How Russia Landed Trump in This Epstein Mess

An anti-Trump demonstrator at a protest in Washington, DC, on Thursday. Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via AP

Aficionados of schadenfreude are no doubt relishing how Donald Trump, a longtime purveyor of false and destructive conspiracy theories, now finds himself snared in a political imbroglio due to outlandish falsehoods he and his MAGA lieutenants have encouraged. But there’s another irony in the Jeffrey Epstein affair that has so far gone unnoticed: The covert Russia operation that helped Trump win the White House in 2016 led to the trouble he faces now.

For all of Trump’s transgressions—trying to overturn election results, inciting an insurrectionist mob, pilfering top secret documents, forging business records to hide a hush-money deal with a porn star, being branded a sexual assaulter by a jury, lying constantly, recklessly demolishing necessary government services, engaging in assorted corruption—the Epstein affair is the first episode to cause fissures in his cultlike base and prompt serious criticism of Trump from his MAGA devotees. The reason is clear: For years, the right wing has been pushing the fringe narrative that a corrupt elite that controls the nation (and the world) comprises a cabal of pedophilic and cannibalistic satanists and globalists who engage in sex trafficking. As his MAGA followers see it, now Trump, by not releasing materials in the government’s Epstein case files, is protecting these evildoers and is in league with the high-and-mighty scum of the earth.

How did this paranoid-drenched world view become an essential component of the MAGA belief system? With a little help from Moscow.

The idea that a group of flesh-eating child molesters runs the world has been around a while. In 2012, conspiracy-monger Alex Jones showed up at a meeting in Chantilly, Virginia, of the Bilderberg Group, an assembly of political leaders, government officials, and corporate titans from North America and Europe, and accused its members of eating “roasted babies wrapped in gold foil.” Presumably, the gold foil was removed before consumption. (Never forget: Jones attended the GOP convention in 2016 wearing a VIP pass.) And Republicans in years past have tried to whip up a scandal over Bill Clinton’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. (Clinton associated with Epstein and flew on his private jet, but he has denied ever visiting Epstein’s private island or being aware of his criminal activity.) Yet none of this gained much traction—not even on the right.

Then came Pizzagate.

In November 2016, Reddit and 4chan users began circulating what they claimed was evidence showing that top Democrats tied to the Clintons were running a human trafficking and child sex ring out of the basement of a Washington, DC, pizzeria (that has no basement). The bogus claim spread to Twitter and a variety of right-wing websites. Prominent alt-right activists pushed this puerile bunk, including Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec (now a top MAGA influencer who hangs out with Trump Cabinet members). This led to a 28-year-old North Carolina gunman showing up at the restaurant to rescue the children presumably held captive there. He fired three shots. No one was injured. He was arrested.

Pizzagate was one result of the clandestine Russian operation that attacked the 2016 presidential election to help Trump win.

Here’s what happened: On October 7, about half an hour after the Washington Post revealed the existence of a video in which Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women, WikiLeaks began releasing hundreds of emails and documents that Russian hackers had stolen from John Podesta, the chair of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Right-wing internet users then pored over this material and soon began claiming that several Podesta emails contained coded references to pedophilia. They identified that pizzeria, which was mentioned in Podesta’s emails, as the secret headquarters for Democrats engaged in satanic ritual abuse. All this merged into the notion that these powerful Ds were operating a monstrous conspiracy.

Vladimir Putin’s assault on the 2016 election aimed to impede Hillary Clinton’s campaign and assist Trump—and it succeeded. But the Russian operatives likely never thought the dissemination of Podesta’s purloined emails would spur far-right activists and websites to cook up the bonkers Pizzagate conspiracy theory. It was one big bonus.

It was also nonsense untethered to reality. Jones, a main proponent of this junk, and his Infowars website eventually had to issue a retraction and apologize to the owner of the restaurant to avoid a libel suit. Pizzagate petered out, but it laid the foundation for a more sweeping version of the pedo-elites narrative: QAnon.

