From the article:
The tension between practicing politics based on conspiracy theories and having to govern extends far beyond the F.B.I. and Justice Department’s problems with the Epstein case.... Days after the backlash over his Epstein comments, Mr. Bongino offered other promises — new investigations into other episodes that have gripped the president’s base: the discovery of cocaine in the West Wing during the Biden administration, the leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion overturning abortion rights in 2022 and the discovery of pipe bombs near Republican and Democratic Party headquarters before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, an unsolved crime that has already consumed significant law enforcement resources....
Emerald Robinson, a former White House correspondent for Newsmax, made her frustration clear on social media. “Dan Bongino & Kash Patel know they destroyed their credibility by claiming that ‘Jeffrey Epstein killed himself’ so now they’re trying to offer up three investigations you don’t care about to misdirect you from the Epstein files you do care about,” she wrote. “Sad!”
86 comments:
I only want the truth. If Epstein killed himself, show us the tape. I'm more interested in who was visiting Epstein island and what foreign intelligence agents were Running Epstein. And what was the real purpose of this operation. Blackmail?
BTW, Bill Barr had to have been the biggest snake in Trump's cabinet. He quietly sabotaged Trump at every turn. And then trashed him after Jan 2021 until supporting him in Fall 2024.
Typical Bushie.
We'll see how all this works out in the fullness of time. And really, how important is the Epstein issue in the larger scheme of things? Does anyone give a rat's a** about it, other than to somehow blame it on the Clintons?
More Resistance 2.0. It wouldn’t be Sunday morning without Post Toasties and bug-eyed leftie blather from the NYT.
- Krumhorn
the Times should just sit this one out, Emerald is right to be skeptical, seeing all the verboten things, that have been designated as such,
the leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion overturning abortion rights in 2022
This seems like one that could have been solved fairly quickly at the time it happened. That it wasn't made it look as though they were protecting someone. I'd still like an answer.
yes it was pretty obvious who leaked it, and we can surmise why,
The good thing about destroying your credibility is that it makes it an imperative for you to explain yourself and prove you were right.
My suspicion is that there are pressures to bury Mossad involvement in the Epstein case. Use of underage sex is bad form for Israel if true. Israel has carte blanc in Gaza for now and needs to maintain it for a while.
the pipe bombs mysterious provenance, how they diverted Capitol Police resources at exactly the right time,
Leftist media covering for itself.
how they could geolocate everyone on the rally perimeter, but somehow they couldn't find the bomber,
the Times does their best Frank Drebin impression,
I'm more interested in who was visiting Epstein island and what foreign intelligence agents were Running Epstein. And what was the real purpose of this operation. Blackmail?
This is why they (Bondi\Patel\Bongino) keep claiming they've got the Epstein list on their desk and they're reviewing it so they can release it.
They think we're interested in the list. They do this to keep us focused on the list. Which will never appear.
ProTip: We aren't interested in the list. I don't care who was being blackmailed, or which foreign country was funding it.
We care about arrests. They have these men on tape raping underage girls. And goddammit, they're not arresting these men. They're not prosecuting these men. These men are getting away with raping underage girls. Are the girls culpable in some way? Argue that if you want, but that's not the law.
Kash Patel recently said there's no video in the FBI's files of rapes. Keep in mind that Pam Bondi said there is, and that there are thousands of hours of videotape in her files of these rapes occurring.
But if Kash Patel is right, and there's no evidence in their files, then someone is going to have to explain why Ghislaine Maxwell was tried, convicted and is currently in prison for securing underage girls for Epstein's operation. OK then, who were the girls, and who raped them?
They keep promising to release video of Epstein killing himself. Then when pressed, admit the video only shows an oblique view of a jail cell that it's impossible to identify, showing nothing. And then claiming this "proves" nobody went in there to kill Epstein. And then of course, they never release the video and the media never calls them on it.
Nobody is buying their bullshit any more than we bought the FBI's previous bullshit when Bill Barr was running the cover-up.
OT:
Pallets of bricks show up for rioting democratic insurrectionists. How magical.
"discovered pallets of cement bricks within striking distance of the ICE agents. There’s no other pallets around, some are in the back of the gate, but these are in front of the gate.
we are told protestors used these cement bricks to throw at ICE agents."
Loyal Democratics sure do make good-boi Domestic terrorists .
Most of the "conspiracy theorists" are just outsiders challenging powerful people and being distrustful of authority. These are the watchers who question the secret activities of authorities. We need these people for our society to function effectively.
