From The Post:
Ghislaine Maxwell, a longtime confidante of sex offender financier Jeffrey Epstein, has been arrested in New Hampshire on federal charges related to the Epstein case, officials said.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are expected to announce charges in the case later Thursday. Maxwell has been under investigation for months as a possible accomplice to Epstein’s alleged long history of sexual abuse of underage girls.
Isn’t that the same federal office AG Barr recently tried to annex for the Trump Organization? I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.
Here’s hoping the victims get justice.
Emma from FL
Well, thank God for small blessings.
Ruckus
Justice?
It’s going to take more than this one man being tried and convicted. There is a problem with a system that allows this to happen. It’s not the system on it’s face, but deep down it is. The system has protected the people with money and no morals until they act so egregious and get caught, and then it takes years and lots of money to convict and punish them. Minorities, black men especially, get street “justice” for one reason, racism, on a regular basis, by the police, while these jokers are running free, living large, assaulting women and walking away, often protected by the very system that is supposed to stop them.
patrick II
I sincerely hope she’s not “suicidal”.
Gabe
I’m sure that she will also mysteriously commit suicide somewhere where the camera’s can’t see while the guard takes a nap.
Gin & Tonic
@Ruckus: She’s a woman.
Brachiator
Lots of inky in that co-inky dinky.
I wonder if they will have Maxwell in tight security or a “suicide watch.”
Her late father, media mogul Robert Maxwell, had lots of friends in high places, and a life which consisted of some great deeds and some significant fraud.
japa21
@patrick II:
@Gabe:
And if that happens it will be because the Clinton’s did her in. That has been the consistent drumbeat on the right, that Clinton (either one, or maybe Chelsea) had Epstein killed to keep him silent about Bill’s involvement.
JPL
Could this be why Berman didn’t step aside until he was given assurances that his assistant would take over?
MattF
I’ll generally reject conspiracy theories out of hand… but persistent rumors that abuse and trafficking of underage girls are common among the ‘elite’ are ones to pay attention to, IMO. We shall see, perhaps.
germy
I’m surprised. I really thought she would flee somewhere far out of the reach of authorities.
germy
germy
Brachiator
@japa21:
Curiously, the media has not really looked into Trump’s friendship with Epstein. The supposed links to Clinton are more a distraction than anything else.
Trump knew a lot about Epstein. From a New York Magazine interview.
Trump should be hauled into court and forced to testify about how much he knew.
MattF
@Brachiator: Yeah, Trump knew all about it. And I’d assume the KGB does too.
germy
Interesting similarities between Maxwell’s father and #45:
germy
Sasha
Barr: Hey, Max. You don’t want to get “Epsteined”, you implicate Biden.
Aleta
Feeling a bit of relief for this small but concrete announcement.
Unfounded guess: she’ll get bail. And her lawyers have been working on her defense for some time by now.
Why wasn’t she living outside the US? No $ left and no safe place to go? Does she have disclosures to bargain with? Was there bargaining before the arrest? Has she been questioned before / had to turn over her passport?
All too murky.
debbie
This is long overdue.
germy
Elizabelle
@Sasha: That’s ridiculous.
====
I am more troubled by the Supremes taking the Mueller disclosures off the map. If ever a case deserved expediting, it is that one. Shame on them
ETA: And I think Gorsuch and Kavanaugh should be forced to recuse. They benefited from Trump’s actions. They are compromised.
japa21
@Brachiator: Their fall back is that Trump had him kicked out of Mar-A-Lago when he tried to come on to the daughter of an even more important guest. They conveniently ignore how he would walk into the dressing rooms of his beauty contest contestants, many of whom where young teens.
germy
@japa21:
He violated an important rule that day. The rule was to restrict his crimes to the daughters of unimportant people. He crossed a serious line.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@japa21:
I’ll add this – the rules of the Miss Teen USA set the age range as 13-18.
He, as an adult, was walking into the dressing room where underage girls were changing so that he could ogle them.
That’s wrong, any way you shake it. I only messed around with underaged girls when I was their same age – once I turned 18, I assiduously kept distance from anybody younger than 18. It isn’t that difficult, unless you’re a creep.
Kay
They’re such trash, the Trump hires. It’s not the most important thing about that administration but it is the most consistent – LOW quality hires. To a man or woman just the bottom 10% of any random group of 100.
laura
@japa21: in 1999, Roadie brother the younger was tour manager and guardian ad litem for a major pop star. She was part of the entertainment for a miss world or miss universe pageant trump staged in glamorous Branson MO. Pop star is in a trailer changing into stage attire and Roadie brother is outside guarding the door. Trump and 2 moes walk up and a moe says that Mr. Trump needs to go inside. Roadie brother calls out trump to his face about how he has no business pestering a child and that if they didn’t walk away he’ll call the real cops and have them arrested. They all skulked away. Trump is in fact a child sex pest.
