The big question on everyone’s mind is who’s on “the list.” The problem is that there’s no real chain of custody for the damn thing. Anyone could have made changes or edits to it along the way.
I’m strongly of the opinion that, if “the list” had Trump’s name on it, the Dems would have released it already. They had four years to do so, and using a simple list to get rid of Trump at the expense of Biden or the Clintons would have been trivial. Still, Bondi said that Trump’s name was somewhere in those files.
On TikTok and Facebook, several of the left leaning people I follow are asking everyone, “If you knew your favorite politician or star was on the list, would you still want it released?” There’s been a lot of crickets from the Left (with a few vehement outliers saying absolutely yes), and a lot of noise from the Right saying “release it already.” More than half the country chose Trump to be our President, and we did so on a platform of transparency. It’s time to be transparent.
I happen to be on the “release it” side of things. Yes, it may have been doctored. It’s up to our Justice Dep’t and Bondi to track that back, have experts look at it and figure out what, if any, changes were made. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be released. Yes, it should. And if it turns out that Trump was bonking little girls and there’s definitive proof, then we toss his ass in jail. Again, we know that won’t be the case or it would already have happened, but that’s the bottom line. I don’t want ANY kiddie diddlers as part of the ruling class of America. I don’t care what “side” they say they’re on; if they’re into children, then they’re not a politician, they’re a cretin.
What is the problem with just opening it all up? Well, first and foremost, doing so would expose victims and people who haven’t been charged with crimes, which is basically re-victimizing those who already suffered. Some of it is definitively child pornography, so that won’t be released. It also exposes a lot of information that is definitively private (financial stuff, etc.). In order to “just release” everything, they’d have to redact large portions of the information. Some in the government fear that would just feed conspiracy theories that the government is holding information back (CNN).
The FBI put out a memo this month, basically saying that they’ve gone through all the information that was gathered. In the gigabytes of information retrieved, they found plenty of evidence of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell doing stuff, and not much else. My guess is, like most predators, Epstein kept images of himself but not others. He wasn’t gay; why would he keep images of other men with the children he was abusing? It doesn’t seem to fit the pattern of how that type of predator works, at least in my understanding.
Most people think there’s an actual list, a client list (Wikipedia). While there’s definitely a list of thousands of names and contact information, it’s not a list of those people who actively did things on the island. It’s basically a huge phone book of all the people Epstein might need to contact. I offer you in evidence my own phone book, which contains my mother’s phone number even though she’s entirely cut out of my life and I would never call her.
As to Trump being named in those files, well, we already knew that. He shared a plane with Epstein several times, or so I have heard. Apparently it’s a thing the ultra rich do. Steven Hawkings was in the files, too, but I don’t see anyone accusing him of doing illegal things with children.
All that said, I want to see the information. Even if it’s redacted to protect the innocent. I want the transparency promised us by Trump when he was running for office. If that means some Dems have to make excuses, so be it. Some will likely say that it was doctored by the Right. So be it. Transparency is HARD… but necessary.
