Observation the First: Morons!
More…
1. So…Director of the F.B.I. Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino are throwing public hissy fits over the Justice Department stating in an unsigned memorandum that there is no evidence that Jeffrey Epstein, the dead convicted sexual predator, had a client list and used it to blackmail elected officials, celebrities, and other powerful people. The memo also declared that Epstein committed suicide. Patel and bongino are behaving this way because they are unprofessional and untrustworthy, though everyone should have known that already. The professional manner in which to demonstrate a serious disagreement with one’s superior, organization or client is to resign, stating why to the extent permitted by the terms of your job. The President should fire both of them immediately.
2. I don’t care about Jeffrey Epstein or his alleged client list. Nobody should at this point. He was a walking, talking ethics train wreck, and now he’s dead. Good! A collection of documents, including emails and schedules revealed by The Wall Street Journal showed, among other things, that Woody Allen frequently socialized with the billionaire. Gee, what a surprise. So what are we supposed to do with such information? We already know that Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew, creepazoids both, were pals with the sex maniac (I’m talking about Epstein, now, not Woody…). Other than as tabloid fodder, what value does such intelligence have? I have the Red Sox winning streak to worry about and a sock drawer to alphabetize. Shut up.
3. Attorney General Pam Bondi is partially at fault for this idiotic “crisis” for the Trump administration, but then she is also a well-established professional disgrace. She told Fox News in February that the client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review.” That statement more than implies that there is a client list. Bondi is a lawyer: words are supposed to matter to lawyers. Bondi now claims that she was only referring to the Epstein case file, in which she assumed that the client list resided. Oh. Then it was intentionally misleading for her to say what she said. Rule 8.4 of every legal ethics rule book, which even U.S. Attorney Generals are bound to follow, demands that lawyers neither “engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation” nor “engage in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice.” Bondi’s statement was dishonesty or deceit if she said the “client list” was on her desk when she meant the file. The statement that there was no list is dishonesty or misrepresentation if there is (or was) an Epstein client list. For the #1 government lawyer and the head of the Justice Department to behave like this undermines what public trust in the Justice Department that might remain in the wake of Merrick Garland; that certainly constitutes conduct that is “prejudicial to the administration of justice.” Her conduct is also incompetent. Bondi, if she had any integrity at all, should resign. If she doesn’t resign, Trump should fire her, too. She should also be disciplined by the D.C. Bar, and I may just have to file an ethics complaint against her to encourage that result. (You could do it too.)
4. President Trump is also at fault for this completely unnecessary distraction from his substantive agenda, not that he doesn’t splash out distractions as an avocation—forgetting the Liberians speak English, using the politically correct term “shylock” in one of his rants, et cetera, et cetera. He let his campaign and allies indiscriminately spread rumors about the alleged list to troll Democrats. In October 2024, for example, JD Vance said, “Seriously, we need to release the Epstein list. That is an important thing.” Why was it “an important thing”? It was an important thing to low IQ MAGA freaks who have the priorities and interests of 11-year-olds, that’s why.
5. We are seeing the downside of President Trump’s laser-focused determination to appoint loyalists and hyper-partisans to important positions over experienced, competent professionals. That is no less a distortion of employment priorities than DEI, just slightly more defensible. Many of the alleged professionals in his first administration betrayed the nation and sabotaged his Presidency. I get it. But surely there are trustworthy, qualified candidates who are not loose cannons and jerks. Aren’t there?
6. Naturally, since they can’t find enough substantive things to try to bring down Trump’s term, Democrats, “the resistance” and the news media (the Axis of Unethical Conduct) are gleefully pouncing on this junk as if it matters. Well, Trump allowed his crew to say it mattered, and had a conspiracy theory-loving base that ate it up like a yummy sundae. So here we are.
[This is Ethics Alarms’ 19,000th post.]
Ethics Alarms 
2. I don’t care about Jeffrey Weinstein or his alleged client list.
You talking about Harvey Weinstein or Jeffrey Epstein? Or maybe a hybrid?
$#@%&**! I should have written “Frankenstein.”
19,000 posts? Incredible. Congratulations.
Or…”What a wasted life!”
Oh, come on, Jack. You know why it’s important to everyone on both sides of the political spectrum. Don’t be deliberately ignoring what is obvious. It’s beneath your intelligence.
