Trump Calls His Lawyer

Trump has launched his latest salvo in the war over the Epstein files. He says he’s asking Justice Department to investigate Epstein’s ties to slew of high-profile figures (who all happen to be political opponents or enemies). I’m not sure Trump’s strategy will slow down this scandal. But it points to an even bigger one: The way the president has turned the FBI and Justice Department into his own personal legal force. And they way the leaders of those institutions are going along with it.

+ Susan B. Glasser in The New Yorker: The Epstein Scandal Is Now a Chronic Disease of the Trump Presidency. “The point is that no matter how much you might want to avoid paying attention to this truly unsavory story, it is not going away. The veteran journalist Jonathan Alter, who’s covered his share of Washington scandals, compared this one to ‘a bad case of herpes,’ that might lie low for a while but will never stop afflicting Trump and shadowing his Presidency.” (Just as Trumpism continues to afflict America…)

+ Courier created a searchable database with all 20,000 files from Epstein’s Estate.