James Comey Is In Hot Water, So He Does The Worst Possible Things

A little over a week ago,

Former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey are under criminal investigation for potential wrongdoing related to the Trump–Russia probe, including allegedly making false statements to Congress, Justice Department sources told Fox News Digital.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe referred evidence of wrongdoing by Brennan to FBI Director Kash Patel for potential prosecution, DOJ sources told Fox News Digital.

. . . As for Comey, DOJ sources told Fox News Digital that an investigation into the former director is underway, but could not share details of what specifically is being probed.

This past Friday,

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard detailed "striking" findings from declassified documents released Friday, claiming to showcase "overwhelming evidence" that an Obama-era cabal laid the groundwork for what would be the years-long Trump-Russia collusion probe after the 2016 election.

. . . Evidence released by Gabbard's office implicated then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey and former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, among others, in addition to the former president.

Gabbard confirmed her intent to send all the uncovered documents to the Department of Justice and the FBI for a criminal referral.

I asked the web, "I'm under federal criminal investigation. What should I do?" The federal criminal defense law firm Perlman Defense provided, in part, the following helpful advice:

The sooner you speak with a federal criminal defense attorney, the better your chance of building a strong defense and avoiding mistakes. A lawyer with experience in federal criminal cases can help you understand the investigation, guide your decisions, and deal with federal agencies on your behalf.

. . . Never post about the investigation, the agents, or your legal concerns on social media. Avoid sharing any details or even vague comments online. Federal law enforcement and the U.S. Attorney’s Office can use your posts against you in court.

Sharing the wrong thing online can seriously damage your legal defense and complicate your criminal case.

. . . If you talk to anyone other than your lawyer about the investigation, you risk those people being questioned by the federal authorities or subpoenaed by the grand jury, in which case whatever you told them could end up being used against you.

You could even face obstruction of justice or witness tampering charges if the things you said can be twisted around to make it seem like you were attempting to influence the investigation.

. . . Destroying documents pertaining to a federal investigation is a crime, and you could end up facing additional charges under 18 U.S.C. § 1519 if you alter or destroy documents, records, or other evidence.

. . . Agents may collect evidence, speak with witnesses, and review your financial records or digital communications before deciding to indict. If you suspect you're under a federal criminal investigation, do not wait. Contact a defense attorney right away, even if no formal charges have been filed yet.

Comey is a former Assistant US Attorney, a former US Attorney, a former Deputy Attorney General, and a former FBI Director. He of all people should know how federal criminal investigations work and the things potential defendants should avoid. He should certainly have known by this past May that he probably was under some type of surveillance, since Trump was back in office, and every indication is that Trump and his team were fully aware of his activities in detail before Trump fired him in 2017.

So it seems to me that he should have hired someone like Abbe Lowell, who was Hunter Biden's defense attorney, almost as soon as Trump was inaugurated, if not earlier. And even if he didn't want to do that, he should have known what any competent defense attorney -- or even a wise non-arttorney friend -- would tell him: keep a low profile, and for pity's sake, stay off social media. Instead, last May, he posted the 8647 note on Instagram, and then, just to be cute, he deleted it.

Federal law enforcement officials said on May 15 that they are investigating an Instagram post Comey made depicting an image reading “8647.”

. . . A federal law enforcement official told USA TODAY on the condition of anonymity that the Secret Service was sending agents to question Comey about his post.

Do you suppose Comey had the good sense to have an attorney with him as he met with those agents? I kinda doubt it. But if he didn't have agents on his case before he made that post, he sure as shootin' did afterward, and you would have to suppose, given his broad experience in the federal legal system, he would have understood this and modified his behavior. But last evening, in the wake of announcements of one ongoing investigation and referral for another, he made a video on Substack. He went on at length about the firing of his daughter Maurene and concluded,

Trump and the hacks who lead the Department of Justice are hammering at the dam [of the DOJ's credibility] day after day, trying to turn it into just another gold-leaf-covered Trump subsidiary.

Our best hope is that good people will stay and do what Maurene asked—have the courage to do the right thing, always. You may get fired for acting that way, but there’s honor in that—and nothing but disgrace for those who don’t stand up.

But this brings Maurene into the picture. On one hand, his remarks can be interpreted as trying to influence Maurene's former colleagues not to cooperate with any DOJ investigation or prosecution of Comey himself, which can be a problem for him. But also, Miranda Devine at the New York Post broadly hints what I've also surmised, that Maurene was the one with access to the Trump-Epstein letter and leaked it to the Wall Street Journal:

One of [Epstein's 2019 fededral] prosecutors was none other than Maurene Comey, the daughter of notorious FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump had sacked two years earlier. James Comey is now in the crosshairs of the FBI, along with former CIA Director John Brennan, after current CIA Director John Ratcliffe referred them for criminal investigation two weeks ago over freshly declassified evidence that highlights their roles in the Russia collusion hoax.

