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America Chose Not to Hold the Powerful to Account

Around the world outside of the USA the Epstein scandal has triggered elites being held accountable for their ties to Jeffrey Epstein.  Here at home, other than a few resignations from corporate boards and Larry Summer's resignation from his position at Harvard, American elites have gotten off free so far.  In Brazil and South Korea, leaders who attempted coups are now in prison, but not here in America.  America which fixates on false "American exceptionalism" and pretends to be a "shining city on a hill" allows the rich and powerful to avoid accountability for misdeeds as if these individuals were aristocrats of years gone by.  Worse yet, so-called "conservative Christians" are the Felon's most loyal supporters.  As a piece in The Nation lays out:

Every segment of the Trump-backing right wing—America First nationalists, Trump loyalists and rank-and-file MAGA activists—has unsubscribed from the idea that there is any such thing as right and wrong, much less that wrongdoing should result in consequences. In effect, there is no behavior Trump’s GOP sees as too wrong to vote for. In late July 2025, almost half of Republicans said they would keep voting for Trump even if he were “officially implicated in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking activities.”

The Felon boasted that he could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and get away with it. So far, evidence that the Felon may have been involved with the rape - or worse - of minors seems to have drawn nothing but yawns from the self-congratulatory and piety feigning "godly folk." Yet, as a long piece in The Atlantic lays out, the trend of allowing the rich and powerful to get away with crimes that would send the rest of us to prison began long before the Felon first sought political office. It is disturbing that in America where supposedly no one is above the law, the elite are above the law even as some of their foreign counterparts are being held accountable.  Here are article highlights:

Around the world, powerful men are facing consequences for their actions. Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was convicted of trying to overthrow the government in a January 6–style coup, as was his South Korean counterpart, Yoon Suk Yuol. Marcin Romanowski, the former deputy justice minister in the right-wing Polish government, is in hiding in Hungary, accused of misusing public funds. The former Prince Andrew—Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor—became the first member of the British royal family in several centuries to be arrested; he’s been accused of crimes related to his relationship with the late sex-trafficking financier Jeffrey Epstein. . . . They’re all unfortunate not to be American. Otherwise they probably would have gotten away scot-free.

One way to look at the rise of Donald Trump is as part of a decades-long backlash among the American leadership class to the idea of accountability. Since Richard Nixon was forced to resign, powerful people in both political parties have worked assiduously to ensure that their leaders would escape the consequences of their actions. Trump has evaded punishment for crimes both low (campaign-finance violations, for which he was convicted, though he will serve no time thanks to his 2024 victory) and high (his attempted overthrow of the federal government in the aftermath of his 2020 election loss, for which he was spared by the Supreme Court’s decision to grant him a kingly immunity). This is not just about Trump; his impunity is the product of a society that has worked hard to help the rich and powerful elude punishment for criminal behavior.

Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor in the name of “healing,” but inadvertently set a precedent that executive lawbreaking was no crime. The Reagan administration engaged in blatant violations of federal law during the Iran-Contra scandal, in which it sold weapons to the Iranian regime and used the finances to support anti-communist death squads in Nicaragua. George H. W. Bush, the former head of the CIA, pardoned nearly all of the officials implicated in Iran-Contra—a move that many Americans supported, because they believed that fighting communism justified extreme measures. George W. Bush’s administration broke laws fighting the “War on Terror” but almost no one faced consequences, because many Americans believed that fighting terrorism justified extreme measures.

While Congress and the presidency have been working hard to raise the executive branch above the law, the Supreme Court has done its part to ensure that laws against bribery and corruption are near-unenforceable. With a series of rulings on campaign finance, the Roberts Court has ensured that the rich can try to buy elections without formally breaking the law. As a result, politicians are indebted to a few hundred billionaires who drop unholy amounts of cash every election cycle.

Getting convicted of bribery in America requires some serious effort—take former Democratic Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey . . .caught with gold bars in his house. When Trump first took office, he paused enforcement of foreign bribery cases entirely—but there are some signs that he intends to revive such prosecutions as a weapon against his political enemies, in the mold of the Hungarian strongman Victor Orbán.

