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US Attorney Tasked To Probe Clinton In Epstein Case Has 'No Prosectorial Experience'

Jay Clayton, Attorney General Pam Bondi's most recent appointment to investigate Democrats involved with late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein after President Donald Trump's sudden reversal, has been chosen for what The New Republic's Michael Tomasky says is a "political task that has nothing whatever to do with justice."

Clayton, a corporate lawyer who is "mostly a high finance guy," Tomasky notes, chaired the Security and Exchange Commission during Trump's first term.

"One thing that impressed me, and that was at odds with the standard Trumpian flouting of rules of any kind governing the behavior of appointees and their families, is that his wife, a Goldman Sachs official, resigned her position when he took the job," Tomasky notes.

"What? People in the Trump solar system acting ethically of their own volition? Hard to imagine how Trump tolerated that," he adds.

However, Clayton has "no prosecutorial experience at all" Tomasky writes.

When Trump named Clayton to run the Southern District of New York earlier this year, Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) blocked his nomination, but Trump appointed him on an interim basis for 120 days. After that the federal court for the district decides whether his appointment should go forward, and Manhattan's federal judges gave him the green light.

Clayton has been quiet in that position, Tomasky writes, saying "critics noted that when Bondi fired Maurene Comey, the daughter of James Comey who had overseen the prosecutions of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, Clayton said nary a word."

"The Aaron Sorkin-movie version of Clayton would have told Bondi to stuff it Saturday and resigned—I do not hold this public trust to go on politically motivated fishing expeditions. But that’s not real life, especially in Trumpworld," Tomasky writes.

It would be "brave" if Clayton comes back and says there's no evidentiary basis to indict his targets—former Democratic President Bill Clinton, Democratic presidential adviser Larry Summers, and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman, but if he does bring indictments, Tomasky says, there are only two plausible reasons.

"One might that there’s actually evidence sufficient to an indictment. In which case, let justice be done. But in Donald Trump’s, and Pam Bondi’s, America, we would be quite justified in suspecting a second explanation: That Clayton did what he was ordered by the White House to do," he writes.

"The Trump era is a time of learning what people are made of. I’m guessing that in six months’ time, we’ll know a lot more about Jay Clayton than we know today," he adds.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

What The Epstein Files Reveal About His 'Best Friend' And Top Republicans Who Enabled Him

By publicly commanding the Justice Department to investigate the “involvement and relationship” of deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein with former President Bill Clinton and various other Democrats, Donald Trump advertised his own consciousness of guilt. Instantly, with the zeal of a born lackey, Attorney General Pam Bondi passed Trump’s diktat down to Jay Clayton, the United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, a reputedly honest lawyer who defiled the proud traditions of that office by echoing her unlawful orders without a peep of protest.

It was just another entry in the shameful docket that will should someday result in disbarments and perhaps worse for all involved (except Trump, who has been awarded blanket immunity by another gang of crooked Republican lawyers on the Supreme Court).

To be clear, there is no evidence at all implicating Clinton (or any of the Democrats named by Trump) in wrongdoing of any kind. There is no justification for Bondi’s farcical vow to investigate them “with integrity,” a concept and characteristic entirely unknown to her.

Indeed, the only “news” about Clinton emerged in two Epstein emails confirming again that the former president -- who once borrowed an Epstein jet for a humanitarian trip to Africa -- had “never ever ever” visited the predator’s private Caribbean island, as Trump and his flunkeys have repeatedly alleged. It’s just another big lie formulated to distract from the president’s own apparent culpability.

What we have seen in the “Trump” pages from the thousands of Epstein documents released so far is damning if not legally incriminating to him, however. “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop,” wrote Epstein in a tantalizing 2019 email. In another the predator depicted Trump as “that dog that didn’t bark,” and noted that his “friend” had “spent hours” at Epstein’s house with one of the predator’s female victims, probably Virginia Giuffre, who killed herself last spring. In other messages, Epstein boasted more than once that he could “bring down” Trump.

What we have not seen yet is whatever has frightened the president into the madly panicked acts of falsification and abuse that he and his minions commit almost every day.

