Miranda Devine: Epstein drama is an unnecessary distraction for Trump admin – and plays into the hands of malign Dems

Uh-oh. Democratic swamp rat Jamie Raskin has jumped on the Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy bandwagon, demanding that AG Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy Dan Bongino testify to Congress about the so-called Epstein files.

After five days of escalating hysteria and chest-beating, including ultimatums to President Trump to “fire Blondi,” MAGA “influencers” have found themselves on the same side as Raskin, which, needless to say, is the wrong side.

While the whole episode has been handled clumsily by Trump officials, it is not so difficult to believe that FBI vaults have been scrubbed of meaningful Epstein conspiracy information or never had any, if the pervert financier was an intelligence asset, as some reporting suggests.

The intelligence angle stems from 2019 reporting by British journalist Vicky Ward in the Daily Beast in which she claimed that Alex Acosta, the former Florida US attorney who negotiated the 2008 sweetheart plea deal with Epstein over sexually abusing dozens of underage girls, told the Trump transition team in 2017, when he was being vetted for labor secretary, that he had been warned off the case because Epstein “belonged to intelligence.”

Ward’s sources were anonymous and Acosta has never confirmed the reports, which serve to divert blame from him over the controversial plea deal in which Epstein served just 13 months in Palm Beach County jail after pleading guilty to soliciting prostitution.

The slap on the wrist always looked shady. So did the fact that Epstein’s clients continued with him after he was officially a registered sex offender.

‘Still talking about this?’

Fresh allegations from victims suing Epstein and investigative reporting by the Miami Herald led to new federal indictments from the Southern District of New York during Trump’s first term.

In August 2019, while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy to traffic minors, Epstein was found dead in his jail cell in Manhattan, and a conspiracy was born. Was it suicide or murder?

Questions linger even though the DOJ and FBI have consistently maintained he committed suicide. Most recently, former Epstein conspiracy mongers Patel and Bongino concluded that there is no evidence he was murdered. A DOJ memo last week announced the case is closed, that there is no Epstein “client list,” and there will be no more public disclosures.

But that wasn’t the end of it

On Tuesday, Bondi was asked by Post White House correspondent Steven Nelson whether Epstein had ever worked for “an American or foreign intelligence agency” and why there was a minute missing from the jailhouse video of the door of Epstein’s cell the night he died.

Trump interrupted to berate reporters for “still talking about this guy, this creep?”

Bondi, meanwhile, tried to explain why she told Fox News that the Epstein client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review,” meaning she hadn’t yet reviewed the file.

As for claims that Epstein was working for an intelligence agency: “I have no knowledge of that. I can get back to you on that.”

The ensuing online MAGA influencer frenzy forced a justifiably exasperated Trump to issue a Truth Social post defending Bondi: “What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’ They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! We’re on one Team, MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening …

“LET PAM BONDI DO HER JOB — SHE’S GREAT!”

The nearly 20-year-old Epstein saga is a distraction, he said: “Kash Patel, and the FBI, must be focused on investigating Voter Fraud, Political Corruption, ActBlue, The Rigged and Stolen Election of 2020, and arresting Thugs and Criminals, instead of spending month after month looking at … Epstein.”

He has a point.

Other scandals

As of Sunday, Bondi still had not gotten back to Nelson on whether Epstein was an intelligence asset. CIA Director John Ratcliffe might have more of an idea.

He was sitting quietly at the far end of the conference table that day taking copious notes in a small notepad throughout Trump and Bondi’s answers.

But even for the most transparent administration in history, there are some things that a world superpower cannot divulge for national security reasons, or to avoid damaging relationships with allies.

I’d love to know the truth about Epstein, but it’s not worth tearing the administration apart and playing into the hands of malign Dems.

If we’re looking in the rearview mirror, there are more recent scandals that are arguably more important.

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Every week, Post columnist Miranda Devine sits down for exclusive and candid conversations with the most influential disruptors in Washington. Subscribe here!

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Russiagate and associated other anti-Trump sabotage by the FBI and DOJ is something that Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has hold of like a dog with a bone.

His latest discovery, revealed exclusively here, is a trove of emails from whistleblowers showing how anti-Trump FBI agents and prosecutors concocted a fantasy insurrection plot meeting at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC, in January 2021 to try to entrap Trump and associates like Rudy Giuliani and Roger Stone over allegedly inciting the Capitol riot.

But all they had was a Washington Post article full of innuendo.

In emails dated March 1 and March 2, 2022, anti-Trump agent Timothy Thibault, who has since resigned, wrote about the ongoing efforts of his team to satisfy requests from zealous J6 prosecutor Thomas Windom to open a case file on the “Willard Hotel.”

Thibault said the Washington Field Office was “hard at work attempting to predicate a Preliminary Investigation, which would allow us to conduct many of the investigative activities Thomas has identified in his plan.”

Windom’s baseless wish list of investigations he wanted the FBI to pursue included issuing subpoenas to the Willard Hotel for information on everyone who stayed there from Jan. 1 to 7, 2021, and subpoenas for internal camera footage from the hotel.

There would also be subpoenas to “J6 witnesses,” email facilities, banks and a review of seized electronic data.

“Yet again, we see that crooked Biden-era FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors started with a conclusion and tried to fit in the data points after the fact,” says Grassley. “That’s the opposite of how real investigative work should be done. For these obsessive anti-Trump agents and prosecutors, the sole objective was to pin anyone connected to President Trump on potential criminal charges, no matter how remote the connection.

“None of this information would have been realized without patriotic whistleblowers.”

Plots and punishments

In the end, Windom’s theory of the Willard Hotel “war room” fell apart — because it wasn’t true.

“The Willard Hotel war room was about the election,” says Giuliani. “We had nothing to do with the riot. We had no time for it. I was too busy trying to collect information about all the phony ballots.”

When the FBI couldn’t find dirt from its trawl through the Willard’s guest list, unscrupulous Democrats, including J6 committee chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Jerry Nadler (D-NY), sued Giuliani, Donald Trump Jr. and others under the 1871 Ku Klux Klan act, alleging they conspired to incite the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Even partisan Obama-appointed DC Judge Amit Mehta couldn’t entertain the nonsense, dismissing the civil suit for lack of evidence.

Soon after, Giuliani’s home and office in New York were raided by the FBI, which spied on his cloud with a covert surveillance warrant over a bogus foreign lobbying investigation which it later abandoned without filing a single charge.

The process is the punishment, and nobody other than Trump has been hammered with lawfare as badly as Giuliani.

It shows how determined malign elements inside the DOJ and FBI were to find dirt to destroy Trump.

That’s why it’s important to expose the corruption, because the wrongdoers are still at it.

They will never stop unless they are stopped.