus on that, and believe that Trump was down, was going to stay down, and that nobody would support that moron ever again. This is one of many things Biden was wrong about.
So, why didn’t Trump order his DOJ to go after Democrats for their alleged connections to Epstein during Trump 1?
And why didn’t Trump order his DOJ to investigate Democrats for “mortgage fraud” during Trump 1?
See? Awfully weak argument you have there. Too much RW media.
I may be missing what you are really getting at here. But to address your question:
Trump may not have cared whether charges concerned Epstein, but he did order the DOJ to go after Democrats.. Trump’s disloyal Department of Justice defied him. See:
Daily Beast 2018: Trump Wanted to ‘Order’ DOJ to ‘Prosecute’ Hillary Clinton, James Comey
And:
WaPo 2017: Trump breaches boundaries by saying DOJ should be ‘going after’ Democrats
The idea that Biden could ever have had a more compliant AG than the ones Trump had between 2017 and 2020 seems far out to me.
The reason that Trump wasn’t jailed when Biden was President is that prosecutors believe in getting convictions for the most serious crimes possible when working on a political corruption case. That takes time. If they had quickly gone after Trump for the easiest to prosecute misdemeanors, he probably would have gone to jail for a few months.
There is no bar to running and winning from jail. I think 2024 was always going to be a GOP year.
I think you probably are. Take a look at the Magiver post to which I was responding.
Sexual crimes and infidelities never seemed to bother him this much before. A mild annoyance that could be fixed with a hand wave or payoff. Finances do bother him though. I wonder if there’s some embarrassing financial entanglements in these files that he’s desperate to keep hidden, and that’s why he’s acting like a cornered animal right now.
I think you’re on to something here. Trump has bragged about his sexual prowess [ewww…] in the past. I doubt if he would seek to hide reports of his sexual activity. Maybe he doesn’t want it made public that he DIDN’T participate in any sex games? That as a self-proclaimed macho-macho man he actually turned down offers from willing girls and women of all ages. That he stayed fully-clothed, zipped-up and either watched or left the room. How do you live THAT down? 
Or this. What could be in the Epstein emails involving trump’s finances that he desperately wants to keep secret? This is where he’s most vulnerable.
Whatever is making Trump so nervous also made him take the extraordinary step of moving Ghislaine Maxwell – a convicted child-sex trafficker – to a minimum-security prison, where she is getting all kinds of preferential treatment.
So the secret is something major that Trump fears could be not only in the emails but also in Maxwell’s memory.
Also, he had her boy murdered in prison. That’s not nothing!
(OK, no theory of Epstein’s death has been proven, but if Trump calls it suicide, I’m going with murder.)
If Trump isn’t scared of revelations about sexual improprieties, that really narrows the field of things he is trying to keep hidden. The glaring one being anything that connects him to Epstein’s death in prison. What if the files include an ultimatum from Epstein to Trump on the eve of his supposed suicide? Even if Trump had nothing to do with it, he knows the connections that people would make.
I can’t figure out how to link to it, but if you search the emails for “Trump” and “ryboloolev”, you can find where Epstein is talking about Russian money laundering.
I think Epstein can connect Trump to Russia.
Which correlates to things that we here at the Dope may remember.
Remember Trump’s innuendo-filled birthday card to Epstein, with the drawing of a young woman’s figure and the reference to the “wonderful secret” both men shared.
It would be strange if that secret is unrelated to the secret that Trump so anxiously wants to suppress.
Why would anyone think that Epstein revelations will materially harm Trump, when
- there’s been ample time and opportunity to scrub the files of incriminating info
- Even if any remains, its release can be blocked by getting the DOJ to pursue an “active investigation” under which info can be withheld indefinitely
- MAGA would forgive any transgressions because “Democrats are worse”
- there’s so much Trump-fear and sycophancy among Republicans that getting an impeachment, much less conviction is highly improbable. Many of them (and some Dems, too) likely fear revenge prosecution by Trump’s team.
Because Trump is losing his shit trying to keep them in the dark.
(ETA Trump and MTG are currently in a public slappy fight over them.)
I just finished reading Giuffre’s book, and I’m doubting that that particular redacted name was hers. She mentions Trump a few times, but she never mentions spending any time with him or talking with him, let alone hours. He was very peripheral in her story. It’s just so very convenient for Trump/Leavitt to name Giuffre, as you say.
My suspicion is that there are plenty of powerful people to be protected.
Look, when Trump ordered the haphazard release of Kennedy documents, he didn’t even bother to have social security numbers redacted, and when that was pointed out his response was basically “Meh.”
So the ONLY reason for him to fight this so hard is that he’s protecting someone. Could be him, could be half the political establishment. Could be important donors.
But something stinks here.