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Why 12 Republicans Want the Epstein Files Released
August 9, 2025 at 10:04 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 3 Comments

I don't expect Maxwell to see 2026. She will either end up dead or pardoned. Or both.

They are making more moves to exert power and seize control of every aspect of law and order in this country. Their version of law and order.

No matter what happens with this Epstein stuff, they will continue to rig every aspect of the law and elections. I repeat, there will be no more free and fair elections in our lifetime.

Even if he just drags his feet.  What if he refuses?

Remember, RickyJim, it doesn't have to make any sense to you at all to still be oh so real in MAGA's parallel universe - a mystical place of magical thinking where Haitians are eating the dogs and cats, Russian president Vladimir Putin is our friend, French president Emmanuel Macron is married to a drag queen, illegal immigrants comprise over half the population of California, powerful CIA lasers hidden in Chile can burn down the town of Lahaina, Donald Trump is a friggin' business, economic and foreign policy guru, a Slovenian emigre can find a rich sugar daddy and rise to become America's very first First Lady with her own soft-core p0rn portfolio, and everything bad that happens can always somehow be blamed on Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Bill and Hillary Clinton and of course, the Mexicans.

One day in the future, when my grandchildren ask me, "Oh, sage and wise Grandfather, how did America come to flounder and lose its way?" - well, that's probably as good an explanation as any.

There's quite a bit.  

Here's one

US media barely touches Epstein links with Israeli intelligence
Jim DeBrosse The Electronic Intifada 25 July 2025

Ga6thDem: "Speaking of France I can't believe Candace Owens is so stupid as to have done an entire multi part documentary on Macron's wife saying she is a man. I guess when you get away with lying for so long you get bolder and bolder about it."

... then Barack Obama ought to likewise sue DNI Tulsi Gabbard, AG Pam Bondi, President Donald Trump and Fox News for publicly and falsely insinuating that Obama concocted "the Russia hoax" and was therefore guilty of treason.

There's certainly ample, publicly available and well-documented evidence proving the Trump campaign's ties with Russian intelligence services were no hoax. The false accusations of treason are both knowing and intentional, and the Obamas need to call them out.

The increasingly brazen impunity with which Trump & Co. continue to lie about others is, as you noted, the direct result of them having gotten away with it for so long without suffering any real consequences. It's become their go-to weapon of choice and further, that sort of behavior has been proliferating throughout the GOP.

However, there is E. Jean Carroll's $88.5 million verdict against Trump in federal court for his false public claim that she lied about being sexually assaulted by him 35 years ago, and that $787.5 million settlement which the Murdoch family and News Corp. reached with Dominion Systems after Fox News defamed that company repeatedly on the air and lied about the 2020 election results. So, there is legal precedent here. The Obamas ought to lawyer up and file suit for defamation.

Let's face it, there are really very few things more defamatory than a U.S. president and his regime having knowingly and falsely accused a political adversary in public of treason, with the clear and painfully obvious intent to damage that person's public reputation and cause them pain and irreparable harm. And honestly, the Obamas aren't the only ones being defamed here. For the country's sake, Trump & Co. need to be held to legal account.

They have all but assured it's going to be boyed on.

The premise for the passage of Smoot-Hawley was ostensibly an effort to shield American agriculture and industries from foreign competition. In that regard, I'd note that the U.S. House had already passed its version of the bill in May 1929, over five months prior to the infamous "Black Thursday" stock market crash on October 29 of that year.

So, the bill itself was already in the pipeline working its way forward, and it was never intended as a legislative response to the Great Depression, as some Republicans would later try to contend. Rather, the bill's authors, Senate Finance Committee Chair Reed Smoot (R-UT) and House Appropriations Committee Chair Willis Hawley (R-OR), first began discussing the proposed tariff legislation almost immediately after the 1928 election, likely thinking they had a mandate for it, which was rooted in the prevailing isolationist tendencies of the then-majority congressional Republicans.

The Senate passed its version of Smoot-Hawley in March 1930, and President Herbert Hoover signed the conference-reconciled bill into law on June 17, 1930. It raised tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods and immediately initiated a worldwide trade war as countries quickly retaliated in kind. As a result, U.S. exports declined by 67% in one year, and manufacturing slowed to a crawl as business inventories piled up far faster than their products could be sold.

The ripple effect quickly grew into an economic tsunami as available capital dried up like a waterhole in a drought, and local banks across the country started to founder and collapse in the economic wash. Industry and businesses began to shed jobs at a then-record clip in a desperate effort to stay solvent, and the national unemployment rate tripled in two years' time from 7.9% in 1930 to 16% the following year, then to 25% in 1932. Meanwhile, the nation's GDP plunged by 50% from $103 billion in 1930 to $55 billion in late 1932.

Smoot-Hawley didn't cause the nationwide recession which had already existed prior to its passage. What it actually did was quickly kill off any chance whatsoever for the recovery to continue and instead, ensured that the existing recession ballooned into the economic collapse we know and remember today as the Great Depression.

Further, and most importantly, the economic calamity exacerbated by the Tariff Act of 1930 also sealed the fate of the then-ruling GOP in the upcoming 1932 election. President Hoover, Sen. Smoot and Rep. Hawley were all booted from office by angry voters in the resultant Democratic landslide. Republicans lost control of Congress for the first time since 1860, and Franklin D. Roosevelt became president with the most compelling and urgent political mandate in U.S. history.

Putin may still want to roll the dice on the hunch that the French are bluffing, but therein lies the rub: What if they aren't bluffing? France is the 4th largest military power on earth. An active French military intervention in Ukraine would likely be joined by the U.K. and other European allies - including Turkey, which also has a large and very formidable military of its own.

On the other side, the Russian military is exhausted after 40 months of full-scale war in Ukraine. They've suffered over one million casualties, including 250,000+ killed. They're now  compelled to conscript 50+-year-olds and procure mercenaries from abroad to fill their ranks. And perhaps most importantly, the Russian public is quietly seething over the ongoing fiasco in Ukraine, and their collective anger is both palpable and growing.

For sure, Putin's government can forbid the reporting of bad news from the battlefields on state-run media. But Putin can't hide the effect of those aforementioned high casualty rates on morale at the home front. He can't stop Russian citizens from discussing the war amongst themselves at the household and community levels, nor can he prohibit them from grieving over the loss of loved ones.

As irrational as Trump is, he has actually offered Putin a lifeline here, even though Trump and his MAGA courtiers may not realize it yet. Just my opinion, obviously, but I think the Russian president would be a fool to reject it out of hand for the reasons outlined above.

A European military intervention in Ukraine would likely result in a decisive Russian defeat on the battlefield and further international isolation. There's also the very real possibility that the self-centered Trump could interpret Putin's rebuff of that lifeline as a personal affront and respond accordingly - up to and including active support for that European intervention, and then claiming personal credit for Russia's defeat afterward.

At that point, I find it difficult to envision Vladimir Putin surviving that defeat politically. Sensing his weakness, citizens would take to the streets and demand that he step down. The probability that a member of his own inner circle would then move against him and remove him is significant. What follows afterward would be anybody's guess.