Antipodes Nuts

What’s up is down. Yin, meet yang. Strike that, reverse it. A little bit country, say hello to a little bit rock ‘n roll. After an extreme effort that played out everywhere from social media tirades to strong-arming in The Situation Room, Donald Trump went full Contradictator, “suddenly reversing his monthslong campaign to bottle up a bipartisan effort to disclose federal records dealing with Jeffrey Epstein — just as scores of House Republicans prepare to defy his demands concerning the late convicted sex offender.” So Trump is essentially encouraging the House to compel him to release the files he could order released on his own. What gives? Is this a classic Trumpian case of He Said, He Said? Has Donald Trump so completely polarized the country that he’s accidentally polarized himself? Or are we playing Checkers while he’s playing Destroy Checks and Balances? Let’s posit a guess at what’s going on. Trump was faced with a House battle to release the Epstein files that he was going to lose. So he jumped to the winning side. But doesn’t that present a big risk if the files contain damaging information about him? After all, he took his pre U-Turn position for a reason. My hunch is that if Congress compels the release of the files, Pam Bondi will say she can’t release all of them because of the ongoing investigation into Epstein and others (Democrats) that Trump ordered last week. If that’s the case, the DOJ investigation into Trump’s enemies could stretch into forever, and we’ll see those files just about the time we kick off Infrastructure Week.

+ Of course, the fact that Trump gives investigation orders via social media to a once independent DOJ is representative of an even bigger scandal than the one everyone is talking about. NYT Magazine (Gift Article): The Unraveling of the Justice Department. “We interviewed more than 60 attorneys who recently resigned or were fired from the Justice Department. Much of what they told us is reported here for the first time. Beginning with Trump’s first day in office, the lawyers narrated the events that most alarmed them over the next 10 months. They described being asked to drop cases for political reasons, to find evidence for flimsy investigations and to take positions in court they thought had no legitimate basis. They also talked about the work they and their colleagues were told to abandon — investigations of terrorist plots, corruption and white-collar fraud.”