It’s Starting to Smell Like Trump’s Watergate
But that doesn’t mean Trump’s scandal will have the same ending as Nixon’s.
Your Morning Shots correspondents aren’t big South Park heads. (Maybe a generational thing?) But we’ve got to hand it to them—how many goofy cartoons have gotten deep enough under a president’s skin to provoke a seething White House response?
“The Left’s hypocrisy truly has no end—for years they have come after South Park for what they labeled as ‘offense’ content1, but now they are praising the show,” White House Assistant Press Secretary Taylor Rogers told Deadline yesterday, after the show’s season premiere painted Trump as a lawsuit-happy, Satan-snuggling maniac with an impressively tiny penis. “Just like the creators of South Park, the Left has no authentic or original content, which is why their popularity continues to hit record lows. This show hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention.”
The show’s creators signed a deal with Paramount this week valuing the show’s streaming rights at $1.5 billion over five years—not bad for a show that is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas.
A programing note: Will Sommer will be hosting a members-only “AMA” this afternoon at 1:30 p.m. EDT, for a deep dive on the Free Ghislaine movement and how MAGA is coping with the Trump administration’s bungling of the Epstein files. If you’re not a member, join now and tune in:
Happy Friday.
Don’t Call It a Coverup
by William Kristol
On June 6, 2025, Donald Trump’s FBI Director, Kash Patel, discussed the Jeffrey Epstein files with podcaster Joe Rogan. “We’ve reviewed all the information,” Patel stressed, “and the American public is going to get as much as we can release.”
One month later, on July 6, a joint, unsigned statement from the FBI and the Department of Justice announced that nothing would be released—except for a prison video. The video turned out not to be, in fact, the “raw” video the statement promised. But it was in any case an attempt at misdirection—an effort to get people to focus on the question of Epstein’s death, rather than on the crimes he committed when alive.
For that is where the danger to Trump lies. And, naturally, that is what is now being covered up.
As a story in yesterday’s New York Times makes clear, the documents about Epstein’s crimes were pretty much ready for release three months ago. The FBI and Justice Department had conducted extensive reviews and re-reviews of the files. They had considered what should and shouldn’t be released due to legal and privacy concerns.
The Times explains:
After the F.B.I. finished its review of the files, the materials were handed over to a team of dozens of Justice Department lawyers who were given the job of double-checking the bureau’s redactions to ensure that neither too much nor too little information was disclosed, according to a person familiar with the process. The lawyers, drawn from multiple divisions from within the department, sat at their desks beginning in late March or early April reviewing documents for the better part of two weeks, the person said. . . . By mid-April, the department’s review had been largely completed.
So in mid-April, the Trump administration was, it seems, very close to being ready to go with the oft-promised release of the bulk of the Epstein files.
But then, in May, Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy Todd Blanche briefed President Trump on the files. According to the Times, they told the president his name appeared multiple times.
Two months later, a decision: No files would be released.
The July 6 joint FBI-DOJ statement makes it seem as if this were a decision arrived at jointly by Bondi and Patel:
To that end, while we have labored to provide the public with maximum information regarding Epstein and ensured examination of any evidence in the government’s possession, it is the determination of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.
But it is the safest of safe bets that Bondi and Patel didn’t simply sit and reflect and deliberate and come to a judicious determination not to release the files. We know Trump had been briefed on the files. We don’t know what subsequent conversations he had about them, or with whom. But we can safely conclude that the Justice Department and the FBI don’t make joint determinations on matters of great interest to the president without consulting him—indeed, without taking direction from him.
It is also the safest of safe bets that it was Trump’s determination that no further disclosure would be “appropriate or warranted.” And it is the safest of safe bets that Trump made that determination because he knew that no further disclosure would be in his interest. At this juncture, it’s impossible, indeed irresponsible, not to note that both Bondi and Blanche served as personal lawyers for Trump prior to taking on their government roles.
Epstein is President Trump’s coverup, as surely as Watergate was President Nixon’s.
And the coverup is proceeding apace. Yesterday, Blanche traveled to Florida to meet—in private—with Jeffrey Epstein’s confederate in trafficking and sexually abusing underage girls, Ghislaine Maxwell. We don’t know if Trump privately suggested such a meeting to his former lawyer. He surely was informed of the plan for his one-time lawyer to get together with his one-time friend, to whom, let us recall, Trump had offered well wishes after her arrest in 2020.
Needless to say, Blanche has not thought to meet with any of Epstein’s and Maxwell’s victims, who, as the chronicler of the Epstein-Maxwell crimes, Julie Brown, reminded us last night,
testified under oath that Maxwell sexually abused them with Epstein. Victims testified under oath that she recruited them and schooled them on how to give sexualized massages to Epstein. Victims testified that she took their passports so that they became prisoners on the island. Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking.
