They're Missing The Point

I was idly listening to some UK commentary on Saturday's decapitation strike on Iran, and it convinced me that just about everyone is missing the point.

The UK government has continued to tread a delicate diplomatic line by avoiding explicit support for the US and Israeli strikes on Iran while condemning Iran’s “indiscriminate” attacks on other countries.

. . . The Greens and the Liberal Democrats have both denounced the military action taken by the US and Iran as illegal.

. . . As strikes on Tehran continued, the Sunday Times reported that Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer had blocked the USA from using British air bases to launch attacks on legal grounds.

Healey repeatedly batted back questions this morning on whether he believed the strikes were legal, saying that “we didn’t participate”.

But by March 1, Starmer had sorta-kinda changed his position:

But Iran is striking British interests nonetheless, and putting British people at huge risk, along with our allies across the region.

That is the situation we face today.

Our partners in the Gulf have asked us to do more to defend them, and it is my duty to protect British lives.

We have British jets in the air as part of coordinated defensive operations which have already successfully intercepted Iranian strikes.

But the only way to stop the threat is to destroy the missiles at source – in their storage depots or the launchers which used to fire the missiles.

The United States has requested permission to use British bases for that specific and limited defensive purpose.

We have taken the decision to accept this request – to prevent Iran firing missiles across the region, killing innocent civilians, putting British lives at risk, and hitting countries that have not been involved.

By Monday, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte was putting the best possible face on things:

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte voiced full support for President Donald Trump’s strikes on Iran, declaring key allies stand "all for one, one for all" amid Tehran’s widening missile retaliation.

"There is no sliver of light between us," Rutte told "Fox & Friends" on Monday.

"The Europeans, Canada, Mark Carney, the United States, the American president… All for one, one for all, because everybody supports, here in Europe, the fact that [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei is gone, that the nuclear capability is gone, that the ballistic missile program has been now degraded — which was a big threat for Europe, for Israel, for the whole region," he said.

The question isn't whether Europe supports the move -- the question is that, as Prime Miniater Starmer kept repeating, that Europe had nothing to do with the move. It happened whether or not Starmer allowed the US to use British bases. The B-2s fly nonstop from Missouri, after all. Secretary General Rutte understands Trump better than most Europeans: Trump is willing to walk away from NATO. The raid, without NATO participation, went off just fine. NATO needs the US, the US doesn't need NATO. NATO had simply better get on board.

Another part of the message is that Israel is a better, and more capable, US ally than any NATO country individually or NATO together.

According to reporting by the Financial Times, nearly all of the Iranian capital’s traffic cameras had been hacked years earlier, their footage encrypted and transmitted to Israeli servers. One camera angle near Pasteur Street, close to Khamenei’s compound, allowed analysts to observe the routines of bodyguards and drivers: where they parked, when they arrived and whom they escorted.

That data was fed into complex algorithms that built what intelligence officials call a “pattern of life,” detailed profiles including addresses, work schedules and, crucially, which senior officials were being protected and transported. The surveillance stream was one of hundreds feeding Israel’s intelligence system, which combines signals interception from Unit 8200, human assets recruited by the Mossad and large-scale data analysis by military intelligence.

When US and Israeli intelligence determined that Khamenei would attend a Saturday morning meeting at his compound, the opportunity was judged unusually favorable. Two people familiar with the operation told the FT that US intelligence provided confirmation from a human source that the meeting was proceeding as planned, a level of certainty required for a target of such magnitude.

. . . According to the Israeli military, the operation began with a surprise attack after military intelligence identified two locations in Tehran where top figures in Iran’s security establishment had gathered. The strikes, carried out early Saturday morning, were described as a deliberate attempt to eliminate senior decision-makers responsible for Iran’s military operations and weapons programs.

And the decapitation strikes are continuing, whether NATO participates or not:

General Mike Flynn, former National Security Advisor to the 45th POTUS, has highlighted breaking reports from Israeli media confirming that Iran’s newly appointed acting Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Arafeh (Alireza Arafi), has been killed. Arafi had been thrust into the role following the death of Ayatollah Khamenei on February 28, representing a desperate reach for stability by the clerical establishment. However, his tenure proved to be one of the shortest in modern history, as new strikes on Tehran targeted the very heart of the interim council before it could even begin the process of constitutional transition.

As of today,

The Israeli air force struck a top Iranian meeting on Tuesday where Tehran’s senior clerics had gathered to select a replacement for slain Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to multiple reports.

The Assembly of Experts, made up of 88 top clerics, were together in the holy city of Qom when an airstrike hit their building overnight, the Times of Israel reported.

The strike came just as the mullahs were counting the votes to appoint the next supreme leader, according to Fox News.

Unverified video and pictures from Qom allegedly show the building that housed the Iranian leaders in complete ruins following the blast.

The message that's being sent is to a worldwide audience, not just Iran, not just NATO, not just China, and not just Russia. In part, it's that the US doesn't really need proxies, and certainly not feckless and unreliable proxies. The US is willing to walk away from any deal, and that includes both the UN and NATO. But also, if China contemplates invading Taiwan, it must contemplate measures equivalent to the Tehran attack. As far as Russia is concerned, as long as it remains bogged down in Ukraine, it doesn't matter to the US; it just keeps Russia from meddling anywhere else, including Iran, Venezuela, or Cuba.

This is the new reality that nobody has quite yet got their head around.