Maurene Comey was fired Wednesday, one day before the WSJ story was published, and one day after the White House was alerted to the story. She told colleagues in an email that her ouster was “unexpected” and unexplained.

Comey was also the lead prosecutor of Maxwell in 2021 over her role in Epstein’s sex trafficking. According to the WSJ, the “birthday book” Maxwell compiled was in the files examined by the DOJ during the investigations of Epstein and Maxwell.

There is no federal father-daughter privilege. Both James Comey and his daughter must be aware of this. It sounds to me like both may have discussed the case at great length, if indeed they both didn't come up with the idea of leaking the Trump-Epstein letter to the WSJ. That leak could make Maurene eligible for criminal contempt charges, obstruction of justice charges under 18 U.S.C. § 1503, or theft of government property charges under 18 U.S.C. § 641.

Given the timing of the leak and Maurene's firing, the DOJ must have had a pretty good idea who was responsible. If Maurene discussed it with dad James, that could bring him into this episode as well. So let's see:

• Comey posted the 8647 image on Instagram and then deleted it, giving the impression he knew of his guilty intention, but also making him liable for obstruction of justice charges
• If he's hired a federal criminal defense attorney, which he clearly should do, he doesn't seem to be following any advice he'd be given
• Although federal agents have already met with him, there's no indication that he had an attorney with him then
• He's gone on social media making wide-ranging vague comments that could be used against him
• He's almost certainly talked to his daughter about his potential case, when she isn't his attorney, and the discussions aren't subject to any privilege
• He and his daughter may well be involved in the leak of grand jury material to the Wall Street Journal.

So far, this guy is looking like his own worst enemy.

Six Ways From Sunday

Flashback to January 3, 2017:

New Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday that President-elect Donald Trump is “being really dumb” by taking on the intelligence community and its assessments on Russia’s cyber activities.

“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.

“So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this.”

Trump said Tuesday evening that an intelligence briefing on Russia’s cyber activities “was delayed until Friday” and suggested that intelligence agencies weren’t prepared. NBC News reported, however, that the briefing was always planned for Friday.

“The ‘Intelligence’ briefing on so-called ‘Russian hacking’ was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!” the president-elect wrote on Twitter.

Intelligence officials have reportedly determined that Russia tried to interfere in the U.S. presidential election to help Trump win the White House.

More than eight years later, we're finally learning what was behimd Trump's tweet and Schumer's implicit threat:

The Obama administration "manufactured and politicized intelligence" to create the narrative that Russia was attempting to influence the 2016 presidential election, despite information from the intelligence community stating otherwise, Fox News Digital has learned.

On Friday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified documents revealing "overwhelming evidence" that demonstrates how, after President Donald Trump won the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton, then-President Barack Obama and his national security team laid the groundwork for what would be the years-long Trump–Russia collusion probe.

Documents revealed that in the months leading up to the November 2016 election, the intelligence community consistently assessed that Russia was "probably not trying…to influence the election by using cyber means."

. . . Fox News Digital obtained declassified, but redacted, communications from the FBI on the Presidential Daily Brief, stating that it "should not go forward until the FBI" had shared its "concerns."

Those communications revealed that the FBI drafted a "dissent" to the original Presidential Daily Brief.

The communications revealed that the brief was expected to be published Dec. 9, 2016, the following day, but later communications revealed that Office of the Director of National Intelligence, "based on some new guidance" decided to "push back publication" of the Presidential Daily Brief.

. . . Later, Obama officials "leaked false statements to media outlets" claiming that "Russia has attempted through cyber means to interfere in, if not actively influence, the outcome of an election."

By Jan. 6, 2017, a new Intelligence Community Assessment was released that, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, "directly contradicted the IC assessments that were made throughout the previous six months."

This sounds like Trump knew what was happening as it was taking place, and his tweets were completely correct, which must have been making the deep state at least mildly uncomfortable. But now let's move to a 2019 account by Josh Campbell, by then a CNN analyst, but in 2016-17 a special assistant to James Comey, then FBI Director:

It was January 6, 2017, two weeks before Donald J. Trump would take the oath of office and assume the role of commander in chief, responsible for protecting the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Comey had flown to New York to join his counterparts in the national security community to brief the president-elect and his transition team on their findings on actions the Kremlin had taken to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election.

