The Branch, the Tape, and the Files

Epstein’s secrets crack open, Democrats flip the script, RFK Jr. sets fire to public health, and Elon sends a robot to plant a tree on Mars.

Good morning! What a time to be alive and possibly subpoenaed. Just when Donald Trump thought he could spin another Epstein news cycle into oblivion with grand jury distractions and vague allusions to “protecting people,” the tables turned. Democrats just outmaneuvered the MAGA caucus and dropped a subpoena straight into the Department of Justice’s lap, demanding the full Epstein files by August 19.

The move came courtesy of Rep. Summer Lee, who caught her Republican colleagues napping during a House Oversight subcommittee meeting just before recess. With the room briefly under Democratic control and the MAGA braintrust evidently off getting fitted for vacation golf polos, Lee pushed a vote on her amendment to subpoena the DOJ. And it passed, 8 to 2. Game on.

The subpoena covers everything: DOJ communications, Epstein’s 2007 sweetheart deal, files from the Southern District of Florida, and yes, direct messages between the DOJ and the Executive Office of the President. If Trump or his inner circle had their hands on the levers of this cover-up, the paper trail could get very real, very fast.

Naturally, James Comer tried to turn the moment into a circus. In response, he blasted out a slate of subpoenas targeting everyone but the people who matter: Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, James Comey, Robert Mueller, Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder. Notably absent? Alex Acosta, the man who actually brokered Epstein’s 2007 non-prosecution deal and who just so happens to be Trump’s former Labor Secretary. Funny how that works.

The plan now is obvious: Comer will say the DOJ can’t possibly release any files until the Clintons comply with their subpoenas. Ghislaine Maxwell’s deposition, originally scheduled for August 11, has already been delayed indefinitely thanks to a deal Comer made with her attorney because apparently, protecting a convicted sex trafficker’s convenience is a bipartisan affair when Trump’s secrets are on the line.

Meanwhile, Trump himself keeps shoveling lies into the furnace. At a press event yesterday, he claimed he knew nothing about Maxwell’s transfer to a cushy minimum-security prison camp, a transfer that required a special waiver because sex traffickers are barred from such facilities by policy. Then, with a straight face, he praised Todd Blanche, his former defense attorney turned Deputy Attorney General, for sitting down privately with Maxwell and making an audio recording of their meeting. “Probably just wanted to make sure people who shouldn’t be involved aren’t hurt,” Trump said, in what may be the most self-incriminating euphemism of the month. Let’s be clear: he’s not talking about victims, he’s talking about perpetrators.

Even Trump’s base is losing patience. At a town hall in Nebraska, MAGA Rep. Mike Flood was loudly booed by his own constituents demanding to know why the Epstein–Trump files haven’t been released. He stammered something about supporting transparency before pivoting to vague defenses of Comer’s procedural fog machine.

Adding to the chaos, Pam Bondi filed a federal court brief that effectively nuked Donald Trump’s favorite excuse from orbit, namely, the claim that the Epstein files are merely sealed grand jury transcripts and therefore beyond reach. For weeks, Trump and his loyalists have insisted that they want transparency but are handcuffed by legal precedent. That was always nonsense. Now, it’s legally shredded nonsense, courtesy of Bondi herself.

According to her own filing before Judge Engelmayer in New York, the grand jury materials contain exactly two witnesses: one FBI agent and one NYPD officer working a human trafficking task force. Neither was a victim, an eyewitness, or an Epstein associate. They were summary witnesses, tasked only with relaying what others had uncovered, essentially reading the headlines aloud. Even more damning: there were no exhibits submitted at all. No surveillance tapes, no documents, no emails no photographs. The DOJ lawyers didn’t even ask the judge for permission to release any of that, because they know it’s not in the grand jury box. In other words, the “Epstein files” are not the grand jury files. And Pam Bondi just admitted it under oath.

