Posted on 08/08/2025 6:44:07 AM PDT by MtnClimber
CIA Director John Ratcliffe told the press that officials from the Barack Obama administration—including former CIA chief John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey—may be charged for their role in Russiagate, the spy operation designed to topple the first Donald Trump administration. With FBI Director Kash Patel reportedly overseeing a criminal conspiracy case involving Brennan, Comey, and others, there’s reason for optimism that those who targeted the president, his aides, and supporters from 2016 to 2024 will finally be held accountable.
Naturally, those with the most to lose, such as former Obama officials implicated in the biggest political scandal in U.S. history, and the media that served as their willing accomplices, are playing to block. And the instrument they’ve chosen to protect themselves is another anti-Trump conspiracy theory, this one holding that the administration is hiding information about Jeffrey Epstein to protect Trump from being implicated in his crimes. Call it Epsteingate.
Perhaps the most senior former Obama official pushing Epsteingate is Susan Rice, the onetime national security adviser whose Jan. 5, 2017, email may implicate Obama in the anti-Trump conspiracy. In an X post over a New York Times op-ed by Brennan and Obama’s director of national intelligence, James Clapper, she wrote that the Trump administration’s Russiagate disclosures are a “shameless, dishonest, defamatory scheme to distract from EPSTEIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIN.” She also reposted an interview with author Michael Wolff who claims that after he published Epstein’s comments on Trump in his 2019 book, Siege, the financier called to say he was worried he might have said too much. Wolff suggests that Trump had Epstein arrested.
The media has a substantial corporate interest in obfuscating the Trump administration’s efforts to bring Russiagate to light, since it may also illuminate the role of the press in publishing leaks of classified intelligence to advance known falsehoods undergirding a criminal conspiracy. The specter of civil suits alone is enough to keep media executives up at night. And thus, according to The New York Times, the administration’s release of documents showing the FBI supported a 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign plot to smear the president as a Russian agent comes “as the Trump team seeks to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein files.”
The president says Democrats started what he calls the Epstein hoax, but that’s not entirely right. They’re using it to defend themselves from Russiagate, but it was a MAGA-aligned cohort led by Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon who weaponized the Epstein narrative, and now parts of the right are as giddy with anti-Trump animus as first-term Never Trumpers are.
“This Epstein thing is probably going to bring President Trump down,” said Douglas Macgregor, a prominent figure on the MAGA podcast circuit who worked in the Pentagon during Trump’s first term. The problem then isn’t just that Russiagate revelations aren’t breaking through to the rest of the electorate but also that podcasters ostensibly aligned with Trump are employing the ghost of a dead sex offender to fracture his base and hobble him, with help from Democrats, after the 2026 midterms, just as Russiagate hobbled Trump’s first term.
After Trump ignored Bannon and Carlson’s warnings against joining Israel in a campaign against Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities, they seized on the White House’s clumsy rollout of the Epstein case to target the president. The administration had promised too much regarding the Epstein case. As civilians, Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino told podcast audiences there was lots more to what Epstein was up to—but it turned out there wasn’t. In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi hosted an Epstein event at the White House and promised the full scoop. When she instead handed MAGA influencers thin binders containing nothing new on the dead sex offender, Trump supporters were rightly upset.
The problem is that nothing the administration produces now will satisfy this faction of MAGA, because Bannon and Carlson are not interested in transparency or accountability. Rather, they’ve rigged the Epstein story to damage Trump. In their telling, Epstein wasn’t just a predator; he was also a spy, an operative using American teenagers as bait to compromise powerful liberal elites on behalf of the Mossad. They’ve framed the affair so that only confirmation of their mad conspiracy theory will put Epstein’s ghost to rest.
“It’s extremely obvious to anyone who watches that [Epstein] had direct connections to a foreign government,” Carlson told a Florida audience last month in one of his most public perorations unfolding the Epstein conspiracy theory. “No one’s allowed to say that that foreign government is Israel because we have been somehow cowed into thinking that that’s naughty.” Bannon is also given to manful straight talk: “The Epstein story leads to the intelligence services of this country and of Israel,” he told his podcast audience last month. “Let’s be blunt. That’s why all the Israel First guys say there’s nothing to see.”
The logic is that if Trump doesn’t release the evidence that he’s shielding Israel, it’s evidence that he’s owned by Israel. The setup is as crazy and destructive as Russiagate because it’s the Russiagate playbook, except in this reboot, Netanyahu plays Putin’s part, and it’s not Moscow that controls Trump’s brain, but the Jews.
Trump indicated in a Truth Social post that he’s cut off his “past supporters”—presumably meaning Bannon and Carlson—and in another said his polls have gone up since the Epstein hoax. But other polls suggest he’s been hurt by it. A Rasmussen poll found that 56 percent of likely voters don’t believe the FBI and DOJ are telling the truth about Epstein. According to a The Economist/YouGov poll, 67 percent of Americans believe the government is covering up evidence related to Epstein, including 59 percent of Trump voters.
For Bannon and Carlson, Epsteingate is part of a larger effort to drive down support for Israel among younger Trump voters. After all, if the Israeli government violated U.S. sovereignty to traffic girls and steal American secrets, it can’t be a good ally. Maybe GOP youth want to believe in an American version of an Arab-world style legend—look out for the Mossad dolphins!—to distinguish themselves from the traditionally pro-Israel GOP establishment. But Bannon and Carlson’s gambit also puts them at odds with the president while aligning them with the party that pushed the Russia collusion hoax.
I have repeatedly indicated ways to get at the truth. But you are ignoring them. Start with the Epstein Treasury files. But bessent , a Soros operative who helped with the infamous raid on the bank of England , is in control of them
And trump has nominated Ben black to oversee the Ukraine slush fund
Do they really want to see what Epstein , Leon black, and the banks were up to??? Somehow, I doubt it it but congress is pushing forward
Nah. You don’t want the truth. You just move goalposts.
If you don’t hate Trump — how would you act differently if you did?
Spoiler alert: You hate Trump.
“It was a MAGA-aligned cohort led by Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon who weaponized the Epstein narrative, and now parts of the right are as giddy with anti-Trump animus as first-term Never Trumpers are.”
“nothing the administration produces now will satisfy this faction of MAGA, because Bannon and Carlson are not interested in transparency or accountability. Rather, they’ve rigged the Epstein story to damage Trump. In their telling, Epstein wasn’t just a predator; he was also a spy, an operative using American teenagers as bait to compromise powerful liberal elites on behalf of the Mossad. They’ve framed the affair so that only confirmation of their mad conspiracy theory will put Epstein’s ghost to rest.”
“The logic is that if Trump doesn’t release the evidence that he’s shielding Israel, it’s evidence that he’s owned by Israel. The setup is as crazy and destructive as Russiagate because it’s the Russiagate playbook, except in this reboot, Netanyahu plays Putin’s part, and it’s not Moscow that controls Trump’s brain, but the Jews.”
This is you, Trump haters
Explain to me succinctly..I don’t read massive posts... why you think that bank of America and Leon black should not be investigated by the Senate finance committee
Assuming you even know what a SARs are and the deadlines associated with them
“I don’t read massive posts”
— rummychick
“I don’t read my own massive posts”
— rummychick, probably
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