Jeffrey Epstein Arrested for Sex Trafficking of Minors

In an era where #MeToo has toppled powerful men, Epstein’s name was largely absent from the national conversation, until the Miami Herald published a three-part series on how his wealth, power and influence shielded him from federal prosecution. For years, The Daily Beast has reported on Epstein’s alleged abuse, starting with Conchita Sarnoff's exposes on his easy jail sentence and soft treatment by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which ultimately scrapped a 53-page indictment against Epstein. An earlier version of Epstein’s plea deal included a 10-year federal sentence—before his star-studded lawyers threatened to go to trial in a case prosecutors feared was unwinnable, in part because Epstein’s team dredged up dirt on the victims, including social media posts indicating drug use.

Meanwhile, the financier flitted among his homes in Palm Beach, New York City, and the Virgin Islands, as well as his secluded Zorro Ranch in Stanley, New Mexico, transporting young women on his private jet to facilitate the sexual abuse that’s gone unchecked by authorities, his alleged victims say.

Ann Coulter has been on the case for years while the MSM helped provide cover.



Ann Coulter: Media Magic — How a Democrat Pedophile Became a ‘Trump Scandal’

As stories go, a child sex case involving a Palm Beach billionaire was pretty big. It was covered in the British press, in Florida media, at The New York Post, and at Fox News. Bill O’Reilly led with the story on his Fox News show.

But CNN and MSNBC did not breathe a word about a Democratic prosecutor refusing to hold a Democratic child rapist accountable.

Epstein had given more than $145,000 to Democratic candidates and causes, including Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Chuck Schumer. He was a big Israel backer. Bill Clinton and Democratic activist Ron Burkle were frequent guests on Epstein’s private plane, dubbed the “Lolita Express.” And Krischer was a hero for his dogged pursuit of Rush Limbaugh! Why bring up all this unpleasantness?

Did Ed Gillespie want to lose gracefully? It explains a lot.

Republicans are focused on taking the high road so that when the Democrat wins they can claim to have lost gracefully.

This is the type of campaign Democrats run (Northam vs. Gillespie)

So the question is how did Gillespie’s campaign miss the Ralph Northam either in blackface or a KKK costume, yesterday he couldn’t recall which one he was, which could have gone a long way towards neutralizing Northam’s race-baiting? This was one theory that was floated by the Washington Post’s “fact checker.”

Surely, you think, there is no possible scenario where a campaign could have had this material on its opponent and not used it. Could. Not. Happen. Here is where we go down the rabbit hole.

Having observed a boat-load of GOP campaigns over the years, I find nothing at all implausible about the Gillespie campaign having the material and deciding not to use it. From what I’ve seen of Vichy Republicans in action at fairly close range, I’d actually be more shocked if it was used than finding it wasn’t. In fact, one of the reasons Kessler gives as to why the story might be false is actually one of the reasons why Gillespie might have decided not to use it.

In a racially charged campaign, would Gillespie want to be accused of trying to depress black turnout? Could he even be sure the press wouldn’t ignore the images and savage him (more than they were) for employing a “dirty trick” to distract voters from the lofty issues at stake…like would Gillespie supporters actually chase black and Hispanic kids with their pickups?

During the 1992 campaign, I was a military aide to an assistant secretary in one of the cabinet departments and all of my counterparts were Bush Schedule C appointees. Through them, I became acquainted with some senior people on the Bush campaign team. There was tons of oppo on Bill Clinton and his horndogging and the fights between Bill and Hillary on the campaign trail and some really salacious stuff on Hillary’s extra-curricular activities but the Bush campaign elected not to use it in large part because Bush was still stinging from the Willie Horton ad. So finding a GOP campaign acting against its own interests for the sake of being a noble loser isn’t new. I would submit the 2008 McCain campaign had as its objective to be a gracious loser to the first viable black presidential candidate. I’ve never really been convinced Mitt Romney wanted anything more than to lose cleanly in 2012.

As to the denials, if you’d had the images and chosen not to use them because you wanted to take the high road and protect “muh principles,” knowing what you know today, would you admit to not using them? My guess is that you would deny knowing anything about them and take the hit for being merely incompetent.

On the other hand, the Gillespie campaign may have never discovered the images. GOP campaigns hiring incompetents, grifters, and rent-seekers foisted upon them by outsiders is nearly the hallmark of any GOP campaign.

We’ll probably never know if the Gillespie campaign knew about the images or how they managed to miss them and that is mostly because there are no possible answers that make the Gillespie campaign or the Virginia GOP look particularly good.

That's why we now have President Donald J. Trump

Mark Steyn recalls: "Hearing the Women, Then and Now"

So on Thursday the Senate will hear evidence of what allegedly happened in an upstairs room at an unknown house somewhere near Columbia Country Club, Maryland sometime in the early Eighties. Presumably Judge Kavanaugh will be cross-examined on how close "anything close to it" actually got. This is the pitiful state to which the United States Senate has reduced its "advise and consent" role.