. . . For months, a series of memos had been privately circulating among members of the media and across government that contained unverified but explosive charges against then candidate Trump. . . . the “Steele dossier,” as it would become known, also included tawdry alleged details of Trump’s sexual proclivities and illicit acts conducted while in Moscow. At one point, Steele thought the information so potentially damning that he approached the FBI and provided it with his reporting.

. . . Conscious of the personal embarrassment this sensitive brief might cause the president-elect, the FBI director opted to discuss it with Trump separately at the end of the larger briefing on Russian interference.

. . . When Comey got to the tawdry details contained in the dossier, Trump became defensive, cutting him off and denying the allegations. “Do I look like the kind of guy who needs prostitutes?” Trump asked. . . . Comey indicated that the intelligence community was aware that the claims in the dossier were unsubstantiated, but that he nevertheless wanted Trump to be aware the information was circulating through government and media circles. Trump thanked Comey for the information, signaling the end of the short one-on-one meeting.

Campbell reports reading Comey's laptop notes on "a meeting that would spell the beginning of the end of his career, and one that would mark the start of a veritable hurricane—a torrent of attacks on the rule of law that would risk threatening the viability of our national institutions of justice." How little he knew. My surmise is that Trump already knew what the meeting with Comey would bring up, as he clearly knew the workings within the deep state that would generate the false assessments of Russian interference in the election.

Let's keep in mind that within days of the election, National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers met with Trump to inform him that Trump Tower wasn't secure, and as a consequence, Trump moved his transition headquarters to his Bedminster, NJ golf club. He seems to have had well-placed informants within the deep state from the start, but the specific reason or reasons he fired Comey as FBI Director have never been made clear. They may eventually surface now.

Cats can eventually lose all nine of their lives, and it looks like the deep state is running out of the six ways from Sunday it had to get back at Trump. Matt Taibbi said, "All week, Washington buzzed with rumors about imminent document releases," but he meant the releases of the Russiagate documents Tulsi Gabbard declassified, when the real rumors that buzzed all week were about the upcoming Wall Street Journal story that turned out just to cover pube doodles. If anything, this was a sign that the deep state had used up all six ways from Sunday.

One thing we're learning is that the grapevine is always a few days ahead of what's happening. Just before DNI Gabbard released the declassified documents and the report,

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Friday bashed Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

“Tulsi Gabbard is not competent to be the director of national intelligence,” he told moderator Peter Baker at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. “I believe she is trying to politicize the workforce and work product, and that makes America less safe.”

But also in the days leading up to Gabbard's action, the Justice Department fired, of all people, James Comey's daughter Maurene.

Ms. Comey was told of her firing Wednesday in a letter from a Justice Department official in Washington who cited Article II of the Constitution, which broadly describes the powers of the president, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. She said in her email that the letter did not give a reason for her termination.

Nor do we know the specific reason for James Comey's own termination in 2017, but the history we're beginning to revisit suggests Trump was then, and is now, much better informed than we give him credit for. I suspect that Comey's daughter was in fact a means of communication that continued between Comey and the deep state, it's now been eliminated, and the timing is no coincidence. And as I've said, there's good reason to think she was the source of the pube doodles letter, too. It's one more indication they've used up their six ways from Sunday.

The Deep State Jumped The Shark!

Michael Lebron, a legal analyst, sometime conspiracy theorist, and standup comic who posts as Lionel on his YouTube channel, had been off the Trump train for a few weeks, convinced Bondi and Bongino were covering something up. No longer, at the post embedded above:

We are hitting a Twilight Zone level of disconnect that I never even thought was possible. . . . I mean, if you'd have told me that we'd be talking about pube doodles, I'd think you were out of your mind. What is this story? What is it? What does it have to do with anything? He wrote, if you believe it, Trump wrote, a birthday note, jotted something, typewritten, I guess, to Jeffrey Epstein, and it's this weird kind of a cryptic -- he's writing this down, and he does doodle by the way. You know, Trump does doodle. . . . We're actually breaking down the word "enigma", whether he's used it or not, I mean, it's the most ridiculous thing in the world, and they said that in the outline of this thing, he writes in the name Donald in pubic hair, but nobody's seen this picture? So show us the picture! Is this even important?

Here's another Trump-Epstein skeptic doing a 180 on the story:

Ten days ago, I wrote “Yes, President Trump, We Are Still Talking About The Creep, Epstein”. Ten days later, I have flip flopped on my position and I no longer give a flying fig about anything Epstein related. Last night, the Wall Street Journal posted “Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump.”. Stop the presses. For his 50th birthday, Ghislaine Maxwell curated a leather notebook filled with bawdy cards, including one birthday doodle from Donald Trump. Get me some freaking pearls to clutch.

