The Jeffrey Epstein Case Is Far Bigger Than Jeffrey Epstein

Last week President Trump took umbrage to a question about the Justice Department’s assertion that there are no Epstein tapes, there is no client list and there is nothing more to be released.  Yesterday he made some more inane comments on the subject.  The Twitterverse has been brutal towards AG Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and his #2 Dan Bongino.  Many people were saying they felt betrayed given the fact that before the election we were told that the files would be released and the criminals held to account.

The president has a point.  There is a lot going on in Washington. There are natural disasters with dozens dead across Texas.  There are continuing ICE protests across the country.  There are budgets that need to be attended to as well as rouge judges who need to be corralled and numerous conflicts outside our borders that need to be midwifed.  And all of that besides the basic blocking and tackling of running the government and trying to advance the administration’s rather ambitious agenda.  And taking the time to talk about some files from a guy who’s been dead for six years seems like it might distract from all of that.

But, you see, here’s the thing.  People want answers that seem logical, that provide rational explanations to obvious questions, that provide proof that the speculation is wrong.  This is particularly true when the people now saying there’s nothing there were the very people who promised answers, transparency and accountability would be coming when they won.  Well, they won, and we’re getting the same obfuscation.

The truth is, if this was just a matter of a senator cheating on his wife with a lobbyist for some industry he regulates, it wouldn’t really matter in the big picture. If this was some bureaucrat taking bribes to sign a service contract for some shipping company nobody would really care.  Sure, the first is an ethics question and the second is illegal, but beyond the participants themselves they aren’t very important in the grand scheme of things. 

The problem here is that this is all happening in an environment where Americans are coming to believe that no one is ever accountable for their actions.  We see city centers across the country imploding as stores and shops and hotels close because of the crime where hoodlums and thugs and drug addicts can basically take or destroy whatever they want with impunity. We see judges issue injunctions against the administration despite SCOTUS specifically ruling they can’t.  At the same time we have politicians, Antifa and activists undermining, and hindering and assaulting ICE agents who are trying to deport criminals, and the chances of them being held accountable for these crimes is almost nonexistent. Nobody seems accountable for anything.  It seems in 2025 in America it’s only the fools who actually obey the rules because everyone else seems to do whatever the hell they want. 

Now add to all of that the fact that we’ve just spent much of the last 15 years watching politicians and the politically connected do whatever the hell they wanted and never face a reckoning. Remember Lois Lerner targeting Tea Party groups? Prosecution?  Of course not.  How about Eric Holder being in Contempt of Congress?  Jail time? Nope.  Compare that to Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro.  How about Hillary wiping her computer or Hunter Biden breaking basically every law in the book and getting a pardon from his daddy. Or Lisa Page and Peter Strzok not only not getting charged, but getting millions of dollars from the Justice Department after conspiring to keep Donald Trump out of the White House? And the list goes on.  In modern America it seems as if no one is ever held accountable for their actions.

And so it is onto this backdrop the Trump administration tells us that 1) Jeffery Epstein killed himself, and 2) there was no client list and there are no videos. 

And when reporters ask about it the President gets indignant. 

The problem with that is the Epstein case no longer has much of anything to do with Jeffery Epstein, per se.  The guy’s dead and he’s not coming back. None of the crimes for which he was responsible can be undone. But Americans have heard rumors that rich and powerful men, from politicians to tech billionaires to justices to high priced lawyers and Hollywood stars were all clients of Epstein in his sex trade with minors, yet they remain free as birds. The one person who was clearly demonstrated to have a connection reportedly settled with his accuser for millions of dollars.

We were told Epstein had logs and tapes that chronicled all of it and used them to blackmail his powerful clients.  Indeed, in February AG Pam Bondi said she hoped to release a "lot of flight logs, a lot of names, a lot of information" on Epstein and said of the material "It's sitting on my desk right now to review." Then of course there’s the fact that Epstein’s “assistant” Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking of a minor as well as transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity. He himself was convicted of procuring underage prostitutes in 2008  Then the guy conveniently “committed suicide” in 2019 after being arrested on child trafficking charges, and the video of his cell was “accidentally erased” or the cameras “malfunctioned” or the video was inconclusive. His lawyers claimed that the particulars of his death were far more consistent with murder than suicide, and many Americans agreed.

And if all of that were not enough, Jeffery Epstein was once a money man for the CIA and Ghislaine Maxwell’s father was reported to be a Mossad agent and then killed by them. 