Such erosion of anti-corruption law has often been a bipartisan project. In 2016, the bribery conviction of former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell for receiving gifts from donors was overturned unanimously by the U.S. Supreme Court. Since then, the Roberts Court has slowly dismantled anti-corruption law. In 2024, it decided in Snyder v. United States that federal law does not bar receiving “gratuities” given after the fact for “official acts.” Convenient not just for politicians, but also for justices who enjoy lavish lifestyles funded by billionaires with interests before the Court!

The logic of the Roberts Court’s quest to legalize white-collar crime led to Trump v. United States, which decided in 2024 that the president is basically entitled to commit whatever crimes he wants in the course of his “official duties,” and which successfully shields Trump and potentially future presidents from federal criminal prosecution for any “official” actions while in office. This was comically framed by the right-wing justices as protecting democracy, rather than undermining it.

Although some of these decisions were more defensible than others, together they suggest a pattern of elite class solidarity: powerful people making sure that powerful people rarely face real consequences.

The #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements can be seen as, at least partially, a brief rebellion against this culture of elite impunity.  . . . . Those movements didn’t last. The backlash against them nevertheless fed a Trumpian nostalgia for the good old days, when sexual assault and police brutality were easily rationalized or not even discussed. This nostalgia also helps explain the extreme response to the call for accountability—many powerful bystanders behaved as though they had narrowly survived Robespierre and the guillotine and worked to prevent such movements from ever emerging again by trying to censor speech associated with them.

This is not to say that the rich and powerful are never held to account. Menendez is one counterexample, and Epstein himself was a billionaire who died in a jail cell, after all. But his crimes were taken seriously by authorities only after the journalist Julie Brown uncovered the extent of Epstein’s crimes and the lenient response from law enforcement over decades.

Unfortunately, many Americans who might have been outraged at this edifice of impunity have instead directed their resentment toward the poor and weak, supporting a cruel and unforgiving system of criminal justice that harshly punishes those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder while exempting many at the top from any accountability at all. So you did a few death-squad massacres or wedding bombings? Well, that was what America’s leaders had to do to fight communism and terrorism. You can even take a sack of cash from an undercover FBI agent if you’re the Trump immigration czar Tom Homan. But if you overstayed your visa or got an abortion, you deserve to have the book thrown at you.

MAGA also offered an implicit bargain: Not only can you be a bigot toward whatever group makes you mad by existing, but everyone will have to love and respect you anyway. This was an impossible promise to keep—not even Trump has managed to bully comedians mocking him into silence—but politicians make impossible promises all the time. Many Americans are simply content to live vicariously through Trump’s impunity, even if they cannot share it.

The answer to why powerful people in some other parts of the world face consequences, while in America they rarely do, is that elite impunity is now an American national project. We might need to reframe “American exceptionalism.” Instead of a New Deal, we have a Great Society for white-collar crime, a New Frontier of executive lawbreaking, a No Rich Crook Left Behind. Most of us probably don’t even realize it. Nevertheless, this has been the priority for the wealthy and powerful, who have managed to convince a critical mass of Americans that they will be able to enjoy the same privileges. They won’t.

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The Felon's DOJ Epstein Coverup Continues

By now it should be obvious to all but the most rabid MAGA cultist that the Felon's Department of Justice ("DOJ") now exists for two functions: (i) threatening and trying to prosecute the Felon's critics and political opponents, and (ii) covering up damning information that incriminates (or worse) the Felon through his ties with Jeffrey Epstein.  The irony of the latter role is that if the Felon were truly innocent - something I do not believe - he should want all of the Epstein files released to clear his name. Of course, the exact opposite is what is occurring as it becomes increasingly clear that the DOJ is hiding documentation that accuses the Felon of sexual crimes against minors.  All of this underscores that if the Felon was innocent of wrong doing, he would not be acting as if he is indeed guilty and Pam Bondi - who is on her way to being the most corrupt Attorney General in the nation's history - would not continue to hide documentation at best unflattering to the Felon. The other thing that is most unusual is that the always litigious Felon has sued no one for libel or defamation for saying he's a child rapist, leaving the conclusion that the Felon fears what a lawsuit might bring to the light of day through sworn depositions and discovery of of other documentation.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the latest DOJ coverup:

The vast trove of documents released by the Justice Department from its investigations into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein failed to include some key materials related to a woman who made an accusation against [the Felon] President Trump, according to a review by The New York Times.