The Moar You Know
@germy: She won’t live to see the end of this month. Goddamn security cameras, you know how unreliable they are.
Chris Johnson
@germy: I saw that tweet, too.
If Trump is President due to extensive Russian attacks on the United States, it’s not because they think he’s so nifty: he’s not. It’s to damage us.
If Russians killed Epstein, it’s to scare the others and protect their guy for the time being, but again it’s not because they LIKE Trump, it’s because having him there damages us.
If they kill Maxwell it’s also to protect the structure they’ve built. BUT… if Trump has established that he can no longer do what they need him to do, if instead it’s time for Russia to throw him under the bus because that will do more damage to us than keeping him around (there’s a calculation of how long they can keep the bullshit going: for instance Pelosi clearly knows everything, Hillary knew far too much, there’s a list of other folks who have been kneecapped because they are of no use to Russia)…
If it’s time for Trump to go, Maxwell is more likely to be ‘welcomed back to Russia as a secret hero’ than Trump could ever be. It looks like she has played her role this entire time and is now in a position to SERIOUSLY fuck Trump up, plunging the USA into real chaos.
Chaos is the purpose, not protection of Trump. This is really important. It was never about ‘making the USA great and strong’, ever. It was always about tearing us apart, and Putin doesn’t need a US strongman. He needs as much damage as possible, and then to get out without getting nuked, or without personally getting hurt by getting nuked (he’d probably like Russia getting first-struck by the USA because it would serve a ‘rogue USA’ narrative that’s become more and more authentic as Trump undermines and destabilizes the government)
Kay
@germy:
Lawyers have an independent and personal duty to do their jobs apart from the boss’s orders to cover things up. I’d like so see some individual professional ramifications for the prosecutors who went along with the Acosta’s sleazy deal. It stunk to high heaven and they knew it. We can’t hold a lot of these people accountable but we can hold lawyers accountable.
How, exactly, was this person allowed to commit crimes with impunity for 20 years?
Another Scott
@laura:
Because of course he was.
And, naturally, Barr wanted the case to go away.
Cheers,
Scott.
The Moar You Know
@Kay: I don’t want to get too much into my work environment but I see the results of low-quality hiring every day. Your sayings about them are kind of a lodestar in my life – don’t hire shitty people and you won’t get shitty results.
jonas
I had just read the other day that she was holed up in a fancy Paris apartment. How the hell did she end up in New Hampshire? And what was she thinking setting foot in the US ever again?
MazeDancer
How is Maxwell going to stay alive long enough to talk?
And what if Barr sought the AG job and has been supporting Trump so he could be in charge during Epstein/Maxwell time?
To protect his father.
Because Dad Barr hiring unqualified Epstein at prep school was so very weird.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
A yes, Epsteins’ lovely deal with Alex Acosta, in exchange(apparently) for information on securities fraud by Bear Stearns, they let him pretty much walk on charges of procuring and raping children. Because money or protecting powerful men matters more that kids apparently.
“The victims didn’t learn about the sentencing until after it happened, and most were still unaware that the deal effectively shut down the FBI probe into Epstein’s crimes.”
“One of the most striking elements of the agreement was that it protected four of Epstein’s accomplices from facing federal prosecution and granted immunity to “any potential co-conspirators,” according to the Herald.”
Acosta worked with Jeffrey Epstein on sweetheart deal
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@germy: Oh wait, the Epstien was molesting rich people’s daughters, that would explain why they had him first acquitted and then killed. The family of these girls don’t want it coming out because that would make these girls sluty-slut-sluts who were asking for it.
The irony being that with homosexuality and drug use socially acceptable, molesting the kids of the rich is the only vice the rich have left to lord it over us peasants.
Jinchi
And he was very explicit in describing this as one of the perks of the job.
Ohio Mom
Sometimes I think we are mere extras in some sort of spy thriller — this story is about a group of celebrity jet-setters and their rarified, hedonistic, completely criminal lifestyle. Add in various plot twists, such as Putin using Trump for his own nefarious purposes, and it makes for the kind of movie I skip. Except this time I am forced into watching.
Cheryl Rofer
Haha, Betty Cracker! Just before I came over here I deposited on Twitter the same speculation about Barr.