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse is of the same mind:

There are some who have speculated the recent tone and response by President Trump to those who requested release of the “Epstein files” may have been a proactive decision by Trump who knew the WSJ story was being assembled. However, the entire thing seems so over-the-top ridiculous it’s likely fake news or manufactured foolishness; akin to the Chris [Steele] claims of “tapes” showing President Trump standing on a bed in Moscow peeing on prostitutes (completely untrue and stupid).

Even David Brooks on the PBS News Hour is taking this line:

This is crazy to me. It's like — and I have to take account of Candace Owens, the people who — like, seriously, the people who invented the QAnon theory?

Somehow, all political conversation revolves around them? As far as I can understand — and this has been looked into — there seems to be no evidence so far that anybody can find that there is an Epstein list. There are a lot of people — and the fact that Donald Trump knew Jeffrey Epstein back in the day is the least surprising fact in American life. They're two rich guys with a little Playboy tendencies.

But like a lot of people, Donald Trump had a fight with Epstein, apparently in 2004, over real estate. And they broke. And Epstein was then arrested and indicted a couple years after that. So a lot of people knew Jeffrey Epstein in those days, and a lot of people broke with him, Bill Clinton, Les Wexner.

So the whole story seems to have disappeared almost immediately, and CBS's cancellation of Stephen Colbert turns out to have been much more consequential news. So I don't seem to need to spend much time debunking the WSJ story. But there are still puzzling aspects that I think are going to come back to bite the Journal.

First, the implications of the original WSJ story are that the leatherbound volume of birthday greetings to Epstein was one-of-a-kind; there was a single copy, and it's now in the possession of the Justice Department.

Maxwell collected letters from Trump and dozens of Epstein’s other associates for a 2003 birthday album, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Pages from the leather-bound album—assembled before Epstein was first arrested in 2006—are among the documents examined by Justice Department officials who investigated Epstein and Maxwell years ago, according to people who have reviewed the pages.

As best anyone can tell, this single leatherbound album remains in the possession of the Justice Department, as implied in this X post by Karoline Leavitt:

The Wall Street Journal published a hatchet job article with a FAKE “birthday letter” that is supposedly from 2003.

This is like the Steele Dossier that kickstarted “the Russia, Russia, Russia” Hoax all over again.

The WSJ refused to show us the letter and conceded they don’t…

— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) July 18, 2025

She says, "The WSJ refused to show us the letter and conceded they don’t even have it in their possession when we asked them to verify the alleged document they’re basing their ENTIRE fake story on."

So esactly what did the WSJ reporters see, and how did they learn about it? Where exactly was this album physically located, and who had access to it? As best I can surmise, someone at the Justice Department, probably in New York or Washington, had access to what must have been very restricted Epstein evidence and saw fit to call the WSJ writers and tell them about it. However, the album was probably in an evidence room, it certainly couldn't be easily removed, maybe not even taken to a copy machine.

I would almost think the Trump note wasn't even copied on a copy machine and then faxed. I would guess whoever was talking to the WSJ went into the evidence room, pulled the album out, took a photo of the Trump note on their phone, and e-mailed it to the WSJ. That's what the writers were working with. And if they showed the White House the photo, given the capabilities of the NSA to search all e-mail, from everyone, everywhere, they'd identify who'd sent the photo immediately.

But this also makes me think whatever copy the WSJ was working with was pretty low quality. According to the story:

It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.

. . . It isn’t clear how the letter with Trump’s signature was prepared.

If in fact the album is still in the Justice Department's possession, located in a closely conrolled evidence room, then it's likely the WSJ writers have never seen the real thing at all, much less had an opportunity to examine it closely. At best, they've seen some e-mailed photos of Trump's note and a few selected others, supported by unsubstantiated second-hand accounts of what else is in it.

And the writers will be highly reluctant to answer any questions about the album, as they would almost immediately lead to the identity of the source who had access to it, which must be among a very limited number of people at a high level with a reason to see it. (You want my bet? Maurene Comey, who led the Epstein prosecution in 2019.) This is a big reason the media is suddenly deciding this isn't much of a story after all.

This story is going to turn out to have been a big mistake by the deep state remnants within the Justice Department. The Trump team just this week fired Maurene Comey, and I wouldn't rule out the WSJ piece as part of the reason; I suspect they knew about the story well in advance, as Sundance suggests above, and had already followed up. But a good many people are also now asking, "Is that all they have? This is ridiculous." They may once have had six ways from Sunday to try to get Trump, but it almost seems like they've come to the end of their ammunition.