Beyond his manipulation of the Justice Department to frame his political enemies, Trump has misused his power to intimidate the handful of House Republicans who stepped forward to demand release of the Epstein files. And as in the Russia investigation, he is dangling a pardon to keep Ghislaine Maxwell quiet and supportive as the Bureau of Prisons lavishes her with special privileges in a minimum-security institution not meant for sex offenders like her.

Only Trump knows (assuming he remembers) exactly what he fears in those massive files documenting his long “involvement” with Epstein. But the disclosures to date should remind us of how deeply his partisan supporters – and top legal figures in the Republican Party – are implicated in Epstein’s long escape from justice.

Among the released emails are many messages between Epstein and his late friend Kenneth Starr whose saccharine tone induces a spasm of cringe. “Luv ya!” and "Hugs!" wrote the former Whitewater special counsel to his pal Jeffrey – in stark contrast to his dogged pursuit of the Clintons, which degenerated into a sex probe when he realized that they were innocent of any financial corruption.

As Epstein’s counsel, Starr played a pivotal role in the sweetheart plea deal, engineered by his longtime associate Alex Acosta, that enabled him to evade accountability for so long. Booted out of Baylor University for covering up a rape scandal, Starr went on to advise Trump during his first impeachment. (He also had a soft spot for other pedophiles if they shared his religion or political outlook.) Acosta was later elevated into Trump’s cabinet as labor secretary, until his gross behavior in the Justice Department as Epstein’s supine enabler forced him to resign. The names of many other Trump Republicans litter the files, notably including Steve Bannon, who advised Epstein on how to "rehabilitate" his ruined reputation.

Although it will never be investigated by Republicans like Rep. James Comer, who has subpoenaed (both!) Clintons to testify about Epstein, therein lies a matter due for investigation. How did the most notorious pedophile in recent history get away with his crimes for so long? Trump knew and did nothing – and so did his Republican mouthpieces and cronies.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (St. Martin's Press, 2024).

Republicans Beware! Medicaid Is Not A Soft Target

Does anyone remember the 1995 government shutdown and why it happened? Basically Newt Gingrich, fresh off a big Republican victory in the midterm election, was trying to force Bill Clinton to make big cuts in Medicare. He failed, in large part because Medicare was and is an immensely popular program.

A decade later, George W. Bush tried to privatize Social Security. But he, too, failed, because Social Security is also immensely popular.

But the Republican quest to rip up as much of the social safety net as possible never ends. And for the past 15 years or so that has meant steering clear, for now, of Medicare and Social Security, which are middle-class programs, and going after Medicaid instead. If the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — which is, incredibly, the legislation’s actual name — goes into effect, Medicaid will be cut by around a trillion dollars over the next decade. (As of this morning, the fate of that bill remains uncertain.)

What is Medicaid? Like Medicare, it’s government-provided health insurance. But unlike Medicare, it’s “means-tested”: your income has to fall below a certain level before you’re eligible. This makes Medicaid a program for the poor or near-poor — and that, for many on the right, suggests a political opportunity.

Ostensibly, the right attacks Medicaid because it costs too much. I mean, it’s a government program, which means that it must be riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse, right? And surely there must be millions of lazy people getting health care through Medicaid who should be getting up off their couches and going to work.

The reality is that none of this is true.

No doubt there’s waste and fraud in Medicaid, as there is in any system created and run by human beings. But overall Medicaid provides essential health care relatively cheaply. Once you adjust for the generally poor health of the average Medicaid recipient — chronic illness can make you poor! — Medicaid appears to have significantly lower costs than private insurance:

Actually, in some ways Medicaid resembles the health care systems of other advanced countries, which are much cheaper than U.S. health care (while achieving equally good results) largely because they’re more cost-conscious, willing to bargain hard with drug companies, say no to expensive procedures of dubious medical benefit, and so on.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of Medicaid recipients either are working or can’t work — they’re disabled or need to stay home to care for others:

Oh, and one thing we know from repeated experience is that adding work requirements to Medicaid does not, in fact, lead to more people working.

I don’t know how many of the right-wingers clamoring for drastic Medicaid cuts believe the stories they tell about waste and lazy Americans who won’t get a job. My guess, though, is that they don’t care whether these stories are true. They’re going after Medicaid because they see it as a soft target — a program that helps lower-income Americans, and who cares about them? Medicaid’s beneficiaries, they imagine, are the new welfare queens driving Cadillacs.

