Why Trump Might Free Ghislaine
Trump can’t bully or bribe the Jeffrey Epstein files, but Epstein’s top co-conspirator is another matter.
For a guy who’s absolutely furious that everyone keeps talking about the Epstein story, Donald Trump sure does keep making a lot of news about it that keeps it stuck to the headlines. One of these days, we’re going to manage to get you a Morning Shots item off this news—but today is not that day. Happy Tuesday.
If He Did It
by Andrew Egger
How far off its axis has this Jeffrey Epstein story careened in the last few weeks? Imagine reading this just a few weeks ago: “It still seems unlikely that Donald Trump will pardon Ghislaine Maxwell, but he sure isn’t ruling out the possibility.”
Well: It still seems unlikely that Donald Trump will pardon Ghislaine Maxwell, but he sure isn’t ruling out the possibility. “I’m allowed to do it, but it’s something I have not thought about,” Trump told reporters Friday. By yesterday, he had thought about it: “Well, I’m allowed to give her a pardon, but nobody’s approached me with it. Nobody’s asked me about it,” he said. “Right now, it would be inappropriate to talk about it.”
Nobody’s asked him about a pardon? Our mistake, Maxwell’s lawyers must have said, we’ll get right on that. Maxwell—who, again, and I feel like we somehow still have not stressed this enough, is a convicted sex trafficker of children—is currently petitioning the Supreme Court to overturn her conviction on a technicality. But after Trump’s comments yesterday, her lawyers saw fit to loop him in as well.
“President Trump built his legacy in part on the power of a deal,” Maxwell attorney David Markus said in a statement yesterday afternoon. “We are appealing not only to the Supreme Court but to the president himself to recognize how profoundly unjust it is to scapegoat Ghislaine Maxwell for Epstein’s crimes, especially when the government promised she would not be prosecuted.”
A new and mysterious quietism over whether Maxwell should remain in prison has suddenly engulfed GOP congressional leadership as well. “Well, I mean, obviously that’s a decision of the president,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday. “I won’t get in front of him. That’s not my lane.” Likewise Senate Majority Leader John Thune: “Well, that’s up to him. But it looks to me like she’s going to spend a good long time in jail.”
You’d imagine Trump would prefer not to be in a situation where his best strategic move appears to be to flirt with pardoning one of America’s most despicable criminals. But there is a strategy at work here.
The main thing to remember is that the White House and its allies are trying to shift the story’s center of gravity away from the Epstein files—files the White House repeatedly promised to release, which it could release at Trump’s direction at any moment, but in which, alas, Trump himself apparently repeatedly appears. Given that the files are simply files, they are irritatingly immune to Trump’s usual toolkit of story-shaping moves: They can’t be bullied, bought off, or intimidated. All the White House can do is release them or not—and they tried “not,” and it didn’t work all that well.
Maxwell, however, provides a potential new center of gravity for l’affaire Epstein. If Trump and his allies can convince their base that she, rather than the Epstein files, is the key to unlocking the Epstein story, they can recast their own role in that story: not as the people holding back the critical information for reasons they can’t adequately explain, but as the people seeking out the critical information by getting Epstein’s top co-conspirator to at last spill the beans.
This, of course, is also why the White House has continued to advance the preposterous notion that the Epstein files currently in their possession were likely doctored during the Biden administration to hurt Trump. Trump’s media allies have picked up on this line too: “If anybody actually has the information of what has happened around Jeffrey Epstein, it’s not going to be some James Comey–created file,” Charlie Kirk said last week on his radio show. “It’s going to be Ghislaine Maxwell.”
That Maxwell is an utterly untrustworthy narrator is a feature, not a bug, of this possible strategy. She more than anyone can give an account of Epstein’s potential associates in crime; she more than anyone would know how (if at all) Trump factors into that story. But of course he and she both know that the best outcome for both of them is for her to share a version of the story that is convenient to him. After all, her lawyers’ efforts at the Supreme Court notwithstanding, there’s one realistic way she gets out of prison just a few years into a twenty-year sentence: a presidential pardon.
All this helps explain why the previously unthinkable—a pardon for Maxwell—is now at least potentially on the table. Of course, this strategy presents mammoth risks for the president as well. No matter how they sugarcoat the story, a pardon for Epstein’s top associate would present a large pill for the Epstein-accountability base to swallow. And it’s not clear what Maxwell’s participation in such a White House scheme would even look like: Would she produce new documents? Sit for sworn depositions? Testify before Congress? But it’s easy to imagine Trump pushing off all those questions to a later day. Here, at last, is a configuration of the Epstein case that plays to Trump’s strengths. Maxwell wants something from him. He has the cards. The more they can make her the center of this story, he no doubt thinks, the better.