The Epstein Birthday Letter: Another Thing I Don't Get

Alt media has been slow on the uptake over The Wall Street Journal's report of a 2003 birthday letter from Trump to Epstein:

The letter revealed by The Wall Street Journal was reportedly collected by disgraced British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell as part of a birthday album for Epstein years before the wealthy financier was first arrested in 2006 and subsequently had a falling-out with Trump. The letter bearing Trump’s name includes text framed by the outline of what appears to be a hand-drawn naked woman and ends with, “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” according to the newspaper. The outlet described the contents of the letter but did not publish a photo showing it entirely.

My first reaction is to wonder why the WSJ is messing around with stuff at this level. Trump has had allegations of a tryst with Stormy Daniels; he's been found liable for sexually abusing E Jean Carroll; he's spoken of grabbing women on the Access Hollywood tape. None of these things has done him permanent damage, and in fact, every time they came out in his interregnum, his polls went up. But similar allegations against Bill Clinton, JFK, Grover Cleveland, or Andrew Jackson didn't do them political harm, either.

So it can't be that he once wrote a bawdy birthday letter to Epstein, there's got to be more to it -- even if the letter is authentic, it seems like it's no big deal. So maybe it's the wording of the message, which is said to be typewritten:

Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything.

Donald: Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.

Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.

Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it.

Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?

Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.

Donald: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.

As far as I can parse this, it seems to be an oh-so-arch reference to some sort of "wonderful secret", and we might infer that the wonderful secret is they're both into nymphets, or something like that. But in a post on Truth Social, Trump said, “These are not my words, not the way I talk." I'm inclined to agree. "Enigmas never age" is something out of Oscar Wilde, not Donald J Trump. The same for "may every day be another wonderful secret" -- that's gushy girl-chat, not Donald J Trump. Trump's style is punchy, one- and two-syllable concrete words. "Enigmas" and "wonderful" aren't his vocabulary.

So this is on top of the problem that so far, the WSJ hasn't shown a photo of the letter itself, and at least according to Vice President Vance, it didn't show the letter to the Trump team in preliminary discussions, either. And it's supposed to be in some sort of leatherbound book put together by Ghislaine Maxwell. One thing that bothers me is that the text quoted above, something like eight typewritten lines, is somehow "framed by the outline of what appears to be a hand-drawn naked woman".

This suggests to me that the overall image must be quite large, larger than what might be expected in a grereting card or a page in a normal book -- and I just can't imagine Trump having the artistic focus or the time to create something like this. Since we don't have a photo, I can only imagine this to be something like a Charles Bukowski sketch, an example of which is at the top of this post. Bukowski, yes. Donald J Trump, no.

But here's another thing that doesn't fit. The Wall Street Journal is a generally reputable paper They have a lot to lose if this is a hoax, but not a whole lot to gain if it's true. CBS got crosswise with Trump, and they're still suffering the aftereffects -- the same morning news that carries the Epstein letter also reports they've canceled "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert".

On one hand, commentators like Scott Jennings are calling the story "a dud" as it is, but now the onus is going to be on the WSJ to prove the letter is authentic, especially if Trump follows through and files suit. Whatever the WSJ may write, there will be a process of discovery which will inevitably cover the letter itself, the leatherbound book that allegedly contained it, the provenance of the book and the letter itself, and so forth. This could well take years and run past Trump's term in office, and he isn't eligible to run again anyhow.

And the downside for the WSJ would make the problems CBS and CNN now face look like just a bad day, while even if the letter is authentic, it will likely not affect Trump much at all. I just don't get this.

How Long Did It Take Them To Kill Big Bird?

On news that the rescissions package had passed the Senate early this morning, including elimination of federal money to public broadcasting, I decided to check how long the idea of "killing big bird" had been in the public imagination. It's been at least since the 1990s:

“Every time Congress comes at public broadcasting, Big Bird is held up,” Sesame Street creator Joan Ganz Cooney told an interviewer in 1998, “as a crucifix is to a vampire.” Three years prior, when Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) took the floor to argue against proposed cuts to public broadcasting funding, he brandished a small Big Bird doll. “Don’t kill Big Bird,” he extolled, “because public broadcasting works, public broadcasting is good for the American taxpayer, and good for the American people.”

From the Tampa Bay Times in 1992:

Columnist George Will has had his fill of Sesame Street.

"Does Big Bird need a subsidy?" he asks.

Heritage Foundation scholar Laurence Jarvik hates the whole antique structure of the thing.

