Proof and truth and lies

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S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

Donald Trump, as he does almost daily, had reporters in the Oval Office today and answered a question saying “there’s nothing on me” in the Epstein files and claimed that “they found that Jeffrey Epstein and a sleazebag writer named Michael Wolff were conspiring against Donald Trump to lose the election.”

Elsewhere, it emerged that in the three million pages of files released by the Department of Justice, there are 38,000 mentions of Donald Trump, and Vladimir Putin’s name appears 1,056 times.

There is an FBI report of an interview with a woman who claimed that Trump raped her 35 years ago when she was underage. There are repeated references to Trump’s friendship with Epstein. There are messages between Melania and Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. As I reported yesterday, the files contain the names of prominent men like Howard Lutnick and Woody Allen and Larry Summers and others. They establish that each of these men had relationships with Epstein. There are details, such as visits to Epstein’s notorious island and trips on his jet aircraft, which was referred to as the “Lolita Express.”

However, there is no proof about any of them, no proof about Donald Trump, no proof that their friendship with the notorious and eventually convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein included committing sexual assault or rape of underage girls.

That’s the problem with the Epstein files. There isn’t any proof. They reveal tons of disgusting material about Epstein himself and the prominent men with whom he surrounded himself, but there is, as at least one report noted, “no smoking gun.”

So, let’s discuss what “proof” is. In the context of Donald Trump, we already know that proof does not matter. Maybe the truest statement Trump ever made was his “joke” in 2016 just before the Iowa caucuses: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” After ten long years of this asshole, I think we can all agree that his statement was absolutely correct. If it were to emerge that there is cellphone video of Trump carrying out the murder of a person in the middle of Fifth Avenue, his supporters would claim that it is fake news, a fake video, that it doesn’t show what it clearly shows.

“Proof” never really had any meaning with Trump. He is functionally immune from proof of wrongdoing. The Supreme Court confirmed and compounded that fact with its decision making him legally immune from prosecution for any action he takes as president. That is why he and his sons are out there making “deals” involving their crypto firm with Gulf state potentates that have, according to reports, yielded them some $4 billion in profits so far. There is nothing that can be done by anyone, anytime, anywhere that would get in the way of Trump’s rampant corruption.

But proof and truth are separate things. It is true that Trump and his sons and Steve Witkoff and his family made a deal with Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who manages the sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates, that yielded a $187 million gain for the Trump family through the Trump/Witkoff crypto business, World Liberty Financial, with $31 million going to the Witkoff family. But it is not proof of corruption, because according to the Supreme Court, Trump cannot commit any corrupt act, and anyone associated with him can be assured that they will not be prosecuted for corruption, because Trump has the power to pardon them, thus nullifying the entire concept of corruption.

How can something that is true not be proof of a crime or legal misbehavior? Easy. It is shown in pages from the Epstein files that were generated by the prestigious law firm, Kirkland Ellis, and signed by the prominent – for all kinds of reasons – Kenneth Starr, who was one of Epstein’s lawyers. Starr and Epstein’s other lawyer, Jay Lefkowitz, sent a letter to the former U.S. Attorney for southern Florida, Alexander Acosta, arguing that Epstein should not be indicted for crimes committed against underage girls. We know that the letter from Kirkland Ellis was successful, because Acosta signed a non-prosecution deal with Epstein that got him off federal charges and left him facing lesser charges by the state of Florida that he pleaded guilty to. We know that this deal was corrupt. Trump paid off Acosta for helping his friend Epstein in 2007 by appointing Acosta Secretary of Labor in 2017, a position in which he served until 2019, when the federal indictment of Epstein in New York forced Acosta to resign his position as Labor Secretary.

All this is fascinating by itself in the way it shows how powerful men, in this case, Epstein, Trump, Acosta, Starr, and Lefkowitz, conspired to fix the case against Epstein and let him off with a slap-on-the-wrist conviction and no real prison time. But it’s how it was done that goes to the heart of how proof and truth are corrupted by lies.

One of the things Epstein was investigated for was “inducement,” which in his case was convincing underage girls to engage in acts of prostitution. The letter from Kirkland Ellis goes into great detail to convince Acosta that Epstein could not have “induced” girls to engage in illegal sexual acts with adult men because (1) they lied about their ages to Epstein, and (2) the acts they carried out on men were consensual.

Oh, boy. It’s hard to even grasp that these men, Starr and Lefkowitz, could go to sleep at night having written the garbage they wrote to Acosta, just as it is hard to believe that Acosta could get to sleep having accepted their arguments.

Reading the pages as they are reproduced in the Epstein files is…there is no other word for it…incredible. Under the subheading, “No Sexual Contact,” the letter quotes one of the underage girl’s sworn statement about Epstein: “So I willingly the first time took off my top when I gave him a massage and nothing more than that.” Further down, the same underage girl says, “I would wear panties. Willingly one time because we were making jokes and everything and willingly one time I had, yes, I was [blacked out] but I was fine with it.”

This is from an underage girl, interviewed by the FBI, and here statements were being used to absolve Epstein of having “induced” her to commit a crime. Elsewhere in the letter, she quoted describing “bringing him, I don’t know, maybe 30 girls. It was all about money to me at the time.” She describes telling the other “girls” to lie to Epstein about their ages. She states, “Like I said, I went [blacked out] for him one time. But the other girls, they practically were topless and that’s all that they were willing to do.”

Here is the conclusion made by Kenneth Starr and Jay Lefkowitz after the above quotes and many others, all of them about the underage girl discussed in the letter:

“In sum, [blacked out] testimony clearly shows that she is not a victim.”

Not a victim.

Here is the conclusion Starr and Lefkowitz provided to Acosta, with which he apparently agreed: “We believe — and know you share our belief that citizens should he treated alike regardless of wealth or status when it comes to criminal justice. We ask for nothing more of your treatment of Mr. Epstein than that he be treated as would any other citizen of Palm Beach under similar circumstances. Mr. Epstein should not be charged with offenses to which his conduct does not apply.”

The underage girl’s testimony about providing Epstein with other girls and being paid for it, about underage girls wearing “panties” and going “topless” while giving “massages” was not enough proof for Acosta to prosecute Jeffrey Epstein.

What we know about Epstein, what we know about Trump, what we know about their friendship from photographs and from everything that has been written about these two men, and their friends, and their associates, may be true, but it is not proof.

Think about this for a moment. Try to imagine being a 15 or 16 year old girl being topless and standing over the prone figures of Epstein or Summers or Trump or any of the rest of them and giving them a “massage.”

That may be evidence of the gross and misshapen moral sensibility, the utter absence of knowing the difference between what is right and what is wrong, by these men, but it is not proof of anything.

That is what Trump and the rest of them want us to believe. That is why “there is nothing on me” is a lie, and yet when it comes to the law, it is true. Proof is neither truth nor evidence of a lie. It is legal and cold and naked. It is what they will deploy to defend the murderers of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Cellphones and the body cameras they promised today will be issued to ICE agents won’t save us.

We may see with our eyes and hear with our ears and be able to distinguish between right and wrong, but that is not much more than evidence of being human. It may be true, but it’s not proof.