In October 2017, an anonymous 4chan user who called himself “Q Clearance Patriot”—meaning he had access to top secret information—began posting information suggesting the existence of a global cabal of satanic, cannibalistic pedophiles who were in cahoots with the so-called Deep State and operating an international child sex ring. The conspirators included the usual suspects: Hollywood celebrities, the Clintons, and liberal philanthropist George Soros. In Q’s telling, Trump was heroically waging a secret battle against this nefarious force.

The QAnon nuttery, unlike Pizzagate, spawned a cultish movement of believers. Retired Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s disgraced national security adviser who fashioned himself into a leader of Christian nationalists, expressed support for QAnon. MAGA leaders attended conferences with QAnon champions, as the two movements merged. QAnon devotees became a significant slice of the audience at Trump rallies. And Trump seemed to endorse QAnon when he reposted on social media an image of himself wearing a Q lapel pin and the QAnon slogan “The Storm is Coming,” which was shorthand for the day when Trump would round up all the sex trafficking globalists. (Imprisonment and executions would presumably follow.)

The essence of QAnon—a sexually perverted and criminal elite is in charge behind the scenes—became a core component of Republican and MAGA reality. Whether or not Republicans identified as QAnon adherents, one-quarter of them, according to a 2021 poll, agreed with this statement: “The government, media and financial worlds in the US are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.” That’s a lot of MAGA crazy.

For MAGA, the Epstein case became a concrete manifestation of its dark fantasy. Epstein was a sex-trafficking pedo who associated with financiers and establishment institutions (Harvard! MIT!) and he hobnobbed with the rich and powerful (Bill Clinton, and, oh yeah, Trump). He was the proof.

For years, MAGA cheerleaders and grifters—Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, Don Trump Jr., JD Vance—have pointed to the Epstein case as evidence of the foul corruption of the system. They claimed there was a cover-up, and demanded the release of information, asserting this would reveal and annihilate the vile power structure ruining America.

All of this was partially seeded by the Russians with their 2016 operation. No Podesta emails, no Pizzagate. No Pizzagate, perhaps no QAnon.

Meanwhile, Moscow continued to fan these flames. Russian government-funded media outlets leaned hard into the Epstein story. In 2019, the year of Epstein’s second arrest and suicide, RT, the English-language Russian propaganda outlet, dubbed the Epstein saga the “major scandal of the year.” According to Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, that year “Sputnik, Tass, and RT produced 230 articles focusing on Epstein, far more than other topics seemingly more connected to Russian interests. For example, there were just 26 articles mentioning Burisma, 102 referencing ‘Russiagate,’ and 114 mentioning special counsel Robert Mueller.” Much of the Russian media coverage promoted conspiracy theories about Epstein’s death.

By this point, Trump’s flock did not need much encouragement from RT and other Russian propaganda shops to believe Epstein was the key to exposing the pedophiles, satanists, and cannibals controlling the government. This notion had become baked into MAGA theology.

By denying that there’s nothing else to investigate in the Epstein case and that its files do not contain the Rosetta Stone of the grand pedo-elites scandal, Trump is telling his devotees that they had been wrong to believe all this—despite his own crew’s previous efforts to give credence to and exploit this conspiracy theory. He is calling them suckers. Naturally, they feel betrayed. As they see it, Trump is protecting the satanic sex traffickers of children. As if he might be...one of them. To make it worse, Trump told his supporters to let it go, and he denigrated those pushing the “Epstein hoax” as fools and idiots.

As of now, MAGA influencers are still calling for the release of all the Epstein files. Some are urging the firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi. It's unclear if this storm in MAGA-land will eventually blow over or yield a consequential rift in Trump’s base. It certainly has caused the worst political headache for Trump since he returned to the White House. He, of course, has no one to blame but himself. He long championed conspiracism and pursued a politics of hate that so demonizes his foes that his backers can believe all this crap. But one cause of this jam for Trump is the Russian operation that assisted his initial rise to the White House. Putin’s operatives produced the kindling for this fire. Trump supplied the oxygen.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland.corn@gmail.com

Want to read even more about Trump and the Epstein controversy? Check out the piece I wrote this week chronicling how Trump has long shouted “hoax” whenever he got into political trouble. This tactic has always worked for him—at least, in terms of retaining the support of his fervent base. But will it now?