It was different nineteen years ago, when I had the misfortune, briefly, to be living in Washington, DC - just for a few weeks while covering the Clinton impeachment trial. I stayed at the Mayflower Hotel, which my editors kicked up a fuss about until Monica checked in a few doors down the corridor from me and I was the only guy on the inside. Anyway, I wanted to check my recollections of that period, so I looked up the moldering pile of clippings from London's Daily Telegraph, Canada's National Post and the other papers that carried my daily trial diary. Just to set the scene: obviously, nailing Clinton is a lot trickier than Clinton nailing you. The general flavor of the times is caught in this January 22nd 1999 column:

Those crazy right wingers and their desire to save nuns the cost of contraceptive coverage

Bud Norman (no fan of Donald Trump) but otherwise a good Republican curmudgeon out of Kansas reviews a new book of revisionist history about Bill Clinton's Presidency in a n article entitled The Future of Bill Clinton's Past.

Now no less a liberal pundit as Thomas Franks is lamenting “Bill Clinton’s odious presidency” in his telling of “the real history of the ’90s,” and it’s something to see. The author of the national best-selling book “What’s the Matter with Kansas?,” which explained that Kansans tend to vote Republican because they’re too crazed by Christianity to embrace the truth faith of socialism, and which was the worst book we ever read on Kansas politics, has a new title out that explains how Clinton’s tenure was a disaster for a liberals. He grudgingly concedes that Clinton achieved modest increases in the minimum wage and top tax tax brackets, and made a failed attempt at health care reform, but notes that the rest of what he’s remembered for was mostly the doing of the hated House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his fellow right-wingers and that even the economic good times were largely a matter of accounting tricks and Enron-schemes and dot-com bubbles.

As much as we’re delighted to hear such a left-winger as Franks at long last acknowledge these points, it is of course in service of the liberal agenda. Those tawdry sex scandals are now conceded, but that’s only because the religious right is now reduced to fighting for the right not to participate or same-sex weddings and saving nuns the cost of contraceptive coverage, and the woman who defended her husband’s serial abuses is now out on the campaign trail saying that any woman who alleges a sexual assault should be believed. Those tough-on-crime measures saved thousands of black lives, but now there’s a Black Lives Matter movement that is more concerned about the mass incarceration of murderers of black men and women. Don’t mention trade deals on a Democratic campaign trail, either, or even a Republican one, because those are now out of fashion, no matter what economic benefits they’ve brought. That welfare reform bill that proved so popular and effective prior to its repeal-by-executive-action under President Barack Obama is now described as “the repeal of welfare,” and the distaff Clinton is to be tarred with that as well. There’s no mention of the awful affordable housing policies that drove a housing bubble whose popping popped the entire economy, which of course is all blamed on those de-regulations, or how the lack of concern with Middle Eastern terrorism might have manifested itself a few months into Clinton’s successor’s first term, so it’s not an altogether satisfying revisionism.

Bud's always a good read, especially when he's off his hobby horse of Trump bashing.

ANN COULTER: CHRIS MATTHEWS' HILLARY AMNESIA

Democrat partisan with his own TV show, Chris Matthews, is shocked, shocked, to find that Donald Trump would accuse Hillary of being an enabler of Bill Clinton's sexual crimes.

So let's get in the Way Back Machine and look at what was said at the times Hillary was covering up for Bill.

-- "There's a risk -- the risk is that (Hillary) gets out there even further in saying nothing happened, and then (President Clinton) has to announce on national television in two weeks ... 'I've been lying to her,' or, 'She's been cooperating with me in a conspiracy.' Which is worse?" -- Chris Matthews, "Hardball," Aug. 19, 1998

-- "In 1992, Hillary was very effective when she came before the American people on the '60 Minutes' program and offered herself very effectively as a character witness for her husband. She said, 'Of course, he's had problems in the past,' as he admitted he caused pain. 'But he was a good man.' She was a character witness.

"In 1998, in January, on that Matt Lauer interview on the 'Today' show, she didn't offer herself as a character witness. She offered herself as an alibi. She said, 'He didn't do it.' I'm here -- I'm this guy's wife and I'm telling you it didn't happen. ... How can a woman, who's been betrayed by her husband so vividly, come back and offer herself once again as a character witness? How can she swear to his character if he betrayed her?" -- Chris Matthews, "Hardball," Sept. 18,

1998.

-- "Men feel they get married and they cut a deal. It's called fidelity. It's a great deal, you spend your life with somebody you love, and it's a great deal, let's face it. But there's one little catch. ... And then they see Hillary say, 'Well, our deal's a little more complicated,' as they like to say at the White House. Everything's more complicated when you're guilty." -- Chris Matthews, "Hardball," Sept. 30, 1998

-- "Was Hillary Clinton part of the cover-up (of the Monica Lewinsky scandal) the last seven months?" -- Chris Matthews, "Hardball," Aug. 19, 1998

It;s getting harder to lie about the past thanks to the fact that computers can search your past pronouncements and confront you with them.

MSNBC Edits Out Footage of Bill Clinton Being Asked About Juanita Broaddrick

It doesn't fit the narrative.