I ran across this amusing video from right-wing nutjob and conspiracy theorist Candace Owens:
You have to admire the confidence with which she says the most idiotic things.
Here’s a sample where she’s talking about the moon landings (at 21:50 in the video):
…Bill Maher made fun of me for this, like, a little tweet that I said that, I don’t know, the moon landing just seems weird and whenever the media like, tries to make you feel like you’re stupid, that’s usually for me like, the first breadcrumb that, like, you’re on to something, because they’re, that’s what they are trained to do. They’re trained to sit here and tell you “You’re ridiculous, you don’t believe this.”
But then I decided to read this document, it was 119 pages, and I know there’s a book, too, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon, and he just broke down the science in a way that was very digestible so I didn’t have a non-expert problem. So there’s a basic thing that you guys can do if you’re, like, somebody who’s like, “It had to have happened, the moon landing,” um, what you can do is look up, uh — I’m calling this the firmament, but it’s the, um, uh, what is the, uh, belt the, uh, 200 miles out, you hit the Van Allen belt.
Okay, so there’s a Van Allen belt. So we have never gone beyond that belt, right? There’s been no human that’s gone beond belt since the moon landings, allegedly. And not even Elon Musk when they go out to space they have to stay like, there is a space station, but like once you get 200 miles out you hit the Van Allen belt which has an incredible amount of radiation. NASA has said, like, in order for us to get through it we’d have to have cement blocks around someone.
So I want you to just Google, if you’re watching this, the temperature of the Van Allen belt. Okay? Just Google that, and you’re going to get something like, at the lowest points in the Van Allen belt it’s, I think, 3,000 Kelvin and at the highest points it’s like 30,000 Kelvin and then I want you to Google what material the shuttle was made out of, and then I want you to Google at what temperature that would just burn and you’re just going to laugh out loud. This literally doesn’t make sense, that an aluminum alloy could have gone through the Van Allen belt for an hour and a half or 59 minutes. It just couldn’t have happened, literally can’t happen, there’s no explanation for it. They just don’t even talk about it, they don’t like talking about the Van Allen belt because that part makes entirely no sense…
Sorry, Candace, but you definitely have a “non-expert problem”.
Trump’s reaction to the release of the birthday letter:
“I don’t comment on something that’s a dead issue”, says the guy who is still talking about the 2020 election, the Mueller investigation, Obama, Hillary Clinton…
For Trump of all people to say “no comment” is remarkable. He comments on everything. When he says “I gave all comments to the staff”, I wonder if he means that his staff told him to shut up and let them do the talking. He’s clearly spooked by this.
The usual suspects are trying, and failing, to cover for him. Mike Johnson was asked if he’d seen the letter and responded:
Johnson put the House in recess specifically to avoid a vote on the Epstein files, and now he wants us to believe that he hasn’t even looked at the images that are all over the news? His phrasing is also telling. He doesn’t say “it’s fake” and “it’s not true”, he says “I’m told that it’s fake” and “the White House says it’s not true”. Not exactly a vote of confidence.
Asked whether he thought the letter was real, James Comer said “The president says it’s not. I take the president’s word.”
Then there’s this:
What a bunch of dishonest, timorous lackeys.
In today’s press briefing, Karoline Leavitt reiterated the claim that the letter is a hoax and said that the White House would support the use of a handwriting expert to determine if the signature is real. And I’m sure that we could trust the White House to pick an impartial expert, rather than shop around for one who would back up the forgery claim, right?
Anyway, the images are in the public domain, so there’s nothing preventing experts from weighing in right now. At least one expert already has:
Handwriting expert says ‘Donald Trump signature’ in Epstein birthday book is ‘absolutely’ his – despite his denials
For anyone who hasn’t seen them, I included the images in a comment on the previous page.
I would love to hear the White House’s explanation of how the letter ended up in the birthday book, if it’s a forgery. I don’t think anyone asked that question at the briefing.
I’m not going to argue that the letter isn’t genuine. I will argue that a photocopy of a letter is not admissible evidence.