She also confessed, though not in those words, that the Trump administration is largely to blame for the tsunami of public outrage. Her now-infamous July 6 “case closed” memo, unsigned and undated, was a bureaucratic attempt to bury the case with a two-page eulogy. Instead, it blew the lid off. In her court filing, Bondi acknowledged that the memo itself sparked renewed public interest and explicitly stated that the demand to see the real files is legitimate and widespread.

So to summarize: there’s nothing in the grand jury materials. The real Epstein files are something else entirely, 300 gigabytes of DOJ and FBI casework that includes flight logs, photos, videos, witness interviews, financial records, and search warrant results. The very files that Pam Bondi’s own team reviewed back in the spring before she told Trump, “Yes, your name is all over them.” That’s what they’re sitting on. And that’s what they don’t want the public, or Congress, to see.

Thanks, Pam. Your filing was the legal equivalent of handing a loaded gun to a press conference and watching it go off.

As Harry Litman noted, Blanche’s decision to tape his secret meeting with Maxwell, without an FBI witness, violated every norm of prosecutorial integrity. But the existence of that tape, now under debate for release, shows the Trump DOJ knows it’s cornered. If that transcript comes out, it’ll likely reveal a coordinated attempt to sanitize Maxwell’s testimony and block further damage to Trump.

And just when you thought we couldn’t slide any further down the public health ladder, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lit the match. On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced the termination of $500 million in mRNA vaccine research contracts, including funding for a bird flu vaccine developed by Moderna and the University of Texas Medical Branch. The decision, framed as a pivot away from “risky” mRNA platforms, was immediately denounced by scientists across the country.

Rick Bright, former head of BARDA, called it reckless. Dr. Paul Offit said it was “not science-based.” Dr. Jake Scott at Stanford called it “dangerous.” But to Kennedy, who once called Covid vaccines “the deadliest ever made,” it was a victory for the anti-vaxx movement he’s spent his life nurturing. This isn’t just another bad decision. It’s a strategic dismantling of pandemic preparedness infrastructure in the name of ideological purity.

So naturally, we’ll close with some levity. Because while Donald Trump scrambles to redact the truth, suppress surveillance tapes, and whisper sweet immunity deals into Ghislaine Maxwell’s ear, and while RFK Jr. plays public health arsonist with a flamethrower full of pseudoscience, Elon Musk is planting trees on Mars.

Or more accurately, he’s posting AI-generated hallucinations of Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus lovingly kneeling in red Martian dust, cradling a sapling beneath a Grok-dreamed golden hour. There’s no oxygen. No water. No pressurized greenhouse. No reason. Just a robot with the emotional posture of a hospice nurse planting hope into toxic soil.

Because when the real news is that Tesla’s U.S. sales are still in decline, consumer trust in “Full Self-Driving” has eroded post-crash, and a $243 million verdict just nailed the company for a fatal Autopilot incident, well, you fire up the hype machine. You post memes. You conjure Mars. You try to drift everyone’s attention from mounting lawsuits and declining margins toward the stars.

In what looked like a meltdown as performance art, Trump emerged onto the roof above the White House’s West Wing for a 20-minute improvisational tour, gesturing wildly, cupping his hands to reporters below, and doodling phantom construction plans in mid-air. When asked what he was doing up there, he said he was “just taking a little walk.” When another reporter asked what he planned to build, he quipped, “Something beautiful… missiles. Nuclear missiles,” miming a rocket launch with both hands. All of it delivered with the gravitas of a man who thinks he’s auditioning for Planet of the Apes: The Architect.

Over that same roof stretches the newly-paved Rose Garden, and looming above it, the announcements for a $200 million, Mar-a-Lago–style ballroom expansion funded by “patriots.” All paid for by Trump, naturally, though the only monuments rising from these headlines are scandals, cover-ups, and Hallmark-level absurdities.

This rooftop stroll was less architecture inspection and more signal of evasion: avoidable optics, performative nonsense, and a desperate attempt to distract from the legal avalanche waiting below. Because if there’s one thing billionaires do well, it’s sell hallucinations while Earth burns beneath them.