Bill’s off today, but in his place we’ve got something fun—a rare outside voice in Morning Shots. Chris Truax is an appellate lawyer in California and a Bulwark contributor—who, we’d note, also has the worthy distinction of having been the first outside contributor EVER to write for The Bulwark, all the way back in the misty past of January 2019. Take it away, Chris:
Beef Is the New Eggs
by Chris Truax
Donald Trump campaigned on making prices go down “quickly.” So why are all his policies aimed at making prices go up?
Take beef prices, for example. Since the beginning of the year, the price of hamburger is up about 9 percent. Steaks have gone up even more. Those are the official numbers. As a practical matter, it seems much worse than that when you’re in the grocery store. At least in Southern California, if you can find hamburger for $5.99 a pound, that’s a good deal—and it never seems to go on sale anymore.
The Trump administration is doing everything it can to make this worse. Trump is imposing a 35 percent tariff on beef from Canada and a 30 percent tariff on beef from Mexico, countries from which we imported 1.6 billion pounds of beef in 2024.
And Trump just announced a trade deal that will lift Australian restrictions on importing American beef. To quote Trump, “We are going to sell so much [beef] to Australia,” which, of course, will drive up the price of beef here at home. In other words, Trump just made a deal that will make Americans pay more for beef so that Australians can pay less. So much for America first.
But the biggest slap in the face for American consumers is his decision to impose a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian imports to punish the country for trying to hold its ex-president, Jair Bolsonaro, responsible for attempting a coup. America imported almost 700 million pounds of beef from Brazil in 2024 so Trump’s “Free Bolsonaro!” tariff will drive up American beef prices even further. Forget taking away healthcare from poor people to give tax breaks to billionaires—Trump is spending my food budget to help sketchy Brazilian politicians.
Not everybody is upset about this, though. I’m sure the four companies that control 85 percent of the American beef market are ecstatic. Trump’s beef policies, which increase demand and decrease supply, will mean more profits for them but much higher prices for consumers.
If Trump cared about consumers instead of corporate profits, there are things he could do about beef prices. At the very least, he ought to declare zero tariffs on beef imports. He should certainly stop demanding other countries buy American beef. While export tariffs are unconstitutional, Trump could push to ban all beef exports. That would sound like a radical step except that the United States had the same policy in place for crude oil for four decades, and for precisely the same reason.
As issues go, this sounds like a perfect storm for Democrats, providing they can resist the urge to lecture everyone about how high beef prices are really being caused by climate change. The question isn’t why beef prices have gone up over the last year, it’s why Trump is adopting policies that make the situation worse instead of better.
Beef is the new eggs. It’s a pocketbook issue that is forcing people to change their consumption habits. Democrats should be taking every opportunity to tie those price increases to Trump and his policies. There is no one thing that is going to tank his approval rating. But “I can’t afford steak and it’s Donald Trump’s fault” is a pretty good start.
AROUND THE BULWARK
The World at War… GEN. MARK HERTLING with a summary of the globe’s ongoing conflicts, which reveals why peace is so hard to build.
Trump’s Supreme Court Enablers Will Face History’s Verdict… They will be remembered, PHILIP ALLEN LACOVARA writes, for their part in the damage done to people’s lives and to the Constitution.
All the President’s Mouthpieces… Are you combative, dishonest, foulmouthed, and mean? You’re hired. BILL LUEDERS on MAGA’s new, er, standards.
No Lyin’ to Lyonne… ZANDY HARTIG reviews the second season of Peacock’s Poker Face.
The Life and Times of Bill Buckley… Author SAM TANENHAUS joins MONA CHAREN to discuss his new biography of the National Review founder and the movement he did so much to create.
Quick Hits
‘THOSE CHILDREN LOOK VERY HUNGRY’: Yesterday, Andrew noted the perverse reality that Trump would have much more political cover than Biden ever had to try to strong-arm Israel into allowing more aid into Gaza, should he choose to do so. Now, remarkably, it appears the White House is at least gesturing in the direction of doing exactly that. Yesterday, Trump was asked whether he agreed with Benjamin Netanyahu’s weekend claims that there is no starvation crisis in Gaza. “I don’t know,” Trump replied. “I mean, based on television I would say not particularly, because those children look very hungry.”
Setting aside the, uh, particular Trump qualities of that answer—“based on television,” says the man with the entire intelligence apparatus of the United States at his beck and call—there seems to have been a real shift here. “We can save a lot of people,” Trump said again later in the day. “I mean, some of those kids are—that’s real starvation stuff. I see it, and you can’t fake it. So we’re going to be even more involved.” The administration announced it would soon begin setting up “food centers” in Gaza, although of course the devil will be in the details.