For reasons I do not entirely understand, both major parties make grand gestures regarding Epstein, but do nothing.
Leading me to believe they all have something to lose.
When distributing evidence to many people (such as, say, members of the House Oversight Committee) you cannot give an original to everyone, can you? You still have not seen Obama’s birth certificate either, have you?
You are a sick moronic Trumpite cultist, absolute know-nothing, always eagerly spreading lies and ignorance in every post. If you think you know something, then why not show some knowledge for a change? For example, you should understand that your stupid-ass concept of “admissible evidence” is not a thing in a congressional committee. The concept matters only in a court of law, and in the court of law everyone will know that the photocopy is a photocopy of the *original* that Epstein’s estate has.
It is reasonable to expect that people who have handled the material already know what they are dealing with. WSJ knew what they were publishing. Alan Dershowitz is not disputing the authenticity of the birthday book, he is not suing WSJ for defamation, yet he is one of the sickest bastards in the world. Trump is of course irredeemably and irrecoverably deranged, and you go with that…
petrushka:
The Epstein estate has the physical book, and that would obviously be entered into evidence. This is a huge blow to Trump’s defamation case.
Um, haven’t you been paying attention? The Democrats have been pushing hard for the release of the files, and the Republicans (except for some mavericks like Massie and Greene) have been blocking their efforts. To my knowledge, not a single Democrat is opposed to their release.
A drawing from the Epstein birthday book, artist unknown:
What’s significant about this is that it shows that Epstein’s behavior was no secret, even back then.
Moreover, the best candidate for the depicted location is Mar-a-Lago. That’s where Epstein partied. And of course he did not party without Trump. As in other Epstein files, Trump is present on several pages of the birthday book, and that drawing can be considered another mark of how close Trump and Epstein were. The birthday book confirms that Trump was the closest person to Epstein immediately after Ghislaine Maxwell.
I find it interesting that both parties seem to be in favor of releasing documents, until they have the majority in congress.
First of all, I do not know what is true and what is not true.
But I know that by 2009, Epstein had already been convicted of trafficking, that according to the victim’s attorney, Trump had provided information to the FBI.
I also know that Trump is so paranoid that he does not use email, or written communication.
So I am a bit skeptical that he would author a bawdy birthday card to Epstein.
Also, I wonder why, in 2024, when the kitchen sink was being thrown, Epstein didn’t come up. I continue to think that everyone has something to lose.
As a corollary, whenever you claim to know anything, you are wrong. Always. About everything.
The rest of your post is total bunkum. You know nothing. You miss obvious elements, such as that the birthday letter is not an email. It’s a physical book, with paper pages. How can you miss that? Because you know nothing. You have abandoned all connection to reality.
petrushka,
Even Kamala Harris? Doubtful.
Trump is notoriously litigious. So this clear defamation (if fake) is surely certain to go to court. To fail to do so, particularly for a man like him, would be tantamount to an admission of guilt. So I look forward to the court case. I’m certain he’s innocent and can prove it. I’ll get the popcorn.
It testifies to Trump’s deludedness to have sued for this, especially after having soundly, roundly, and conlusively lost a different defamation case recently. Did he think Putin would bring out the KGB cavalry to vanish the book and silence some witnesses? Did he think presidency would grant him untouchable impunity as dictated by SCOTUS?
Also petrushka is full of funniest theories. Earlier in the thread he proposed that Trump had the book and was in position to make it go away – in which case the book would be real, but not for long. However, now that somebody else has the book, no way it is real!
Edit: My longer walkthrough and critique of petrushkanian reasoning is here.
Allan:
Judging by his performance in the E Jean Carroll case, Trump’s deposition would be fantastically entertaining and self-incriminating. I’m sure his lawyers cringe at the thought. It’s in their (and his) best interest to delay as long as possible. When the deposition is imminent, he’ll have to decide whether to drop the case or proceed. He may have been hoping that the Epstein thing would blow over by the time of the deposition so that he could drop the case without political repercussions, inventing some lame excuse for not proceeding.
