I think Trump giving the OK changed everything re Passing the Bill quickly - it was like a hot potato at that point. There’s still two different things that are going on:
They’ll need to have the same guts for the enforcement. People will need to demand it. It really feels like there will be another data dump and that will be that/enough.
Thune became Majority Leader over Trump’s objections. Trump wanted Rick Scott. McConnell wanted Thune to succeed him. The caucus voted for Thune.
And the Senate leadership must have figured, right, he’s saying he wants it, let’s get this over with before he changes his mind again.
Remember when everyone believed Saddam Hussein had WMDs so we went to war and lo and behold he didn’t? Can you imagine if that happens here? That Trump is not implicated in any of the files. Every Dem head will explode.
That would be difficult:
These situations are exact opposites:
Those whose heads would explode might just assume there was a cover-up.
I have said that several times, even here. Bondi et all will just take out or modify the worst stuff. Everyone knows trump and epstein met, etc.
I am a woman who has been sexually assaulted and I wouldn’t care. I have nothing to be ashamed of. Obviously mileages can vary, but haven’t some of the women threatened to release their own list?
To paraphrase Trae Crowder: don’t expect any good to come of this, because Republicans are in charge, and “good” isn’t what they do.
A wise caution. Copyright that quick!
Good line there, however I would maybe change that to MAGAs, but recently MAGA and GOP have come to be almost the same.
A lot of people here have predicted as much. And we’re a pretty liberal bunch
They can certainly try this and it would not surprise me if they do. But having said that, it does not make Trump’s problem go away. If they think people will see the files, find nothing incriminating about Trump and just say “oh well, we tried” I think they are vastly underestimating everyone. If the released files have 1100 mentions of some variation of “Donald Trump is a total gentleman who does not approve of any of this” it’s going to be super obvious that Bondi has done an edit. At that point, we will have people demanding the real files except now they are ready to burn some shit. Remember, a crowd of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol for less.
At the end of the day, no matter how “honest” Trump tries to be, we all know he lies about everything all the time. And from the way Trump has dealt with this so far, it’s basically impossible for him to be as innocent as he claims. If there’s nothing but Democrats in there, he’s been fighting to protect Democrat pedophiles! And fighting harder than he’s ever fought anything in his life! Well except maybe dodging STDs in his college years while his peers were dying in Vietnam.
Trump has zero options for making this situation better by lying, obfuscating or pulling some other shenanigans to make it difficult for people to access those files. They will haunt him until the day he dies and no matter what he does, the real information will always exist just slightly beyond his control. All the money, all the power and all the fame and he’ll never be able to make this go away. Nobody will ever forgive him and nobody will ever forget. He’s in Hell and it’s a Hell of his own making. But if he wants to try to make himself feel better by altering his local copy of documents that exist in the cloud, he can do that. In fact, I dare him to. I double dare him.
IIRC Bondi is considering re-opening an investigation into the Epstein Files. By law, the files cannot be released during an active investigation. Then she will drag it out for as long as she needs to.
That’s fantastic. The longer she delays, the more obvious it is that she’s protecting a pedophile and the more opportunities there are to ask Trump questions about it every single day until he dies.
Only the parts that are relevant to the ongoing criminal investigation, and the exemption is required to be “narrowly tailored and temporary”, and must be justified in writing and submitted to the Federal Register. And Congress still has to receive an unclassified summary of all redactions.
Unless she’s announcing a criminal investigation into Trump, that’s not gonna help hide anything. There’s really no “gotcha ya we ain’t releasing shit” in this bill.
“And press hard - you’re making three copies.”
Trump signed the bill:
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-presidency-epstein-files-release-11-19-25
(note this is a CNN live blog so the link may change to a different story as it ages)
Yeah, this bill kind of screws up the plan to use an investigation as an excuse to hide stuff.
I have a question about what is supposed to be released.
My understanding is that the courts are not considered to be part of the Department of Justice. And Justice is the body addressed by the just-signed Epstein Files Transparency Act. So whatever files are in courthouses do not get released, unless Justice has a copy. Correct?
Concerning grand jury material which the Department of Justice has, the way I read the new law, there is no carve-out for copies of grand jury testimony,or exhibits that Justice keeps. And there is nothing in the Constitution that addresses grand jury secrecy. So I presume the Epstein Files Transparency Act, being newer, overrides past laws and regulations concerning grand jury secrecy. Is that also correct?
Of course, Pam Bondi will do whatever she thinks she can get away with, even if not legal. I’m just asking for a reasonable interpretation of the law.