So here is where we are.  A high flying millionaire with connections to the CIA and possibly the Mossad and MI6, who owned an island in the Atlantic and who is reported to have used it as a honey trap for the rich and powerful ends up dead and suddenly the people who were telling us they were going to expose the entire thing when they were on the outside are now telling us that there’s nothing to tell now that they’re on the inside. 

The reality is the Jeffery Epstein case is far more important than Jeffery Epstein ever was. There is credible evidence that Epstein was an asset for one or more intelligence agencies who were very possibly blackmailing powerful men in government, finance and elsewhere and Americans feel like they have a right to know. There is a great deal of smoke around the Epstein case and Occam's razor suggests that it is likely to be exactly what it looks like: A honeypot operation set up by the CIA / Mossad / MI6 as a blackmail vehicle.

This case may not be as important as others on the President’s desk, but it’s a far bigger deal than I think he understands. He promised transparency and accountability.  We are getting neither and the more his administration obfuscates the less people are going to trust him on those bigger issues. Americans want to know we’re moving back towards no one being above the law.  This case exemplifies exactly that.  How the President chooses to handle it will tell us a lot. 

Follow me on X at @ImperfectUSA

Black Lives Apparently Don't Matter to Democrats Who Use Them As Cannon Fodder in Pursuit of Power

America is being destroyed from within.  The Republic is being demolished by the Swamp, the borg of pernicious politicians, entrenched, politicized bureaucrats, media elites and academics who wield environmentalism and equity as truncheons to obliterate individual freedom, economic opportunity and the rule of law.  The recent episode of hypocrisy onMartha’s Vineyard demonstrates with crystal clarity the universe the elites of the Swamp create as they make laws that apply to peasants but no to the aristocracy.

Columns documenting the machinations of the Swamp are legion, but this is not one of them.  No, this piece is specifically about the destruction of the rule of law that the those elites have unleashed on said peasants, specifically as it relates to violent crime.

This past week New Orleans reclaimed the title of America’s deadliest city after seeing murders jump 141% over the last couple of years.  In New Orleans the murder rate is a staggering 52 per 100,000 people.  That compares to the national average of 6.9, the highest it’s been in a quarter century and the 50 per 100,000 of Venezuela, the most dangerous country in the world.

If New Orleans were an outlier it would be a shame, the fact that it’s not is a tragedy:  New York, Chicago, Portland, LA, San Francisco, Philadelphia and more. Big cities and small, crime is up across the country over the last two years, in most cases, dramatically.

We’ve always had crime in America.  Such is the price of freedom.  But what we are experiencing today is something altogether different.  It’s not just crime.  America can sometimes be a dangerous place.  Everyone knows working the midnight shift at a convenience store carries more risk than working the 9 AM shift at your local library, just as common sense tells you the odds of getting into a fight in a bar on a Saturday night are far higher than they are at church on Sunday morning.   

And just to be clear, this is not Antifa thugs and BLM cultists burning down cities.  Protest, even violent protest has been part of American history since its founding and largely is event driven like Shay’s Rebellion, the Vietnam War protests, or the riots after the killing of MLK or the acquittal of the police in the Rodney King video.

No, this is something different.  It’s one thing to rage against the machine, it’s another to commit violence against citizens, particularly when they are unsuspecting innocents or compliant victims.  And this is the issue today and we see it taking place across the county, from urban jungles like New York City to Midwestern communities like Salt Lake City.

What America’s experiencing today is exponentially worse than the typical crime that America is used to, and the truth is, most of it – but far from all of it – is being perpetuated by young black men, although increasingly, by young black women as well. 

Violence is being taken not only to a new level in terms of its frequency, but in the application as well. It’s not taking place in dark corners or deserted parking lots, but rather right in the middle of regular hustle and bustle of American’s daily lives.  It’s taking place in broad daylight, in full view of video cameras – often with others videoing the carnage to share on social media.  Violent, brutal crime is taking place on main street USA, in schools, drugstores, fast food restaurants, subway platforms, high end retail stores, and of course homes. 

We see large groups of young people blitzing stores and grabbing merchandise off shelves and running out with smiles on their faces.  We see “shoplifters” methodically clear store shelves of merchandise and simply stroll out the door, unconcerned about getting stopped or arrested and often assaulting employees along the way. 

What’s more, there’s an element of violence that seems unprecedented in its scale.  Almost daily we see random innocent people on subways or on stairs or in restaurants getting shoved or kicked or punched. We see fast food workers attacked as customers come over or around counters and spark mayhem.  We see bus drivers attacked and shop owners beaten and cops spit on. Indeed we see countless instances where robbers beat or shoot victims even after they have taken whatever they were after.  We also read daily of innocents of all ages killed in the crossfire while sleeping in their beds, standing in a bar or sitting in their cars. 