Trump is so hyperlitigious that it’s often news when he doesn’t file a suit against someone. When Elon Musk claimed that Trump was in the Epstein files and Trump didn’t file a defamation suit, it raised a lot of eyebrows, including mine.
petrushka:
You’ll have to explain your reasoning here instead of just hinting as usual. If there are prominent Republicans and Democrats in the files, and if the parties want to protect those people, then what difference does it make whether they have the majority in Congress? They should be opposed to the release. The Republicans are; the Democrats aren’t.
According to the victims’ attorney (Brad Edwards), Trump provided information to him, not to the FBI. The White House has denied that Trump was an FBI informant and Mike Johnson has retracted his earlier statement claiming that he was.
Dude, you aren’t paying attention. He wrote letters all the time. That’s why there are so many examples of his signature to compare against. I’ve seen letters to Rudy Giuliani (multiple), Larry King, Hillary Clinton, George Conway, Lawrence O’Donnell, and even Keith Olbermann. There are many more.
ETA: A 2016 New York Times article:
Donald Trump’s Secret Weapon: Letters of Love, Flattery and Revenge
petrushka:
Ghislaine Maxwell was compiling a book for Epstein’s 50th birthday. Trump was Epstein’s close friend. Why wouldn’t he contribute a letter? It would have been weird not to.
Why are you assuming that anyone outside the DOJ knew what was in the files or suspected that Trump was in them? Remember, this was when Biden was in office, and Biden was the last in a long line of presidents who actually respected the independence of the DOJ and didn’t tell it who to investigate or use it to carry out their personal vendettas.
If the Democrats have something to lose, why are they pushing so hard to lose it? They want the Epstein files to be released.
They say they want the files released now that they know they won’t be.
Except that they – Oversight Committee Democrats – released the birthday book. This is a notable addition to the available Epstein files in contrast to Trump/Bondi releases, which only repeats earlier already available files and has added no information.
Petrushka knows nothing and is always wrong about everything.
There are Epstein files that have been in the open for a very long time already, such as the flight logs, the “black” address book, many scattered photos of/with Epstein, trial evidence and testimonies, etc. Epstein was a tabloid celebrity of sorts, not of the same magnitude as Trump, but there are enough articles about him from before his conviction. From the available material it can be deduced that Trump was the closest associate of Epstein throughout 90s until 2004 (the birthday book is from 2003) – the closest after Ghislaine Maxwell.
What is still missing is Epstein’s personal photo&video collection, allegedly 2TB in size, with Epstein’s guests in very compromising situations. The nature of this material is easy to deduce from available photos that Epstein took where his guests and girls are together, such as the Prince Andrew photo.
petrushka:
When did they ever oppose the release? Did you hear any Democrats protesting when Pam Bondi said “the files are on my desk” and appeared to be on the verge of releasing them? Or when the White House announced that goofy event where they handed out those binders that turned out to have little or nothing new in them?
If the Democrats were actually opposed to the release, they would have protested on both of those occasions. They didn’t. Your hypothesis doesn’t fit the data.
Also, what makes you so sure that they won’t be released?
petrushka:
I’ve already explained why it isn’t surprising at all. But since you doubt its authenticity, I’m curious: How do you think a fake letter from Trump got inserted into a book of genuine letters compiled 20 years ago that has been in the possession of the Epstein estate since then? Who at the time would have had any reason to do the forgery? And if you think it happened later, who could have done it, and how did they manage to get it into the book?
You are assuming your conclusion.
I have doubts, but no conclusions.
My standard is, would your evidence stand up in court. You have already concluded it would.
Your standard is to accept or deny evidence on partisan basis. For Trump it is better that the birthday letter not exist or be a forgery, therefore according to you it does not exist or is a forgery, and it does not matter that the rest of the book is 100% authentic.
Edit: Epstein emails are out, the bulk of the messages are from 2005-2008 https://www.newsweek.com/epstein-emails-private-account-2128274
Next up hopefully Epstein’s bank accounts.
petrushka:
No, I’m reaching my conclusion, based on the facts, which I’ll lay out in a subsequent comment.