Betty Cracker
@laura: Completely unsurprised. Kudos to Roadie Bro for stopping the perverts from invading her trailer.
I hope that grotesque 1990s NBC video of Trump and Epstein (with Maxwell in the background) ogling cheerleaders and Trump slapping his gross, tiny meathooks on them makes the rounds again. It circulated widely on social media after Epstein’s death but, like all other revolting revelations of Trump’s lack of character, just went by the boards. Someone should do an ad buy and ensure everyone in America sees it. No ad copy needed. Just show the repulsive shit-stain in his natural element. Paging Mr. Bloomberg…
jonas
@Chris Johnson: Let’s also not forget, Ghislane is the daughter of Robert Maxwell, the late Czech/British media tycoon who mysteriously drowned in 1991 and was widely reputed to have had ties to both Russian and Israeli intelligence.
Mart
Find it amusing that both Epstein and the D.C. Madam both mysteriously died shortly after imprisonment. Maybe amusing is the wrong word
Betty Cracker
@MazeDancer: I think the Father Barr hiring of Epstein was debunked. Not that it still isn’t weird that an unqualified pervert was hired to teach math at a ritzy prep school, but from what I understand, the elder Barr had departed that job some months before Epstein came on board.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
Part of the reason she was picked up in New Hampshire is that she lives in Bedford part-time:
“Maxwell, 57, reportedly lived at Sharksmouth Estate in Manchester-by-the-Sea with Scott Borgerson, chief executive of CargoMetrics Technologies and an ocean conservation activist, after some of Epstein’s victims accused her of having a role in their abuse.”
FBI arrests Ghislaine Maxwell in Bedford
cmorenc
@japa21:
Bill Clinton had no need of the likes of Jeffrey Epstein to secure hook-ups with women. However much you may dislike Bill Clinton’s seductive demeanor toward women-not-his-wife, at worst Clinton was a pig, not a monster or molester.
Sasha
@Elizabelle:
Of course it’s ridiculous, but the entirety of the last 4 years has been ridiculous.
If there’s one thing that the Trump presidency has taught me, it is that there no thing so absurd or ridiculous that it is not possible to actually happen.
(That said, I’m not actually expecting that kind of deal to be made by Barr, but I will be less than shocked to hear the usual suspects attempt to tie Maxwell/Epstein to Biden, especially since that’s exactly the kind of QAnon crazy that the base craves.)
RepubAnon
@japa21: The Clinton’s assassin of choice is Socks, the Clinton’s cat. See, they buried it in the “Pet Semitary” from Steven King’s historical account, and it came back as a Devil ninja cat. It lives in the secret sub-basement below the tunnels in Central Park where the mole children are kept, and …
(/snark)
(would even Q-Anon believers be silly enough to buy this? Alas, probably)
Jinchi
I forgot about that. Man is anyone in this administration not tied to Epstein?
Frankensteinbeck
Epstein committing suicide was very, very plausible. Narcissists do that when they’re looking at life in jail. Imagine Trump, a whiny shit when living in luxury, living in a prison cell. Yeah, delightful image, but a ‘nothing to live for’ from his perspective, and narcissists are exactly centered enough on their own emotions to commit suicide. Nothing is more important than that they’re not happy, so NUH UH, they’re taking their ball (life) and going home. Plus, Epstein had already tried and failed once, and made not a peep suggesting he didn’t do it of his own free will.
Maxwell is an entirely other kettle of fish. If she dies, suicide is not a plausible explanation.
debbie
@jonas:
Russia and Israel had nothing to do with it.
Maxwell drowned himself because he was about to be found out that he had stolen the pension funds of his British companies to buy Macmillan Publishing in NYC so he could be more Rupert than Murdoch himself.
Ken
How fortunate that we have the recent district court opinion that the government is free to set aside such agreements. Admittedly that was a case where they were declining to prosecute, and this would be the opposite, so perhaps it will need to go to court again.
Ken
Frankly, I thought you were quoting from one of their websites. Or perhaps an RNC anti-Biden ad; we’re rapidly getting to the point where there’s no daylight between them.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
My working theory is that Maxwell has a serious dark freak side that includes rape and seduction of really young women. Likelihood is high that she suffered some serious sexual abuse at a very young age, which stunted her own emotional/sexual maturity at that point.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: No, Epstein targeted at-risk, disadvantaged and abused girls. He befriended and groomed them. It’s a common story and it’s why it is so hard to stop these people. By the time a kid realizes what has been done they have no one to turn to for help and are sometimes complicit in helping procure fresh victims.
