'If People Think This is Going Away...I Don't See How it Can'

Correctly noting that “Despite Trump’s campaign promises to dismantle the deep state and hold elites accountable, his administration now appears to be protecting the same intelligence and law enforcement networks it once condemned,” Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag published a fantastic piece at Public News about the DOJ’s amateurish, transparent coverup of the Epstein Scandal.

The piece is not behind the site’s traditional paywall, so you can go read it in full at this link.

Here are some excerpts of key highlights from the story:

The idea that America is ruled by a secret government of deep state intelligence agencies like the CIA and FBI is a right-wing conspiracy theory, the media has said for the last decade. Journalists at outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and NPR have portrayed claims about a “deep state” as paranoid fabrications pushed by Donald Trump and his supporters to discredit legitimate government institutions. They insisted that accusations of political bias or covert influence by agencies like the CIA or FBI had no basis in fact and served only to inflame public distrust.

And yet over the same period, investigative reporting, including by the two of us, and official disclosures revealed that these agencies interfered in domestic politics in ways that aligned with that very narrative.

…

The strongest argument against the existence of a secret government run by the deep state was the re-election of Donald Trump in 2024. If agencies like the CIA, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security truly exercised covert and unchecked control over American politics, it is difficult to explain how their most outspoken critic, and avowed enemy, returned to power. Trump did not merely criticize the intelligence community; he ran on a platform promising its reform.

…

But now the Trump administration is attempting to sweep the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal under the rug, with the Justice Department claiming that there is no client list and that no further disclosure is warranted, even though Attorney General Pam Bondi explicitly stated publicly that there were “tens of thousands of videos” which means the ability to identify the individuals involved in sex with minors, and that anyone in the Epstein files who tries to keep their name private has “no legal basis to do so.”

On April 28, 2025, in a candid off-the-record exchange caught on video, Bondi told a bystander, “There are tens of thousands of videos… and it’s all with little kids.” She later reiterated on May 7 that these were “videos of Epstein with children or child porn.”

Bondi’s comments directly contradicted the official stance of the administration, which has dismissed calls for a client list and slowed efforts to release the full contents of the Epstein files. Despite Trump’s campaign promises to dismantle the deep state and hold elites accountable, his administration now appears to be protecting the same intelligence and law enforcement networks it once condemned.

Strong evidence suggests that Epstein was part of a sex blackmail operation tied to intelligence agencies. Visitor logs show that William Burns, who served as CIA Director under President Biden, visited Epstein’s New York townhouse multiple times. The Wall Street Journal reported those visits in 2023 based on Epstein’s private calendar. In 2017, Alex Acosta, the Justice Department official who gave Epstein his 2008 plea deal, told Trump transition officials that he was told to back off Epstein because he “belonged to intelligence.” The Justice Department later admitted that all eleven months of Acosta’s emails from that period had disappeared.

This failure to follow through seriously undermines Trump’s explicit commitments to reform and shine light on the deep state.

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It is thus hard not to conclude that the intelligence community continues to operate in violation of the constitutional system of checks and balances by evading meaningful congressional oversight.

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To prove it is not simply the latest custodian of the deep state, the Trump administration must release the Epstein videos and related evidence, fully expose the scope of the sex trafficking and apparent IC blackmail operation, and ensure that every perpetrator, regardless of power or position, is held accountable under the law. It must also release the long-withheld files on COVID origins, Russiagate, the Hunter Biden laptop, January 6, unidentified aerial phenomena, and other topics. Even if these files do not reveal any “smoking guns,” the public has a right to full transparency. Only through this transparency can the credibility of the intelligence community be restored.

Congress must step up as well. Legislative leaders must hold public hearings on each of these issues, issue subpoenas if necessary, and demand full executive branch compliance with oversight. The Constitution grants Congress, not the intelligence agencies, the power to check secrecy, correct abuse, and uphold the rule of law.

These are not matters of political convenience but constitutional obligation. The American people have the right to know what their government has done in their name and against their rights. If the Trump administration fails to act, it will confirm the fear that even the most populist and combative president can be captured or neutralized by the very system he vowed to dismantle. And it will lose much of the legitimacy it gained by surviving and overcoming the lawfare, censorship, and weaponization of the deep state against it.

Many within the Trump administration acknowledge this and note that this is hardly the end of the Epstein affair.

“This is a total fucking disaster,” someone within the Intelligence Community told us this afternoon, as we were going to press with this editorial.

After we pointed out that the Attorney General said one thing and now the Justice Department, FBI Director, and Deputy FBI Director are all saying the opposite, the person said, “I hope you ask these questions. These are the questions that need to be asked. We’re in a time when information flows more freely. If people think that this is going to go away — I don’t see how it can.”

Nor, we would add, should it.

[End]

Outstanding. Again, you can read the piece in full at this link.

That is all.