Free-lance journalist Michael Tracy pointed out on “X” that all of the “victims” who Rep. Jayapal demanded that Pam Bondi apologize to were adults at the time of their claimed victimization by Jeffrey Epstein. Tracy asked if any news organization bothered to mention that rather salient point, especially since the Left’s narrative connecting President Trump to Epstein rests on calling Trump a presumed “pedo”-by-association.
It seems the answer is no. I certainly assumed the hand-raising women at Bondi’s hearing were all sexually exploited as minors.
The Epstein obsession is such an Ethics Train Wreck, and such a dumb one my eye-balls hurt from rolling. If Democrats succeed in the mid-terms because of the duel mendacities of the Epstein innuendos and the even dumber “affordability” talking point (“How dare Trump not lower the prices our incompetence raised?”), I think it will be fair to say that the American public is no longer intelligent enough for a republic.
I recommend a conservatorship.
In an excellent Wall Street Journal piece (which I no longer can find) on what the Epstein files didn’t include, the author wrote that the news media and Democrats are focusing on Trump’s past denials that he ever knew or suspected what his fellow billionaire was doing, when what they should be focusing on was that he alone among the many names being exposed in the files “got the hell out of there,” as soon as Epstein’s teenage girls turned up.
We’ve had some interesting discussions here about “experts” here of late, notably this post. I am rapidly reaching the point where anyone who appeals to authority to justify his or her position, particularly if the authority is a study, a report, an “expert” or a scientist, immediately inspires my skepticism and even suspicion. Now what?
Once again, Duke professor and researcher Dan Ariely is in the news, and not in a good way. Ariely, professor of business administration in the Fuqua School of Business is named 636 times in the more than 3 million additional Epstein files released on January 30. He may be innocent of any wrong-doing and he and Epstein may have just played in a Fantasy Baseball league together, but the problem this creates for me is that I have been using Ariely’s work as authority in my ethics seminars for as long as I can remember.
For more than a decade, I told incoming members of the D.C. Bar as part of their mandatory ethics training that such sessions as mine were essential to making their ethics alarms ring. To support that thesis, I related the finding of research performed by Dan Ariely when he was at M.I.T. Ariely created an experiment that was the most publicized part of his best-selling book “Predictably Irrational,” giving Harvard Business School students a test that had an obvious way to cheat built into it and offering small rewarde for the students who got the highest scores. He tracked how many students, with that (small) incentive to be unethical, cheated. He also varied the experiment by asking some students to do simple tasks before they took the test: name five baseball teams, or state capitals, or U.S. Presidents.
None of these pre-test questions had any effect on the students’ likelihood of cheating, except for one question, which had a dramatic effect. He discovered that students who were asked to recite a few of the Ten Commandments, unlike any of the other groups, never cheated at all. Never. None of them. Ariely told an NPR interviewer that he had periodically repeated the experiment elsewhere, with the same results. No individual who was asked to search his memory for a few of the Ten Commandments has ever cheated on Ariely’s test, though the percentage of cheaters among the rest of the testees is consistently in double figures. This result has held true, he said, regardless of the individual’s faith, ethnic background, or even whether they could name one Commandment correctly.
The classic moral rules, he concluded, reminded the students to consider right and wrong. It wasn’t the content of the Commandments that affected them, but what they represent: being good, or one culture’s formula for doing good. The phenomenon is called priming, and Ariely’s research eventually made me decide to start “The Ethics Scoreboard” and later this ethics blog.
My theory? They hate Trump so, so much that they were willing to risk their own being blown to bits for the faint chance there would be something devastating in the Epstein Files that would blow him to metaphorical bits. Or their Trump Derangement is so extreme that they were sure something damning and irrefutable would be revealed, even though everything we know indicated there wouldn’t be. Whatever the reason,
KABOOM!
And also, GOOD. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving gang.
Former Obama White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler’s emails with and regarding Epstein show that he showered Ruemmler with expensive gifts over several tears. The evidence in the recent mass Epstein Files dump comes after CNN reported last month that Ruemmler advised Epstein on media strategies. She insisted to the outlet that she “did not represent him and was not compensated by him.” Hmmm. A $9,400 Hermes handbag, a Hermes-branded Apple watch, and a spa treatment package at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington sure seem like compensation to me. The gifts revealed in the documents released yesterday by the Department of Justice came years after allegations of Epstein’s sex crimes became public knowledge.