Yup. Per NYT he "conspiracy theories" are just "unsolved mysteries" from the Biden Administration. Time to move on. Sure. We should all be happy with the explanations provided. Right.
official sources, are often incomplete if not dishonest, that has been the story for the last 10 years,
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I can see through some statements that just don't add up.
Bongino saying the two of them have been briefed on these investigations and there's no "there there" is a bullshit statement.
We didn't send Bongino and Patel to Washington DC to get briefed on cases by those who covered them up. We sent them there to conduct REAL investigations.
Don't give me statements that you've been told by a third party that everything's copacetic and expect me to just trust you, bro.
like the danchenko dossier, the delta house kangaroo court,
"The world that they have to inhabit" is not a world of conspiracy-mongers, but a world in which people are no longer willing to accept "classified" as an all-purpose cover for dishonesty, corruption and malfeasance.
Remember the good old days when crusading newspapers were trying to answer those basic questions?-- When what who where why? Sure, it was a myth, but they weren't proudly stating their opposition to disclosing the truth about things.
The problem now for the NYT and all the leftists (including their allies here on this blog) is that they are now firmly identified on the "20" side of the "80-20" public perception of the Truth Spectrum. And particularly on what they disastrously keep referring to as "conspiracy theories". The more they keep doing it, the farther they slide down the 20 side. It's comical actually.
serious Question:
WHAT is the difference? between a "conspiracy theory", and a fact?
is it about three months?
O'Bama's FBI is wiretapping the Trump Tower..
O'Bama's FBI is pushing Hilary's Russian Dossier..
The Laptop from Hell..
The Ukraine "War"..
The destruction of the Russian Bomber force..
The assassination attempts on Trump..
Conspiracies ALL!
Mary Beth said...
the leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion overturning abortion rights in 2022
This seems like one that could have been solved fairly quickly at the time it happened. That it wasn't made it look as though they were protecting someone. I'd still like an answer.
We already know it was Roberts.
People are just trying to hide from what that means.
A politics professor wants us to ignore breakdowns in the rule of law because turning over that rock will make the Dems look bad. “Move on! Nobody cares!”
Quelle surprise.
Compare and Contrast..
"Anonymous Sources say" with "Unsupported by facts"
"mostly Peaceful Protests" with "insurrection"
"conspiracy theories" with "what is ACTUALLY HAPPENING"
Josephbleau said...
The good thing about destroying your credibility is that it makes it an imperative for you to explain yourself and prove you were right.
My suspicion is that there are pressures to bury Mossad involvement in the Epstein case. Use of underage sex is bad form for Israel if true. Israel has carte blanc in Gaza for now and needs to maintain it for a while.
This is my highest probability hypothesis too.
Epstein and his family were heavily tied in with Mossad.
Peachy: "discovered pallets of cement bricks within striking distance of the ICE agents. There’s no other pallets around, some are in the back of the gate, but these are in front of the gate."
Well, who does construction in this country nowadays?
Just takes one dude who still has some bricks or pavers in his work truck and is angry enough.
May not be a conspiracy.
JSM
Podcasters running the country...
On Rogan Kash said, We're not going to re-traumatize the victims by releasing the videos. Then, 2 seconds later, he said there's no videos of crimes.
You can't have it both ways.
Podcasters running the country...
Even if that were true, at least we'd know who was running the country.
Kak is fearful of anyone, on their own!, without permission, who might dare break-thru the BS veneer of democratic corruption ... that lies right there beneath the surface. How dare they.
The leak from SCOTUS is a fact. The cocaine found in the White House is a fact. The discovery of pipe bombs is a fact.
Muirhead doesn't help his cause by conflating post-discovery -- "conspiracy theory" -- speculation with the physical evidence.
Meantime - Leftwing democratic street terror gets a thumbs up from corrupt Soviet democratic media(D)
"We're not going to re-traumatize the victims by releasing the videos."
Again ... Kash is trying to get people to demand release of the videos knowing that would never happen ... who would air them anyway. They're child porn. It's illegal to air them.
If you keep people demanding things they're never going to get, then they'll forget about demanding the thing they COULD get: The arrest of the pedophile rapists.
It's a modified limited hangout.
Professor of politics? Bullshit artist?
Bob Boyd said...
On Rogan Kash said, We're not going to re-traumatize the victims by releasing the videos. Then, 2 seconds later, he said there's no videos of crimes.
You can't have it both ways
***
Rogan caught that too. Kash kind of danced around that, even as Rogan kept pushing. I don't think Kash thought it through, too many kids to keep straight.
When did Althouse’s comment section become a hothouse of MAGA conspiracy freaks? It didn’t used to be.
John Mosby - during the Antifa riots in Denver - pallets of bricks were found all over the place. Conspiracy? yeah - just happy coincidence.