Edward Feser On The Iran Bombing

Last summer (here, here, and here) I looked at how the neo-Thomist philosopher Edward Feser treated what he calls "just war doctrine" as it relates to the B-2 mission to bomb Iran's nuclear program and the decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan.

What's increasingly troubled me about his reasoning is that he never quite spells out exactly what comprises "just war doctrine" in his arguments. He continues not to do this in a post on his blog from Saturday, The U.S. war on Iran is manifestly unjust. Instead, he cites piecemeal paraphrases, like

The war clearly does not meet just war conditions. First, the U.S. cannot claim a just cause.

. . . The war also does not meet the “lawful authority” condition of just war.

. . . For a war to be morally legitimate, that there are realistic prospects of success must be established before the fact, and a lucky break cannot retroactively make just what was entered into unjustly.

In fact, these are the only points of "just war doctrine" that he specifically cites. He may feel that if the justification for the Iran attack fails to meet only these points, these are sufficient to make the whole project unjust, but if he feels this way, he ignores the specific language of the doctine's most authoritative current expression, The Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph 2309:

The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. the gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

- all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

- there must be serious prospects of success;

- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. the power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine. The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

There are any number of possible general expressions of "just war doctrine", but as far as I've seen in Feser's writing, he's never referred to any explicit version, just an abstract "just war doctrine". But the doctine in CCC 2309 makes no mention of either "just cause" or "lawful authority" -- Feser just pulls this out of some other version. The only criterion he mentions that's actually contained in CCC 2309 relates to "prospects of success", but he uses the word "realistic" instead of "serious", for reasons he doesn't explain.

So let's go to Aquinas, something Prof Feser must certainly endorse. According to Chrome AI Mode,

Thomas Aquinas outlines his just war doctrine in the Summa Theologiae, Second Part of the Second Part (II-II), Question 40, titled "De bello" (On War). He establishes three necessary conditions for a war to be just: legitimate authority (sovereign)just cause (grave reason), and right intention (advancing good/avoiding evil).

Chrome Ai summarizes this in more detail:

1. Legitimate Authority (Auctoritas Principis): War must be declared by a lawful sovereign, not private individuals, who can defend the common good.
2. Just Cause (Causa Iusta): There must be a real, grave reason, such as defending against aggression or rectifying injustice.
3. Right Intention (Intentio Recta): The goal must be to promote good or avoid evil, not for revenge or territorial gain.

Aquinas himself mentions "just cause" and "lawful authority", but in the latter he distinguishes only between a legitimate nation-state and private parties, not whether internal constitutional niceties have been observed within the nation-state. He makes no menion of prospects of success. Any of these criteria may certainly be contained in anyone's idea of "just war doctrine", but this nevertheless goes to the point that "just war doctrine" is an abstract, amorphous concept, and any useful discussion needs to limit itself to a specific enumeration, which Feser never quite does.

In fact, I call hypostatization, which according to Wikipedia is "is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a concrete real event or physical entity. In other words, it is the error of treating something that is not concrete, such as an idea, as a concrete thing." "Just war doctrine" is an abstract ambiguity that Prof Feser can claim is anything he wants. CCC 2309 is concrete and authoritative. I did hard time in graduate school. I know about professors.

But let's hold up CCC 2309 against the Iran attack.

"The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain." Consider only the potential for nuclear weapons in this hands of the Iranian mullahs or their client terrorist organizations. Iranian leaders and military officials have repeatedly expressed the goal of destroying Israel and defeating the United States through official rhetoric, military planning, and state-sanctioned slogans.

"All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective." Iran has a history of negotiating in bad faith and using it as a delaying tactic. The current concern is that Iran is rebuilding its nucelar capabilty under the putative cover of negotiation.

"There must be serious prospects of success." So far, use of electronic and stealth weapons under the current administration appears to have been highly successful.

"The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. the power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition." The weapons currently in use are conventional explosives with highly accurate guidance systems, so that specific buildings and facilities of military use can be targeted almost exclusively, far more so than in any previous conficts. In fact, one specific goal of the current Iran attack is to eliminate their nuclear weapons program.

But beyond that, CCC 2309 concludes, "The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good." It's important to note that phrase "prudential judgment", which as far as I can tell, Feser doesn't cite, at least in his discussion of "just war doctrine". I asked Chrome AI mode, "What would be an example of 'prudential judgment' for Catholics?" It answered,

In Catholic teaching, prudential judgment is the application of moral principles to concrete, often complex, circumstances where there is no single "right" answer mandated by the Church. While the Church provides unchanging principles (e.g., "care for the poor"), it often leaves the means of achieving them to the conscience and reason of the faithful.

. . . The Just War Tradition provides criteria for conflict, but deciding if a specific modern war meets these criteria (such as "probability of success" or "last resort") requires a prudential judgment of complex geopolitical facts.

Prof Feaser, who is at least nominally Catholic, states flat out, "The war clearly does not meet just war conditions." But according to CCC 2309, this really isn't his decision to make. It belongs to US elected authorities using their prudential judgment. In fact, I asked Chrome AI mode, "Does Edward Feser ever discuss the term 'prucential judgment'?" It answered,

Yes, Edward Feser discusses the term "prudential judgment" extensively, particularly in the context of Catholic moral theology and public policy. His most prominent use of the term appears in his defense of the death penalty and his critiques of recent shifts in Church teaching.