More evidence for the abrupt shift: The Bulwark reached out to the White House and the State Department on Sunday to ask whether the administration believed there was a starvation crisis in Gaza and if there were plans to address it. We received no response in time for yesterday’s newsletter. Yesterday afternoon, however, the State Department forwarded a statement from White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly: “President Trump wants to alleviate suffering for the people of Gaza because he has a humanitarian heart. He announced a new aid plan today to help Gazans obtain crucial access to food—details are forthcoming.”
WHOOPS, NEVER MIND: As protests flared in Los Angeles last month against federal immigration enforcement, Attorney General Pam Bondi pledged justice would be swift and ferocious against any lawbreakers. “We’re going to prosecute them federally,” Bondi said on Fox News. “You spit on a federal law enforcement officer no more.”
Now, though, federal prosecutors are quietly dismissing many of the charges filed immediately in the wake of the protests—in many cases because the prosecutions appear to have relied on false statements from federal immigration officers who took the defendants into custody. The Guardian reports:
Out of nine “assault” and “impeding” felony cases the Justice Department filed immediately after the start of the protests and promoted by the attorney general, Pam Bondi, prosecutors dismissed seven of them soon after filing the charges.
In reports that led to the detention and prosecution of at least five demonstrators, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents made false statements about the sequence of events and misrepresented incidents captured on video.
One DHS agent accused a protester of shoving an officer, when footage appeared to show the opposite: the officer forcefully pushed the protester.
One indictment named the wrong defendant, a stunning error that has jeopardized one of the government’s most high-profile cases.
For our money, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression lawyer Ari Cohn had about the right takeaway: “Here’s your real Enemy of the People, folks. [DHS/CBP/ICE] agents lied to imprison people for protesting them. Read that again: federal agents lied in a deliberate attempt to criminalize protest against their abuses.”
WHATEVER YOU SAY, COACH: Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville spent nearly all of 2023 singlehandedly grinding top U.S. military promotions to a standstill, preventing them from being processed expeditiously by the Senate in an attempt to force the Biden administration to stop its policy of paying for travel costs of servicemembers seeking abortions. He ultimately abandoned the effort after eleven months amid heavy pressure from both parties.
Now, though, Tuberville appears to have developed some new thoughts on such tactics. “When a new coach is hired, they get to pick their team. It’s that simple,” Tuberville said. “77 million Americans PICKED President Trump to lead our country. And yet, radical Democrats continue to BLOCK over 150 of his nominees. RIDICULOUS. It’s time we buckle up and get @POTUS’s team confirmed.”
As the Hill reports, Republicans have been fuming over Senate Democrats’ stalling tactics on Trump’s nominees this year, which have included routinely demanding a full set of procedural votes on even uncontroversial picks. Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has warned that Republicans may try a similar strategy in the future if Democrats don’t let up, calling the now-routine stalling “a whole new precedent.” Meanwhile, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) this week pledged to continue using “every tool at our disposal” to fight the “disastrous Donald Trump, Republican agenda.”
Cheap Shots
The 2026 GOP primaries are already seeing remarkable new innovations in the form of “Trump endorsed my opponent, but if you really think about it he sort of actually endorsed me”:
 | A guest post by
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A new and mysterious quietism over whether Maxwell should remain in prison has suddenly engulfed GOP congressional leadership as well. “Well, I mean, obviously that’s a decision of the president,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday. “I won’t get in front of him. That’s not my lane.”
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Therein lies the problem. It very much is his lane, as the leader of the House as one of the checks-and-balances on presidential authority. It's in the job description. Alas, for the GOP there is no lane anymore other than to rubber stamp the DJT agenda and give it verbal and legislative support. It's not like they could, maybe, try to talk him out of some very bad ideas. Or listen to the taxpayers who fund their salary, pension, and benefits when they say collectively that something is a bridge too far.
But this is more than that. It's not about the ability to prevent the President from issuing a pardon. It's about the moral authority that our elected leadership exudes, or not, and what it says about their values and principles. If you don't draw the line at child sex trafficking, exactly where do you draw it? What isn't acceptable as long as one man tells you what you should be for and you never question it, much less try to prevent it?
If they go along with a presidential pardon of Maxwell and try to justify it, or even if they do not openly oppose the idea, the GOP should become known as the Gang Of Perverts. Guilt by association. There is no shade of grey here. Either they are part of the solution or they are part of the problem. If they earn it, they own it. Make it stick so that we know who and what they are and it becomes a permanent part of their record.
didn't the administration just torch a ton of USAID food in Qatar, rather than distibute it? imagine if it went to Gaza...