What is the basis of those doubts? The only thing you’ve offered so far is your belief that Trump eschewed letters. I’ve shown you that your belief is wrong and that Trump wrote tons of letters during that time. You say you still have doubts. Why? Fill in the blank: “I’m doubtful that Trump wrote the letter, because ______________.”
Yes, because the evidence is so compelling. Do you think it wouldn’t stand up to courtroom scrutiny? If so, why wouldn’t it? If you were one of Trump’s attorneys, what would you say in court that would make a judge or jury doubt the letter’s authenticity? When I put myself in their position, I find it impossible to come up with a plausible argument. Perhaps you’re seeing something I’m not. What would your argument be?
petrushka,
Here’s why I think the letter is authentic:
1.The signature matches other contemporaneous Trump signatures.
2. The letter fits perfectly with what we know of Trump’s character. He’s been found by a court to have committed sexual assault, he’s been accused by over 25 women of sexual predation, he’s bragged about how he “grabs ’em by the pussy”, and he’s told Howard Stern about how he would abuse his status as a beauty pageant owner to go into the dressing room and ogle contestants while they were dressing. And more. The guy’s a creep.
3. Contrary to your earlier belief, Trump wrote a lot of letters during that time. This was just one more.
4. It would have been odd for Trump not to contribute a letter on the occasion of his best friend’s 50th birthday, especially when you consider everyone else who did.
5. The letter was part of a book that included contributions from many people, none of whom have disputed the authenticity of the book or of their contributions to it — except for Trump.
6. Trump is a prolific and compulsive liar, and he has every motivation to deny the authenticity of the letter. His denial carries little if any weight.
7. He lied when he claimed “I never wrote a picture in my life.” He’s “written” many of them, so why not this one?
8. The Wall Street Journal is a respected publication with a reputation to protect and no desire to pay a settlement in the millions or billions of dollars. Nor does Rupert Murdoch want that. No way they would have published the story if they weren’t damn sure that their reporting was correct.
9. Trump was a registered Democrat at the time that Maxwell put the book together. (He even contributed to Kamala Harris’s California AG campaign, lol.) Plus he had shown no interest in running for office. Would the Democrats have been motivated to frame Trump on the off chance that he would change parties in the future and run for president?
10. Maxwell had the books (there were more than one) professionally bound. Are we to believe that someone snuck in, planted a forgery in the midst of the letters, and that she didn’t notice it before having them bound, or afterwards?
11. Or if you think the forgery was planted later, how? Did someone find out where the books were stored, break in, undo the binding, insert the Trump letter, redo the binding flawlessly, and leave? When did this happen? How did they pull it off?
12. Did Obama, Clinton, Comey and Brennan, who Trump blames for being behind the “Epstein hoax”, fabricate the letter and travel back in time to stick it into the book somehow?
Are you aware of any evidence that points away from Trump as the source of the letter? Do you have any plausible alternative explanation of the letter’s origin? If not, why do you doubt that it’s authentic?
“I have my doubts,” you say, but I think what you really mean is “I don’t want this to be true, even though it’s the only plausible explanation.”
Trump says he is bringing a $15 billion lawsuit against The New York Times
There is your free speech champion again suppressing easy obvious facts. The good thing about these lawsuits is that the Epstein discussion remains active, i.e. more people will realise that Trump is the worst kind in power, a selfish corrupt criminal sex trafficker pedo.
Kash Patel squirming under questioning from Eric Swalwell:
Kash Patel wasn’t happy about this question from Rep. Swalwell
After watching that clip, remind yourself that Donald Trump — who says that he hires “only the best people” — chose this guy for the role of FBI director. Imagine what it’s like for, say, a 20-year veteran at the FBI, professional, serious, dedicated to the cause of justice, who clicks on a YouTube video and sees their boss doing that. What a jackass.
Pretty clear confirmation that he did tell Bondi. Not that there was ever any question about that, except among the naive.