Ruemmler is now the top lawyer for Goldman Sachs. The Washington Free Beacon found emails ranging from 2014 to 2019 in which Ruemmler routinely corresponded with Epstein’s associates to accept gifts or express her gratitude to the sex trafficker. In some cases, she even asked for specific items.
In 2016, when Epstein purchased Ruemmler a $9,400 handbag from the French luxury brand Hermes, he took particular care to ensure Ruemmler received the gift, directing one of his associates to “confirm receipt with Kathy” and “follow up to make sure it happens.” When Ruemmler received the bag, she wrote in response, “OH MY GOD!!!!! He is in so much trouble!!!! I am dying. It is so beautiful!” A second-hand version of the same bag now sells for around $5,000.
And here I am, living in cardboard box by the docks. I just have to find richer friends….
Two years later, in November 2018, Epstein bought Ruemmler a Hermes edition of the Apple Watch, which retails for $1,300. Emails show that Ruemmler asked for a specific model and said the gift was “so sweet of Jeffrey!”
“If truly okay with him to do the Hermes, I would love the 40 mm, stainless Hermes with bleu indigo swift leather double tour,” Ruemmler wrote at the time. “I’ll wear that one every day, whereas the sportier ones I would likely only wear on weekends or when exercising, etc.”
Also in 2016, two years after she left the White House staff, Epstein booked a “full half day” spa appointment for Ruemmler at the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown. He wrote to an associate, “she won her case and needs some pampering.” Gee, why was the convicted sex trafficker sucking up to the lawyer? His associate responded with a credit card authorization form and said, “Kathy will go either today or tomorrow she says…” A massage and facial at the luxury hotel can cost $1,000 or more.
Wait a sec…Frank Drebbin has something to say:
Epstein appeared to provide other gifts of unknown value to Ruemmler. In December 2014, an Epstein associate emailed Ruemmler that Epstein planned to send his housekeeper to “deliver your ring to you!!” In February 2019, an Epstein associate sent an email to an unidentified individual reading, “Reminder: Bottle of wine and note card to be delivered to Ruemmler today. Let me know once it has been delivered so I can tell Jeffrey.”
“There’s an accommodation process when you’re talking about a President or a former President.Contempt is punitive; it’s not about enforcement. If you want to get the information, agreeing to accommodations is one way of getting it.”
—Kimberly Hamm, a partner at Morrison Foerster, after being cherry-picked by the New York Times to excuse Bill and Hillary Clinton for trying to defy a Congressional subpoena.
For some strange reason (I’m being facetious) Bill and Hillary Clinton seem to think that they are excused, unlike any other Americans (or, say, Michael Corleone) from obeying a subpoena to appear before a Congressional committee. Hamm, as we know how these things work, was tracked down as a putative objective “expert” by the Times to excuse the Clintons and impugn Republicans who are not inclined to accept their offensive and arrogant defiance, as Ethics Alarms highlighted last week.
There should be a “heightened standard” when it comes to a subpoena of a former President, Hamm said. Oh really? Show me your authority for that assertion, Counselor. But first show me where you made a similar statement about armed raids on former Presidents’ homes over disputes regarding classified documents.
What utter balderdash: “contempt is punitive and not about enforcement.” How dumb does this lawyer (and the Times) think we are? Punishment is always about enforcement. A law that has no penalty for its violations isn’t a law at all. You know, like immigration laws during the Biden Administration.
The Times reports that negotiations between Representative James Comer, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and the slippery Clintons over their refusal to testify before his Committee in its Jeffrey Epstein investigation broke down today, “hours before a scheduled vote to hold the couple in contempt of Congress.” Read the whole thing if you like (gift link), but the basic facts are clear: the Clintons feel they have a special right to avoid being grilled in public, and they don’t.
Just when Tim Walz and Minneapolis’s insurrectionist mayor Jacob Frey seemed to have an insuperable lead in the 2026 “Political Assholes of Year” race, around the turn come perennial contenders Bill and Hillary Clinton!