. . . Feser argues that while some moral principles are fixed and infallible (e.g., the death penalty is not intrinsically evil), the application of those principles in specific historical circumstances is a matter of prudential judgment. He contends that Catholics are not bound to agree with a Pope's prudential judgment if they believe the assessment of circumstances is incorrect.

But it appears that while we're not bound to agree with a pope's prudential judgment on the death penalty, we are in fact bound to agree with Edward Feser's prudential judgtment on the B-2 bomber.

But luckily for us, Prof Feser's authority extends only within the walls of particular classrooms at Pasadena City College.

Catching Up On Kathryn Ruemmler

Epstein's relationship with Kathryn Ruemmler, a former close confidante of Barack Obama as White House counsel and subsequently chief counsel at Goldman Sachs, came to light only in the last tranche of Epstein files released by the Justice Department in January. Referring to sources behind paywalls, Chrome AI Mode says "Ruemmler and Epstein reportedly swapped approximately 11,300 emails between 2014 and 2019, with The Economist reporting they exchanged direct messages on roughly 70% of days during that period."

Once the extent of this relationship became known, she almost immediately resigned as chief counsel at Goldman Sachs, although this is not to take effect until June (given the way these deals work, she may well have already cleaned out her office). This makes her the eighth propminent woman to have had such a complex, ambiguous relationship with Epstein, It's likely that they were lovers, while Ruemmler's connections with the Obama administration, the white-shoe law firm Latham & Watkins, and the investment bank Goldman Sachs would have been a key source of insider information for Epstein. According to Wikipedia,

After departing her White House counsel position and while once again employed as a partner at Latham & Watkins, Ruemmler was a close associate of and met with Jeffrey Epstein on dozens of occasions between July 2014 and May 2019 according to his schedule, well after he had been convicted of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute. These meetings included "lunches and dinners with celebrities, apartment hunting, and personal beauty appointments." She was on his schedule for a flight to Paris in 2015 as well as a stop at his home in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2017 but denied that these trips happened, and The Wall Street Journal could not confirm whether they did. She said in 2023: "I regret ever knowing Jeffrey Epstein."

Don't we all have things we regret? However, the relationship with Epstein lasted until the evening after his arrest. According to CNBC,

Her announcement that she will leave Goldman comes nearly a week after The Wall Street Journal reported that Ruemmler was one of three people whom Epstein called on July 6, 2019, after being arrested by federal authorities on child sex trafficking charges at an airport in New Jersey.

But Ruemmler doesn't otherwise fit the pattern of other Epstein women, all of whom began their relationships with him in the 1990s, and all of whom except Ghislaine Maxwell were in their early 20s at the time (Maxwell was about 30). By the time Ruemmler met him, she was 53, already a partner at Latham & Watkins, and already with White House jobs in both the Clinton and Obama administrations. Yet according to Wikipedia, Epstein was able to groom her like any old sugar daddy, and she fell for him like a schoolgirl. At the Wikipedia link:

Ruemmler called Epstein "wonderful Jeffrey," "sweetie," and "Uncle Jeffrey," and wrote "I adore him" in a December 2015 email exchange which appears to show Epstein booking and paying for a first-class trip to Europe. In other back-and-forth messages with Epstein, Ruemmler expressed gratitude for her "friendship" with Epstein as well as concluding her messages with "xo" and "xoxo." Other emails show her asking Epstein to help her land a job with Facebook and giving him advice as to how to respond to the coverage that his crimes were receiving in media.

At the CNBC link,

Other news articles detailed emails and documents showing how Epstein had made gifts to Ruemmler that included a Hermes bag, and other luxury items, such as a Fendi purse, spa visits, Bergdorf Goodman gift cards and flowers. On one occasion, she effusively thanked him, calling him “Uncle Jeffrey,” one email showed.

What interests me is that some people were able to meet Epstein and immediately sense something evil about him, while others, like Ruemmler, were drawn to him. Chrome AI Mode gave me a list of people who saw him the other way:

Melinda French Gates: After a single meeting with Epstein, she said she regretted it "from the second I stepped in the door". She described him as "abhorrent" and "evil personified," and later had nightmares about the encounter.

Maria Farmer: Farmer realized something was wrong when Epstein stole nude photos of her younger sisters and threatened her. She attempted to report him to the FBI as early as 1996.

Leon Botstein: The President of Bard College, has since referred to Epstein as a "truly evil man".

Donald Trump: According to a 2019 FBI interview with a former Palm Beach police chief, Trump claimed in 2006 that he "got the hell out of there" after being around Epstein when teenagers were present and subsequently "threw Epstein out of his club".

On the other hand, there are odd similarities between Ruemmler's relationship with Epstein and Larry Summers's. Both were listed as "backup executors" in Epstein's will. Both had long and wide-ranging e-mail correspondence. According to the Harvard Crimson:

Across years of messages, the two men arranged introductions, exchanged gossip about global politics, and referenced Harvard-linked projects that blurred the boundary between Cambridge and Epstein’s private world.

Ruemmler somehow thought she should rely on Epstein for career advice, when Epstein had no law degree, no four-year degree, and no law experience. Summers relied on Epstein as his "wing man" in arranging adulterous trysts, although he probably did have experience in that area.

Sometimes people need to trust their better instincts.

So, Precisely What Was Epstein's Grift?