There also seems to be a racial element to this new crime wave with black perpetrators targeting a disproportionate number of white or Asian victims… but make no mistake, the single largest group of victims of this crime wave are black citizens. 

The question is, why is all of this this happening?  What is it that has caused an increasing number of black Americans to believe that they can rob and beat and even kill their fellow citizens with impunity? There are no doubt countless contributing factors, from missing fathers to failing schools to social media, but those problems (at least the first two) have existed for quite some time. No, the reason for the sharp jump in violent crime and unhinged behavior on the part of large numbers of primarily young black Americans is the Democrat proposition that everything bad that happens to blacks is a consequence of racism and as such, they’re not responsible for their choices and therefore they should not be held accountable for their actions.

Ronald Reagan once said, “If you want more of something, subsidize it…” and that is exactly what the Democrats have been doing with violent crime.  While they are not yet directly paying criminals to attack their fellow citizens and rob local businesses, they are subsidizing crime nonetheless.   

On the one hand George Soros backed Democrat prosecutors from coast to coast are demonstrating their pro criminal empowerment bonafides by refusing to seek bail for most arrestees, refusing to prosecute countless misdemeanors and simultaneously undercharging countless violent crimes as said misdemeanors. While on the other hand you have Democrats effectively decriminalizing an entire swath of crimes or eliminating bail for almost every offense.  Indeed, the lunatics running Illinois have just passed a law that eliminates bail for virtually every offense below 1^st degree murder and prohibits police from arresting or removing trespassers caught in the act of burglarizing a home or business.  That means that if someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night and you call the police, if you’re lucky enough given the Democrat “Defund the police movement” that they respond while the trespasser is still there, they are literally not allowed to remove them from your home…

All of this is happening exactly when America’s cultural and political elites are telling young black Americans that the system is rigged against them, that they’re incapable of succeeding when playing by the rules, that most white people hate them and if they break the law there are no consequences to be had.  That is literally a recipe for the collapse of society. 

Today in Democrat run America, it’s only the rights of criminals that matter, never the victims… and the fact is that most of the victims of this American renaissance of violence are, in fact, black Americans, the very people Democrats pretend to care about.  Democrats have leveraged the fictions of “systemic racism” and millions of “white supremacists” running around to accumulate power, and Americans of all races are paying the price.  But this is exactly what happens when politicians pursue policies of balkanization and victimization, setting groups of Americans against one another for the purposes of gaining power.  The Democrats thrive, their grifter partners thrive and America’s citizens suffer. 

America was founded on the principle that all men were created equal in the eyes of God and in the laws of man. While the execution of those truths have been imperfect from the beginning, it has consistently improved for over 200 years, bringing Americans freedom and prosperity unmatched in human history, and that includes black Americans, who make up fully 8% of American millionaires.  Democrats, in half a generation have undone 200 years of progress and created a violent cage match between demographics in the public square, and the result has been a body blow to civil society, mayhem in cities, and blood on the streets, and most of it black.  But somehow black America continues to vote Democrat in Stalin like numbers. Perhaps they should reconsider…

Commodus, Nero and the Punk Next Door, or at the Gas Station or in Walgreens...

From Madison reading Cato and Cicero when framing the Constitution to the outsized impact both Rome and America had on the world around them, the United States has long been associated with historical Rome.  There are great similarities, and there can be much to learn. 

When most of us think of the worst emperors Roman in history we think of names like Commodus, Nero, Caligula and Elagabalus.  To a man they were vain, self centered, bloodthirsty hedonists who took what they wanted and tortured and killed many thousands of Romans and provincials. 

All emperors, including the great ones like Augustus, Trajan and Aurelian had blood on their hands to one degree or another, but most tried to maintain or grow the empire.  Commodus et. al. didn’t.  Their goal was to satiate their lusts, whether literal lust, or gluttony or sadly, bloodlust.  While there were other bad emperors, these four are among the worst.    

What makes this relevant today is the fact that all four of these “men” were spoiled, pampered, entitled sadists who were given free reign when they were still essentially children.  Commodus was the oldest at 19, while Nero was 17 and Elagabalus and Caligula were both 16. 

They were overindulged brats who never faced consequences for their behavior.  They were given virtually anything they wanted, or just as often, allowed to take what they wanted with impunity. And it was at those ripe young ages they were literally given the keys to the kingdom and unleashed on the Empire and virtually everyone in it suffered as a result.

