Donald Trump cannot accept defeat.<\/p>\n
He showed it to the world on Jan. 6, 2021,\u00a0 by trying to persuade his vice president to overturn the election he had lost.<\/p>\n
The same character flaw explains why he told House Republicans to vote to require him to keep his reneged-upon promise to release the Jeffrey Epstein files.<\/p>\n
He was going to lose that vote Tuesday after failing to keep MAGA loyalists in line. But the public shouldn\u2019t expect to see what is in those files any time soon \u2014 if ever.<\/p>\n
Pam Bondi\u2019s role<\/p>\n
Trump could have simply ordered the files released now.<\/p>\n
He appears to be counting on never having to release them. The Senate might defeat the bill or not take it up. If that happens, he would all of a sudden love the filibuster, and if it passed, he could still veto it.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s already established the pretext for Attorney General Pam Bondi to ask him to do that.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the likely intent behind his order to her \u2014 which she eagerly accepted \u2014 to investigate former President Bill Clinton, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and other Democrats whose Epstein connections were prominent in the documents from Epstein\u2019s estate that a House subcommittee released last week.<\/p>\n
An active criminal investigation is the boilerplate excuse for refusing to release a file.<\/p>\n
An abuse of power<\/p>\n
The investigation itself looks like incandescent abuse of power by Trump and Bondi. The Department of Justice said unequivocally in July that there is nothing in its Epstein files to suggest a criminal investigation of anyone who hadn\u2019t already been charged.<\/p>\n
That referred to the deceased Epstein and his procurer of young women, Ghislaine Maxwell.<\/p>\n
There was explicit language in a joint statement by the Justice Department and the FBI, both under Bondi\u2019s control, and notably, no one\u2019s name was on it.<\/p>\n
A \u201csystematic review,\u201d the statement said, \u201crevealed no incriminating \u2018client list.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
Was that a lie? If not, why has Bondi now ordered criminal investigations of people whom her department declared in effect to be innocent?<\/p>\n
What\u2019s Trump afraid of?<\/p>\n
We suspect Trump\u2019s improper order to open new investigations is a smokescreen and a convenient excuse to keep the files buried in the bowels of the DOJ.<\/p>\n
Why does Trump seem so afraid of what might be in them? What might others fear? Who figured in sparing Epstein the decades he should have spent in prison?<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s former friendship with Epstein was widely known and the emails released last week suggest only that he knew more about the financier\u2019s abuses of young women than he ever acknowledged. That would not be a crime.<\/p>\n
That also was before Epstein went to jail in 2008 under the kid-glove deal that U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta in Miami worked out for him. It sabotaged an FBI investigation of Epstein\u2019s serial\u00a0predation\u00a0by allowing him to plead guilty to state misdemeanor charges resulting in only 13 months of bedtime in jail and work release during the day.<\/p>\n
The Epstein estate papers have whetted the appetites of people who relish prurient scandal. But they do not answer, as the government\u2019s file might, other questions that are far more significant as matters of public policy.<\/p>\n
Epstein\u2019s sweetheart deal with the Justice Department and the Palm Beach County state attorney\u2019s office went down during the second George W. Bush administration, in which Trump played no known role.<\/p>\n
More and more questions<\/p>\n
Was Acosta\u2019s decision influenced by higher-ups? Was Epstein\u2019s immense wealth fully explained by his exploitation of certain clients? Was his globetrotting effective cover for clandestine missions on behalf of some U.S. or foreign agency?<\/p>\n
Why did the U.S. government let Epstein get away with his criminal behavior for so long? Who was protecting him? What blackmail, if any, did he have?<\/p>\n
Why did it take an expos\u00e9 by Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown to prod the government into finally filing sex trafficking charges that could have put Epstein in prison for life? Why was he left alone in jail without a cellmate, even though he had recently been on suicide watch?<\/p>\n
Why was Maxwell moved to a cushy minimum-security prison despite having a 20-year sex offender sentence, shortly after her know-nothing interview with a top DOJ official who had been Trump\u2019s personal lawyer?<\/p>\n
These questions and more prurient ones will persist so long as they\u2019re not answered. The files that Trump had promised to release may not hold the answers.<\/p>\n
One way or another, the public is entitled to know.<\/p>\n
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Executive Editor Roger Simmons, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant, Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney and editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump cannot accept defeat. He showed it to the world on Jan. 6, 2021,\u00a0 by trying to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[2853,482,139,141,140,109],"class_list":{"0":"post-53725","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-editorials","9":"tag-opinion","10":"tag-orlando","11":"tag-orlando-headlines","12":"tag-orlando-news","13":"tag-social"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}