🚨 BREAKING: After listening to testimony from Bill Clinton, Rep. Luna says she believes Jeffrey Epstein was running an "INTELLIGENCE-GATHERING OPERATION"

She's also calling on four co-conspirators who are being falsely called "victims" to be subpoenaed:

- Lesley Groth
-… pic.twitter.com/iRHPOItJ93

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) February 27, 2026

Rep Anna Paulina Luna asks a good basic question in the video embedded above, which I'll interpret as, "Precisely what was Epstein's grift?" She suggests it was an intelligence operation, but so far, Alan Dershowitz's informed view is that if Epstein had actually been a spy, he never would have gone to prison.

But Rep Luna raises the issue of what Epstein's various women associates were there for, and that's a question worth pursuing. She lists four names, all of which I've covered in past posts here, Lesley Groth (December 14, 2021), Nadia Marcinkova (December 13, 2021), Adriana Ross (December 15, 2021), and Sarah Kellen (December 12, 2021).

But there are other names that belong on the same list, like Eva Birgitta Andersson-Dubin (covered here on May 14, 2021) and Melanie Walker (covered here on May 23, 2021). All these women appear to have had complex, ambiguous relationships with Epstein over a period of years in which on one hand they were lovers, on the other Epstein appears to have pimped them out to influential people, but slso, they served as recruiters. In the latter two cases, Epstein appears to have been able to get them into medical school and then get them degrees.

As I said in 2021, I would not let either one of them get close to me with a scalpel. Kathy Ruemmler appears to have been a latter-day member of that same group.

In light of recent revelations about Bill Gates, I note that in my post on Melanie Walker at the link, she became Epstein's "science adviser" after graduating from medical school, later went to work for the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation and according to the UK Daily Mail "became an intermediary between Epstein and the Microsoft co-founder". But that's not all:

Dr Walker, then 28 years old, seems to have been an important pivot in the tycoon's burgeoning relationship with the Duke [Prince Andrew].

In June 2000, the neurosurgeon attended — according to the guest list — the 'Dance of the Decades' party thrown at Windsor Castle by the Queen to mark a number of royal birthday milestones, including the Duke's 40th and Princess Anne's 50th.

She then conntinued to socialize with Andrew at various Epstein-sponsored events, including a visit to Epstein's New Mexico ranch. At that time, Andrew's protection officer referred to her as Andrew's "girlfriend".

But the big name among Epstein's women was, of course, Ghislaine Maxwell. In addition to Andrew's apparent liaison with Melanie Walker, he was conducting an affair with Ghislaine as well during this same period. According to the UK Daily Mail,

Prince Andrew gave Ghislaine Maxwell 'unrestricted access' to Buckingham Palace as part of their close friendship, a former royal police officer has claimed.

The relationship between the Duke of York, 62, and Maxwell, 60, who has been jailed for 20 years for grooming young women for Jeffrey Epstein, is being scrutinised publicly.

It is said that Maxwell was waved in by Palace police when she visited the Duke, being allowed to enter 'at will', to see him.

While these meetings took place in the early 2000s, Maxwell was able to visit Andrew at Buckingham Palace as late as June 6, 2019, a month before Epstein's arrest in New Jersey.

PRINCE Andrew secretly met Ghislaine Maxwell inside Buckingham Palace — two weeks after her paedo ex Jeffrey Epstein was placed under new investigation by US cops.

The Duke of York admitted in his “car crash” Newsnight interview that he saw Maxwell during the summer, but denied discussing Epstein.

. . . A source said: “The Duke and Ghislaine met at the Palace. She brought four other people with her.

“They were all smartly dressed and looked very official, very serious and business-like. There was no way it was a social occasion. They stayed for about two hours.

“Looking back now it seems very likely they would have been discussing the fallout from Epstein’s misdemeanours and what they planned to do about it.”

Although Ghislaine and Andrew apparently met at Oxford in the 1980s, their serious relationship appears to have begun around the time she and Epstein visited Balmoral at Andrew's invitation in 1999. Then,

February 2000: At the start of the year, Epstein is with Andrew at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. They are photographed together; also in the photo are Melania Trump and Gwendolyn Beck (see above).

April 2000: Maxwell and Andrew go to lunch in New York City. The duo are spotted holding hands at Nello’s, but not photographed together. Andrew is snapped leaving the restaurant:

June 2000: Epstein and Maxwell go to a 40th birthday party for Andrew, hosted at Windsor Castle by Queen Elizabeth.

. . . The same month, Andrew attends the Royal Ascot with Epstein and Maxwell

December 2000: Prince Andrew throws a shooting weekend for Maxwell’s birthday, and Epstein is in attendance. (Andrew denied it was a birthday party in the Newsnight interview, saying it was “just a straightforward, a straightforward shooting weekend.”)

2001: Andrew allegedly sexually assaults Virginia Giuffre in London.

. . . 2006: Epstein attends Princess Beatrice's 18th birthday party at Windsor Castle.

Epstein was one of the guests at Princess Beatrice’s Victorian-themed birthday party at Windsor Castle on July 15, 2006; in 2019, the Sun published a photo of Epstein, with Harvey Weinstein and Maxwell, at the party. Eight days after Beatrice’s party, on July 23, Epstein was arrested in Palm Beach, on a single charge of soliciting prostitution.

. . . 2008: Epstein is sentenced to jail.

. . . 2010: Prince Andrew and Epstein go on a walk together in Central Park.

. . . Epstein and Andrew are photographed on a walk in Central Park during the trip. As photographer Jae Donnelly later said, "Without that photo they would have the chance to deny any knowledge of knowing each other. And that photo, for them, sadly exists." The photos ran in News of the World in February 2011.