I repeat: it’s not important and never was important. There are no charges that can be brought absent much more evidence. It’s “important” to people looking for cheap attack modes, rumors and sliming. The doubletalk and obfuscation is important, but not Epstein or Epstein’s list. What is it you think is so imprtant, and by important I mean, important to the public good and national policy, not “important to people looking for a political weapon”?
Sorry, I was in a hurry and wrote imprecisely. I should have put “important” in quotes (as I just did), because in a cosmic view of the current global insanity, of course it’s not important. But it seemed that you were ignoring why it “matters” to both sides. On the MAGA side, the Christian nationalists (those who weren’t/aren’t pedophiles themselves) would see Trump’s inclusion in a list of other pedophiles as outrageously immoral. And the other side would, yes, use his lies (if he is on the list) and hypocrisy as a weapon. As they should. As the Republicans always do whenever they find anything they can use as a weapon *cough* DEI, Illegal immigrants stealing their jobs, trans people, etc etc etc.
“Republicans always do whenever they find anything they can use as a weapon *cough* DEI, Illegal immigrants stealing their jobs, trans people, etc etc etc.”
So, by your logic, I (we) can dismiss all Republican issues like the examples I gave.
(Sorry, hit reply too soon)
You are seriously comparing making a national issue over gossip and speculation over a dead predator’s Rolodex (he didn’t have “clients”) with enforcing immigration laws, opposing unconstitutional and unlawful employment discrimination against whites, heterosexuals, and males, and opposing cheating in women’s sports? What a weird world view that represents! The latter positions shouldn’t even be partisan—they are obvious, ethical, legal and beyond rational argument. How do people get their heads so turned around? Who’s responsible for that? How can we fix it?
So you are saying that it is “important” because the anti-Trump obsessed see it as a long-shot opportunity to find something to undermine Trump with? That’s important to the Trump Deranged and enemies of the law and democracy, but its inthe same category as wishing Trump would have a heart attack.
Again, DEI is objectively un-American, illegal, unfair and idiotic (if Kamala, Karine and Mayorkas, plus Harvrd’s DEI president who had to cheat to make her academic bones, don’t demonstrate that sufficiently, I don’t know what to say). Illegal immigrants are undesirable because they have no right, justification nor business being here. If they never took a single job an American would get it wouldn’t change the equation at all: straw man argument, and a bad one. Nobody should ever be allowed to compete against a girl or woman by just declaring themselves female. There are few debates as one-sided on the fact and law as those three. Surely you have better?
“[This is Ethics Alarms’ 19,000th post.]”
Hop on board Mr. Peabody’s Wayback (WABAC) Machine to April 20, 2018
MONEY QUOTE: “This is as good a time as any to mention that Ethics Alarms passed the 9000 post landmark this week, and those posts (over less than nine years) have sparked 222, 231 comments so far, at a steadily increasing rate.“
OBSERVATION: You tacked on another 10,000 posts faster than you got to 9000!
MONEY QUOTE, 2.0: “Kudos, Jack! In an odd twist of fate, I wrote out check # 9000 earlier today for, and this may come as no surprise, beer.”
PWS
1. A couple of top officials are ‘throwing public hissy fits’ over whether or not Epstein had a client list and used it for blackmail of elected officials. 2. I don’t care about a client list. 3. Bondi said she had the client list, and then she said she meant something else. 4. Vance said we need to release the list. Why? It was important to low IQ freaks and 11-year-olds.
Well! (As George Will would write.) I’m well past 11, and measurements of my IQ and freakiness leave room for interpretation. Yet, I don’t think it’s stupid, juvenile, or deviant to hold public officials (and others) accountable, even for actions before they took office when those are consequential actions. The importance of that client list (probably not exactly a client list) is that it reveals criminal activity, and that is why both Democratic and Republican administrations have promoted or diminished the importance of it, or even denied its existence, depending on whose fat was in the fire.
Clinton? Trump? Stars of Pop Culture? Political Party Megadonors? Yeah, we need to know, who and when and what. Ghislaine Maxwell was served up a long prison sentence for various conspiracies and actions related to enticing, transporting, and sex trafficking of minors. Is that the end of the criminal offense? Or, perhaps, are there some on the receiving end of that trafficking, and would that be a criminal offense worthy of pursuit? It brings to mind the instances of prosecution of prostitutes while not prosecuting the johns (as an aside, Here’s Johnny hates that usage, as well as the usage related to bathroom facilities, and in this regard he has a great deal of sympathy for those who are known by one of the nicknames for Richard).
