I think I'm still pretty much out on covering the twists and turns of Trump's re-emerging Epstein scandal; despite, as I noted above being certain the President is guilty of far more than child sexual assault. Rather I believe in addition to being a pedophile rapist, Trump was actually part of the trafficking operation that supplied young girls for Epstein to victimize. However, I remain very skeptical that anyone rich or powerful is going to be held accountable for atrocious crimes against minors as young as thirteen years old; given that a solid 95% of the scandal, including names of powerful pedophiles and folks who covered up the rape island guy's operation, has been in the public sphere for years and literally nobody has gotten into a significant amount of hot water for it except Epstein himself, and his former-girlfriend turned partner in (child sex) crime(s) Ghislaine Maxwell.

Something very interesting happened last night however, that has the potential to change my mind about where this story ends. While noted fundie fascist freak Mike Johnson was literally trying to end the congressional session just to avoid a vote on releasing the "Epstein files," Democrats serving on a subcommittee that's part of the House Oversight Committee ambushed their Republican counterparts with a motion to subpoena the Epstein files; all of them, with names of victims redacted. Astonishingly, three GOP members of the subcommittee then voted with them to pass the motion.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ap-us-epstein-congress_n_688158b4e4b0d55a3f191b25

House Subcommittee Votes To Subpoena Justice Department For Epstein Files

"Meanwhile, Democrats on a subcommittee of the powerful House Oversight Committee made a motion for the subpoena Wednesday afternoon. Three Republicans on the panel voted with Democrats for the subpoena, sending it through on an 8-2 vote tally.

The Republican subcommittee chairman, Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana, said that work was beginning to draft the subpoena but did not give a timeline for when it would be issued.

“I’ve never handled a subpoena like this. This is some fascinating stuff,” said Higgins, who voted against the motion.

Democrats cheered the action as proof that their push for disclosures in the Epstein investigation was growing stronger. The committee agreed to redact information on victims, yet Democrats successfully blocked a push by Republicans to only subpoena information that was deemed to be “credible” — language that Trump has also used when discussing what he would support releasing."

So, let me start by saying that I have no idea if this means anything at all. Given the behavior of the fascist Trumpenreich, and the lengths the Swine Emperor's minions have already gone to try and hide criminal activities by various members of the executive branch, including of course Trump, I strongly suspect Bondi has a minion somewhere shredding files as we speak. Furthermore, and speaking of Bondi, I actually have no idea if the Trump regime is going to honor a subpoena at all; none of the folks working for the Justice Department are immune to consequences for ignoring a Congressional subpoena, but I have a hard time imaging Trump won't do whatever it takes to protect anyone close to him, who could also leak what they know about his double life as a pedo rapist human trafficker.

That having been said, for once Democrats actually sealed the deal and meaningfully targeted our fascist would-be Furher in the White House. The subpoena is on record, and if the government spits back obscenely redacted material, or refuses to obey Congress's order, the President and his sick nazi fuckhead enablers are going to have to explain why. I'm still not sure what hope there is for justice when an elite pedo sex ring with over a thousand (that is not a typo, I said "a thousand") victims is more or less totally exposed and not only does nobody particularly rich or powerful involved go to jail, but the US government tries to cut a sweetheart deal with the pedo rapist human trafficking blackmailer running the whole operation, just to cover it up. This shit goes deep, and it touches on so many powerful people and even institutions in our society that the ruling class establishment seems to regard it as "too big to prosecute" at best.

But I will tip my hat to Democrats for at least trying to expose the coverup, even if only to hinder our fascist president; I sure wish they felt like playing hardball this way to stop an anti-trans pogrom in progress, and our ongoing ethnic cleansing operation (now with bespoke concentration camps!). I'm too jaded for hope, but the dream of, after all these years, seeing rich and powerful people who brazenly destroyed the lives of so many girls, literal children, suffer consequences for what they have done, is not quite dead yet.