“Many were from “disadvantaged families, single-parent homes or foster care,” she wrote, with several girls just “one step away from homelessness.” Some girls had endured parents’ suicides, abusive fathers and abused mothers, she added.”
How Jeffrey Epstein targeted at risk girls
Cheryl Rofer
That was fast!
Kay
@The Moar You Know:
What I have learned in hiring people is truly bad hires (as opposed to mediocre or middling) don’t get better, they only get worse, so just eating the error immediately is the only way to go.
We knew in the first six weeks Trump was a bad hire. They don’t get better, only worse. Always worse.
Trump is much worse now than he was at the start. Literally every month he has gotten worse. That won’t change.
Kay
@The Moar You Know:
I was smiling because someone (NYT?) did a look back at some regretful Trump voters and people are really quite generous! They kept thinking he would grow into the job. Nope.
The rest are just people who never cut their losses. You know them too- the double downers.
dnfree
@The Moar You Know: I once had a job interview where they asked me what was the most important thing I considered in taking a new job. I said it was the quality of my new co-workers. The interviewer was surprised and said he’d never heard that answer. But if you’ve worked a number of places, you know what a difference that makes.
Betty Cracker
@Cheryl Rofer: So gross. Obviously most Americans (including way too many women) don’t give a shit about women, or Trump wouldn’t be POTUS right now. But how is humping the flag not worse than burning it? Trump should be jailed and/or fined for desecrating that flag. I mean, if we’re going to fetishize a piece of cloth, let’s at least be consistent!
SiubhanDuinne
N/M
PIGL
@Brachiator: Without prejudice to the actual subject matter, It’s interesting to notice that these sentences of trumps are fully coherent, even verging on well spoken. This puts his mental decline into Sharpie relief.
Feathers
Actually, if you are looking to hide out from the rich and powerful, New Hampshire is probably a pretty good place to go. (says the Masshole)
Agreed on we need to get to the bottom of why Barr tried to kneecap the SDNY. How and why QAnon started is another interesting question.
Wish we had a LeCarre for the internal US skullduggery. Alan Drury was a good source for the Cold War era stuff. Not the details, but for understanding the mindset and the lay of the land. Maybe it’s just gotten too complicated for fiction.
Betty Cracker
@dnfree: Did you get the job?
Kay
We have the first big quarantine out of a court here. “He/she is out on quarantine” is something we are all going to have to get used to. The lawyers are not court employees so they’re quarantining voluntarily, but I imagine that won’t always be the case. Not everyone is going to go along with that. The court is still open for business, because it has to be.
Such strange times.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kay:
I mean, the ignorant fuck has gone through 70-some odd years of existence on this spinning rock without learning to DO anything.
He’s never changed a flat, unclogged a toilet or fixed an electrical outlet. I doubt that he’s ever actually flipped switched on a breaker box, and he for sure has never started a chainsaw or so much as filled the gas tank on a push mower.
For all his alleged golf prowess, he only plays his own courses – he never challenges himself by playing elsewhere, and everybody who’s played with him says he cheats on his card.
He doesn’t understand shit about leadership, governance, finance or budgeting. All he apparently has been conditioned to do is make grandiose promises which he underdelivers on, then whines about how it isn’t his fault.
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
It is plausible that Epstein committed suicide, but the whole situation still stinks. He had tried committing suicide before, but they didn’t keep him on a suicide watch. The very best possible interpretation is complete incompetence on the part of his jailers, but I think it’s far more likely that they were happy to let him save everyone a load of trouble by killing himself.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Feathers:
Drury would have been a Never-Trumper. Shit, we’re practically living the plot of Come Nineveh, Come Tyre.
dnfree
@Betty Cracker: I think we agreed it wasn’t what I was looking for. Sometimes headhunters are way off the mark, or they were in the 1980s when this happened.
Another headhunter story from the 1980s: I got a call at home from a man who asked me right away, “ Is your husband a programmer?” Puzzled, I said no, and he hesitated a moment and said, “Well, do you have a son who’s a programmer?” I finally figured out why he was calling, and told him that actually I was the programmer, and that blew a gasket somewhere in his brain. Whatever opportunity he was pushing, I didn’t pursue.
Kay
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
There was a piece that made the rounds during the election. A writer was in one of the common areas of a Trump property and he noticed how crappy all the work was. Expensive materials, like marble flooring, but cut rough and just jammed into place with potted plants covering gaps and shit. There was no one in the common area because it was sited wrong and was in the dark all day. It was like they checked the box “luxury building, common area, done”
I knew his whole presidency would be like that.
