On today’s BradCast, it’s one of those shows you may have to take a shower after — or even during. Apologies in advance. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]
We start today with the easy stuff. The Trump Administration announced two new federal rules of note on Monday. Both include major changes to federal law without Congress actually voting to have changed anything and both will result in lawsuits from opponents.
The first is a change to the law that would further restrict legal immigration to the U.S., by barring green card status in the country to whomever the Administration believes is not wealthy enough and may require public assistance. The move, if not blocked by the courts, would put the emphasis on the skills of immigrants seeking permanent status, rather than on family reunification. The new rule would prevent many U.S. citizens from being joined here by parents, siblings or children.
The Administration’s other major rule change today is to significantly weaken the landmark Endangered Species Act on behalf of industry profits. The ESA has protected thousands of plants and animals from becoming extinct since President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1973. Trump’s changes would end protection for plants and animals newly deemed threatened and allow federal officials, for the first time, to consider the economic costs of protecting a particular species. The change could also allow officials to disregard the impact of climate change when determining which species require federal protection. Both rule changes, according to opponents, are unlawful and will face legal challenges almost immediately.
Next, we turn to the weekend’s disturbing news regarding the death of imprisoned financier, sexual predator and former Donald Trump friend, Jeffrey Epstein. The accused pedophile was found dead Saturday morning alone in his federal prison cell in lower Manhattan where he was supposed to have had a cellmate and guards that were supposed to monitor him every 30 minutes. His death came less than 24 hours after thousands of documents from an earlier lawsuit were publicly released, revealing lurid allegations that he’d sexually abused scores of young girls and just two weeks after he’d been removed from “suicide watch” after reportedly trying to kill himself just six days earlier.
There are many questionable circumstances that resulted in Epstein’s death, angering elected officials, his many victims and even Trump’s Attorney General who claimed to be “appalled”. Barr announced over the weekend that he had tasked the Dept. of Justice Inspector General to investigate the matter. But, of course, conspiracy theories began flying almost immediately upon the news of Epstein’s death, given his years of contact with high profile celebrities from Presidents to prime ministers to princes to other politicians and titans of industry and the academic world. Those conspiracies are hardly surprising. But the fact that Donald Trump, over the weekend, tweeted out several such conspiracies, attempting to tie Epstein’s death to Bill Clinton, suggesting the former President had a hand in murdering the accused sex trafficker and may even have been a “pedophile” himself, seems to be a new low, even for this President.
Of course, while there is no evidence that Clinton was a close friend of Epstein’s, Trump is known to have partied with him on several occasions, telling New York magazine in 2002 that he had “known Jeff for fifteen years” by that time, that he was a “terrific guy” and a “lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” Trump’s senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway actually defended Trump’s Twitter smears of Bill Clinton, claiming on Fox “News” on Sunday that “the President just wants everything to be investigated”.
Okay. If so, does he also want a proper investigation of the detailed 2016 lawsuit filed against him and Epstein — before many of the allegations against Epstein had even come to public light — by a woman who claims she was raped and abused by both men when she was 13 years old? Trump vigorously denied the charges at the time, and the case was eventually dropped after the woman says she faced death threats. But, given the many credible allegations of sexual assault by Trump, including from his own ex-wife who claimed at one point she was also raped by Trump, there is certainly more evidence to support that conspiracy than the ones forwarded by the President of the United States over the weekend following Epstein’s death by apparent suicide — in a federal prison overseen by Trump’s own Administration.
While we have never discussed those rape allegations against Trump by the anonymous woman on The BradCast before — yes, we saw them originally when they appeared in 2016, but didn’t share them on air, preferring not to traffic in unverified allegations — it seems that Trump himself has no such reservations. That, even after the death of his sexual predator friend in a federal prison overseen by his own federal Bureau of Prisons. If Trump is happy to spread wildly defamatory unsubstantiated allegations about former Presidents, I guess its now appropriate to publicly share allegations with far more substance since, right? According to Conway, after all, he “just wants everything to be investigated.” And, as noted, we just want to take a shower at this point!
Finally, setting aside grotesque conspiracies, ANDREW COHEN, senior editor at The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization which reports on the U.S. criminal justice system, and a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, took the opportunity of Epstein’s death to note that it was “completely predictable”. Not due to Epstein’s high-profile or even the particular circumstances of his case, but because there is what Cohen describes as an “epidemic” of prison suicides in U.S. prisons.
He explains that the epidemic — shamefully resulting in an all-time high of hundreds of suicides in both federal and state prisons each year — is the number one cause of death in such facilities. Cohen says the epidemic crosses all demographics and has been exacerbated — arguably, even caused — by a lack of interest or empathy by prison officials and both funding and interest from elected officials. “There’s plenty of blame to go around,” he tells me. “Yes, it’s a long term problem [and] yes, it’s gotten worse under the Trump Administration.”
If anything good can possibly come of all of these horrific events, perhaps it begins in conversations like the one we have on today’s program with Cohen. After your shower, I hope you will tune in for it…
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[audio:http://BradBlog.com/audio/BradCast_BradFriedman_NewRules-Immigration-ESA_TrumpEpsteinDeath_AndrewCohen-PrisonSuicides_081219.mp3]
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“there is no evidence that Clinton was a close friend of Epstein’s, Trump is known to have partied with him”
I have read numerous reports that Bill Clinton’s private contacts were in Mr. Epstein’s phone book, so there clearly was a trusted connection.