The world’s strangest married couple refused this week to testify in the House’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation, and its Republican leader, Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, quickly said he would take steps to hold them in contempt of Congress. That’s good: they are in contempt of Congress, but the letter is outrageous for other reasons. Being completely shameless, as we all know they are, they refused their civic duty to come testify when their government calls by loading up their missive with Trump Derangement-nip, turning it with every Axis of Unethical Conduct Big Lie and talking point they could think of (yes, the missed a few) while styling themselves as heroic for desperately trying to stop Bill’s metaphorical Jeffrey Epstein chickens from coming home to roost. Naturally the New York Times is trying to cover for Bill, writing,
I hate that I am tempted to write this every day now, often several times a day, but how can anyone of good character and admirable values continue to support a political party, whatever its claimed beliefs are, that behaves this way?
Yesterday EA discussed the desperate Democratic Party tactic of picking 19 photos (out of thousands) that showed a young Donald Trump (and other progressive hate-objects, like Alan Dershowitz and Steve Bannon) in the company of sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein when he was known as just another billionaire on the celebrity party circuit or in the company of unidentified women. These were described in some of the Axis media as “bombshell” and “explosive” photos, though it is unclear when and where most of the photos were taken, many of them had been publicly released before, and none of them suggested any criminal, illicit or even unethical activity.
Despite that, political hack Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) had the gall to say, “These disturbing photos raise even more questions about Epstein and his relationships with some of the most powerful men in the world. We will not rest until the American people get the truth.”
He might as well have added, “And we won’t stop lying about this phony Epstein scandal either until we Get Trump!”
Today Professor Jonathan Turley, a one-time Democrat who is obviously disgusted with Democrats, pointed out that what his former party has done with the photos is a classic example of a tort known as “false light,” where true photos are presented in a misleading and harmful way to damage a reputation or otherwise harm an individual via innuendo . It is essentially photographic deceit. He writes,
With great hoopla, Democrats have released photographs from the Dark Ages showing a young Donald Trump and other personages of note at social gatherings in the company of Jeffrey Epstein. “It’s unclear when all of these pictures were taken,” says NBC News. It also notes, “They do not appear to show illegal activity by these individuals,” and that Trump, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Steve Bannon and Woody Allen, among others, appeared among 19 photos out of more than 95,000 photos in the infamous Epstein Files.
Based on this, House Oversight Committee ranking member Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) actually said, he really did, “It is time to end this White House cover-up and bring justice to the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful friends.These disturbing photos raise even more questions about Epstein and his relationships with some of the most powerful men in the world. We will not rest until the American people get the truth. The Department of Justice must release all the files, NOW.”
Why are those photographs “disturbing” except to someone who has already decided that they suggest something that isn’t in the photographs? [Q 1]
Unbelievable. Or at least it should be unbelievable that an elected member of Congress would behave like this. That the party such an indefensible hack belongs to—and who is regarded as a leader of???— wouldn’t collectively disclaim any responsibility for said hack and wear paper bags over their heads in penance. That…oh, never mind. Why do I bother?
Diving in to try to defend Virginia Islands Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D) after the Epstein files revealed that she had been reading texts from the convicted sex-trafficker during a House hearing, Crockett got up and accused Mitt Romney, John McCain, Sarah Palin and Trump official Lee Zeldin among other Republicans officials of receiving political contributions from “someone named Jeffrey Epstein” as she claimed that Republicans were exacting a double standard—you know, like Democrats do routinely. But the Jeffrey Epstein she was tying to Romney et al. was a completely different person.
Was the ethically-inert Texas Congresswomen shooting off her mouth using false information because she is irresponsible and incompetent, or was she engaging in despicable deceit (that is, lying) to mislead the public? Who knows, and I don’t care: her declaration was a bright-line ethics breach and sanctionable in either case, as well as signature significance both for an untrustworthy member of Congress and a hyper-partisan asshole.
Ah, but this in-your-face blot on the U.S. Legislative Branch wasn’t done. When her false innuendos were raised in a CNN interview, Crockett exploded in double-talk to try to weasel out of her indefensible conduct:
“Listen, I never said that it was that Jeffrey Epstein. Just so that people understand, when you make a donation, your picture is not there. And because they decided to spring this on us in real time, I wanted the Republicans to think about what could potentially happen because I knew that they didn’t even try to go through the FEC,” this awful woman humina-humina-ed. “So my team, what they did is they Googled. And that is specifically why I said, ‘a Jeffrey Epstein’. Unlike Republicans, I at least don’t go out and just tell lies.”