Andrew said he had no contact with Epstein following December 2010; e-mails released in 2025 later proved this was not true.

2011: Sarah Ferguson admits Epstein helped pay off her debt.

And so on. It's significant that the "humble address" from Parliament seeking documents relating to Andrew's 2001 appointment as UK trade envoy, a position he held until his ties with Epstein became public in 2011, relate to precisely this period. In fact, the relationship among Andrew, Epstein, and Maxwell around the time of his appointment comes off as a particularly squalid menage, even leaving aside the concurrent relationship among Epstein, Andrew, and Melanie Walker.

And that leaves aside whatever was going on among Epstein, Walker, and Bill Gates. Just this past Sunday, I posted on the news that Gates's relationship with Epstein was much deeper and lasted much longer than previously reported. The current line is that the relationship between Gates and Epstein began in 2011, but the Kevin Bass timeline derived from the final tranche of Epstein files shows meetings as early as 2009 --but even then, it omits that Melanie Walker and Boris Nikolic were members of both Gates's and Epstein's inner circles from about 2000 and are generally characterized as "intermediaries" between both.

As far as I can tell, we're only beginning to glimpse what appear to be extremely complex interrelationships among a fairly large number of parties, apparently involving sex, mutual favors, and whatever else, quite possibly inside information. What was the grift? The best we can say is there was something in it for everyone, but nymphets will turn out to be little more than a footnote and a distraction. When figures like Bill Gates and Bill Clinton say they saw and did nothing wrong around Epstein, all they're basically saying is they didn't schtup minors, but everything else was perfectly OK.

Moral Panic Across The Pond

What's puzzling about the whole Epstein affair is that in the US, it's looking like the last few reluctant pops of a batch of popcorn, while in the UK and Norway, it's buildng to a frenzy it never remotely reached in the US. Over the past week here,

• A board member of Beta Technologies resigned because he was mentioned somewhere in the last document dump
• Lawrence Summers resigned his last paid faculty gig at Harvard, having long since been fingered as an Epstein crony
• Hillary Clinton says "ask my husband" about any Epstein questions, while insiders worry Bill himself could "have a Biden moment" in his own testimony.

But in the old country, it's become a much bigger deal:

• Former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland was hospitalized following a suicide attempt days after being charged with "gross corruption" for his part in the Epstein scandal
• World Economic Forum CEO Børge Brende, another Norwegian, is resigning in the wake of a WEF investigation into his Epstein ties
• The UK Parliament passed a "humble address" to the King that compels the government to disclose all papers regarding the creation and vetting of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's role as Special Representative for Trade and Investment from the Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister’s Office.

According to the UK Guardian, a "humble address" was

originally regarded as a polite, ceremonial message. . . politically weaponised in recent years by opposition parties looking for procedural back doors to force the release of sensitive documents.

This appears to be roughly equivalent to the The Epstein Files Transparency Act (H.R. 4405), signed into law by President Trump on November 19, 2025, which required the DOJ to release all unclassified, non-victim-identifying documents related to Jeffrey Epstein. While Trump regarded the whole Epstein story as a "big hoax", he always said he would sign the bill when it came to his desk, and the only revelation the files had about Trump himself was that he had reported Epstein to law enforcement as early as July 2006.

As a result, the Epstein files have posed no serious threat to Trump or his agenda, and there have been no resignations by prominent Republicans due to allegtions from the Epstein files, much less suicide attempts. Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene, however, resigned her House seat, apparently in frustration that the files did so little damage to the administration.

Not so much in the UK. Prime Minister Starmer's chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, resigned, taking full responsibility for advising Starmer to appoint Peter Mandelson US ambassador. Mandelson in turn was fired from that position in September of last year due to revelations from earlier tranches of the Epstein files. According to Wikipedia,

Later in January 2026, a further release of documents relating to Epstein appeared to show that Mandelson and his then partner, Reinaldo da Silva, had received at least $75,000 in payments from Epstein. The documents also revealed that Mandelson, then serving as business secretary, had lobbied government ministers to amend policy on bankers' bonuses at Epstein's request. Mandelson resigned his membership of the Labour Party on 1 February 2026 due to his relationship with Epstein.

Two days later, he also resigned from the House of Lords. But as I noted earleir this week, while conventional wisdom still maintains that the Epstein crisis is the worst for the royal family since 1936, it appears already to have become a much bigger threat. According to Time,

In the wake of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's arrest on suspicion of misconduct in public office, some U.K. lawmakers are calling for an independent inquiry into the royal family.

“There must be an independent inquiry into what the royal family knew about his Epstein links,” said Richard Burgon, a member of the ruling Labour Party.

Burgon went a step further, suggesting it’s “time for a serious national debate about abolishing the monarchy.” He argued that even if people disagree, there should at least be a discussion over “the role of hereditary privilege in our democracy.”

. . . Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, said Friday morning that there are “lots of questions to be asked.”

. . . Polanski also raised the issue of potentially abolishing the monarchy, something which he has previously voiced support for.

“The monarchy are doing a pretty good job in themselves of not having their proudest moments over various issues we’ve seen in the last couple of years and, when the public are ready to have that national conversation about the monarchy, I think issues like this certainly don’t help the monarchy’s case,” he said.