"Public television is a relic," he says. "The high priest is Bill Moyers. The sacred symbol is Big Bird. And you have people always asking you for offerings."

The same story quoted Bob Dole, who noted that people were complaining to him that Republicans, by holding up a financing bill, were threatening "to derail democracy, tear up Sesame Street, kill Big Bird and starve the Cookie Monster."

In other words, the idea of "killing big bird" had been in the language at least by 1992, but I'm almost certain I'd heard it before then. Still, this at least means the phrase was 20 years old by the time Mitt Romney brought it up in the 2012 presidential campaign:

Sad news, Sesame Street fans. That meanie Mitt Romney wants to cut funding for PBS, the public television network that has broadcast Big Bird and her fellow Muppets since 1970. "I like PBS, I like Big Bird," he claimed during Wednesday's [October 3] presidential debate. "But I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for."

Although Big Bird had been a metonymy for PBS by at least 1992, the exploitation of cloying characters from its childrens' programming went back to 1969, only two years after its founding:

On May 1, 1969 Fred Rogers, host of the longtime children's television landmark Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, appeared in Washington before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications to express his disagreement with a proposal by President Richard Nixon to cut federal funding for public broadcasting from $20 million to $10 million.

. . . Over the course of Rogers' passionate yet respectful testimony, Senator Pastore's gruff demeanor slowly softened. The chairman even said that, though he was "supposed to be a pretty tough guy," Rogers' fervent plea had given him "goosebumps." Pastore effused: "I think it's wonderful. I think it's wonderful," and, after a slight pause, he made his conclusion clear: "Looks like you just earned the twenty million dollars."

In other words, PBS's "for the children" defensive strategy had been successful for at least 56 years, and Big Bird had been part of that strategy for more than half that time. Another part of that argument was that the PBS budget was only a rounding error in the federal deficit, and any cut would be meaningless.

As far as I can see, up to Trump 47, Republicans had simply conceded these arguments. But all of a sudden, Big Bird is dead. Except it wasn't Republicans who killed it:

[W]ith the rise of streaming, it became difficult for the preschool staple to maintain being on PBS due to licensing fees once DVD and video sales tapered off. "Sesame Street" simply couldn't maintain staying on PBS without the revenue needed to produce the show, which is when HBO stepped in. But after completing their five-year deal, HBO, now known as Max, is shifting its focus to content for adults and families according to Variety.

On one hand, times changed. But on the other, congressional Democrats, even in this year's budget debates, with Sesame Street canceled by HBO, still fell back on Elmo to try to keep funding for PBS. But for the first time in nearly 60 years, Republicans finally won that symbolic fight. Under Trump. I can't disagree with him here:

I have had more success in 6 months than perhaps any President in our Country’s history, and all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the Fake News and the success starved Dems, is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax. Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore.

Something's truly hinky here. Cutting funding for PBS had been a small but symbolic item on the Republican agenda since Nixon's first term, and only Trump finally accomplished it -- but B-list Republicans are drowning it out with Epstein, Epstein, Epstein. I'm scratching my head.

The Problem Has Existed For Generations

The sign in the photo above is a bit of 1990s nostalgia, it was prominent on San Diego area freeways back then as a warning that illegals might dash across traffic, but eventually the highway department seems to have decided the warnings were redundant, or maybe just a bad look, and it removed the signs. As I thought about those signs recently, I suddenly recognized that Californians have been adjusting to the conditions of mass migration ever since I've been out here, starting in the 1960s.

But the other day I saw a news item that made me think things are changing:

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass signed an executive order Friday to bolster protocols and support immigrant neighborhoods, including offering cash assistance, in response to raids by the Trump administration targeting those living in the United States illegally.

. . . In addition, Bass said a plan is being worked out to provide cash assistance to those affected by the enforcement operations, the Los Angeles Times reported. Cash cards with a "couple hundred" dollars on them will be distributed by immigrants' rights groups in about a week, Bass said.

The wording here is a tacit acknowledgement that there aren't just ethnically Mexican neighborhoods or barrios in California, which has always been the case, but specifically neighborhoods made up of illegal immigrants, a much newer concept, though by no means brand new. But the ICE raids in LA are drawing attention to the problem:

Amid ongoing ICE raids around here in Los Angeles, many immigrant communities are fearful about living their daily lives, like leaving their homes, showing up to work, shopping at local businesses. Freelance journalist Benjamin Gottlieb spent some time in the San Fernando Valley, one of the many hubs of Latino immigrant life in this city.