Somebody pleas explain to Crockett what a lie is.
” Because it was not the same one, that’s fine,” she continued, spinning like Dorothy’s cyclone. “But when Lee Zeldin had something to say, all he had to say was it was a different Jeffrey Epstein. He admitted that he did receive donations from a Jeffrey Epstein. So at least I wasn’t trying to mislead people. Now, have I dug in to find out who this doctor is? I have not. So I will trust and take what he says is that it wasn’t that Jeffrey Epstein, but I was not attempting to mislead anybody. I literally had maybe 20 minutes before I had to do that debate.”
Right. Of course she was trying to mislead.
Kaitlin Collins responded (more equivocally than she should have): “Yeah, but people might see that say, well, you’re trying to make it sound like he took money from a literal sex offender.”
“But I literally did not know,” Crockett answered.
Jasmine Crockett is a walking, jive-talking insult to the nation.
You expected to see one of the train wreck graphics didn’t you? Well, this is a train wreck graphic…
Usually humor is not something Ethics Alarms associates with ethics train wrecks, but the ridiculous bi-partisan Jeffrey Epstein Ethics Train Wreck is already producing a large number of metaphorical appearances by Nelson Muntz…you know, the mocking “Simpsons” character?…
…with more certain to come. The lesson here, it appears , is “Don’t play Cognitive Dissonance Scale games if you don’t understand the rules!”
First, the Republicans made releasing the “secret files” about long-dead and even longer-disgraced sex-trafficker and pervert Jeffrey Epstein a 2024 campaign issue for idiots. (The national welfare will be neither enhanced nor harmed by anything regarding Epstein at this point, but the matter was a campaign squirrel. The news media, however, as it has an Epstein addiction that began once Bill Clinton seemed out of harm’s way, couldn’t resist. )
Then Trump was elected and appointed a none-too-bright Attorney General (Pam Bondi) and an incendiary FBI chief (Kash Patel) who soon said “Surprise! There are no Epstein files or nothing is in them or something!” This (predictably) inflamed the idiots, particularly Democrat idiots, who decided, “AHA! There must be something that will allow us to smear Trump and derail his second term like we did the first one with the fake Russia collusion investigation!” The idiot voting bloc is, one must admit, unusually large, so the Democratic Party has been using Epstein with some success—aided by their unethical news media, aka. “the news media,” which elevated Epstein files rumor-mongering and “Trump must have something terrible to hide, because he’s terrible” stories ahead of substantive news that the public genuinely needed to know.
Now it became the old Cognitive Dissonance Game…you must know the drill by now. Here’s Dr. Festinger’s invaluable scale showing how we form and maintain our attitudes toward, well, everything:
Right now, a sniffling groups of women including past victims of the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking operations are standing in front of the Capitol before Congress’s vote on releasing “the Epstein files,” whatever that means at this point. One speaker—they are all saying not just kind-of the same thing, but exactly the same thing but in different words (sometimes) said that their lament isn’t about politics. It’s obviously about politics. Both CNN and MSNBC, the most aggressive Democratic propaganda agents broadcasting, are showing the demonstration live, as if it’s important news. Fox News is barely mentioning it.
The issue is political and partisan. The proof is irrefutable. Why didn’t the victims, or whoever organized them, or the mainstream media, insist that the Biden Administration release the files when the power to do so was entirely within its grasp? Nobody thought of it? The Democrats were fabricating ways to “Get Trump” and had been since 2015; everyone knew he had once been pals with Epstein; and the scandal was 20 years old. The Epstein revival only became a thing when the Axis of Unethical Conduct became desperate in its efforts to slow down Trump 2.0 as his administration began dismantling the Obama-Biden nascent totalitarian state. Naturally, Axis media was all in. Naturally, publicity hound Marjorie Taylor Greene, who comprehends neither law nor logic, decided to use it to get cheap clicks. Maybe she really thinks a rehash of the evil deeds of a man who has been dead for six years is a good use of her time; who knows? She’s an idiot.
Ethics Alarms 