This site compares calls for the abolition of the monarchy in 1936 to those now and suggests gthe 1936 crisis was less serious:

On 11 December 1936, the Conservative party Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin brought the Abdication Bill before parliament, allowing for Edward to be replaced by his brother George. But the radical socialist MP James Maxton then introduced a republican amendment to the bill demanding that the country ditch an outdated institution and become a republic. He was backed by four other MPs: Campbell Stephen, Dr Alfred Salter, Agnes Hardie, and Willie Gallacher. Four of the MPs were left-wing Labour while Gallacher was a Communist.

. . . The republican amendment was discussed and reported at surprising length. However, it was overwhelmingly defeated and the monarch soldiered on to the present day.

In addition to calls for the abolition of the monarchy now, there's also speculation that King Charles III could be forced to abdicate in favor of Prince William, even if the monarchy stays.

The scandal surrounding Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor could end the reign of King Charles III, says a British historian who wrote an unofficial biography of the former prince.

Andrew Lownie, who spent years researching the royals for his book Entitled, says if the King had any idea of his brother's alleged misconduct while in public office, it could be cause for an early end to his reign.

"This is far more serious than the abdication crisis," Lownie told 7.30, referring to the abdication of King Edward VIII in 1936, when he chose to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson.

Let's keep in mind only that the 1936 crisis was resolved and tied up with a bow within a ten-day period after the first public mention. This phase of it has been festering far longer than that already.

A Kinder, Gentler Bill Gates

Now Bill Gates is undertaking a belated crisis management program, although the damage from his association with Epstein, as well as his sexual harassment of subordinates at Microsoft and his divorce, was done several years ago, and as more comes out from the latest tranche of Epstein files, the cleanup job just gets harder. The poor guy is just a creep.

More than a year ago, February 1, 2025, he published a ghostwritten memoir, Source Code: My Beginnings, which as far as I can tell almost nobody noticed who wasn't paid to notice it. I asked Chrome AI Mode, which on the whole I think is quite a good product, better than Grok or ChatGPT, which charge for features Chrome provides for free, "Who was Bill Gates's ghostwriter in Source Code?" It answered,

Bill Gates's memoir, Source Code, was written with the assistance of Rob Guth.

Guth is a former Wall Street Journal reporter who now works for Gates. Gates has described their collaborative process as one where he would talk to Guth about his early life, Guth would write the initial drafts based on those conversations, and Gates would then edit the material.

In other words, Guth is his full-time publicist, tasked with cleaning up Gates's image. Source Code is to be the first of a three-part memoir covering Gates's full life. According to Wikipedia,

Several reviewers noted Gates’s penchant for self-deprecation and his ability to humanize his success. Writing for The Guardian, Steven Poole remarked that Gates conveyed humility, in contrast to other tech titans. Poole wrote: "There is a sense of the writer, older and wiser, trying to redeem the past through understanding it better." . . . In The New York Times, Jennifer Szalai liked the description of Gates's youth but found that not much happened in many parts of the memoir. . . . She wrote that Gates might have to grapple with more difficult reflections on his later years in his two upcoming memoirs.

This promo site for the book gives some pull quotes that are nothing more than anodyne:

I left college early, but the experience left a huge impression on me. I made lifelong friends, and I expanded my programming skills while messing around in Harvard's computer lab.

Although I have always been curious about the world, I wasn’t always the best student. I was lucky to have amazing teachers and mentors at the Lakeside School who sparked my love of learning.

Growing up, my world was defined by the people around me. I wouldn't be who I am today without my parents, my sisters, and my childhood friends.

I was curious whether a modern-day captain of industry like Gates would have any insight into Ivy League culture -- a good part of my own leisure reflection has been over the bait-and-switch I encountered at Dartmouth. I could never understand how a place that had such a high reputation was full of dullards and Babbitts. I asked Chrome AI Mode, "Does Bill Gates in his memoir provide any insight into why he dropped out of Harvard?" The best it could come up with was,

Gates admits in the memoir that he actually regretted leaving. He "struggled intensely" with the choice because he loved the classes—even auditing courses in psychology and history— and valued being surrounded by smart peers.

Except that the prestige-school undergraduate program is vapid, especially in fields like psychology and history, and as I keep repeating, by and large, Ivy undergraduates are no smarter than anyone else, except they're convinced they are. It doesn't seem like Gates actually paid much attention at Harvard.

Another part of Gates's rehabilitation program is a much-publicized town hall with Gates Foundation staff this past Tuesday:

In the meeting, Gates maintained that he took no part in wrongdoing but conceded that he had damaged the non-profit’s brand by having close contact with the late financier, which he said was in the hopes of connecting with donors to his global health efforts.

Well, he'd damaged the non-profit's brand by causing it to cease being idenmtified as the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation in 2024 in consewquence of their divorce, which according to Melinda was only partly connected with Epstein:

Melinda French Gates on Tuesday said that her ex-husband, Bill Gates, needs to answer for the behavior alleged in the latest trove of private communications released in connection with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

"For me, it's personally hard whenever those details come up, right? Because it brings back memories of some very, very painful times in my marriage," French Gates said in an interview on NPR's Wild Card podcast.

"Whatever questions remain there of what — I can't even begin to know all of it — those questions are for those people and for even my ex-husband," she said. "They need to answer to those things, not me."

I asked Chrome AI Mode, "How much does Rob Guth make working for Bill Gates?" It answered,

Specific salary details for Robert (Rob) Guth at Gates Ventures are not publicly disclosed, as Gates Ventures is a private personal service company.