Jared’s Covid testing program is 15 drugstores.
hueyplong
I have lost all faith in anything good coming from any actions by law enforcement at any level, at least through 1.20.21. From the rotten, criminal, treasonous top to the racist, violence-first bottom of the system.
Over many years, Maxwell has established that she’s not going to talk in a way we care about if walking around free. Now that she’s incarcerated, how can you have faith that good will come of it? Either she’ll be pressured to talk in a way that helps Trump or we’ll read of her suicide in custody, with no resolution of how that could have come to pass.
Living for Nov 3, regardless of the obstacles and dangers set up between my house and the local NC voting booth.
Martin
I have to think she was still in the US because she believed she was safe. I wonder why she would think that? I wouldn’t have thought that.
Kay
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
The nastiness of the whole family is, I think, unusual. One of the awful sons was posting joke memes yesterday about Biden’s son’s funeral, including photos of the grandchildren who had just lost their father. The little boy looks about 10 years old.
I think Mary Trump is going to tell us a lot about that family. It must have been really bad to produce those people. They’re sure desperate to gag her. Tell us, Mary. Speak.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
The worst part about a bad hire is that they’re afraid of letting any of their own reports be better than they are. They’ll only make bad hires themselves, and they’ll drive away any competent subordinates they inherit.
Frankensteinbeck
@Roger Moore:
I think ‘when he turned suicidal people in authority were happy to let him succeed’ is a very likely explanation. It’s different from murdering him and pretending that’s suicide, however, particularly in terms of what might happen to Maxwell. I guess we’ll see!
Kay
The victims of the Florida Epstein crimes were outraged that they charged him with prostitution, because that means, of course, that they are prostitutes. That’s why Acosta and his sleazy team hid the deal from them. They knew the deal smeared 15 year old girls. It really doesn’t get any lower than that. Epstein not only skated on serious charges, he demanded a deal that smeared the victims. And his fawning lackeys in the DOJ met his demands. Not a spine among them.
Martin
Just an observation. If our suspicions are that Barr was trying to protect Trump by removing Berman to prevent this from happening, then the SDNY must know they need to be careful about where she’s held, how the DOJ interacts with this case and so on.
By all accounts the SDNY is filled with extremely smart and shrewd people. They wouldn’t have gone this far if they didn’t have a plan.
JPL
@Martin: According to twitter the case is being handled by the public corruption unit, not the sex trafficking unit. I assume they are both.
Isn’t it possible that her attorney was already in touch with the SDNY
Martin
@hueyplong:
I think this is a big part of why this moment has been so big. If you have a general amount of faith in law enforcement, then its easy to believe the police. When federal law enforcement proves it can be this easily corrupted, its a lot harder to give the guy walking a beat the benefit of the doubt. You just assume that there is no justice at any level.
It’s going to take a lot of work to repair this.
Roger Moore
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Shorter: Trump is the epitome of rich white male privilege.
MattF
@Kay: I just pre-ordered Mary Trump’s book. She’s going to need the money.
Martin
@JPL: Sure, it’s a big enough case to go down like that, but usually in that case like that the person surrenders. She’d simply report to the SDNY.
Maybe they were negotiating that, saw what happened with the Flynn case, saw what happened with Berman, and decided they couldn’t afford to let Barr intervene any more and pulled the trigger. I could see that too.
But the public corruption unit is a little bit revealing…
SiubhanDuinne
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
It’s funny, I was just thinking a few days ago that it might be interesting/informative to reread the Drury series that started with Advise and Consent, and ended with the two alternative outcomes (Come Ninevah, Come Tyre and The Promise of Joy). I read them all, avidly, as they were published, but haven’t returned to them in 45-50 years. Wonder how they’ll hold up — and if there’s any prescience.
susanna
I’m thinking some powerful people are behind most of the now-regular drip-drip-drip of torture D.T. is receiving. Excluding the Covid virus.
And taking headlines away from him.
Looking forward to more.
SiubhanDuinne
@MattF:
I pre-ordered it the day it was listed, and can hardly wait ‘til the end of the month!
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
One intermediate possibility worth considering is that he was encouraged to commit suicide by some combination of threats about how bad prison would be and promises not to look into things he didn’t want looked into if he made things easier on his co-conspirators.
jonas
If they weren’t trash, or incompetent, or incompetent trash, they wouldn’t be in Trump’s orbit to begin with. That’s who he has to work with.