The materials are F.B.I. memos summarizing interviews the bureau did in connection to claims made in 2019 by a woman who came forward after Mr. Epstein’s arrest to say she had been sexually assaulted by both Mr. Trump and the financier decades earlier, when she was a minor.

The existence of the memos was revealed in an index listing the investigative materials related to her account, which was publicly released. According to that index, the F.B.I. conducted four interviews in connection with her claims and wrote summaries about each one. But only one summary of the four interviews, which describes her accusations against Mr. Epstein, was released by the Justice Department. The other three are missing.

The public files also do not include the underlying interview notes, which the index also indicates are part of the file. The Justice Department released similar interview notes in connection to F.B.I. interviews with other potential witnesses and victims. . . . Officials did not directly address why the memos related to the woman’s claim were not released.

The woman’s description of being assaulted by Mr. Trump in the 1980s is among a number of uncorroborated accusations against well-known men, including the [Felon] president, that are contained in the millions of documents released by the Justice Department.

The missing records deepen questions about how the Justice Department has handled the release of the Epstein files, which was mandated by a law signed by Mr. Trump last year after bipartisan congressional pressure.

Under the law, the Justice Department can redact material that could be used to identify Mr. Epstein’s victims, depicted violence or child sexual abuse, or would hurt a continuing federal investigation. But the law expressly prohibited federal officials from withholding or redacting materials “on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm or political sensitivity” to public figures.

Some lawmakers and survivors of Mr. Epstein’s abuse have strongly condemned the department for how it handled redactions, noting that details identifying some victims were left exposed and nude photographs of young women were included in the public release, while material related to claims of abuse by other men had been heavily redacted.

The woman who made the accusation about Mr. Trump came forward in July 2019, days after federal investigators arrested Mr. Epstein on sex-trafficking charges, according to records in the public files of tips the F.B.I. received during that period. She claimed that she had been repeatedly assaulted by Mr. Epstein when she was a minor in the 1980s, according to a summary of an F.B.I. interview with her on July 24, 2019.

The F.B.I. did three subsequent interviews to assess her account in August and October 2019 and made a summary of each interview, according to the index of records compiled in the case. But the memos describing those three interviews were not publicly released.

The public files do contain a 2025 description of her account, as well as other accusations against prominent men contained in the documents. In that 2025 memo, federal officials wrote that the woman had said that Mr. Epstein introduced her to Mr. Trump, and that she claimed Mr. Trump had assaulted her in a violent and lurid encounter. The documents say the alleged incident would have occurred in the mid-1980s when she was 13 to 15 years old, but they do not include any assessment by the F.B.I. about the credibility of her accusation.

The Times’s examination of a set of serial numbers on the individual pages in the public files suggests that more than 50 pages of investigative materials related to her claims are not in the publicly available files.

Representative Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said that when he reviewed unredacted versions of the Epstein files at the Justice Department on Monday, interview summaries related to the woman’s claim were also missing from that trove. . . . . Mr. Garcia said. He added that the Justice Department had also not provided them to the Oversight Committee, which issued a subpoena last year for all of the Justice Department’s investigative material regarding Mr. Epstein.

The woman spent most of the interview on July 24, 2019, describing in detail what she said were repeated violent assaults by Mr. Epstein that she had endured, as reported earlier by The Post and Courier. She said that as a teenager in South Carolina, she was asked to babysit at a house on Hilton Head Island. But after she arrived, there were no children to babysit, and only a man she came to know as Jeff who she said plied her with alcohol, marijuana and cocaine. She described him raping her on multiple occasions.

The woman joined a lawsuit later in 2019 against Mr. Epstein’s estate. She subsequently dropped her claim. Court records do not indicate if she received any financial settlement. A court record from 2021 said she was separately deemed ineligible for compensation from a fund set up for Epstein victims, but it did not specify why.

