Your Independent Journal from the Heartland
There are things in this world that are so obvious that to assert them requires no supporting evidence. The sky is blue. Water is wet. Even your mother’s love hardly requires confirmation.
At this same level of certitude are political assertions that a brewing scandal is totally non-existent and there’s nothing to discuss, next question. Nothing can confirm one’s worst suspicions like a sweaty, shouting denial.
The Epstein files are the telltale heart that beats in the eardrums of Trump and his disciples. When Speaker Mike Johnson can’t seem to find time to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) to join the House and become the final and confirming signatory of a discharge petition demanding the release of the Epstein files, it does more to confirm the rumors than to deny them.
And when officials like Kash Patel and Pam Bondi are asked plaintively, not accusingly, by senators in an oversight hearing to explain their decisions on Epstein, they spew a torrent of sass and invective comparable to what a teenager would deliver to a parent after coming home at 2 a.m. smelling of booze. The distilled aroma of consciousness of guilt is all over them.
While Trump toys with the notion of pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell, the only living person successfully prosecuted for being involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s massage parties, we can only wonder which prominent people are being shielded from the consequences of pedophilia and statutory rape.
JEFFREY HOBBS, Springfield, Ill.