. . . When I was out reporting, I saw an unusually low number of people milling about, especially on Van Nuys Boulevard, which is this major street in this part of Los Angeles. It felt like a ghost town really. I spoke with about a dozen day laborers and street vendors. Many were happy to chat but fearful recorded or give any identifying information.

. . . Yeah, so it's not just the fact that there are ICE raids. Those happen in Los Angeles. But immigration advocates say more people are being deported in an expedited way. So they might get put on a plane before they have a chance to appeal to an immigration judge.

. . . I walked into a juice bar that Jonathan Reyes and his family owns in Van Nuys. He says people no longer feel safe to go out, and they're just not coming to buy juice.

What this says to me is that the ICE raids, beyond rounding up illegals, are damaging an enormous underground economy that was based on serving illegals, and once you take the illegals out of the equation -- not just by physically removing rhem, but by making them reluctant to go out and spend money -- you're damaging that underground economy. And this economy is huge. At the link above,

This is the largest county in the U.S., about 10 million people. Census data puts the immigrant population at about a third. And there are estimates that as many as 1 million people in LA County are in the country illegally.

So all of a sudden, something like a million people who support low-end ethnic restaurants, pushcart vendors, ethnic grocers, barbers, hairdressers, food trucks -- not to mention drug dealers -- are reluctant to go out and spend money. And if they don't go to work on off-the-books jobs, they won't have the money to spend. So Mayor Bass is going to give them all gift cards? Wait a moment. This is a cash economy. What are these people going to get with gift cards? And this is a million people. How are gift cards with a couple hundred bucks going to fill the gap? Beyond that,

The money will not come from city coffers, but from philanthropic partners, [Bass] said.

Really, how much money are we talking about here? If we're talking about enough to make up for a million people who are afraid to go out, and go to work, this isn't just a piddling amount, it's got to be billions. "Philanthropic partners" won't have pockets that deep.

It also occurs to me that the illegals have in effect set up their own version of the Mexican "informal economy" that I linked to in a post a while ago:

An informal economy is made up of mostly small businesses that are not taxed or regulated, with workers who lack benefits such as health care and pensions. . . . In Mexico, the informal sector accounts for a staggering 24 percent of GDP and 55 percent of employment.

What's happening is that the ICE raids by the mere fact that they're taking place are pulling the rug out from under the California version of the Mexican informal economy. But with the additional funding for ICE and a changed policy direction, many more illegals are likely to be deported, also reducing the size of this informal economy:

President Donald Trump’s deputies have reversed the Democrats’ “catch and release” migration strategy and are now enforcing the federal law that requires migrants to be detained until their asylum claims are resolved.

. . . The ”catch and release” policy was created by the 2010 “Morton Memos” in President Barack Obama’s administration. The Obama policy flouted the federal law and allowed migrants to get jobs while they waited for their asylum hearings. The jobs allowed the migrants to pay off their smuggling debts to coyotes and cartels, regardless of how weak their asylum claims.

In turn, the policy greatly encouraged economic migration into Americans’ communities by reassuring would-be migrants that they would safely pay off the debts and upfront costs of hiring coyotes and cartels needed to get them into the United States.

. . . Trump’s 2025 policy will be an economic disaster for the [interest] group that profits from the cartel-managed migration.

In effect, it was the "informal economy" created by the illegal migrants that's financed the California Democrat machine. Mayor Bass's attempt to replace it with gift cards is a feckless effort on one hand, but it also shows the real damage the Trump policy changes are doing to the vested illegal immigration interests.

Dershowitz: There Is No Client List

Alan Dershowitz, after feeding confusion for several days with remarks like ". . . hand to God, I know. I know the names of people whose files are being suppressed in order to protect them, and that's wrong", has finally clarified what he means. In an interview with Chris Cuomo on NewsNation yesterday embedded above, he says at 0:12,

No, there is no client list, there never has been a client list. A "client list" suggests that Jeffrey Epstein made a list of people to who0m he trafficked women. What there is is a redacted FBI affadavit from accusers -- there are several of them -- from accusers that accuse various people of having improper sex, and that has been redacted. The names of the people accused have beern blacked out.

This is what I've been saying for a week. It's absurd to imagine that Epstein would create any document, that could be found via a search warrant or discovered in a civil suit, that confirmed the details of serious crimes like sex trafficking or blackmail. On the other hand, Dershowitz is correct in saying there are FBI files and court papers that contain allegations from various parties that say they were trafficked to prominent people like George Mitchell or Dershowitz himself.

