Keri Wagner

Mom, mosaic lover, neighborhood activist, volunteer, knitter who prefers hand-dyed yarn. She/her.

[Ashley Harrell @AshleyHarrell3]

SFGATE's tenacious reporting on national parks seems to have struck a nerve. We've been blacklisted by the Department of the Interior. https://t.co/mn5zKwblZY

[Keri Wagner @platebreaker]

@dieworkwear Derek, you're the best! What do you think of hand knits? I'm knitting scarves/hats for my young adult sons. Wondering if you've seen good examples of stylish adults with hand knit wearables.

[Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦 @cmclymer]

This week has generated what is rapidly becoming a massive schism in the MAGA movement. There have been public calls for resignations, private shouting matches, and loud declarations of betrayal from some of Trump’s most prominent supporters.

We haven’t seen anything like this from Trump’s base. The anger is real and visceral.

If you’re unfamiliar with the salient details of the Jeffrey Epstein saga and predisposed to dismissing it all as conspiracy pablum, I don’t blame you. It’s been squarely at the center of the MAGA universe and QAnon and all the rest of the Way Too Online discourse that makes it all easy to wave off as extreme nuttiness.

But I promise it’s not. Don’t let those unfortunate associations distract you from a simple and undeniable truth: this is one of the biggest criminal cover-ups in U.S. history, and every subsequent layer of it is somehow more horrifically chilling than than the last.

Here’s a summary with a lot of important details removed for brevity:

Jeffrey Epstein was a financier and notorious socialite who engaged in many years of sex trafficking children and young women. He had a lot of friends in high places, many of whom are alleged to have sexually abused these victims.

His sex trafficking operation first came to the attention of law enforcement twenty years ago, and after a long undercover investigation by the Palm Beach Police Department, charges were recommended against Epstein that included sexual abuse of children.

It should have been a straightforward case to prosecute. The evidence was overwhelming and horrifying: phone records, appointment books, message memos, photographs, and interviews with more than thirty teenage girls, most of them still in high school. It was a clear-cut sex trafficking operation with textbook grooming tactics.

But instead of directly filing charges, State Attorney Barry Krischer took the highly unusual step of convening a grand jury, which was typically only done for murder cases. Epstein’s legal defense team included Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr.

This is where it starts to get really weird, and you can thank Miami Herald investigative journalist Julie K. Brown and her colleagues for bringing this all to light years later in the award-winning series “Perversion of Justice.”

The grand jury was less than four hours, only two victims were called to offer their testimony (remember: this is out of more than 30 identified victims), the girls were aggressively questioned in a way that placed the blame on them—with the repeated warning that they may have committed a crime—and here’s the kicker: they were presented not as exploited minors (14 and 15 at the time) but as consenting, adult sex workers.

The grand jury returned just one count of felony solicitation of prostitution, and understandably, Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter was so outraged by how this all went down that he reached out to the FBI for help.

The FBI launched “Operation Leap Year” in July, 2006. They collected more evidence—including child pornography and appointment logs—and interviewed witnesses and victims in Florida, New York, and New Mexico. About a year later, the U.S. Attorney’s Office prepared a 53-page indictment, which has never been released to the public.

Long story short on this part (leaving out A LOT of details): U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta reached a plea deal with Epstein—negotiated by Dershowitz—that got him only 18 months in prison on state charges, restitution to the victims, and registration as a sex offender.

Additionally, Epstein and his named associates and “potential co-conspirators” all received immunity from federal charges, further investigation by the FBI was halted, and the victims were not notified about the plea deal, a big violation of federal law.

The victims and their families learned about the plea deal and went to court to petition compliance with the Crime Victims’ Rights Act—which would drag on for years—and meanwhile, Epstein completed his sentencing in a bizarrely lenient environment that permitted him out in public unsupervised and he got released five months early.

In July of 2019, Epstein was arrested after a separate investigation by the FBI-NYPD Crimes Against Children Task Force. They searched his Manhattan townhouse—one of the most expensive (and largest) private homes in NYC—and found, among other things, an enormous collection of nude photos of underage girls and a fraudulent, expired Austrian passport.

They charged him with sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors, alleging that “dozens” of underage girls were victimized in his operation. A federal judge then had to decide whether his non-prosecution agreement reached with Mr. Acosta years prior still protected him from these charges.

Meanwhile, Epstein was jailed at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in NYC, and his offer to post a $100 million bond for release to house arrest was denied by U.S. District Judge Richard Berman. He had been there for five weeks when he was found dead in his cell on August 10th, 2019. Six days later, his death was ruled by the NYC Chief Medical Examiner as a suicide by hanging.