SiubhanDuinne
@Kay:
It’s worse than that. TrumpFailson (Uday or Qusay, who can tell?) was very strongly implying that Biden was molesting the girl. Pretending that he just inserted himself in some rando family and began kissing the little girl and the boy was watching in horror. These people aren’t just deplorable, they’re despicable.
MattF
@SiubhanDuinne: Just bear in mind that any accusation from a Trump is a tell about their own fears and acts. They’re awful people, but beyond awful, they’re guilty.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: Think of this way Epistien starts with runway kids, but any old moral degenerate can do that, works his way up to kids of poor families, but that hardly lets Epistien stand out among his douch bag friends as King of the Twatwaffels, so Epistien goes for the gold and starts abusing rich kid. Plus the added bonus is Epistien can lord it over the parents how much power he has since it’s very likely these rich kid’s fathers can’t speak up because Epistien has been supplying the father with teenage kids too.
jonas
@Kay: I remember too an interview with a guy who had been on the first season of The Apprentice, who had previously worked in corporate law and/or finance or something and knew something about how the billionaire-class in Manhattan actually lived. He recalled being in Trump’s executive suite in Trump Tower at some point during the show and noticing just how shoddy and worn everything was. Peeling paint, cheap fixtures, lame art, carpet stains. Trump of course was going on and on about how he so enjoyed the finer things in life, yada yada. It was then he realized that Trump was, of course, a total fraud.
MattF
@jonas: Keeping marble-ish and gold-ish surfaces from looking shabby is labor-intensive and expensive. Not something Trump would do.
Uncle Cosmo
@SiubhanDuinne: There is a really vile scene right at the end of Come Nineveh, Come Tyre that I have been meaning to post here, but I only have access to the book through the library. Now that the Enoch Pratt is doing curbside pickup, I probably should put in for it – & copy the damn passage before I have to turn it back in!
SiubhanDuinne
@jonas: Five or so years ago, around the time that Trump came down the escalator, I read an article and a follow-up on Trump Tower. Lots and lots of health and safety violations. Bags of rotting garbage shoved out and left to fester on a balcony. Restroom and kitchen horrors. I’ve looked for it since and haven’t been successful, but it was destroying.
Another Scott
@Martin: The simplest explanation is that she has dirt on Trump and figures Barr wouldn’t be stupid enough to let her go to trial.
True? No idea. Maybe we’ll find out.
Cheers,
Scott.
JPL
@Martin: Trump had that so called modeling agency and I wonder if there is a connection.
SiubhanDuinne
@Uncle Cosmo: Wish you would!
Betty Cracker
I’m very much looking forward to Mary Trump’s book too. Poor thing. According to an article I read, she was a lit major before she got her PhD in psychology. She used “Compson” as an alias, taking the surname of thoroughly fucked-up family in “The Sound and the Fury” and other Faulkner novels.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
Maybe.
Ladyraxterinok
@laura:
Branson and nearby gigantic amusement park Siver Dollar City is the center of family-friendly vacations for Evangelicals, other conservative christians.
JimBaker’s minsistry is close by. There he has his broadcast studio, auditorim for his videos, stores, cabins and condos to rent or buy
Geminid
I hope the anti-trump forces run some ads featuring women whom trump intruded on in beauty pageant dressing rooms, and contractors who were stiffed by him. I know I’ve seen video testimony by both. The stories are not that old. I had satellite tv in 2016, and I saw many ads showing him mocking the disabled reporter. But you had to know the backstory on that one to understand the cruelty, and I’m not sure that many people did. The beauty pageant and contractor stories require no context, but as far as I know were not pushed in 2016. Maybe that material will be considered out of date, but I think there are there are a lot of people these stories would still speak to, especially parents and small business owners.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I’m kind of interested in her too. One of the never Trumpers said “I want a President who doesn’t have to sue family members to shut them up”.
Roger Moore
@MattF:
This is a big part of the point. Having fancy stuff like that is not just about your ability to afford marble and gold leaf; it’s about your ability to hire the servants needed to keep it in good condition.
Rand Careaga
@SiubhanDuinne: Advise and Consent, which I revisited the other year, holds up pretty well after six decades. Each subsequent book in the series, however, was inferior to its predecessor, and in the latter volumes, Drury was practically fizzing with rabies (as Martin Amis once memorably put it in another context).
Ken
In fairness, it might simply mean that his vision had begun failing, and as we know his vanity prevents him from wearing the eyeglasses he needs. Think of it as the reverse of when we switched to HDTV, and every TV newsroom had to be remodeled because every detail of the crappy set was suddenly visible to the viewers.