In this thread, discussing (among other things) two different defamation cases, we have seen the legal standards of petrushka. On the one hand, when Macrons sue Owens for defamation, then petrushka’s stance is that for a public personality it is notoriously difficult to meet the necessary burden of proof and Owens can easily slip away by pleading absolute insanity and go on with her business intact. On the other hand, when Trump sues WSJ, then WSJ should have considered whether Trump has the birthday book (and can therefore make it vanish, thus undermining WSJ’s defense) and/or whether the letter/signature is real or whether Trump wrote it personally, else it could indeed be defamation in some way. So, petrushka’s legal standard is – always go conspiratorial, and for the sake of Trump even go into a multi-level conspiratorial whirlwind.
For comparison, here’s WSJ’s legal strategy.
Different from eternal pedo-defender petrushka, the legal standard of WSJ attorneys is that it is not defamation to say about a pedo that he is pedo. It is just a fact to say that the pedo is pedo.
Oh, and by the way, the book is 100% real despite petrushka’s strong protests.
Erik:
Even if it were somehow defamatory, the WSJ didn’t say it. First, they were careful in the article not to say that the Epstein letter was authentic. They just described it and said that it appeared to be signed by Trump. They also noted Trump’s denial of its authenticity. Note their phrasing in the filing:
The article was about the letter and not about its provenance. The WSJ reporters thought it was authentic, of course — any objective person would reach that conclusion — but they didn’t say that, and they didn’t need to. The article had the desired effect without that claim.
The wrinkle is that claims don’t have to be explicit to be defamatory. If the letter turned out to be a forgery, the court would have to decide whether the article effectively claims that the letter is Trump’s despite not saying so explicitly. I know very little about defamation case law, so I don’t know where courts typically draw that line.
The second paragraph is fallback insurance in case the court sides with Trump and agrees that the letter is a forgery and that the WSJ either knew that or was reckless in not knowing it. They’re basically saying “Even if we screwed up and recklessly published a false statement about Trump, it isn’t defamatory because it didn’t cause any damage to Trump’s already shitty reputation.”
They didn’t call a pedo a pedo, and they didn’t even call a creep a creep. They just described a letter that, if authentic, would fit right in with Trump’s behavioral history.
This is a very lovely way of putting it, honestly without irony. Except here’s the thing: Despite all the caution in WSJ’s wordings, Trump still sued for defamation and said he would already before the publication, because the implications of the letter are obvious. And petrushka’s reaction to the letter has been so painful as if he were implicated himself, just that he has not sued for defamation.
By the way, according to the court documents, WSJ attorneys quote Trump’s “grab them by the pussy” to establish the nature of his (Trump’s) reputation. Yeah, you can say that they did not say that Trump is a pussy-grabber. They merely quoted Trump saying that “you can grab them by the pussy”. The difference really does not matter for Trump’s reputation. It’s Trump’s self-made reputation either way. Trump is a pedo and petrushka is a pedo-defender.
Erik:
I think he regarded suing as a political necessity, even if his legal team had warned him that he would inevitably lose. Not suing would have been tantamount to an admission that the letter is authentic, since we’re talking about Trump here — a guy who will sue at the drop of a hat.
Yeah. For their purposes, it doesn’t matter whether Trump actually is a pussy grabber. The very fact that he made the statement is enough.
And I don’t think the effect would have been much different for Trump if they’d actually gone ahead and said that he wrote the letter, so why take the chance? Given the evidence, no reasonable person could conclude that he didn’t write it, and the unreasonable people who believe or claim it’s a forgery would have insisted on that regardless. Letting their readers draw the inevitable conclusion gave the WSJ an extra layer of legal protection without lessening the impact of the article.
And it is just an extra layer of protection, because Trump already has the burden of proving that the letter is a forgery. It’s not enough to cast doubt on its authenticity. He has to show by a preponderance of the evidence that it is a forgery, and how is he going to manage that? He did demand a jury trial, but this isn’t a criminal trial, so getting one juror to hold out against the rest isn’t enough. He needs to get most of them to buy his story. Good luck with that.
I think he’ll drop the suit before it goes to trial, and even before discovery begins. A Trump deposition would be a clown show.
J-Mac, in Sandbox:
Tell us about your subpoena, J-Mac.