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The State of the Union Carnival Show

I will admit that I did not watch all of the State of The Union address for several reasons: it was laced with lies and distortions which is the norm for the Felon - a piece at the Associated Press lists the untruths - and went on for ever, and I simply was not in the mood to watch a spectacle of narcissistic preening that would have made it difficult to keep from vomiting.  Members of the military and the men's U.S. hockey team were used as political props to an utterly insincere performance bu the liar in chief.  The one thing the speech, if one can call it that, was missing was any accurate description of how the Felon's  policies will bring down prices and benefit everyday Americans. Indeed, while many are struggling financially, some in the GOP want more tax cuts for the super wealthy and large corporations. In short, the event painted an utterly false picture of where the nation finds itself under the regime of a narcissistic psychopath suffering from increasing dementia. With luck, the event will prove to be little help for the Felon's plummeting approval numbers that with luck will prove to be a heavy anchor on Republican candidates in November.  A piece at The Atlantic looks at the carnival barker's show: 

The longest State of the Union in modern history is now over. Donald Trump held court in the House of Representatives and said little of substance, but substance wasn’t the point. This year, he intended to put on a show, with an array of guest stars and special appearances. He was happy, because he was playing the roles he clearly loves: game-show host, ringmaster, MC, beneficent granter of wishes—and, where the Democrats were concerned, a self-righteous inquisitor.

Trump did his usual rote lying about the economy—pity the fact-checkers who tried to keep up even in the first 10 minutes or so of the speech—along with some of his other greatest hits, including the many wars he stopped and the magic of tariffs.

Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator, once managed to do the entire State of the Union address in 31 minutes; that’s because he could say important things efficiently and well. Tonight, however, was not about communication, it was about showmanship. Almost every line was a cue for applause from obedient Republicans; they even gave Jared Kushner a standing ovation. Every few minutes, Trump told a story, and reached out into the audience like the host of The Price Is Right, telling people to come on down.

He started, of course, with the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team. Just basking along with Team USA wasn’t enough. Trump soon announced that the goalie Connor Hellebuyck would receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Normally, this honor is bestowed for a lifetime of achievement . . . .

And so it went, all night. Sometimes, the guests were meant to tug at the heart, such as when Trump recognized Erica Kirk, the wife of the murdered activist Charlie Kirk. Others were presented as ornaments meant to illustrate Trump’s successes: Enrique Marquez, a Venezuelan political prisoner freed after U.S. forces deposed the strongman Nicolas Maduro, was given a round of well-deserved applause. Trump also gave a shoutout to a woman whose IVF medications were now, he claimed, cheaper.

But no group received more attention than the U.S. military. Trump handed out two Purple Hearts (one posthumously), a Legion of Merit, and not one, but two Congressional Medals of Honor. Military awards that should have been treated with dignity and respect were placed on men like prizes, including a moment when Trump’s co-host, the First Lady, put one of the Medals of Honor around the neck of a 100-year-old fighter pilot.

Trump even had designated heels in the audience: the Democrats. He called them crazy, and accused them of impoverishing the nation. He dared them to stand up if they agreed with him that “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” This stunt was obviously meant to force Democrats either to stand or boo or otherwise do something that Trump could exploit; instead, it merely resulted in several awkward seconds of a staring contest between the president and the Democrats in the chamber. Trump managed to bait Representative Ilhan Omar into shouting at him, but for the most part, he seemed genuinely irritated that the Democrats sat through his show in stony silence.

The only thing Trump did not do was explain his policies—especially about war and peace—to Congress or the American people.

The largest American armada assembled since the second Gulf War is now encircling Iran. Trump never mentioned the buildup; instead he claimed that his one overriding interest was that Iran would forswear nuclear weapons forever. But the brief case he laid out was not for nonproliferation, but for regime change.

But if some of the address was a game show, much of it was a bloody Grand Guignol theater of horror stories, almost all about immigrants preying on the helpless and the innocent. Trump led into these anecdotes by starting with an accusation that the Somali community of Minnesota was scamming the state. He followed up with stories of murder and mayhem, . . . .

Trump tonight went far beyond what even the most self-indulgent presidents would have envisioned. Beset by scandal, facing multiple defeats in America’s courts, and hitting levels of unpopularity that would make Richard Nixon nod with empathy, he turned the State of the Union into a vulgar, populist carnival.

Trump made a great show of honoring a handful of U.S. military heroes. Meanwhile, thousands of young men and women are a world away, waiting for his orders to go to war. The president of the United States might have taken a moment tonight to tell their families why they’re out there, and what they’re supposed to do. But why bother? The show must go on.

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