Kay
@SiubhanDuinne:
I wonder if that boomerangs with Biden, though. He’s a genial guy but if there’s one thing that comes clear about him, it’s that he is devoted to his family. I think he probably gets pretty inspired to beat the Trumps with the attacks on his grandchild.
greenergood
@germy: Mungo Jerry, ‘In the Summertime’: ‘If her daddy’s rich, take her out for a meal; if her daddy’s poor, you can do what you feel’
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
I agree with every part of your comment except this. From the (admittedly) meagre information that’s available about her, she sounds smart, educated, and insightful. She’s gone through some terrible times, no doubt, but she’s not a victim. At least, that’s my reading, subject, as always, to new information.
Poe Larity
@RepubAnon: Socks uses a Black Quadcopter. It’s much better than Hillary’s Black Helicopters.
Martin
@JPL: Uh.
Wonder why he chose that moment to drop in on them?
This all sounds very familiar if you’ve watched any of the documentaries on Epstein.
SiubhanDuinne
@Rand Careaga:
Hahahahaha. If I decide to do The Great Reread, I’ll bear that in mind. I do agree that the books got progressively worse and less plausible. But then you could say that about any number of fictional and cinematic series.
burnspbesq
@germy:
Her assumption—which was not unreasonable under the circumstances—was probably that “somebody” would “take care of it” before the heat got too intense. That it didn’t turn out that way is evidence of a small, slow change for the better.
burnspbesq
@germy:
Which got us Eugene Scalia as SecLab. You sure that’s a net positive?
Uncle Cosmo
@SiubhanDuinne: Well, it’s on hold for pickup now with a few other unrelated tomes. Haven’t done “sidewalk service” before so we’ll see how it works. At best, middle of next week.
SiubhanDuinne
@Kay:
Oh yes, he is fierce about his family. If Trump (and/or his surrogates) goes after Biden’s wife, kids, or grandkids, there will be hell to pay.
Martin
@Ken: No, Trump Tower was gross. Casinos were a good fit for Trump because they were cheap as shit but had this gilded veneer (and I assume this is still the case with casinos in general). I’m a good finish carpenter as an extension of my hobby and work on my homes over the years, and there are pretty easy ways to tell if a place is cheap or not. Shitty craftsmanship painted gold, that is unmistakable to anyone who gives a damn. You learn to look at the stuff that isn’t screaming for your attention and you can tell if its garbage or not. And it was like this 30 years ago, and everything was garbage. I remember someone coming to visit and wanting to go to Trump Tower and the whole time they’re oohing and aahing over the glitz, and I’m like, ‘this place is trashy as shit – it’s literally falling apart’. The restaurant looks fancy, but it’s terrible. Not even in the ‘if McDonalds served filet mignon’ way. Honestly, they wouldn’t oversell it as badly as Trump did.
Martin
@burnspbesq: I’ll take dumb and evil over smart and evil every day of the week.
Uncle Cosmo
@Rand Careaga: You’ve got to be a pretty sick old mutt to type out a book where the big events are the Soviets nuking the crap out of the ChiComs & the latter returning the favor by invading the USSR in the mother of all human wave attacks – and then title it The Promise Of Joy. =8^O (Spoiler alert: The US intervenes on the side of the Rooskies – can’t have them Asiatic hordes running loose, now, can we?)
Come Nineveh, Come Tyre is the opposite number, in which the USA is [spoiler alert] essentially suborned from within by traitors & turned into a puppet state of the Soviet Union.
What probably has Mr Dreary (for so he became in those late tomes) spinning furiously in his grave is that his beloved Republic now faces the dire prospect of subservience to the Russians due to the treason of a neofascist six-megaparsecs-starboard-of-Genghis-Khan crowd, & the only hope for rescuing it lies with the “pinkos” and “colored folks” he so thoroughly despised.
Ken
A positive spin would be that we now know he’s the type of person who would work for Trump, which is as close as we’ll get to a confession of corruption.
Uncle Cosmo
Advise and Consent was highly praised as “the quintessential Washington novel,” rife with the machinations of Congress and the White House, based on Drury’s observations as a reporter whose beat was the Senate from 1943 to 1945. After that a variety of kneejerk antiCommunism grabbed the controls & the sequels descended into the depths.
Uncle Cosmo
Maybe the Trumpistas figure their only real hope is to piss Uncle Joe off so badly that he bares his fangs & looks every bit as scary to the electorate as Orangecandyass. Not gonna happen.
Brachiator
@SiubhanDuinne:
The sad thing is that this is what Trump is trying to do to America.
