New Republic Editor Michael Tomasky said there are plenty of things President Donald Trump could have done to show his innocence in the Epstein scandal — but Trump keeps not doing those things.
“Consider the following five developments, and ponder what common sense tells us they probably add up to,” Tomasky said.
No. 1: After telling Fox News earlier this year that the Epstein file and his alleged client list is sitting on her desk, Attorney General Pam Bondi reverses herself and says there was no client list and nothing would be released.
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No. 2: In June, Trump denies Bondi told him his name was in the files. One month later, The New York Times reports Bondi told Trump that his name appeared in the Epstein files “multiple times” back in May, making Trump look like a liar, said Tomasky.
No. 3: Trump sends his former defense attorney — who is now the deputy attorney of the DOJ — to interview convicted sex-trafficker and Epstein friend Ghislaine Maxwell, but he also keeps the information from that meeting from the public, Tomasky adds.
No. 4: Maxwell gets transferred to a country club prison where Tomasky said sex offenders aren’t supposed to be. And Trump has repeatedly refused to rule out her pardon.
No. 5: Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) subpoenas a lot of people to get to the bottom of the Epstein matter, but Tomasky said he failed to subpoena the one person “who likely knows more of the truth … than anyone: Alex Acosta”, the Florida prosecutor who “cut that shameful deal with Epstein’s lawyers back in 2008 — 13 months in a work-release program that enabled him to go out and rape more children.”
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Tomasky said Bondi could have released the files and Trump’s name did not have to appear in them multiple times. Trump could also have given Maxwell no special treatment, and Comer could have subpoenaed Acosta.
“Those moves would have shown us an administration, and a president, that didn’t have anything to hide,” said Tomasky. “Instead, we got the opposite of all those things. You don’t need to be Hercule Poirot to suspect that somebody is hiding something.”
Acosta, by himself, could have cleared Trump’s name and gotten to the bottom of the case.
“He was the prosecutor!” Tomasky said. “… If Trump genuinely knew he was innocent of any wrongdoing, why wouldn’t he personally demand that Acosta step forth and spill?”
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What’s left after all this, said Tomasky, is the suspicion that the administration is taking “the only choice they have: to stonewall and lie and try to put things off.”
“Even a lot of MAGA people smell it,” Tomasky said. “[MAGA influencer] Candace Owens said recently: ‘I feel like Trump thinks his base is stupid … that his base is too stupid to see through the lies that they’re telling now.’
“Apparently, enough of MAGA world is repulsed enough by that fact that this is one time in the last decade when Trump’s attempts to wave it all away as a Democrat hoax aren’t cutting it,” Tomasky said.
Read the full New Republic report at this link.