Three weeks after Epstein’s death, the case was closed by Judge Berman.

Although all official sources upheld this conclusion of suicide at the time, it has unsurprisingly been the focus of varied and complex conspiracy theories. In late 2019, the phrase “Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself” became a massively popular conspiracy meme and remains so.

In early 2021, the Epstein flight logs were partially released in a civil defamation lawsuit filed against Ghislane Maxwell—Epstein’s consigliere and romantic partner—by Virginia Guiffre, who was groomed and abused by Epstein and Maxwell beginning at 16-years-old.

Guiffre would win her case and settled out-of-court with Maxwell for millions. She also settled out-of-court in a civil suit against Prince Andrew for sexual abuse; he reportedly paid her $16.3 million. This past April, Guiffre committed suicide; she was 41 and the mother of three children.

The Epstein flight logs—along with the details of his suicide—are the engine of the years-long campaign to get all investigative files on him released. To date, the most high profile names in the flight logs include: Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Naomi Campbell, Kevin Spacey, Chris Tucker, Michael Jackson, Maria Shriver, Larry Summers, Maxwell, and Dershowitz, among many others.

It’s important to note here that being in the flight logs doesn’t mean culpability in Epstein’s sex trafficking operation. Many of these people have provided reasonable explanations that flights were used for humanitarian or business trips. Of course, it doesn’t exactly help that a number of the names are connected to other sex abuse scandals.

A whole other list of public figures have been falsely accused of being named in the flight logs, including: Barack Obama, Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg, Lady Gaga, Jimmy Kimmel, Justin Trudeau, Ellen DeGeneres, and many others.

There is zero evidence any of these people were on Epstein’s flights, but in our era of unhinged disinformation, there are many millions of people, particularly Trump supporters, who are convinced these people were involved in sex trafficking.

For years, much of the rightwing has made the Epstein sex trafficking operation their biggest conspiracy vehicle. They have accepted Trump’s explanation for denial of any wrongdoing whilst constantly hammering away at Clinton for being named in the flight logs.

They have fully rejected Clinton’s explanation that he took four trips as part of his work with the Clinton Foundation and that his staff, supporters of his Foundation, and his Secret Service detail were with him throughout these trips, including Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker.

There is no credible evidence to suggest he was involved in Epstein’s sex trafficking operation. No victims have named him. No witnesses have named him. No unsealed documents in any of the investigations of Epstein have linked Clinton to criminal activity. None of the flight logs have him traveling to Little St. James, popularly known as “Epstein’s Island,” where victims and former employees have testified Epstein trafficked underage girls.

But, of course, none of that matters to MAGA, who are absolutely convinced that an elitist cabal is shielding Clinton (and other public figures) from accountability and that Trump will bring them all to justice. They believe this because Trump literally campaigned on holding accountable those involved with Epstein.

In February, Pam Bondi, Trump’s attorney general, said that she had Epstein’s client list and is in the process of reviewing it: “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review. That’s been a directive by President Trump. I’m reviewing that.”

At that time, she made a big show of releasing so-called “Phase 1” of the Epstein files, most of which was already publicly available and none of which was particularly satisfying to the MAGA base. She said further batches of documents would eventually be released, but those haven’t materialized.

On Monday, Bondi and the Department of Justice finally released a memo that did a complete 180 on the whole thing, asserting there is no client list, Epstein didn’t blackmail any public figures, and there’s no reason to investigate anyone who hasn’t yet been charged. It also affirmed the conclusion that Epstein committed suicide.

So, for the past four days, Trump supporters have been thoroughly enraged, directing their anger specifically at Bondi but being (mostly) careful not to blame Trump himself, even as he interrupted Bondi during a televised cabinet meeting on Tuesday to insist everyone move on from the Epstein quagmire:

"Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years. We have Texas [the floods], we have this, we have all of the things, and are people still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable. Do you wanna waste the time? [points and says to Bondi: ‘Do you feel like answering?’] I mean, I can’t believe you’re asking a question about Epstein at a time like this, when we’re having some of the greatest success and also tragedy with what happened in Texas. It seems like a desecration."

Trump’s attempt at feigned grievance and moral righteousness fell flat. It did nothing to stem MAGA outrage the rest of this week.

Laura Loomer, Glenn Beck, Megyn Kelly, Liz Wheeler, George Santos, and other rightwing influencers have all called for Bondi’s resignation or firing. Kelly said that Bondi’s “days are numbered.”

