A Feckless Senator from a Feckless Party
The chair of the Senate Finance Committee supports the Epstein cover up
I write this with the full realization regarding the “Epstein Files”:
That material held by the federal government is going to be so thoroughly scrubbed before release by Donald Trump’s Justice Department that what does eventually come out will likely amount to a nothing burger.
That the initial Epstein investigation was so poorly handled that a lot of potentially valuable information likely just doesn’t exist.
That Trump will start a war with Venezuela and we’ll forget all about justice for Epstein’s victims and move on to the next outrage.
Still, hope triumphs over experience, even as Trumpism threatens to strangle common sense in its crib.
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It’s the bad faith …
Bad faith is always the presumptive expectation from Trump and everyone around him. Indeed everyone devoting their lives to fluffing his bottomless ego, while clinging to their own tarnished political lives must embrace bad faith actions. It’s part of the deal.
Up is down.
Right is wrong.
Nothing is what it seems (the Deep State did it).
Trump is always right.
Remember when the attorney general had the “Epstein client list” on her desk? No, I don’t either.
Still, as Julie K. Brown, the Miami Herald reporter who broke the very biggest Epstein stories, reminds us there must be something in those Epstein files or Trump wouldn’t have worked so hard to keep them secret.
David A. Graham interviewed Brown recently for The Atlantic. Read the whole piece here - it is worth your time.
Here’s a key excerpt:
One fundamental question in this release is whether the public can believe that the DOJ will release the files fully and without interference. The Trump administration has done little to earn the benefit of the doubt on this, and the Epstein story has been rife with officials failing to hold appalling behavior to account. “I think the American public is correct to be skeptical about what they’re going to show us and not show us,” Brown told me. Naturally, that skepticism is particularly pronounced when it comes to the role of the president of the United States. Trump has repeatedly denied any knowledge of or involvement in Epstein’s criminal schemes, and Brown said she has long doubted that Trump was directly involved in them, but she’s been surprised by his recent handling of the matter. “I think the most telling thing is the fact that Trump has fought so hard” to keep the files sealed, she said. “I just don’t know what that means, you know?” Perhaps the Epstein files will provide an answer—or at least some hints.
And there is this.
I have never before turned to Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene for affirmation on anything, but I guess there really is a first time for everything.
Greene confirmed in an interview with CBS, as reported by The Hill newspaper, that Trump was livid with her for supporting the release of Epstein material.
“We did talk about the Epstein files and he was extremely angry at me that I signed the discharge petition to release the files,” Greene told CBS News in a “60 Minutes” interview that is set to air on Sunday. “I fully believe those women deserve everything they’re asking. They’re asking for it to come out. They deserve it.”
“He was furious with me. He said it was going to hurt people,” she added, referencing the president’s comments about the release of the files.
It’s going to hurt people? Hell, it already has hurt a lot of women. And since when has Donald Trump cared about hurting people?
Still, Marge seems to be confirming that Trump remains more than mildly concerned.
Which brings me - again - to the shabby excuse for a United States senator that is Idaho’s Mike Crapo. Crapo, a Capitol Hill lifer, could actually be an important catalyst for making information public about Epstein, his money and his friends, but he refuses.
As hours and days tick by, and the steady drip, drip, drip of Jeffrey Epstein revelations continues, Crapo, for inexplicable reasons, continues to play “rope a dope” with his constituents, the Senate and, most importantly, with victims of Epstein’s sex crimes.
For Crapo, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, the failure to demand release of bank records related to the vast sums of money that flowed in and out of Epstein’s many accounts is mind-numbing in its incoherence.
Crapo’s position begs at least two questions: what is he helping cover up and who is he protecting?
A bit of context. We know from previously released records that Epstein, who died in jail in 2019, maintained a vast array of banking relationships, most prominently with J.P. Morgan Chase, the world’s largest bank. Literally billions flowed in and out of these accounts. What isn’t known is where the money came from, what it was used for and who benefited from all the cash.
As Esquire magazine’s Charles Pierce noted recently investigating these questions demands adherence to the Watergate admonition “follow the money.”
“The keys,” Pierce wrote, “are two senators from Oregon – Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley. Both of them have been digging into what Merkley calls ‘Epstein Files 2,’ a promising sequel in which they seek to find out what – and whom – Epstein may have purchased with the billions of dollars he apparently spread around when he was riding high.
Days ago, “Wyden, the ranking Democratic member of the Senate Finance Committee released a new analysis of how megabank J.P. Morgan bankrolled Epstein’s empire of sleaze.”
Wyden’s latest report – he’s produced several follow the money reports – provides new insight into Epstein’s relationship with J.P. Morgan, including that even after being convicted of sex crimes the bank continues to consider Epstein a high value client.
Yet, Crapo continues to maintain that his Senate committee has no role investigating Epstein’s billion-dollar banking operation, factitiously saying the House Oversight Committee is doing a bang-up job and his committee has no jurisdiction related to banking records.
“Jeffrey Epstein was a notorious sex trafficker who committed appalling crimes,” Crapo recently told the Idaho Statesman. “The House Oversight Committee is now leading an ‘investigation of the investigators’ and is the appropriate committee to uncover why Epstein was not properly investigated and prosecuted earlier.”
To be blunt: that is ridiculous. Senate committee investigations often run parallel with House investigations and for Crapo to neuter his own committee by suggesting it can’t act is doubly ridiculous.
Furthermore, the House’s lead investigator, Representative James Comer, a Kentucky Republican who is running for governor and hopes for Donald Trump’s endorsement, is already badmouthing his own investigation.