Not much details but I’m probably one of few people who can prove Brigitte Macrone has not taken on her brothers identity.
Is this good enough?
BTW: I don’t like it but that seems to be the truth…
Popcorn for sale, everybody.
J-Mac:
What is your expertise, and how will you prove it?
I feel like suing my lawyers who are my friends… they are imperfect like me…
I can’t really say it out loud, but my specially is hair
Watch it before it’s deleted! In this 1-hour broadcast, a very charming softball interviewer Miranda Devine lures Lutnick into inescapable trap right at the beginning. Within the first minute, Lutnick is made to talk about his life as Jeffrey Epstein’s neighbour. Lutnick of course was instantly invited in by Epstein, as soon as they became neighbours.
At the second minute, Lutnick mentions Epstein’s massage room next to dining room. Then, for show, Lutnick denounces Epstein as gross and as the most disgusting person ever – “one [visit] and absolutely done”. This already departs majorly from Trump’s assessment of Epstein as “fun to be with”. (One might wonder how Lutnick bears to hang around Trump…)
Then at 3:35
Miranda Devine, “So how come Bill Gates and all these other people could hang around him and not see what you saw? Or did they see and ignore it or…?”
Howard Lutnick, “No, they participated in it.”
Miranda Devine, “Right…”
The obvious point is of course that the closest known friend of Epstein is Donald Trump. If in the place of the interviewer’s mention of Bill Gates there were a mention of Donald Trump, the question would be even more apt, not less! Also in the interview, Lutnick purports to know that Epstein was the greatest blackmailer ever and that “there must have been a trade” with the FBI/CIA against the videos that Epstein had.
This interview is a Prince Andrew level PR disaster for Lutnick – and Trump.
Meanwhile, here’s Kash Patel under oath:
Sen. John Kennedy:
Patel:
Kennedy:
Patel:
Kennedy:
Patel:
I have a feeling Patel’s testimony isn’t going to age well.
Patel’s testimony was instantly outdated by more than a decade. It has been established common knowledge since at least 2011 that Epstein trafficked to Prince Andrew, for one.
Here’s Thomas Massie questioning Patel at his House hearing:
Patel:
Massie:
Patel:
Massie:
Patel:
Massie:
Patel:
Massie:
Patel:
Seems like Kash Patel is on board with what’s at stake and therefore simply denies everything directly before him and conveniently forgets everything not directly before him. Howard Lutnick, on the other hand, forgets that the agreed tactic is to deny everything and can easily be induced into admitting damaging specifics about Epstein – except when it comes to Trump personally.
That the agreed tactic is to deny everything became clear when Mike Johnson accidentally said that it’s “common knowledge and everybody knows” that Trump was a heroic FBI informant in Epstein’s case and then was made to backtrack on this the next day. Trump usually likes to be a hero, but apparently not in connection with Epstein.
Lutnick can easily talk in vivid detail how disgusting Epstein was, that the grossness was clear from the inside of his house upon first visit and Bill Gates definitely “participated in it” – forgetting that these very details were Trump’s reason to appreciate Epstein. Whereas Kash Patel is more in line with the mafia mindset, he deflects all details and no longer conspiratorialises like he used to before taking office.
Erik:
Tim Miller comments on that:
The commerce secretary is really stupid
It would be interesting if Epstein stuff is still being used for blackmail.
A while ago, author Michael Wolff commented on some compromising Trump photos that Jeffrey Epstein showed him:
Pam Bondi’s testimony today before the Senate was a disaster. Here she is dodging Sheldon Whitehouse’s questions about those photos:
Pam Bondi dodges Sheldon Whitehouse’s questions about compromising Trump photos
If the FBI didn’t actually have those photos, she would have said so immediately and forcefully. She dodged instead. The obvious inference is that the FBI has them.
According to an FBI whistleblower, there was a bizarre effort in March in which 1,000 FBI personnel spent a couple of weeks going through the Epstein files, working 24-hour shifts, flagging every document in which Trump’s name appeared.
Dick Durbin interrogates Pam Bondi about the effort to scour the Epstein files for Trump’s name