Yesterday, rightwing podcaster Andrew Schulz, who supported Trump during the election, went on quite the rant against him, seemingly catalyzed by Bondi’s memo regarding Epstein:

"Everything [Trump] campaigned on I believe he wanted to do. And now he’s doing the exact opposite thing of every single fuckin’ thing. There’ll be people that like, they’ll DM me and be like, ‘You see what your boy’s doing? You voted for this.’ I’m like, I voted for none of this! […] He’s doing the exact opposite of everything I voted for. I want him to stop the wars; he’s funding them. I want him to shrink spending, reduce the budget. He’s increasing it. It’s like everything that he’s said he’s gonna do, except sending immigrants back—and now he’s even flip-flopped on that … ‘Maybe he will stop these wars.’ No. ‘Maybe we will see what’s up with this Epstein shit.’ No."

Yikes.

Today saw quite an escalation of the outrage.

Steve Bannon yelled about Epstein from the stage at a Turning Point USA event and warned there would be a severe backlash from the MAGA movement if the files aren’t released.

Dan Bongino, Trump’s FBI deputy director—who made his career among the MAGA masses by pushing conspiracies like the Epstein mess—got into a heated confrontation with Bondi at the White House after she accused him of planting stories about her with conservative media. All day, Trump influencers online have been claiming that Bongino will resign if Bondi doesn’t; all of them are siding with Bongino, of course.

And it’s only Friday! We’re only four days removed from Bondi’s memo. What will the weekend bring us?

I do want to make something clear to any MAGA folks who are reading this: in the past, many of you have claimed Democrats don’t want the Epstein files released because they would implicate Bill Clinton or some other Democratic luminary.

I don’t care if Clinton is in the Epstein files. I don’t care if any Democrats are on the client list. I don’t care if any progressives are on the client list. I don’t care if any trans people are on the client list.

If Clinton or anyone else who aligns with my politics are implicated in Epstein’s sex trafficking operation, I want them held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. I want the book thrown at them. I want them to pay.

You know why? Because I’m not in a cult. Because whether or not someone should be held accountable for sex crimes should have no relationship to their political party or ideology or how they voted in the last election.

Ask yourselves why Trump is so clearly against transparency on Epstein. Ask yourselves if he’s telling you the truth. Ask yourselves why these people campaigned for your vote on a pledge to release the Epstein files and are now making you look like fools.

Maybe you’ve been had. Maybe you got snookered. Maybe Trump really doesn’t respect you. Maybe Trump doesn’t actually give a shit about victims of sex trafficking.

Maybe it’s time to wake up and realize this guy has something to hide.

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Full piece here for easier sharing: https://t.co/7hG894srFX

[Keri Wagner @platebreaker]

@SkinnerPm They will always know that you and T are a safe, loving place.

[Fadi Quran @fadiquran]

Israel is starving NICU babies. Not by mistake—by policy.

The milk is gone. Mothers starving too.

When Israel says it’s defending itself and the EU and US echo it this is what they mean.

No other regime is committing cruelty like this.

Starving infants. Deliberately.

[Keri Wagner @platebreaker]

@BarbaraKJanik Happy Birthday, Barbara! You deserve a lovely day!

[Keri Wagner @platebreaker]

@dieworkwear Thank you, Derek, for being such a friend to our fur babies!

[Keri Wagner @platebreaker]

@dieworkwear @feederofcats Tiffany has no style questions because she is purrfect, but she donated $10 to say thank you for helping all kitties.

[Keri Wagner @platebreaker]

@judy_argumedo @barronparkbees @PaloAltoUnified Such a fun idea! I know the students miss their furry friends during the daytime.

[Keri Wagner @platebreaker]

@nallelygj Grateful to be there!

[Keri Wagner @platebreaker]

@ahmedhankir Ahmed, WH, are you on Threads?

[Jay Root @byjayroot]

This is a photo of a baby being passed through concertina wire near Eagle Pass, Texas yesterday. 1/4

[Keri Wagner @platebreaker]

@JohnCleese Probably not

[Keri Wagner @platebreaker]

@MoiraDonegan Bad idea! Do something inside!

[Keri Wagner @platebreaker]

@nallelygj Fabulous celebration! Lovely event!

[Keri Wagner @platebreaker]

@RosemarieDowell @PaloAltoUnified Thank you all for keeping our students healthy and safe!

[Keri Wagner @platebreaker]

@TPP_MD Love! I only choose younger docs, I want them all to outlive me!

[Keri Wagner @platebreaker]

@cmclymer Tucker Carlson has never even seen a fist fight!

[Keri Wagner @platebreaker]

@PuppiesIover A little unwieldy, maybe Kahlua?

[Keri Wagner @platebreaker]

@PuppiesIover Ghirardelli