This week was another doozy. The judges decided to put all the remarks about the Epstein controversy to the side, including Donald Trump’s repeated claims that it’s a “hoax.” There’s no question that his Justice Department and FBI released a memo declaring that Epstein had committed suicide and that there were no new and undisclosed revelations—and no so-called clients list—within the files of his two criminal cases. MAGA people were outraged by this. So where’s the hoax?

Fox host Greg Gutfeld once again demonstrated he has no class and is not as funny as he thinks he is. Outraged that ICE critics have called the masked and unidentified agents who terrorize law-abiding residents “Nazis,” Gutfeld said, “We need to learn from the Blacks. The way they were able to remove the power from the N-word by using it. So from now on it’s, ‘What up, my Nazi? Hey, what up, my Nazi? Hey, what's hanging, my Nazi?’”

The Blacks? And it seemed that Gutfeld yearns to be called a Nazi. The judges are sure that can be arranged.

Kevin Hassett, the head of Trump’s National Economic Council, totally blew it when ABC News’ Jon Karl pressed him on Trump’s threat to slap a 50 percent tariff on Brazil. As Karl noted, the United States has a $6.8 bullion surplus with Brazil and has not had a trade deficit with the South American nation since 2007. Hassett replied:

The president has been very frustrated with negotiation with Brazil and the acts of Brazil. We are trying to put America first...This is about America getting ready for the Golden Age...Their actions have shocked the president.

That really made no sense. How does impeding trade with a nation to which the US sells more goods than it buys lead to a Golden Age? Karl pressed Hassett:

The president had made it quite clear that what he’s upset about is how the Brazilian Supreme Court has handled the criminal case involving the former President Bolsonaro [who has been indicted for money laundering and illegally receiving diamonds from Saudi Arabia when he was president, and for being part of a cabal that plotted to assassinate his successor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and overturn the 2022 election that Bolsonaro lost]… I find it confusing here. On what authority does the president have to impose tariffs on a country because he doesn’t like [how] that country’s judicial system is handling a specific case?

Hassett answered: “If it’s a national defense emergency or if [Trump] thinks it’s a national security threat, then he has the authority…We have a massive trade deficit.”

Certainly, Bolsonaro’s criminal trial poses no threat to the United States and, once more, the US has a trade surplus with Brazil. So there’s no national emergency. Hassett looked ridiculous. That’s the price of serving Dear Leader.

And there’s more. The judges nominated Hassett twice this week. In the same interview, he hailed Trump as “one of the most successful—if not the most successful—businessmen in the 20th century.”

Slight hyperbole? By the way, the 20th century ended 25 years ago, and Trump filed for bankruptcy four times in the 1990s and twice in the following decade.

Trump, as always, could have filled all the brackets this week. After the judges took note of Trump’s misogynistic slam of Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), I visited ChatGPT.

I asked the AI chatbot, “Does Trump use the ‘low IQ’ insult against women more than men?” Here’s the answer I received: "Trump certainly uses 'low IQ' as an insult & he directs it at both men & women. [R]esearch & numerous documented examples show he uses it more frequently—& often with a sharper tone—when targeting women."

Emil Bove is a Trump henchman. He served on Trump’s legal team in the stolen White House papers case, the election overturning case, and the porn-star-hush-money case. Trump rewarded him with a top position at the Justice Department—where he reportedly told underlings to ignore court orders and say “fuck you” to judges—and then nominated him to serve on the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. As is customary, the Senate Judiciary Committee, which this week approved his nomination, sent him a list of questions, including this one: “Where were you on January 6, 2021?” Bove replied, “I do not recall where I was on January 6, 2021.”

That is ludicrous. Either he’s refusing to tell the committee an inconvenient truth, or his memory is so impaired he ought not be handed any position of responsibility.

The winner this week is an old-timer we don’t pay much attention to anymore: Bill O’Reilly. He truly went the extra mile in blaming the Biden administration for the Epstein affair. Watch the full video:

The judges unanimously agreed no further comment was necessary.