On Rogan Kash said, We're not going to re-traumatize the victims by releasing the videos. Then, 2 seconds later, he said there's no videos of crimes. You can't have it both ways.
Unless the videos show the victims without providing direct evidence of the crimes committed against them.
But would they release the videos if they did show evidence of the crimes?
So "reporters" are still claiming "there is no evidence" after all the times that turned out wrong. The only thing that brings out the truth is time, and often far too much time is needed, because people are actively resisting exposing it, and they are powerful, well-funded and highly motivated.
A couple big questions of corruption turn out innocent, but that is a very small percentage of them. To lose skepticism of either side now would be stupid.
There are purportedly TWO sets of videos: ones taken on the Island, showing kids being sexually abused. the second are the prison videos of Epstein in his cell, and those going in and out of it.
If the first involve child porn they won't be publicly released. If Epstein were alive and charged with child sexual abuse, those vids could be shown in court as evidence, but they would not be relased to the public.
The prison videos, however, could be released publicly.
Got it?
"ProTip: We aren't interested in the list. I don't care who was being blackmailed, or which foreign country was funding it."
Yeah, I mean who cares about national security or foreign spies blackmailing US politicians. LOL!
there aren't any arrests for having sex with underage girls, because the original Federal Attorney worked out a plea deal with epstein and it not clear what laws were broken on "epstein lsland".
Peachy said...
"OT:
Pallets of bricks show up for rioting democratic insurrectionists. How magical.
"discovered pallets of cement bricks within striking distance of the ICE agents. There’s no other pallets around, some are in the back of the gate, but these are in front of the gate."
A couple of years ago we were returning home from Tennessee, and in Interstate 81 we caught a glimpse of a truck with a white semi trailer marked only with a red "A" anarchy symbol, southbound near George Mason University. I've never seen another like it, and perhaps it's a corporate brand or some such, but it would be a handy way for the gathered masses to know where their supplies are. Has anyone else seen a truck like that?
A "conspiracy" is when two or more people work together to achieve some objective, while taking steps to prevent others from knowing of their efforts. Does anyone seriously suppose that conspiracies are uncommon?
"Yeah, I mean who cares about national security or foreign spies blackmailing US politicians."
This. While I have read numerous claims that various people have gathered "blackmail material" on politicians and other influential persons, those influential persons are almost never named. Hoover and Kennedy are the only ones who come to mind. I suppose that is the whole point of blackmail.
Douglas B. Levine When did Althouse’s comment section become a hothouse of MAGA conspiracy freaks? It didn’t used to be.
I dunno...maybe during Russiagate, when high public officials in offices of trust publicly lied, framed innocent people, committed perjury before the FISA court, and coordinated with the press to advance a false and slanderous narrative for political purposes...
Or maybe during the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, when 51 highly placed and supposedly credentialed and credible "former intelligence officials" knowingly signed and distributed a letter claiming that the laptop was "Russian disinformation" when they knew damn well it was the real thing...
Or maybe during the Covid crackdown, when, well, I hardly know where to begin...
Or hell, maybe it was during Epstein round one, when we were told that perhaps the most highly publicized politically toxic criminal just happened to figure out how to kill himself with nobody paying attention while in a jail cell on suicide watch...
I really don't know, Douglas. I didn't always question these things. Now I do.
The cameras were turned off - and the guards were missing - when Epstein "killed himself."
Those are FACTS. Not "maga" conspiracies.
"the discovery of pipe bombs near Republican and Democratic Party headquarters before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, an unsolved crime that has already consumed significant law enforcement resources...."
oh really?
You know who consumed a lot resources?
Mueller.
Those guys all destroyed their phones afterwards, too.
The videos may just be Epstein himself. He liked young girls.
yeah that was an implausible script for the blacklist,
just like the fellow who put the gallows on the Capitol lawn, he was never persecuted,
Ray Epps.
yeah that guy, who adam kinzinger practically adopted,
very little of these stories made any sense, and yet we are supposed to accept them at face value,
Ray Epps, Indeed.
Ray Epps told people to "go into the capitol" on camera. He was also there early, opening up fences. No denying it. ...and most of the people who heard him say it, understood clearly.. "That guy is a FED."
I think the french called it agent provocateur
"Yeah, I mean who cares about national security or foreign spies blackmailing US politicians. LOL! "
My working assumption is that they're ALL being blackmailed.
That doesn't alter the fact that not a single pedophile from the Epstein rapist list has been arrested, even though the FBI knows exactly who they are - including Prince Phillip who paid his child rapee a $12 million dollar settlement.