Every day in America we see modern day Commoduses or Caligulas wreaking havoc on our streets and in our stores, restaurants, schools and more.  Instead of a single entitled Emperor, America in 2022 is being ravaged by a generation of young men – many of whom have grown up fatherless – who have been told that they can do and say anything they want and that regardless of what they do, there will be no consequences for them. 

Just as Elagabalus et al brought nothing but blood, despair and dysfunction to the Empire, these 21^st century youth are bringing blood, despair and destruction to America. A generation of Americans has grown up being given “time outs”, “participation trophies” and grades that have nothing to do with actual academic success, while at the same time they’ve been told that all inequality is due to racism or sexism or homophobia or anything other than individual choices or actions.  The consequence of this indoctrination is that far too many young Americans think they can do anything with impunity.  If they want something they take it. If they’re mad about something they protest, disrupt the lives of everyone within shouting distance and frequently riot.   They assault, rape and sometimes even murder, increasingly with impunity. 

Pat Moynihan predicted much of this 60 years ago in his “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action."  In it he “…described through pages of disquieting charts and graphs, the emergence of a “tangle of pathology,” including delinquency, joblessness, school failure, crime, and fatherlessness that characterized ghetto—or what would come to be called underclass—behavior.” 

While most of the scenes of flash mobs, carjackings, Knock Out Game punches, subway shovings and daily shootings involve black male youth, this is not a race issue.  Yes, the problem is disproportionately black, but white and Hispanic America is increasingly experiencing the same challenges of unwed mothers, school failures and the lack of responsibility that underpins much of the dysfunction.  Whether a California college student getting 6 months for rape, a Texas boy getting no jail time for killing four people in a car crash or charges being dropped against a South Carolina boy for killing someone in a boat crash, unaccountable America spans across races, wealth, and indeed the country itself.  This is nowhere better demonstrated than by the legions of rioters who participated in the “peaceful protests” of 2020 who found their charges dropped or their bails funded by the glitterati.   

These unrestrained youth highlight the existential threats to America today:  The lack of accountability and individual responsibility.  To the degree that America’s leaders have spent more than a generation telling youth they’re nothing more than products of others’ malevolent thoughts and actions and are not responsible for their own actions, they shouldn’t be surprised at the carnage we see across the country.  To the degree that single mothers and schools and increasingly DAs across the country are not holding youth accountable for their transgressions, they should not be surprised by the blood on their streets, the boarded up shops in their neighborhoods and the flight of families seeking safety and security. 

Since its beginning America has been a nation governed by the Rule of Law as opposed to the Rule of Man. Imperfect and sometimes unequal in its application, America’s Constitution has successfully guided the behavior of government (mostly) for more than two centuries and in doing so guaranteed citizens freedom and the prosperity freedom cultivates.  But that framework only works when citizens feel confident that justice and the laws are applied equally, or mostly so. When citizens begin to recognize Orwell’s “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" in their daily lives and on their streets and on their television screens, the civilization’s days are numbered.  Which is exactly what Americans are seeing today…

Nero, Elagabalus and the rest of that youthful cohort showcase exactly what happens when young men learn that accountability doesn’t apply to them.  When people aren’t held responsible for their actions, many will act accordingly, without restraints, unleashing a torrent of violence, excess and depravity that tears at the fabric of a civilized society. 

Which is exactly where America is in 2022.  If the country remains on its current path, one of coddling youth and ever increasing cries of victimhood combined with the acceptance of rampant crime, ubiquitous homelessness and public drug abuse as the price of addressing “inequality”, it will lead to an acceleration of the breakdown of civilization.  As more citizens feel like they cannot rely on government to provide security and enforce societal norms, they will increasingly take matters into their own hands. They will look for vigilantes like a Charles Bronson character to step into the gap, or more likely, many will choose to arm themselves as they increasingly feel they need to become the next Bernhard Goetz. But 2022 America is not 1994 New York… indeed it’s worse.  Thugs are bolder, crimes are more widespread, and most of all, today everyone feels vulnerable because they see videos of horrific crimes every single day, often in the parking lots of stores they frequent, at the gas stations where they fill up or in the subways they ride every day.  That’s a powder keg filled with 100 million armed Americans who are tired and frustrated and feel let down by a government that no longer cares about them.   

