SCOTUS To Ghislaine Maxwell: STAY IN PRISON
And Howard Lutnick says there might be Epstein blackmail tapes?!
The Supreme Court of the United States of America is back from its summer vacation, back from wherever the justices were answering Donald Trump’s many shadow docket EMERGENCY GIMME POWERS petitions from, and now once again back at their mahogany bench to take care of the people’s business. This term is going to be a doozy, with a certain six surely taking a rusty shovel to what is left of voting rights, giving Trump the power to fire all the civil servants and maybe even a Federal Reserve board governor too, at his royal whim. All of which we will surely get to in due time.
But FIRST, how about those EPSTEIN FILES?
Straightaway, first up, as Trump’s DOJ had requested back in April, SCOTUS has just told Ghislaine Maxwell NO GET OUT OF PRISON FOR YOU, refusing to hear her appeal.
You’ll recall that Maxwell had appealed to SCOTUS to free her, on the grounds that her 2021 conviction should never have happened because she should have been included as an unnamed co-conspirator in the wildly accommodating and illegally secret non-prosecution agreement that then-US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Alex Acosta gave Jeffrey Epstein back in 2007 — long before Acosta’s meteoric rise, then resignation, as Trump’s Labor secretary. The wording of the agreement, pushed by Epstein lawyers including Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz, was as vague as could be, and covered Epstein’s acts between 2001 and 2007:
“…if Epstein successfully fulfills all the terms and conditions of this agreement, the United States also agrees that it will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein.”
But if that dog was going to hunt, Maxwell would have trotted it out for her first trial in 2021. And Old Yeller would not, because Maxwell was being tried for crimes that went as far back as 1994, and ones that she actively, eagerly, personally and enthusiastically participated in, even outside of Epstein’s presence.
REMINDER!
But then Trump, Maxwell’s former friend and neighbor who had publicly wished her well, and the 15-year wingman of her boyfriend Epstein, got his horndog rump back in office, so she figured she’d shoot her shot. After all, she had stayed nothing but quiet and loyal on the subject of him for five years.
Trump’s DOJ opposed her motion, though. And then pages from the Epstein birthday book that she compiled leaked out, with no one sure from whence they’d come! And Trump’s underlings at the DOJ realized he (and others in the Cabinet) were ALL OVER those Epstein Files. Trump’s DOJ couldn’t push for her to be let out, not with QAnon already whooping and hollering mad over those files they were not getting. But maybe they could make her some kind of other deal. One where she said Trump was a gentleman in all respects, in exchange for a spot in plushy prison, and protection?
PREVIOUSLY!
A deal, she clearly got. A fellow inmate of hers who complained to the press about Maxwell’s special treatment in minimum security prison even claims she got transferred to high security, as punishment. Don’t mess with the big dog’s bitch!
Later, we found out the birthday book had not come from a stash of Maxwell’s, but from the Epstein estate, controlled by his brother, Mark. (That was after a House Oversight Committee subpoena got hold of the whole thing.) That’d be another person who’s likely not pleased to see all of Epstein’s other co-conspirators skittering blamelessly away, and has other interesting files too, like financial ones that the Committee is now combing through.
But then there’s those others in Trump’s Cabinet that Maxwell mysteriously alluded to in her interview with Trump personal lawyer DOJ lawyer (same thing) Todd Blanche:
“... [S]ome are in your Cabinet, who you value as your coworkers, and you know, would be with him if he was a creep or because they wanted sexual favors. A man wants sexual favors, he will find that. They didn’t have to come to Epstein for that. Now did some? Okay. I don’t know.”
Blanche, of course, was not the least bit interested in that morsel, and did not follow up in any way. But HMM! We already knew RFK Jr. had flown on the Lolita Express, but we’d almost forgotten about Howard Lutnick, who just happened to have lived right next door to Epstein’s townhouse on 71st Street in New York! What a small world. It would be weird if the FBI didn’t question him, so maybe he’s mentioned somewhere in some files. (Only one way to find out for sure!)
Pretty weird, then, that he went on a podcast last week to offer up this about his encounters of the Epstein kind:
“I say to him, ‘Massage table in the middle of your house? How often do you have a massage?’ And he says, ‘Every day.’ And then he gets, like weirdly close to me, and he says, ‘And the right kind of massage.‘”
Okay, so, so Howard Lutnick went to his house, he saw a massage table with candles, such a freaky scene, and got grossed out. Did he ever tell the FBI about this? And did he ever see underage girls coming in and out of the house? You’d think that dozens a week would be hard to miss. And there was a lot he didn’t miss.
Asked whether Epstein’s associates “could hang around him and not see what you saw, or did they see it and ignore it,” he says, “They participated.”
“They get a massage, that’s what his MO was. ‘Get a massage, get a massage,’ and what happened in that massage room, I assume, was on video. This guy was the greatest blackmailer ever, blackmailed people. That’s how he had money.”
Epstein was THE GREATEST BLACKMAILER EVER?
You know who else was a really close associate of Epstein’s and hung out with him in New York and Palm Beach? Is Lutnick suggesting that Trump could have been blackmailed? What about Lutnick himself? And how does Lutnick know this? And did he ever tell the FBI about it?
Nothing but questions, that’s all we got!
Remember when Hillary Clinton got scorched because in 2015 she hosted a fundraiser at Howard Lutnick’s house, just because it was next door to Epstein’s? QAnon was SURE she was there to check out some baby-blood-drinking tunnels! And now here Lutnick is, just saying out loud he knew something creepy was going on, and there may have been tapes, and crickets. And the Trump administration for sure has no comment on this. Just acting like Lutnick’s whole spill didn’t happen!
Does Lutnick know more than he’s saying? Wouldn’t we like to know! He was running around New York with all of the finance guys, as president and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald from 1991 on, and later the chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald’s fixed-income trading and sales business, all the way up until he was confirmed as Trump’s secretary of Commerce.
Why would Lutnick bust out with this story now, one that is at total odds with the administration’s HOAX claims, claims that Epstein wasn’t blackmailing anybody, and demands that everybody shut up about those BORING Epstein files?
Just curious!
Also curious, apparently: Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, says he would like to subpoena Lutnick, and yeah, it sure sounds like somebody ought to ask that guy some questions. Whenever Speaker Mike Johnson will allow them to get back to work, that is. But gee, there sure are a whole lot of Epstein files guys around Trump. It sure seems like less of a coincidence every day, by golly, and more like the predator presidency.
Maybe we should also be asking, what other pimps and child sex predators have DAs and judges let get off too easy? Who else needs a shaming? Epstein surely wasn’t the first and won’t be the last. Won’t somebody think of the children?
OPEN THREAD.
[SCOTUSblog / Daily Beast archive link]
Thank you for being Wonkette’s friend! We have no paywall ever, and no ads, because we’re brought to you by people like you! The button below will let you donate one time or monthly, in any amount of your choosing.
I know the suspense is killing you, yes my toilet was fixed! It wouldn't stop running and chasing it around the apartment was exhausting. Donald the Plumber replaced a part and the silence felt great after 3 hours of that noise. Donald the Plumber was awesome and not in anyway comparable to Donald the Dumber.
I ride Xena, Warrior scooter to go to the supermarket. There’s a Xena sticker on the fender and my helmet (I have many skills.) As I was leaving the store there was a man and woman in front of me and as they walked by my scooter the woman nudged the man and started singing the theme song to Xena, Warrior Princess. Which made them both laugh, and she kept it going all the way to their car. Bringing joy in any way I can. Also never be afraid to sing the theme song to any show while in the supermarket parking lot!
https://substack.com/@ziggywiggy/note/c-163664089?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2knfuc