She got justice, but we still haven't gotten it.
Well, who does construction in this country nowadays?
Just takes one dude who still has some bricks or pavers in his work truck and is angry enough.
How does *one dude* get a pallet of bricks or pavers out of his work truck?
but it's more than one pallet or one site, but we're supposed to pretend
an 'armed insurrection' where practically no one had any firearms on them, again it fails the test of credulity,
the carter page where the bureau targeted a businessman who had actually revealed svr agents, which was used as a pretext to spy on the Trump campaign,
The world they helped create, a world in which conspiracy destroys facts, is now the world they have to inhabit.
That's a hell of a fucking sentence.
The world was honest in 2020-2024. Honest and factual. And then, in 2025, we are now in a fact-free universe, because the facts have been destroyed by the Trump administration.
So you know that Jake Tapper book where he apologizes for missing that big story that Joe Biden was mentally incompetent for most of his administration? Apparently, this academic has not read that book.
Leave it to the NYT to reach into academia and find a guy willing to still insist that Joe Biden was honest and true and factual. And everything now is lie, lie, lie.
Some reporters are embarrassed about how they missed all the facts of Biden's dementia. But not the NYT!
New subhead suggestion for the NYT:
All the news made up in academia
he drew the short straw, some years ago, they published a rather easy mark for bureau barium enemas louise mensch she bought the most ridiculous Russian hoax templates,
After a quick google search of Russell Muirhead...
All the news made up by a state senator from New Hampshire
has any of the other hoaxers been embarassed in any way, for all the damage they caused to the body politic, not in the least,
they are much bigger fraud than james frey, who was low down conman,
When did Althouse’s comment section become a hothouse of MAGA conspiracy freaks?
Maybe you can tell us just what 'conspiracies' we've gotten wrong.
we've just been ahead of the curve, yet progs keep looking for the pony, (its not there)
It should be obvious to all - -
Trump 2nd has once again underestimated the depth and scope of the corruption in the deep state. You'd think after Trump 1st, he and his team would have known what they were getting into and would not have set such high expectations for rooting out and punishing the bad guys.
139 days in, and no one has been indicted or jailed.
quelle déception
“the carter page where the bureau targeted a businessman who had actually revealed svr agents, which was used as a pretext to spy on the Trump campaign,”
Patel, the other day, on his Rogancast appearance, made it quite clear that- the purpose of the FISA warrants on Carter Page were for the purpose of electronically surveillance Trump and his inner circle. The first while he was President elect, and the other three while he was their boss, the President. High treason. He also pointed out that Andy McCabe was rewarded by the Biden Administration for orchestrating it (along with Lisa Page, his attorney, and her boyfriend, Peter Strzok), by restoring his pension. We had known it, but that was the first semi-official acknowledgment of that. And that Crooked Hillary had given hundreds of thousands of dollars to McCabes’s wife’s campaign.
He also explained a bit more about how the whole thing worked. That Nellie Ohr brought the Steele Dossier back into the FBI through giving it to her husband, then #4 at the DOJ. She lied to Congress about it. Turns out that instead of not knowing Steele, she was working with him at Fusion GPS, and (not mentioned) likely wrote several of the papers in the Dossier, based on writing style (she is a PhD academic, and he a former spy, and they write quite differently). Indeed, she was Fusion’s Russia expert. He also told about the FBI leaking the Dossier to several MSM outlets, then using that, when they published it, as cooboration of the Dossier for the FISA warrants.
although much of the danchenko details came from the beer
talk circle, much like wormuld's own set of fake agents in 'our man in havana'
Why does anyone give a cr@p what this guy says? Because he is a "politics professor?" Give me a break.
Calling something a "conspiracy theory" rather than offering a simple alternative explanation is closer to confirming the conspiracy than disproving it. To do that over and over, often involving the same conspirators, is damning. Why are reasonable alternate explanations rarely offered, but insults are as some kind of substitute. Just tell us why the theory is impossible or even unlikely. The bar is just getting higher with every dismissal.
At this point, although I am not keeping score, the conspiracy theorists are up about 16-0 against the legacy media's narrative.
Bruce Hayden said
The first while he was President elect, and the other three while he was their boss, the President. High treason.
********************
Will you all stop it with thie "treason" shit?
Scurrilous though their actions may be, you can't commit treason against a person or POTUS personally, , only by levying war against to the United States, or giving aid and comfort to its armed enemies---and the latter does NOT include collateral gains such enemies might experience through your actions against a Person or POTUS.
England had "High Treason" as a crime, generally meaning to plot against the sovereign. We dropped that when the Constitution was adopted--in part because the Framers knew how such charges could easily be made against political opponents.