Gravenstone
@MazeDancer: I’m going to suggest that protecting his father’s reputations is pretty far down on the list of priorities for Barr. He’s there to do for Donnie what he did for Poppy Bush, direct the burial of sundry and assorted skeletons that might disrupt the continued Republican rapine and pillaging of the United States.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@SiubhanDuinne:
He had some really dumb caricatures (Fred Van Ackerman as a bug-eyed commie senator from Wyoming not being the least of them), but the level of Russian intrusion into American life hits both of the alternate endings pretty well.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@JPL: Did some actor refer to Trump Modeling as a one stop dating service?
...now I try to be amused
@Roger Moore:
As they say, first-rate managers hire first-rate people; second-rate managers hire third-rate people.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@burnspbesq: I will not be convinced about that until she is convicted and actually does real time in an actual prison for any of this.
greenergood
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: Then she was very stupid to think she could hide out in a mansion in the US and escape detection. If the IC wants you, they’ll find you. Her greatest achievement in the next year or so will be to stay alive, cause there’s a tremendous number of rich/powerful/asshole men who will be happy to see her dead. No love for her, but pissed off at all these bastards who will get away with what they’ve done if they manage to bump her off.
The Moar You Know
@Martin: 2014 my wife and I went to Vegas and she got us a room at Trump tower there. I’m still a guitar builder in my spare time, and know good workmanship. Everything above the fourth floor was stunning. Really nice in a way I did not expect.
Was talking to the cabbie who took us back – he’d asked about what we thought of the place. I told him based on Trump’s record (remember-no political involvement yet!) I was floored at how nice the place was. He laughed. Said Trump didn’t own it anymore and hadn’t for a few years, ever since the state of Nevada had refused to give him a gambling license he was out of there. Said they paid for the use of the name but that was it.
In retrospect I’m not sure I believe that and this is why…
I mentioned the fourth floor and above for a reason. You need a guest key to get there. The lobby level was packed, every day, with a crapload (more than a hundred) of Russian youngsters. Suits, dresses. WAY overdressed for Vegas. They were there in the morning when I went for coffee and they were there when we came back from gambling and drinking late at night. They spoke minimal to no English. Just sitting around. Don’t know what they were doing there or where they were staying. They weren’t being harassed by staff, so I assume them being there was OK.
So…what the fuck were bunch of young Russians doing, living out of the lobby of Trump Tower in Vegas in 2014? I’d sure like to know that.
Room was seriously nice, though.
Ella in New Mexico
@Martin:
This is gonna get really, really ugly. I also think we all need to be prepared to see people from “our side” scooped up in this mess.
If Barr lets it proceed, that is.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Uncle Cosmo:
Oddly, I never got the feeling that Drury was a true race hater. His treatment of Cullee Hamilton was decent, and LeGage Shelby does a hero’s end.
Gotta dispute your memory a bit – my recollection is that Orrin Knox intervened against both at the end after the Russians completely fell apart due to grotesque stupidity.
Remember how Drury portrays the successor Chinese government?
Feathers
@Uncle Cosmo: I read Advise and Consent in the 80s, the summer I worked on Capitol Hill. Very fond memories. Read none of the followups because college. Curious about them now, they are $4.99 each on Kindle, but think I may wait for the libraries to reopen.
Martin
@Ella in New Mexico: I could care less if any Dems go down. Good riddance. Clear the decks, make it right, make sure it can’t repeat.
Not sure Barr could stop this one. So much of it has been documented on TV recently that nobody doubts the accusations any more. Epsteins threats kept people quiet and he can’t threaten them any more. And like we’re seeing in other communities where stories are finally being told, we have scarier things to worry about now. Hoffenberg is out of prison and talking. Les Wexner is slowly opening up. Victims are talking. It’s clear that at least some parts of the federal machinery feel emboldened to defy Trump. CDC is starting to work again. Someone is dunking on Trump daily on this Russian bounty thing. Barr failed in his bid to install his own guy in SDNY. Congress is looking.
I think this one is out of control.
MoxieM
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: I actually knew Scott Borgerson in a former life (of mine). He was the kind of guy who ogled the nurses in the Labor & Delivery suite while his wife was busy giving birth (and then made a report back at the office.) No, really, I’m not kidding. More gross dirt, but it’s gross, and dirty. I hope this doesn’t violate blog rules. But like company keeps like, I guess.
columbusqueen
@Martin: Wexner’s not opening up as much as blowing smoke to cover his own complict ass.
Another Scott
@Ella in New Mexico:
Hmmm…
Cheers,
Scott.