But what do Epstein’s victims matter when you’re rushing to carry out an Epstein coverup?
What’s more, last week Bondi and Blanche abruptly fired Maureen Comey, the highly regarded Justice Department career attorney who had prosecuted the Epstein and Maxwell cases, and in doing so, had spent much time with their victims.
So we have Trump’s Justice Department all-in on executing Trump’s coverup. And unlike in the case of Watergate, we have no special counsel investigating and combating the coverup; we have no Senate Select Committee holding hearings to try to get at the facts; we have, as of yet, no conscientious individuals like John Dean who turned against the coverup after having been part of it.
This coverup could succeed.
But perhaps not. The fact that the Epstein-Maxwell crimes were so horrible will surely make the coverup more difficult to sustain. Trump was very close to Epstein and Maxwell during the years they were committing those crimes. I suspect more information will come out about their relationship.
So does JD Vance. Last night he complained, in response to the latest Wall Street Journal piece about the Epstein birthday book, “We all know what’s going to happen. They’re going to dribble little details out for days or weeks in an effort to assassinate the president’s character.”
Feel free to chortle, dear reader, about the notion that Trump has an upstanding character that is now being disparaged. But consider what the vice president is acknowledging: That more is to come. More “little details” like Trump’s incriminating birthday note. More little revelations of hushed Oval Office meetings. More little cracks in the Trump stonewall. More and more until, perhaps, it all comes crashing down.
Zelensky’s Home-Front Turmoil
by Cathy Young
For the past few days, Ukraine has been roiled by political turmoil that has nothing to do with the war. This week, the parliament passed and President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law stripping the country’s two anti-corruption agencies of autonomy and subordinating them to the government. This sparked massive protests in Kyiv and other cities, undeterred by a wartime curfew.
On Thursday, Zelensky apparently backed down, announcing a new bill to reinstate the two bodies’ independence while also protecting them from Russian influence—the ostensible reason given for the earlier move to bring them under government control.
A number of people who strongly support Ukraine in its war against Russian aggression have expressed disappointment in Zelensky, even accusing him of “betrayal” of Ukraine’s liberal democracy. (Of course, for Kremlin propagandists like Moscow-based Irish businessman and “journalist” Chaye Bowes, this is a golden opportunity to bash “dictator Zelensky.”) On the other hand, Zelensky advisor Mykhaylo Podolyak argued in a television interview that the controversy ultimately shows the strength of democracy and civil society in Ukraine—and its leaders’ willingness to listen to citizens.
The two agencies, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office—known by the Ukrainian acronyms NABU and SAP—were created in 2015, just after of Ukraine’s 2014 “Revolution of Dignity,” as part of the conditions set by the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund for moves toward the country’s European integration. Their structures have been completely independent of the Ukrainian government, and they have often collaborated with European and American agencies, including the FBI. The disputed legislation would have given the prosecutor general, a presidential appointee, the power to review, postpone, or shut down the agencies’ investigations and otherwise direct their work.
Substance aside, many Ukrainians were angered by the rush to pass the bill, right on the heels of several NABU officials being arrested on charges of spying for Russia. Critics have charged that both the crackdown and the legislation were intended to defang the agencies because of investigations into Zelensky’s close allies inside and outside the government (notably deputy prime minister Oleksiy Chernyshov.) Other speculation goes further to suggest that Zelensky used a preemptive strike to derail an investigation targeting him—or, possibly, to thwart a Trump administration move to use NABU and SAP to remove him from office.
On the other hand, a report on the Russian-language site of LRT, the Lithuanian national broadcasting company, notes that even some of the protesters agreed that the two agencies have had real problems—including slow and inefficient work with few results to show for it. And yes, Russian infiltration and spying are a very real cause for concern.
In other words: It’s complicated. But one thing is clear: Ukrainians reacted. The protests were not suppressed. (So much for “dictator Zelensky.”) And the government apparently listened—to international concerns, but also to its own people. While the parliament has gone into a four-week recess, its speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk has promised that the new bill protecting the autonomy of the anti-corruption agencies would be voted on in an expedited manner.
This is, of course, a glaring contrast to the real dictatorship next door to Ukraine—the one trying to destroy it—where all protest has been crushed and high-level officials get arrested for corruption only when Vladimir Putin wants them gone. But you might say it’s even a lesson in democracy for Donald Trump’s America, where many White House moves to curb, muzzle, and undermine independent institutions have gone forward without much public reaction.
AROUND THE BULWARK
Why the Huge Conflicts of Interest Among Trump’s Epstein Team Matter… There may be an issue when his former personal lawyers are overseeing the Department of Justice, writes PHILIP ROTNER.