Many of these came from Virginia Giuffre, who retracted her own allegations against Dershowitz in 2022, and whose allegations against Mitchell have been contradicted by Epstein's pilot. Circumstances arose at the end of her life that suggest serious investigation of her mental condition may have damaged her credibility as an accuser or a witness, especially if her testimony was ever subjected to cross-examination in an actual trial:

On March 31, 2025, in an Instagram post, Giuffre claimed that her car collided with a bus traveling at 110 km/h (70 mph), resulting in her going into renal failure. Giuffre said she had been given four days to live. Her family later said in a statement that "police were called but said that there was no one available to come to the scene", and Giuffre, who was "banged up and bruised", was subsequently taken to hospital as her condition deteriorated. She was later discharged.

Giuffre died of suicide at her home in Neergabby, Western Australia, on April 25, 2025, at the age of 41. Although the family at first accepted the alleged cause of death as suicide, on May 1 Giuffre's father released a statement discounting the suicide explanation and posting that "somebody got to her".

It seems to me that statements by accusers that haven't been substantiated should be redacted to protect both the accusers and the accused. Dershowitz continues on the redacted names of those accused at 1:00,

I can tell you right now, none of them are public figures who are currently in office. Some of them were previously in office. Some of them are dead.

This is consistent with what I've been saying for the past week, especially with yesterday's post, and I think Dershowitz is referring to most of the individuals named in that post. At 1:50, he says,

I don't know of any information that [Pam Bondi and the Justice Department] could disclose that they haven't disclosed. . . . The vast majority of people who are in the files, I know them all, I've seen all the names, the vast, vast majority of them have already been disclosed.

Again, these are the same people that I could identify with a few hours searching the web in yesterday's post. But then he moves to the other big question at 3:15:

And then there's Tucker Carlson's absurd allegations about the Mossad. There I know it from very, very personal experience. I was representing Jeffrey Epstein. I asked him about everything, including whether he'd had any contacts with intelligence agencies. If he had, he would have been dying to tell me that, because I could have used that to get him a better deal. If he had worked for the Mossad or the CIA, that would have been golden for me, but of course, he said "no". And then I checked it with my sources in Israel. Let me be clear. I once represented the Mossad . . . . I can tell you with absolute certainty, he had no connections to the Mossad.

There was a related deveopment yesterday when former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett posted on X:

As a former Israeli Prime Minister, with the Mossad having reported directly to me, I say to you with 100% certainty:

The accusation that Jeffrey Epstein somehow worked for Israel or the Mossad running a blackmail ring is categorically and totally false.

Epstein’s conduct,…

— Naftali Bennett נפתלי בנט (@naftalibennett) July 14, 2025

None other than Megyn "Me Again" Kelly replied in a post that has apparently since been taken down that "The U.S. Attny who spiked the case, Alex Acosta, is on record as saying Epstein was an intel agent and he was told to get rid of the prosecution." Numerous replies then made the point that there is in fact no public record containing those remarks from Acosta, that this is third-hand hearsay.

The idea that Epstein would have been a serious agent for any professional intelligence agency goes against common sense. If being sexually kinky makes anyone grounds for blackmail, then wouldn't Epstein himself be even more vulnerable than any of his victims? You don't want that guy, of all people, as an agent. But also, he had an insanely high public profile, mansions in Manhattan and Palm Beach, a private island, a private 737, stories in the tabloids -- spies don't call attention to themselves.

It's odd that the Epstein-Mossad story is being pushed mainly by two has-been ex-Fox hosts, both of whose public personas involve heavy plastic surgery (Kelly is 54, Carlson is 56) and lots of extra hair they didn't grow themselves. Notwithstanding, the facts as they've begun to fall out appear to be supporting the Justice Department's line a week ago: there's no client list, Epstein didn't work for the Mossad, and he in fact committed suicide. Charlie Kirk himself, who certainly enabled both Kelly and Carlson at the Turning Point summit over the weekend, has changed his tune:

After the right-wing uproar over the Justice Department’s Jeffrey Epstein memo hit a crescendo this weekend after the president’s Truth Social post calling for the MAGA base to let it go and leave Attorney General Pam Bondi alone, key Trump ally Charlie Kirk declared Monday that he was “done talking about Epstein” for the time being.

Kirk’s announcement comes a day after he spoke to the president on the phone to express his support for Bondi, according to CNN. Bondi has come under extreme fire from MAGA critics, including Kirk, who have blasted the attorney general for releasing an unsigned memo last week concluding that Epstein had no “client list,” died by suicide while awaiting trial and did not blackmail prominent figures who allegedly took part in his underage sex trafficking.

Quite possibly Trump himself also got in touch with Dershowitz and encouraged him to make his views clearer. It seems like Trump's people are gradually getting control of the story in any case.