Unlike the citizens of the Roman Empire, who were often stuck with whichever murderous psychopath emerged from the carnage to don the purple, Americans have an opportunity to guide their own society in ways that don’t involve assassination or subterfuge or armies marching against one another. We have the ballot box. We have recall petitions.  We have school board meetings and the right to peacefully protest – or at least we used to.  But… will the political and “elite” establishment listen, or will they continue to turn a blind eye to the calls for a return to a civilized society? Blood is already spilling.  The question is, will we get less of it or more?  The ideal is less.  But if the answer is more, the question becomes, whose will it be?  And who will do the spilling? 

Representation without Taxation...

In the United States we take taxes very seriously. Indeed it’s in our blood. One of the key reasons for the American Revolution was taxation without representation. The Colonists did not like the idea of paying taxes to England without having a voice in how those funds would be levied or spent, i.e. they didn’t have representation in Parliament. In some cases they had representation in a state assembly, but the local legislature was in all cases trumped by the government in England.

Building on that initial connection between voting and taxes, in 1964 the 24th Amendment to the Constitution made it explicitly clear that no one could be barred from voting because of a failure to pay any tax. The primary target of the Amendment was Southern states who were limiting the rights of blacks by imposing a poll tax. The Amendment however did not ban simply poll taxes but rather any “other tax” as a bar to elections.

The goal of barring discrimination of black voters was of sufficient consequence that it deserved a Constitutional Amendment. The problem however is that by adding the words “or other tax” the government sowed the seeds for its own demise.

How? By permanently severing the relationship between those who finance the government and those who control it. Today, 51% of income earners pay no income tax at all, while the top 10% pay 70% of all income taxes. In addition, 30% of “taxpayers” actually earned money from the government in the form of refundable tax credits while those on welfare are not counted in the pool in the first place.

Progressives often respond that everyone pays Social Security and Medicare taxes. That is true – assuming someone is employed. In the federal system we have five primary forms of taxes:

First of course is the aforementioned Social Security. Social Security taxes are ostensibly taken from employees to fund (or ideally to supplement) their retirement.

Then there is Medicare, also taken from paychecks, which is intended to provide health insurance to those over 65.

Next there are excise taxes, taken with the specific purpose of supporting particular government programs and funded by the people who use those services. These would include things like gasoline taxes going to pay for transportation projects and airport fees to support airport maintenance and operations.

Then we have the corporate income tax, which is levied on corporate profits. These taxes go into the general fund and are intended to pay for the normal operations of the federal government.

Finally there are personal income taxes. These taxes are often the largest single component of the federal government’s revenue, and like corporate income taxes they are intended to fund the general operations of the government.

Here is the error of the progressive argument. The taxes paid by the bottom 50% of income earners (and those who earn no income) are for either retirement support or to pay for a used service, not the general operation of the government. As such, they are paying no taxes to support the actual functioning of the government. The fact that Congress has been raiding the Social Security “Lockbox” for decades does not change this fact. As long as the government is functioning, Social Security recipients will be the senior creditors on any government expenditures… and it is the people who pay the taxes who will have to make good on those IOUs.

Neal Boortz asks the question: should the vote of a welfare matron on the government dole with a five children be equivalent to the vote of a small businessman who pays $25,000 in income taxes and has 10 employees who support 20 other family members? The obvious answer would seem to be no. Certainly no more than it makes sense to allow your neighbor to negotiate with your boss how much of your salary you will be allowed to keep and how much your neighbor gets to take home in exchange for a kickback to the boss.

Is it now time to flip the colonist’s battle cry on its head? Should there be representation without taxation? Can the United States survive with a growing majority of her population contributing nothing to the running of the government, or increasingly, being net consumers of government largesse? This is not a new issue. "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy." That quote is sometimes attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville and sometimes to Alexander Fraser Tytler. Regardless of its provenance, the notion is spot on. One need look no farther than today’s dysfunctional federal government to recognize the writer’s prescience.

Not only is the government taking all of its income taxes from the top 49% of income earners, but at the same time it’s borrowing trillions of dollars (that those same taxpayers will have to repay) to redistribute to tens of millions of others who are not paying any income taxes. The logical progression of this cleptocracy will be that eventually the most productive members of society will seek refuge in countries where they can enjoy the fruits of their labor. Where will the government look to then as it seeks to fund its redistribution of wealth?

Perhaps now is the time for another Amendment. One that states simply: “In order to be eligible to vote in federal elections a citizen must have paid federal income taxes in one of the previous three years.” Absent that, perhaps it’s time to consider a flat tax, or even better, the Fair Tax. None of these solutions will solve our fiscal problems on its own. Without spending cuts and a smaller, limited government the Grand Experiment is doomed. Creating an exclusive connection between voting and those who pay the government’s bills is a good first step however.