JOSH HAMMER: Log Off Social Media And Return To The Real Things
A lot of people online have been very, very upset over the Trump Department of Justice’s two-fold conclusion, announced last Sunday, that Jeffrey Epstein’s death in jail in 2019 was a suicide and that the Federal Bureau…
A lot of people online have been very, very upset over the Trump Department of Justice’s two-fold conclusion, announced last Sunday, that Jeffrey Epstein’s death in jail in 2019 was a suicide and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had no “incriminating ‘client list’” among its Epstein files.
The tremendous uproar against the Justice Department and FBI has crossed partisan lines; if anything, it has been many conservative commentators and some Republican elected officials who have expressed the most outrage, with accusations and implications that the government is hiding something about the case to protect powerful individuals.
It is not merely that the underlying subject matter here — the feds reviewed “over ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography,” per the Justice Department — is inherently sordid. It’s also that this week’s uproar is a political distraction from substantive issues far worthier of our collective time and energy. To be sure, it is always righteous to seek justice for victims, but many don’t want public scrutiny.
The Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files has not been its finest hour. During a February interview on Fox News, Attorney General Pam Bondi said, in response to host John Roberts’ question about whether the Justice Department would release a “list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients,” that the list was “sitting on (her) desk right now to review.” It is an astonishing about-face for Bondi to now disavow that investigators have any such list. The Trump administration owes us all a clear explanation.
With that large caveat aside, though, the fact remains: This is just not the biggest deal in the world — and if you think it is, then you probably need to log off social media.
The midterm elections next fall are not going to be determined by the existence — or absence — of a “client list” for an extravagantly wealthy dead pedophile. Nor will they be decided on the absurd grounds of whether FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino have somehow been “compromised.” (They haven’t). Instead, the election — and our politics — will be contested on typical substantive grounds: the economy, inflation, immigration, crime, global stability and so forth. This is as it should be.