Some thoughts on the new Epstein Files revelations:
I’ve now read everything that’s come out from the new Haberman and Swan book, and the thing I keep coming back to is the Situation Room. They held multiple meetings in the Situation Room about the Epstein files. That room is for war. It’s for national security emergencies. It is not for figuring out how to spin a scandal you’re telling the country is a hoax.
While the President was deflecting or calling this old news, his own Vice President and Chief of Staff were huddled in the most leak-proof room in America because they knew how bad it really was.
You don’t take a nothingburger to the Situation Room.
And I have to be honest, reading all this brings back a lot of frustration about what happened in the House of Representatives. I sat there and watched Mike Johnson send the House home early to dodge a vote on releasing these files. I watched him refuse to swear in a duly elected colleague for months just to stall the discharge petition. Month after month of excuses, arm twisting, and procedural games, all to keep this information from the public. We only got the files because survivors, families, and a handful of members in both parties simply refused to let it go.
So when people ask me why I talk so much about transparency and accountability, this is why. The truth eventually comes out. It always does.
The only question is whether your leaders helped reveal it or helped bury it.
Everyone who voted to keep these files hidden should have to answer for that.
Finally, notice what’s missing from all of this is any sign that Trump’s DOJ will actually investigate the powerful men named in these files.
Draw your own conclusions about why a Justice Department run by the President’s former defense lawyers might not be eager to pull that thread.
Samuel Alito’s son has worked as a lawyer inside Trump’s Treasury Department since early last year. The administration hid it.
No public resume, no LinkedIn, no mention on the Treasury website, outdated bar listings. Four former officials confirmed it.
The public was never told.
Here is why that matters.
Philip Alito served as an attorney-adviser in Treasury’s general counsel office, briefed on department matters across the board, while the Supreme Court took up a case in which the Treasury Department was a named defendant.
The department never disclosed the connection in court.
Justice Alito did not recuse.
The federal recusal law is plain. A justice must step aside in any case where his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.
That is the test.
Not whether anyone can prove influence but whether a reasonable person looking at this would doubt it. A justice ruling on cases involving the very agency that employs his son fails that test on its face.
And Treasury sits at the center of many upcoming issues, including the fight over Trump’s $1.776 billion dollar fund to reward the January 6th rioters he pardoned. That fight could be headed to the Court too.
This is exactly why the honor system has failed.
The Supreme Court is the only court in America with no enforceable code of conduct. I support withholding funding from the Court until the justices adopt a binding code with real recusal review.
Congress holds the power of the purse.
We should use it.
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