How many times did Bill fly on Epstein’s plane?
It’s a bipartisan scandal.
I have suspected that “pizzagate / qanon” was a diversion away from Trump’s involvement in the Epstein scandals.
Mr. Acosta, who arranged Epstein’s lenient sentence a decade ago, is on record saying that Epstein “belonged to intelligence” and that the case was above his pay grade. Sounds like a blackmail operation.
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David Talbot, best-selling author of The Devil’s Chessboard, Season of the Witch and Brothers. Talbot also founded the Salon Media Group:
quote:
“Well, it’s official. We now live in a criminal, lawless nation where people who know too much about the sleazy lives of the rich and powerful can be ‘suicided’ to death — even when they’re on suicide watch in a New York City jail cell!”
The “suicide” of Jeffrey Epstein — oh what the hell, let’s call it what it really was, a politically necessary execution — reeks of the “suicide” of Craig Spence back in 1989.
Spence (below), a Republican lobbyist with deep ties to the Reagan presidency, ran a Washington call-boy service and, like Epstein, had the goods on many of America’s decadent elite. After his sex racket exploded in the headlines, Spence told friends he would probably be murdered — a termination that would be called a suicide. And guess what? In November 1989, Spence was indeed found “suicided” in a Ritz Carlton hotel room in Boston….
A final note on this flaming conspiracy to silence the latest man who knew too much.
For decades, the corporate media have been ridiculing and condemning those who believe that power in the U.S. often operates in darkly clandestine ways. The New York Times, Washington Post, TV networks et al have worked feverishly to marginalize the deep investigative work done by citizen researchers and independent journalists (including me) to shed light on the national security assassination of President Kennedy.
Eye-opening investigations into 9/11 — and the undeniable web of connections between Saudi royalty and the hijackers, U.S. agencies’ foreknowledge of the hijacker plots, and the Bush-Cheney administration’s cover-up of inconvenient 9/11 truths — also are routinely blacked out by the mainstream media.
But in the wake of this Epstein bombshell, the C-word (as in ‘conspiracy’) is creeping into the prose of even NY Times columnists like Paul Krugman. Sometimes the criminality at the top of America becomes so brazen, so obvious, that even our press watchdogs are stirred from their slumber.
Mark Robiinowitz said @1:
4 times, according to Clinton’s spokesperson. To and from Clinton Foundation events in Europe, which they say the Secret Service was onboard and logged.
While I can’t personally confirm that’s true, that’s a far cry from what Trump is accused of having done with Epstein.
Well, maybe. If the allegations made by one of the victims regarding Gov. Richardson are accurate. But to “both sides” this thing based on Trump’s completely unsubstantiated claims about Clinton is some lazy ass punditry, Mark.
As to your quote from Talbot (which you didn’t link to, so I don’t know the context, nor when/where his quote stops and your comments begin), his claim that Epstein was “suicided” while on “suicide watch” is not true. Epstein was off suicide watch for about two weeks when he died.
So, really not impressed by Talbot’s knee-jerkery either.
Newsweek, for what it’s worth, makes some claims, here:
https://www.newsweek.com/jeffrey-epstein-lolita-express-bill-clinton-flight-logs-1448367
The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/10/jeffrey-epstein-trump-clinton-friends
And the right-wing rag, the Washingtom Examiner makes claims too:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/flight-manifests-reveal-bill-clinton-traveled-with-epstein-six-times-not-the-four-times-he-admitted
Maybe they’re all BS.
But there is some kind of Clinton-Epstein connection.
The Clinton link probably didn’t include young girls, since we all know Bill Clinton just isn’t into that kind of thing, right?
Anyway, many rich and powerful people were definitely going to be implicated by his testimony, so Epstein had to go.
That’s not really preposterous at all in today’s world.
But it is still very very creepy.
Epstein’s death is just as creepy as Epstein was himself.
I have read claims in relatively reliable publications that 26 is the number of times Bill Clinton flew on Epstein’s plane. Perhaps it is fake news. No doubt a lot of disinformation and misinformation is lobbed at this scandal, just like it is at most others. But any number above “zero” is grounds for detailed investigation, not like that is likely to happen …
Talbot’s reaction was on his facebook page. Sorry I don’t have the direct link. Perhaps he’s wrong and Epstein really killed himself, without assistance. I know of other controversial suicides where some said it was murder but was not (Mike Ruppert and Gary Webb are good examples).
Partisans on the D side say the Epstein scandal is all about Trump. Partisans on the R side say it’s about Clinton. I think it transcends partisanship.
It would be nice to hear Mr. Acosta testify under oath about the lenient sentence and his comment that Epstein belonged to “intelligence” (agency / ies). Sounds like a honeypot / blackmail operation, at the least.
When you look at what conspired in the DC Madame case (ending in a mysterious “suicide”), the Epstein case seems to fit right into the same category (i.e. “deaths convenient to the power elite”).
Sadly, this is not an outlandish idea in today’s political climate.
Interesting how these suicides only occur under Republican administrations and when the only elite that might be exposed by the information are GOP.