“The DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients? Will that really happen?” a Fox News host asked US Attorney General Pam Bondi on February 21, 2025. “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review,” Bondi replied.

On July 8, Bondi’s department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation released an unsigned memo claiming that a “systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list.'”

Something of a bombshell, but the shell carried two bigger payloads inside.

First: “We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”

Second: “[N]o further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.”

Bondi defended the “no further disclosures” decision (while also trying to explain missing time from video covering Epstein’s cell at the time he allegedly killed himself)  at a cabinet meeting because most or all of the unreleased evidence supposedly consists of child pornography. Not child pornography of Epstein or his “clients” sexually abusing minors, just stuff he downloaded.

Move along, folks, nothing to see here.

And yet the UK’s Prince Andrew settled a lawsuit (reputedly for $16.9 million) with one of Epstein’s victims, who claims that Epstein delivered her into Andrew’s clutches for sex while she was a minor.

And Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell sits in prison, sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking and conspiracy.

And records HAVE been released including the names of many prominent individuals — including one Donald J. Trump — who flew on Epstein’s private plane (“The Lolita Express”), in some cases to and from his private island where lavish “sex parties” were allegedly held.

There may or may not be a piece of paper somewhere labeled “my client list, signed, Jeffrey Epstein,” but no “evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties?” If that’s a joke, it’s not funny. But it isn’t a joke. It’s a lie. Period.

Who were Epstein’s accomplices in crime? We may never know.

But the US Department of Justice knows, and would rather keep that information to itself than tell the rest of us about it.

Now, I’m not saying Donald Trump’s name would appear on a list of those who provably had sex with minors courtesy of Epstein’s trafficking operation. Given his known history and predilections, and his long public friendship with Epstein, it wouldn’t surprise me, but hey, maybe not.

Trump’s own name wouldn’t have to be on that list to make him want to quash the matter, though. A number of prominent, wealthy, and powerful people have already been shown, beyond doubt, to have associated with Epstein.

Some of those prominent, wealthy, and powerful people have already been publicly accused of taking part in, and advantage of, his depredations.

Any or all of those prominent, wealthy, and powerful people are well-positioned to bludgeon Trump with threats, buy his favors with inducements, or become useful targets for extortion by a president who regularly, even openly, engages in that practice.

We may not know the reasons for this blatant cover-up, but we all know that’s exactly what’s going on here.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

As I write this, the known death toll of floods in Texas stands at 104, including dozens of children from summer camps dotting the affected area. That number will likely increase.

It’s a terrible thing, and naturally many of us not caught in the middle of it would like to assign blame.

“Key roles at local offices of the National Weather Service, in particular, went unfilled as the floods hit,” the New York Times reports. US Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) wants “an investigation into the scope, breadth, and ramifications of whether staffing shortages at key local National Weather Service (NWS) stations contributed to the catastrophic loss of life and property during the deadly flooding.” US Senator Christopher Murphy (D-CT) cites “consequences to Trump’s brainless attacks on public workers, like meteorologists.”

But let’s be real here. No, US president Donald Trump and his administration are not to blame for it — and I say that as someone possessed of an ingrained “blame government first” mentality in general and a strong dislike for Trump in particular.

Trump’s not responsible for the weather, and to the extent that federal agencies are responsible for accurately forecasting that weather and warning the public of dangerous situations (they shouldn’t be, but they are), they did exactly that.

According to an ABC News timeline:

The National Weather Service’s Austin/San Antonio office issued its first flood watch at 1:18pm on July 3.

That evening at 6:10pm, the Weather Prediction Center warned of severe thunderstorms in the affected area.

At 1:14am on July 4, flash flood warnings  with a “considerable” damage tag — automatically triggered alerts on weather radios and mobile devices. Those warnings were upgraded at 3:35am and 4:03am.

At 4:35am — nearly 16 hours after the first watches and three hours after the emergency warnings — started going out, the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office reported the first observed flooding.

By 7am, evacuations were under way.

It’s important, at this point, to assure you that I’m not trying to SHIFT blame to the victims. There are many reasons other than negligence why those alerts might have been missed, or why those who received them took action that seemed sufficient, but turned out not to be, to save their own lives and  others’.

But while we could (and probably will) see failures and foul-ups in the post-flood response from FEMA et al.,  and while we can (and definitely will) argue incessantly about various things Trump and his team do, this particular tragedy didn’t result from failures of the government systems in place to warn us of impending disaster.

Trying to get politicians and the politically involved to not “play politics” with every bad thing may be a fool’s errand, but it’s always worth condemning when it happens.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“Let Zohran Mamdani’s victory in last week’s Democratic mayoral primary in New York serve as your periodic reminder that capitalism is in dire need of able defenders.” Matthew Hennessey’s call that “Capitalism Needs Champions” (Wall Street Journal, July 1) would have provoked Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal author Ayn Rand’s trademark reminder to “check your premises.”

According to Hennessey, who uses “capitalism” interchangeably with “free markets” and even plain “markets,” “anticapitalists on both left and right struggle to make a serious case that things are worse now than they were 100 or 150 years ago.” Chris Matthew Sciabarra notes: “For Rand, this ‘unknown ideal’ had been approximated in history but it had never been practiced in its full, unadulterated laissez-faire form. It was largely undercut by state intervention.”

Even while America’s actually existing mixed economy produced the “washing machines [and] chemotherapy” hailed by Hennessey, manufacturing became so intertwined with federal contracts and organizational bureaucracy that Karl Hess could quip in a 1976 Playboy interview that “to find a difference worth dying for in opposing the Soviet Union while supporting General Motors requires a theological position.” Michael Harrington observed in The Next Left that ostensibly private healthcare providers accepted being primarily funded by “socialized insurance premiums” to the point of becoming “the worst of capitalism and the worst of socialism combined,” in which “no one was particularly concerned about controlling the outlays or quality.”

“Free people” do “abominate coercion,” but Hennessey overlooks how capitalists have taken the initiative in burdening their competitors.  Asserting that “the owner-operator of a corner deli is no less a capitalist than Jeff Bezos” ignores how, in the words of Roy Childs, “men in larger businesses supported and even initiated acts of government regulation” (and would obviate the case against antitrust breakups).

Hennessey dismisses “soft-headed notions about inequality,” since “the incredible wealth [markets] generate can be used to fill the gaps.”  Yet the most pro-market mayoral candidate in New York’s history, Henry George, saw how unfree markets aggravated what he called the “Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth.”

Hennessey predicts that Mamdani will require “plans to keep New Yorkers captive,” forgetting his own Journal op-ed page’s survey of socialist mayors who “took an entrepreneurial approach to government, improving systems, cutting waste, and finding creative new sources of income” (Michael Trinklein’s “Sanders Can Learn From ‘Sewer Socialists’,” March 19, 2020).  The New York mayor who hailed “the crumbling bricks of the Berlin wall” yielding to “a world liberated from the crushing weight of fascism and totalitarianism” was card-carrying member of Harrington’s Democratic Socialists of America David Dinkins.

Harrington’s heirs lack the socialist stalwart’s perceptiveness of “the worst of socialism.”  Mamdani’s proposed municipal groceries would have a harder time recreating efficient supply chains geared to local retail needs than dot-com bubble fiascoes like Kozmo or Webvan.  Free buses would at least not jeopardize free markets in a transit economy so subsidized that fares act like a regressive tax. But no free ride would get as far as free trade.

New Yorker Joel Schlosberg is a senior news analyst at The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.

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