“I fear the report will be like the Warren Report,” Comer told Politico last week, “Nobody will ever believe it.” True. And perhaps because House Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson, apparently to protect Trump, have slow rolled the Epstein matter for months now. What’s more Comer continues to refuse to commit that his committee will even release a report on its Epstein investigation.
And this is the effort Mike Crapo thinks is “appropriate” to uncover vital information about a serial sex abuser and his ties to big names and huge banks?
History is a guide here. Successful and important congressional investigations – Teapot Dome in the 1920’s, Harry Truman’s investigation of waste and corruption in military procurement during World War II, the Watergate and Church Committee investigations in the 1970’s and the investigation of Iran-Contra in the 1980’s – demand diligent, persistent, fact-based work. Serious people must do serious work. Follow the money. Get the documents. Insist on transparency.
Mike Crapo is doing the opposite.
Again, one must ask why? Why reach the pinnacle of political power in the U.S. Senate and refuse to engage on one of the great scandals of our time?
It’s hard to believe Crapo is comfortable with not giving Epstein’s victims some sense of closure about what the creepy pervert was doing with all his money. Crapo used to champion legislation protecting women from violence, although he rarely speaks about it these days, so he’s not blind to what Epstein’s victims have endured. So, why? Why invent reasons not to use your position and power do the obvious and right thing?
Mike Crapo is a creature of Washington, D.C. He’s been in Congress since 1993, 32 long years navigating the “swamp” of, as they say, “being in cycle” for re-election, raising money – lots of money – courting lobbyists, endless receptions and pro forma meetings with this CEO and that special pleader, always avoiding the hard choices and, of course, never getting on the wrong side of your party on anything.
You can search long and hard for even one example where Crapo, the Harvard trained lawyer from Idaho Falls who rose to the top of the Senate hierarchy by dint of being there for 32 years, has ever crossed the Wall Street, big banks, J.P. Morgan Chase crowd. He’s made his peace with their power and their money. Crapo’s not an independent actor, as the Founders envisioned a senator to be, he’s an errand boy for the moneyed class.
In a Washington that values money and access before everything else, Crapo has mastered how to get along and go along with the kinds of people Jeffrey Epstein relied upon to commit his crimes.
According to the non-profit Open Secrets that tracks political money, Crapo has been supping at the money table of the big banks, the big insurance companies, the big asset management firms for decades. Crapo is not the senator from Idaho. He’s the senator from Wall Street.
Epstein had accounts with J.P. Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and HSBC. Mike Crapo knows them well. He’s taken thousands of their dollars since 1993. And go ahead and try to find an example – good luck – where he has opposed them on anything.
Crapo’s explanation for failing to investigate Epstein’s banking connections and the billions that flowed through his accounts, is both repulsive and a flat out lie. He’s now part of the cover up.
More reading (and no it won’t make you feel all that good):
Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale has become ‘more and more plausible’
Atwood tells the BBC: “I’ve always been somebody who has never believed it can’t happen here. It can happen anywhere, given the circumstances.”
Yup.
Read a summary of her interview.
Trump Weighs Moving on From Noem
Oh, please …
Adrian Carrasquillo writes in The Bulwark:
For weeks, a rumor has been circulating in political circles that Noem may soon be on the outs. It briefly surfaced in a CNN report a few weeks back that listed her first among the cabinet officials who could be caught in a year-end turnover, noting that while Trump himself has been happy with Noem, top White House officials have grown frustrated with her tenure—specifically, her employment of her divisive and combustible chief adviser, Corey Lewandowski.
Of course there is every chance that anyone who might replace her would be … worse.
All the president’s millions
The Guardian has a big piece on all the grifting and deal making from the Trump family.
Corruption on such a scale we have never seen before. Your stomach should turn.
Trump’s eldest sons, Don Jr and Eric, formally the custodians of the family business, are conducting a global dealmaking blitz. They have broken ground on new golf courses, received permission for new skyscrapers, rented out the Trump brand, and in cryptocurrency they have embraced a venture with the capacity to bring in more than everything that has gone before.
They insist, in Eric’s words, that there is a “huge wall” between this moneymaking and their father’s position as the most powerful man alive. “Nothing I do has anything to do with the White House,” Eric told CNN recently.
And Don, Jr. was recently in Gibraltar, allegedly furthering a billion dollar plus data center deal with a Russian investor.
But, of course.
The businessman behind that project, Russian‑born American investor Konstantin Sokolov, is one of 37 donors helping to fund construction of a new ballroom at the White House.
Mr Trump Jr is an executive vice president of the Trump Organization, the Trump family businesses, and works to expand the company’s real estate, retail, commercial, hotel and golf interests.
The Trump family also has interests in crypto initiatives and digital assets, a sector in which Gibraltar has pioneered regulation in recent years.
If you believe any of this is on the up and up I’ve got a Qatar 747 to gift you.
About me: I am a Nebraska native, grew up in South Dakota and migrated in Idaho after college to work in broadcast journalism. In 1986, I joined the “comeback” campaign of a legendary Idaho political figure – Cecil D. Andrus – who eventually served four terms as governor and four years as Secretary of the Interior, not bad for a Democrat in a very conservative state. I had a small role in helping Cece Andrus win his last two gubernatorial terms. I did communication and crisis consulting work, and since “retiring” have written three books on U.S. Senate history. I’m working on a new book on another legend – this one a legend in journalism.
I write this Substack to scratch my itch to connect history with current politics. I hope, in some small way, to contribute to understanding of this perilous moment for our democracy, for free speech and facts.
Both Crapo and Risch have mortgaged any integrity they may have once had to power, money and Donald Trump. They are pathetic and should have been retired by the voters years ago. Sadly, in Idaho any Republican with a pulse can get reelected regardless of how useless they really are to the state and the people.
Crapo is aiding and abetting the Epstein cover-up.