Peachy said...
The cameras were turned off - and the guards were missing - when Epstein "killed himself."
Those are FACTS. Not "maga" conspiracies.
**************
no. The guards were either sleeping or on their PCs, not that they were "missing". They pled to lesser charges of negligence, not dereliction, and were never convicted of anything
Typically cameras are not placed inside individual prison cells. No one seems to have claimed there were.
AI Claude says:
Based on the available evidence, the cameras were not deliberately "turned off" but some were malfunctioning or broken, creating unusable footage:
What was actually found:
At least one camera in the hallway outside Epstein's cell had footage that was unusable, but there was other usable footage captured in the area.
The cameras were outside his cell, not inside it (there typically aren't cameras inside individual prison cells)
They were broken/malfunctioning, not deliberately turned off
Some footage was still usable from other cameras in the area"
So, no FACTS yet, at least not officially.
No professorial correspondent for the NYT has any business discussing “misinformation and conspiracy theories” as though they are not the primary content of that fish wrapper. As for Epstein, I wouldn’t bet against his being murdered, but it hasn’t been proven.
Jupiter said...
A "conspiracy" is when two or more people work together to achieve some ILLEGAL objective, while taking steps to prevent others from knowing of their efforts. Does anyone seriously suppose that conspiracies are uncommon?
******************
FIFY
Wince said...But would they release the videos if they did show evidence of the crimes?
Maybe not, but they'd be able to act on them wouldn't they?
Aaron said...The videos may just be Epstein himself. He liked young girls.
True, but if that's the case, why not just say that?
What does all that video consist of? Normal, boring vacay videos of sunsets and fishing and parasailing and just hanging out laughing and shooting the breeze?
If so, why not release it?
Video compromising many powerful people would have been priceless to whoever controled it and it would be priceless to whoever controls it now.
Right, the NYTimes the the poster child for misinformation conspiracy theories. They lied for 8 straight years and called it journalism.
Aaaaand I'm going to hammer on the brainwashing book again - The Instability of Truth.
So here's how you "radicalize" intelligent (yes, they are) people: two truths and a lie. That isn't exactly how the author puts it, but when she's writing about POWs, people like Patty Hearst, those who have been recruited by cults - she has found that it's not that they turn into zombies, incapable of independent thought. Instead, in a setting that includes trauma, either caused by the "brainwashing" group or simply taken advantage of by them, they're fed true statements or statements they already believe (for Korean POWs who were black, their captors pointed out or asked them to consider the evidence of continuing racism in supposedly egalitarian America, for example), and once they've got them acknowledging things that are true, they slip in the exaggerations. Or the twistings of truths. Or the plausible lies. As the person is carried along in an environment in which they're deprived of various things (sleep, food, bodily autonomy - in the case of social media, I'd add "a real touchstone for what is true" and "in-person interaction with all its nonverbal cues"), hearing messages repeated almost like mantras (sometimes they are mantras), the leader can introduce bigger and bigger lies. The person has been primed to accept statements from this source as "true," so these other statements must be true as well. (One cult recruit put it something like, "It's not that you forget how to think, it's that you forget how you feel about what you think.")
The way I see this dynamic playing out with regard to news/social media is that we now know they've been playing Two Truths and A Lie with us for years - could be decades. They present their product as uniformly true when we now know it isn't. They repeat it incessantly. They use The Algorithms to keep us looking at it.
And when they respond to questions with, "How dare you?!" it sounds - to some of us - like the protestations of an unfaithful spouse - if it's true, why not produce the evidence? If all you've got is "how dare you," not evidence, what's the questioner supposed to take away from your diversion?
But it's possible that they really do believe everything they say, and that they're just righteously angry that you could doubt them. That is possible.
So - we can't know what's true. The stage of "brainwashing" where we find ourselves in is beyond the lovebombing, beyond the initial identification of shared and known truths, somewhere in the middle of Two Truths and A Lie. Not quite - for most of us - to the point where we start recruiting others and signing over our life savings.
It's always presented as a "Conspiracy Theory" without evidence when Republicans make an allegation about Democrat transgressions, but Democrat allegations are presented as truth that has been "fact checked" by an expert or authority figure. Democrats are non-plussed that their media posse who run interference for them are no longer trusted. America is polarized for some unknown reason.
Me thinks you doth protest too much Mr. Muirhead...
I'd trust anything said by Patel and Bonigno for another four years before I believed anything said by the person quoted in the post about the sun rising tomorrow, or today, even.
Trust Bongino.
Don't bother, Ann. Iwill not bevetted by so.eone who knows far less than I do.
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