But a funny thing has happened to public opinion about Medicaid. The share of Americans covered by the program has increased a lot over the past 15 years:

And the fact that so many Americans now receive Medicaid means that many people have either benefited from the program or know people who have. And as a result the program has become remarkably popular:

83 percent favorability — 74 percent among Republicans! — is incredibly high. In fact, Medicaid appears to have slightly higher favorability than apple pie.

What this suggests is that Republicans who consider Medicaid a soft target, a program that only benefits inner-city rats, are going to be shocked by the blowback if they do manage to eviscerate this key piece of American health care.

Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist and former professor at MIT and Princeton who now teaches at the City University of New York's Graduate Center. From 2000 to 2024, he wrote a column for The New York Times.

Reprinted with permission from Substack.

Trump's Tax Cut Will Lead To Fiscal Disaster

First off, let's drop the Republican claim that not extending Trump's 2017 tax cuts is a tax increase.

Many of these tax cuts were purposely designed to expire and for a sneaky reason. Making them permanent would have hiked the bill's cost by more than $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Add to that the interest payments tied to the higher borrowing, and the number rises to $2 trillion.

The ugly bottom line is this: Trump's "big, beautiful" tax and spending bill is expected to tack another $3.8 trillion to budget deficits over the next decade.

Recall Elon Musk's vow to cut $2 trillion in spending a year ago? The amount actually cut was about $100 billion. Sorry to throw more numbers at you, but that's only 5% of $2 trillion.

Balancing the federal budget without added borrowing can be done. It was done when Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was president. Clinton had raised some taxes, notably on the wealthy, in his 1993 budget. Republicans demagogued those tax hikes, which helped them win big in the midterms that followed.

By 1998, the federal budget was in surplus. Republicans rightly insist that they helped by forcing lower spending. But the added tax revenue brought in more money than the spending cuts saved.

Most Americans got richer under Clinton. Despite higher tax bills, the rich got richer, too. They benefited from a stock market lifted in large part by the growing belief that the federal government had become a responsible financial steward.

During Clinton's presidency, the S&P 500 stock index rose a legendary 208 percent. Had dividends been included and reinvested, the total return would have been higher.

George W. Bush took over the presidency in January 2001 and squandered the surplus with tax cuts and dramatically higher spending. He also oversaw the reckless deregulation that led to the financial collapse at the end of his two terms — and a 40% drop in the S&P 500.

Anyone who has done a household budget knows that two numbers matter. One is for spending; the other is for money coming in. For the federal government, money coming in is the tax revenues.

Ronald Reagan bought into the idea that tax cuts would pay for themselves through greater economic growth. He quickly saw that his 1981 tax cuts didn't come close to covering the lost revenues plus higher defense spending. To his credit, Reagan acted to stabilize the financial picture by signing a tax increase the following year and then other increases in 1984 and 1986. Nonetheless, the national debt tripled during his eight years.

Trump is pushing hard for both tax cuts and higher spending. And that has the financial markets fearing a new era of financial irresponsibility. Moody's has just lowered its credit rating for the United States from triple-A to double-A. That's contributed to a global selloff of U.S. Treasury debt, as it is no longer seen as the ultra-safe investment it was. The U.S. must now offer higher returns to compensate for the higher risk. Our annual interest payments, meanwhile, now surpass the defense budget.

All this doesn't fully count the growth-killing effects of Trump's tariff plans. JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon says investors may not have fully digested how much of a threat to their portfolios the tariffs pose.

Trump's tax-and-spending bill has a long way to go — the Senate after the House. But the financial markets obviously don't like what they are seeing.

Republicans should not be extending and adding to the 2017 tax cuts. Responsible lawmakers would just let them expire as they were scheduled to do. Alas, they clearly don't have it in them to be responsible.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

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Smart. Sharp. Funny. Fearless

US Attorney Tasked To Probe Clinton In Epstein Case Has 'No Prosectorial Experience'

What The Epstein Files Reveal About His 'Best Friend' And Top Republicans Who Enabled Him

Republicans Beware! Medicaid Is Not A Soft Target

Trump's Tax Cut Will Lead To Fiscal Disaster

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