It is not exactly a hissy fit to feel outrage that politics outweigh justice, as certainly seems to be the case here. Certainly, there are others well beyond those prosecuted so far who are deserving of prosecution. To write that culpability off as ‘who cares’ or juvenile prurience is to say for some crimes that, while there are victims, there are some perpetrators who should not be held to account.
But this is not about holding public officials accountable. It is about desperately seeking validation of rumors, gossip and conspiracy theories for political gain. Nobody’s proposing that Clinton’s rape accusation be re-opened or Biden’s, or Pelosi’s insider tradingand there is a lot more hard facts supporting those than what some people hope against hope is in the elusive “client list.” We’ve seen this before, you know, with the DC Madam feeding frenzy. Trump knew Epstein before his hair turned yellow; he’s said that he quit the relationship, not one individual has surfaced to say otherwise, and none of Epstein’s victims have mentioned him.
Please don’t quote George Will. He disgraced himself as badly as Bill Kristol because he would rather support the precise principles he railed against his whole career than tolerate a lower class peasant like Donald Trump.
I was quoting the Will of a decade ago, not the Will of a little over 3 years ago when he said (inadvertent satire, perhaps) Senators should be banned from the Presidency. With the prospect of a Biden-Trump rematch seemingly in the cards at that time, he could be forgiven for straying from his usual logical reasoning. Many people lost the ability to think when it evolved from that prospect to the actuality of a Harris-Trump contest.
As to the main point, when criminal penalties for criminal behavior by politicians is no longer feasible or possible, there at least should be political penalties.
I’ve always assumed there’s no “client list.” What I assumed Epstein kept is a contact list much like my own with hundreds or thousands of names and phone numbers of friends, relatives, business acquaintances and virtual strangers. Mine still has contact information for my grandparents, all long dead, for Charlie Munger, Hakeem Jeffries and Scott Bessent, all of whom I met briefly in the distant past, for women I dated once or twice 30 years ago, for people who gave me their cards at business conferences, for parents of my son’s friends when he was 7 years old. If I were to be arrested for a heinous crime, all of those people could be smeared for their suspicious connections with “Greg.”
Presumably, if I were a sex fiend like Jeffrey Epstein, I wouldn’t write “likes 12-year olds” next to anybody’s name.
I have never understood why after Epstein’s death (suicide?) everybody including politicians is still so focused on his client list. My gut feeling that this interest is not based on a true desire for justice, but on a desire to find political opponents on the Epstein list, and tar them with this sordid association. This also fits with American culture, which is high on conspiration theories; after all we are still talking today what truly happened when JFK was killed.
The Trump administration should take to temperature of this issue; when pressured in interviews they should say that Epstein committed suicide (as there is no evidence to the contrary), and leave it at that. If there is a list with clients that can be prosecuted, then go ahead and disclosed that, but else keep your shut, and do not make statements that you have to walk back later.
The Trump administration does much better to focus on the real policy issues such as immigration, foreign policy, DEI, and the economy. On these issue it is also where you have to win in public opinion. Once you start slinging with manure it will fly back right in your own face (e.g. Elon Musk’s statements about Trump being on the list); nothing good can come off it.
Bingo.
Jack wrote, “This is Ethics Alarms’ 19,000th post.”
That’s quite an accomplishment, Congratulations!
I get a kick out of knowing that at the rate I post on my blog, it’ll only take me 640½ years to catch up to that 19,000 post count.
It’s quality, not quantity, that matters.
So true — and it is to our eternal good fortune that you are blessed with both.
I am reminded somewhat of Isaac Asimov, who became obsessed with publishing books. He started as a science fiction author (with a Chemistry degree, as I recall). But then he started writing science books, essays, history, biography, literary critiques, and anything else that crossed his mind.
My recollection is 900 books over his lifetime, but then again I think he might have cracked 1000. I wonder how that compares to 19000 blog posts and many thousands of comments here.
330,000 comments, not counting mine (67,000).