However, based on industry standards for high-level roles at Gates-related organizations, here is the estimated compensation landscape:

Rob Guth, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, has been a key member of Bill Gates’s private team, notably working on book projects with him since at least 2014.

. . . At Gates Ventures, a Director of Communications earns an average of $173,662 per year.

. . . Compensation for specialized high-level roles (e.g., Legal/Tax) in the Seattle area ranges from $319,500 to $495,300.

. . . Given Guth's long-term personal proximity to Bill Gates and his senior role within the private office, his compensation likely aligns with the upper tier of these executive ranges.

Here's the problem I see. It sounds as though Guth has been Gates's publcist for more than a decade, certainly including the period of his divorce, Microsoft's investigation of his sexual harassment, his departure from Microsoft, and extended revelations about his relationship with Epstein, which most recently suggest was much deeper and more extensive than he previously claimed.

Yet over this period, his publicist's responses to all these developments have been reactive, self-justifying, and incomplete. Let's just take what's reported at the link above from the Tuesday townhall at the Gates Foundation:

“I did nothing illicit. I saw nothing illicit…,” Gates said, according to a recording reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

“To be clear, I never spent any time with victims, the women around him,” he added, per the Journal.

Gates reportedly admitted to having two extramarital affairs with Russian women, but said they did not involve Epstein victims.

I asked Chrome AI mode, "Does the term 'illicit' cover adultery?" It answered,

Yes, the term "illicit" covers adultery, as it refers to actions that are forbidden by law, custom, or moral standards. In legal contexts, especially regarding divorce and alimony, "illicit sexual behavior" is frequently used to describe adultery. This includes sexual acts with someone other than a spouse.

So based on what's public knowledge, including statements by Melinda, adultery, apparently involving both Russian women provided by Epstein, Microsoft employees unrelated to Epstein, and whatever else, was a major factor in their divorce. But apparently if none of these trysts was with a minor, that's not "illicit", and Gates is pure as the driven snow.

I think if I were Rob Guth, I'd be advising Gates to say nothing, rather than weasel-worded statments that do nothing but cause further embarrassment. At the link,

A spokesperson from the Gates Foundation [Rob Guth?] said the town hall was a time for Gates to answer “questions submitted by foundation staff on a range of issues, including the release of the Epstein files, the foundation’s work in AI, and the future of global health.”

The spokesperson added that Gates “spoke candidly, addressing several questions in detail, and took responsibility for his actions.”

I doubt if Gates's PR problems can be fixed at this stage. Things are just going to continue to leak, and his responses via Guth are going to continue to be reactive, partial, and weasel-worded. But this is because Gates is basically a creep. Not even a high-paid publicist can fix creep.

This Crisis For The Royals Is Worse Than 1936

A week or two ago, I was reading that the ongoing crisis over Andrew's relationship with Epstein was "the worst for the royals since 1936", referring to the events that led to Edward VIII's abdication over his intent to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson. Although there were rumors of Edward's intent prior to the crisis, without belaboring details, the entire matter was resolved in a ten-day period that December after it finally reached the press on December 1. Having abdicated on Deceember 10 in favor of his brother Albert, who became George VI, he left the country on December 12, and everything was over, long live the King.

But as I noted the other day, the Andrew-Epstein scandal first reached the press in 2011, 15 years ago. It seems pretty clear that the royal family, the government, and the family's own advisers never anticipated how the matter would fester. In fact, in recent days in the UK (and Norway as well), having largely blown over in the US, it now seems to have become a full-blown moral panic. I think several factors led to this. Chief was the family's reactive and piecemeal attempts to handle each successive sub-crisis. The UK Independent lists each attempt:

2011: Steps down as trade envoy

After facing severe criticism for his continued association with Epstein, Mr Mountbatten-Windsor agrees to step down as trade envoy with Buckingham Palace confirming he would only support businesses in the UK.

2015: Virgina Giuffre allegations emerge

In April 2015, allegations emerged in court documents filed in Florida that Mr Mountbatten-Windsor had sexual intercourse with Virginia Giuffre when she was 17 years old.

Both Buckingham Palace and Mr Mountbatten-Windsor strenuously deny the allegations.

. . .

2019: BBC Newsnight interview

Mr Mountbatten-Windsor was criticised for a car crash BBC Newsnight interview that aired on 16 November 2019 following further reports about his relationship with Epstein.

. . . He denied he slept with Giuffre, saying an encounter could not have taken place because he was at a branch of Pizza Express in Woking with his daughter, Princess Beatrice.

He also said Giuffre’s claim he was sweaty at a nightclub was untrue because an “overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands war” had left him unable to sweat.

The royal faced a public backlash, with equality campaigners claiming he was “too stupid to even pretend concern for Epstein’s victims”.

2019: Step back from public duties

Four days later, Mr Mountbatten-Windsor announced the Queen had given him permission to step back from public duties in the wake of the interview.

. . .

2021: Virginia Giuffre sex abuse case

In 2021, Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, formerly known as Virginia Roberts, filed a lawsuit in Manhattan alleging she was trafficked by Epstein to have sex with Mr Mountbatten-Windsor on three occasions when she was 17 and a minor under US law.

. . . In October 2021, it was claimed that the Queen intended to spend millions of pounds privately funding her son’s defence against the allegations of sexual abuse made by Giuffre.

