Subject: Arsonist sets fire to himself
Trump, who hasn’t been accused of any crimes in connection with Epstein, once made political hay stoking conspiracy theories about Epstein’s relationships with elites. He knitted that tale into a broader narrative about institutional malfeasance smothering average Americans, and it may not have occurred to him that some of the traps he set would eventually snap back.

The Trump who emerges from this recent round of Epstein emails is consistent with the Trump that I and other writers have encountered over the years. But what’s most significant about the Epstein episode transcends questions about Trump’s character alone. What remains to be discovered and delineated is whether he secured sexual liaisons through Epstein, or whether the same president who has been busily enriching himself from the Oval Office also once made use of some of Epstein’s murkier financial services.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, has thus far kept a lid on a deeper exploration of Trump and Epstein’s ties. The Justice Department, presided over by Trump loyalists, is sitting on its hands. So an information vacuum has emerged, and it’s populated with conjecture.

Some of that theorizing is built upon statements from Epstein enablers like Ghislaine Maxwell, now imprisoned and desperate to extricate herself (while being the beneficiary of a curious White House desire to make sure she’s relatively well looked after). The cast of unreliable narrators also includes social media sensationalists and propagandists such as Tucker Carlson, Laura Loomer, Alex Jones, Michael Flynn and Jack Posobiec.

Trump himself reigns supreme over this entire group as the Unreliable-Narrator-in-Chief. To that end, the White House has opted for misdirection. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing that the fresh Epstein email disclosures “prove absolutely nothing other than President Trump did nothing wrong.”

There may be some alternate universe in which that claim is accurate, but in the current reality confronting the Trump administration, the email disclosure has resurrected speculation that Trump and Epstein’s intimacy may have harbored a very dark side.

——Timothy O'Brien, Bloomberg

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