MAGA Inches Closer to a Ghislaine Maxwell Alliance… WILL SOMMER writes: Is perpetrating heinous crimes against children too big a hurdle for a political alliance of convenience? Maybe not.
BONUS: Join Will for an “AMA” this afternoon at 1:30 pm ET in The Bulwark’s members-only chat room for a deep dive on the Free Ghislaine movement and how MAGA is coping with the Trump administration’s bungling of the Epstein files.
Withdrawing from Europe Would Be a Strategic Blunder… Yet it’s one even some experts seem intent on making, observes GEN. MARK HERTLING.
Destiny of the Dispossessed Spinach Prince… John Seabrook’s history of Seabrook Farms, where many incarcerated Japanese Americans worked during WWII, is ultimately about fathers and sons. NICK RIPATRAZONE reviews the new book.
Quick Hits
OH MY GOD, OBAMA KILLED KENNY!: We’ve written a few times this week about DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s new role as lead attack dog for the White House’s “treason” attack on Barack Obama. Here she was yesterday on the Charlie Kirk show, blaming the 2017 intelligence assessment that Vladimir Putin had wanted Trump to win for all the world’s subsequent evils:
They manufactured a hoax. They manufactured these lies, published it as though it were true, propagated this through the media to the American people. And then what happened next? The yearslong Mueller investigation was launched. You had two impeachments coming from Congress. You had a raid on President Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago by the FBI. . . . This January 2017 intelligence community assessment is that foundation for everything that came after.
As we’ve already covered at length, this is all deeply stupid. But what we really appreciated here is Gabbard’s wild claims about the consequences of the intel report. As we remember it, the launch of the Mueller investigation might have had something to do with the multiple administration officials who were caught lying about having met with Russians, which led to the resignation of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and made Attorney General Jeff Sessions recuse himself from Russia-related matters. We had also been under the impression that Trump’s impeachments concerned unrelated matters—his attempts to bully Ukraine into helping him get dirt on Joe Biden first, and his attempt to steal the 2020 election culminating in January 6th later. And here we were walking around with the wild notion that the Mar-a-Lago search had to do with classified documents Trump had walked out of the White House with and refused to give back!
Well, not so, says Tulsi: All that stuff goes straight back to Obama. “This is not about Tulsi Gabbard’s beliefs or opinions or even allegations,” she insisted to Kirk. “Read the intelligence. Read the evidence. . . . Anyone who is a little bit objective who would read that would draw the same view that you and I have, that the truth is very real and it’s irrefutable.”
VISITING THE FED: Donald Trump spends his days in a constant state of low-level irritation at Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whose insistence on keeping interest rates up to clamp down on inflation is a stick in his craw. Trump’s advisers, as we’ve written, have hatched a plan for how to get Powell out of the way, should Trump choose to do so: Accuse him of defrauding the American people by permitting cost overruns on the new renovation of the Fed’s headquarters.
Yesterday, Trump took a little field trip over to see how the renovation was going. It was a fascinating moment in a lot of ways, not least because of the made-for-TV visual of Trump and Powell side-by-side, talking to the press—in incongruous hard hats no less! It was remarkable to watch Sen. Tim Scott2, who just last year was pitching himself as a kinder, more hopeful presidential alternative to Trump, tagging along behind the president to parrot his ridiculous attacks on Powell. And it was amusing to watch Trump, as always, say the quiet part out loud. Asked what Powell could do to assuage his concerns about the cost overruns, the president replied that “well, I’d love him to lower interest rates.”
But the most remarkable moment was this real-time fact-check from Powell of Trump’s claims about those overruns: “It looks like it’s about $3.1 billion,” Trump said. “It went up a little bit . . . the $2.7 billion is now $3.1.” Powell shook his head: “I’m not aware of that,” he replied.
Trump handed Powell a piece of paper. Powell looked it over. “You are including the Martin renovation,” he said. “You just added in a third building.”
“It’s a building that’s being built,” Trump said.
“No,” Powell replied, “It was built five years ago.”
Cheap Shots
Former Rep. George Santos begins his seven-year prison sentence for fraud and embezzlement today, marking the end (for now?) of one of the weirdest micro-sagas of the Trump era. We’ll let him talk us off:
sic.
Scott didn’t qualify for a hard hat, it seemed. Bummer.
"At this juncture, it’s impossible, indeed irresponsible, not to note that both Bondi and Blanche served as personal lawyers for Trump prior to taking on their government roles."
IMHO, the above quotation needs a bit of editing:
At this juncture, it is impossible, indeed irresponsible, not to note that neither Bondi nor Blanche ever relinquished their roles as personal lawyers for Trump before assuming their secondary roles, allegedly for the government.
"Your Morning Shots correspondents aren’t big South Park heads. (Maybe a generational thing?)"
Really, guys? Generational? South Park has been on for what, 27 years? How old are you guys, anyway?