Amid his self-created Epstein scandal, Trump decided it was time to revive his 19-year-old celebrity feud with actor/comedian/activist Rosie O’Donnell, calling her a “Threat to Humanity.” Trump gave no reason for taking this out-of-the-blue pot shot at O’Donnell, and there was much online speculation that he was looking for a distraction from EpsteinGate. Normally, this would be a silly matter easy to dismiss. But Trump said he was considering yanking away O’Donnell’s citizenship—something a president cannot do. This threat was yet another sign of his authoritarian desires.

O’Donnell, always feisty, punched back in appropriate fashion.

A number of Democrats could learn from O’Donnell.

Plenty of Our Land readers were bemused by—if not enjoying—Trump’s Epstein difficulties and responded to the recent issue exploring this MAGA civil war.

Peter Ross wrote in about Epstein’s supposed clients list:

Surely, in the handling of evidence there is an audit trail from collection to storage thru archiving (or disposal?). Couldn’t/shouldn’t this be an easy thing to “put to rest”?

There’s no accounting of what is in the so-called Epstein files. Since he was the subject of two criminal investigations, there are obviously case files with evidence that was collected, witness interviews, and, presumably, grand jury testimony. There's no confirmation there's a so-called clients list. While Epstein was a sex trafficker, he apparently did not run a prostitution ring that would have clients. The question has always been if he trafficked girls for sexual encounters with his pals and associates. Perhaps there’s an answer to that in the files. But it probably wouldn’t be in the form of a clients list.

Several readers asked about the Katie Johnson case. In 2016, a woman using that name filed a lawsuit suing Donald Trump for $100 million, claiming he and Epstein sexually abused her in 1994 when she was 13. Her initial filing and video clips of her (in a wig) discussing these allegations have been bouncing around the internet since then.

I was one of the first journalists to investigate those allegations when they were brought to me in 2016 by a former television producer who was using an alias. I did some digging and discovered the guy pushing this story had arranged to receive a large payment from a German TV station for exclusive rights to a video interview with the supposed victim. But this outlet would only pay if an American media organization first published a story on her claims. And this fellow was trying hard to convince me to do so—without providing any backup evidence or access to the victim, though he repeatedly promised he would.

When we at Mother Jones tried to check out an address we were provided for her, it was an uninhabited foreclosed property in the middle of nowhere. This all had a feel of a hoax, and I passed on the story—as subsequently other reporters did. Alas, in the years since, too many people have repeated this allegation and accepted the apparently false legal filing as real. (My colleague Anna Merlan did a long examination of this unsubstantiated allegation in 2016 for Jezebel.)

Linda Jack emailed:

This may be the issue that finally convinces the MAGA cult that Trump is not God. He'll suffer the same fate as Rudyard Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King.” 

That’s a gruesome fate. In Kipling’s short story, when one of the protagonists—a pair of con men—pretends to be a god to lead an indigenous tribe in Afghanistan, things don’t work out too well once the tribespeople realize he’s an ordinary mortal. He’s tossed into a gorge and decapitated. In Trump’s case, I think most of the cult will stick with him. That's what cults do. But he does seem to be doing his best to persuade his own followers that he’s covering up serious wrongdoing.

Karen Martin appreciated the issue featuring an interview with Tim Weiner, the author of the new book The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century. She emailed:

The article was incredibly sobering, sad and beyond scary. To hear it from an authority on the CIA and his many, credible sources is overwhelming. It is disheartening to realize that there are so, so many Americans who do not, or will not, see the dangers to our democracy. Your interview with Tim Weiner was sensational in the best way. Thank you so much for your insightful questions and his replies, which do nothing to allay fears about this presidency. Every thinking American should read this.

Barbara Elzohairy also sent in a note about this interview:

An eye opener for sure and very troubling at best. Trump might put a target on Weiner’s or your back; no one is immune from his vindictiveness. Thank you for sharing. I will sign up as your offering is an important instrument to educate those who need to learn outside the conventional box of corporate media.

Thank you, Barbara. If you like that interview, I highly recommend that you read the book.

“After this grooming, you look great, Moxie.”
“So I didn’t look great before?”
“Of course. Just...a different ‘great.’”
“What do you mean a different ‘great’? That just means, ‘not great.’”
“Look! A rabbit!”