They Got Pics

The Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released pictures of Epstein and his clients.

Not Brian Epstein with the Beatles, and Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, and Cilla Black.  Jeffrey Epstein with some of the most powerful and/or revered men in the world.

Among the chaps in Epstein's company are, clockwise from top right, Bill Gates, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (whom King Charles III demoted by rescinding his royal titles), Alan Dershowitz, Woody Allen (not really surprising, given Allen's own scandals involving girls and young women, but still saddening), Richard Branson, a guy who looks like Richard Benjamin (but isn't, because if Richard Benjamin had had anything to do with Jeffrey Epstein, his wife Paula Prentiss would have left him by now), and Epstein himself.

Oh yeah, and pictures of Bill Clinton too.

And of course, pictures of one Donald J. Trump.

The Epstein estate honored subpoenas by the House Democrats to produce such material related to the ongoing investigation into the late financier and pedophile.  Unlike Trump, Epstein's survivors and lawyers actually obey the law.  Out of 95,000 pictures provided to the House Democrats, they released 19.

Isn't nineteen thousand pictures a lot go through, you might ask?   Yes.  But they didn't released nineteen thousand pictures.  They released nineteen pictures.

Clearly, the Democrats don't want to flood the zone, as it were, to embarrass Trump or anyone else caught up in the Epstein scandal.  They want to release photos bit by bit, to make Trump in particular sweat as much as possible.  They need the as-yet unreleased pictures as leverage to get the Epstein files released.

In the meantime, they can laugh at the reaction one picture is likely getting - that of Steve Bannon (yeah, him too!) talking with Woody Allen.  What could be more embarrassing to the maestro of MAGA than to be seen talking with the one American filmmaker who has taken his cinematic cues from the French - and, artistically speaking, has much more in common with Jean Renoir than John Ford? 

Dersh

Joining a who's who of right-wing legal eagles for Trump's defense team in the impeachment trial is none other than that old Harvard fossil Alan Dershowitz, a liberal Democrat who can't seem to find anything wrong with what Trump has been doing in office on . . . constitutional grounds?

I tuned into CNN to hear Dersh's reason for defending Trump, and he more or less went on saying, "Well, Trump didn't violate Constitution I gotta say nothing wrong with exerting power not a high crime he can get foreign policy Ukraine is simple policy dispute we don't want to use impeachment trivial purpose Constitution Constitution deal and the phone call but it doesn't amount to level Constitution Constitution 1787 the Founding Fathers advice consent it's constitutional foreign affairs letter of the law we have to point out Ukrainian policy . . ." for twenty minutes or so, and I didn't understand a word that he said . . .

. . . but he says he's not defending what Trump did, he's just making the constitutional argument against impeachment.

Uh, I'm still missing something here . . .. 

Should be an interesting show, this trial . . . (Freudian slip there!)