2022: Stripped of military titles and royal patronages

In January 2022, the Queen stripped Mr Mountbatten-Windsor of his military titles and royal patronages in the wake of a US judge allowing Giuffre’s civil sexual abuse case against her son to move to trial.

. . .

2022: Out-of-court settlement

In March 2022, Mr Mountbatten-Windsor paid Giuffre a multi-million-pound out-of-court settlement, meaning both sides avoided the case going to trial.

. . . Mr Mountbatten-Windsor faced calls to confirm how he funded the settlement – which was reported to be as much as £12m – and whether the Queen or even King Charles, then Prince of Wales, contributed to the sum.

. . .

January 2025: New messages reveal ties with Epstein continued for months after New York visit

Newly surfaced messages revealed the Duke of York remained in contact with Epstein until February 2011 – despite having claimed to have cut him off in December 2010.

Emails between Mr Mountbatten-Windsor and Epstein reportedly show they were still exchanging messages until at least late February 2011, when the former duke wrote: “Keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon.”

. . .

October 2025: Mountbatten-Windsor forced to renounce Duke of York title

Mr Mountbatten-Windsor is forced to relinquish all his titles, including the Duke of York and Knight of the Garter as his former friendship with Epstein threatens to overshadow the work of the royal family. [As a result, he is no longer "Prince Andrew" and is to be known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. He was also evicted from Royal Lodge but transferred to another royal dwelling on Sandringham Estate. Unconfirmed reports suggest that these semi-final moves were at the urging of Prince William, who is said to have favored stricter measures for some time.]

. . .

January 2026: Images show former prince kneeling over woman

New pictures from another tranche of Epstein files brought further scrutiny upon the King’s brother, with one showing him crouched over a woman as she lay on the floor.

. . . Emails also appear to suggest he invited the sex offender for dinner at Buckingham Palace and agreed to meet a “beautiful” 26-year-old Russian woman.

February 2026: Mountbatten-Windsor arrested

On his 66th birthday, the former prince was arrested by Thames Valley Police officers at his new home in Sandringham, on suspicion of misconduct in public office.

Let's keep in mind that the commonplace advice in crisis management, even in situations where all the facts can make an individual, company, or government agency look bad, is to get all those facts out at once, along with what's being done immediately to solve any remaining problems. Certainly in the US corporate environment, companies routinely follow this advice, and famous cases like the poison Tylenol crisis for Johnson & Johnson established this as a successful paradigm.

The one thing that sticks out clearly from the timeline above is that nobody seems to have thought that such principles should apply to the Andrew-Epstein case. In a similar set of circumstances, the Nixon-Watergate "plumbers" scandal, successive denials of partial revelations proved "inoperative", leading to Nixon's ultimate resignation, when immediate disclosure of the whole circumstances when they seemed fairly minor in context could have saved his presidency.

In this case, David Cameron, who was UK Prime Minister from 2011 to 2016, had a responsibilty for insulating the monarch from political controversy. He simply had to have been aware of the full scope of Andrew's association witn Epstein -- certainly he should have been, and he should have been talking to MI6 about it. In turn, he should have been advising the royal family that a piecemeal approach could create grave scandal.

The same would apply to Teresa May and Boris Johnson, who were UK Prime Ministers in 2019, when Prince Andrew's BBC interview incited so much criticism. This raises a touchy set of constitutional questions. I asked Chrome AI mode, "Could the UK government have intervened to prevent Prince Andrew's controversial BBC interview in 2019?" It answered,

In theory, the UK government has no formal power to block a member of the Royal Family from giving a media interview, as they are not government officials and the BBC operates with operational and editorial independence.

. . . Under the UK's constitutional monarchy, the "Crown" (the Monarchy) and "Parliament" (the Government) generally stay out of each other's day-to-day affairs. While the government scripts or vets certain official speeches for the Sovereign, these rules do not typically apply to the personal media engagements of junior or extended royals.

. . . Decisions regarding Prince Andrew’s media appearances were a matter for Buckingham Palace and the Prince himself. It is widely reported that the Newsnight interview was authorized by Prince Andrew and his private office, rather than being a state-managed event.

But there's got to be a threshold, or Edward VIII could have married Wallis Simpson just like that. I asked Chrome AI Mode, "What authority did the UK government have effectively to forbid Edward VIII's marriage to Wallis Simpson?" It answered,

Under the UK’s constitutional monarchy, the King must act on the advice of his ministers. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin made it clear that if Edward married Simpson against the Cabinet's advice, the government would resign.

Because no other party was willing to form a government under those conditions, this would have triggered a general election, forcing the King to campaign for his marriage in the political arena—an act that would destroy the monarchy’s neutrality and likely the institution itself.

So why couldn't any of serveral prime ministers have had the foresight, especially given what MI6 knew, or should have known, about Andrew's relationship with Epstein, to approach the Queen with the potential for grave scandal that appears, it seems now, to pose some threat to the monarchy? The solution to the Andrew problem, 15 years in the making, should have been quietly to strip him of his titles and privileges in the 2010s and set him up in someplace like France a la the Duke of Windsor.

Instead, we're going to have the continuing problem of Andrew's arrest, the inability under UK law to discuss his charges openly, and endless rehearsal of all the dirty linen we do know about, plus all Fergie's dirty linen, plus all the Mountbattens' dirty linen, ad infinitum -- and nobody seems to have foreseen this and acted to avert it, least of all, apparently, the Queen, whose reputation will fall as well.

What a remarkable governing class the UK had in 1936.