There must be long overdue accountability. I have said many times that the corruption in this administration is far reaching and goes deeper than we can imagine. It ties in totally with the Epstein criminal activity. We are looking at decades of widespread corruption encompassing all sectors - big business, big money, finance industry and politics on a worldwide level. Learning some of what has been revealed in the released Epstein files is so appalling, so unimaginable, so horrific that it is crippling. If these are the files they released, what the hell are they hiding in the unreleased files??? And I realize it is not just trump and his regime at fault here, but do not be fooled - they are key players from the word go. Think about it, it explains a great deal - the unending support of billionaires and big business, the conflict of interest investments around the world, the buddy of Putin, the stifling of free speech, the endless cruelty and lack of humanity, the purging of people they seem lesser. It all comes together and is understandable when the Epstein files surfaced. They are twisted, privileged, power hungry, evil and money hungry. No matter what the effects are, it's more than time to make the real criminals pay for their crimes. No more I'm above the law because I can buy my way through life.
Vietnam vet here. Susan goes to the head of the class. I would guess that most people here understand the long term ramifications of her post. Bondi has alluded to the fact that if all these files were released unredacted the entire paradigm political and financial might crumble. .then what? As Jack Nicholson yells toward the end of the movie A Few Good Men
“You Can’t Handle The Truth”. . .maybe that applies here.. however if this be the case as Bondi alludes to then maybe a system with that depth of corruption needs to fail.
It will most likely all be laid bare in November for this regime, the power and monied elite, our owners must not and can not allow their grip on power be put into jeopardy. Listen to what Bannon and Drump are telegraphing, almost saying out loud. They will stop at absolutely nothing to protect themselves and usher in Tyranny, the end of the Constitutional Republic. The Democrats writ large have only the slightest inkling of the depths these people will go to protect themselves and they are doing almost nothing to thwart those efforts, to completely compromise the mid-term election, to ensure they remain in control of both chambers. .and by extension all three branches of government.
listen to Sen. Chris Murphy’s speech on the Senate floor . .think it was yesterday (not sure) . .it was a good one. Like he says “all empires come to an end, it is our job to see to it that it doesn’t end on our watch”. ..admirable sentiments indeed but history shows that when the political center collapses that’s when societies fracture. the wheel of history is turning now yet again and history teaches that once a nation goes this far down the path of authoritarianism, tyranny there is no smooth off ramp, no easy return to sanity. It’s gonna be one shitty ride. Hope america proves the exception to what history indicates.
Frightening to think what lies ahead. We can stay on the road to tyranny which is not what any true American wants. Or we can hold those responsible for a system that has turned corrupt, accountable for their crimes. I choose accountability without a doubt. We may not know how difficult that road will prove to be, but we know the road we're on now is tragically horrible.
Thank you. Thank you. For years I've talked to friends about how we have shifted to an extraction model vs an investment model. How Private Equity and much of finance is essentially legalized looting. How real shareholder value comes from long term reinvestment of earnings, not share buybacks and multimillion dollar CEO comp. I just get blank stares.
Thank you for describing our "system" so clearly. Hopefully minds will start to change.
That Pandoras Box was made in Moscow. I bet my life that Epstein was funded by Putin. All those sex tapes of powerful billionaires and elected officials raping minors were sent to Putin for him to control them and by extension, us.
Follow the money. Epstein did not commit suicide. We will bring to justice his murderer and the people that allowed it. This cabal needs to be exterminated.
Bring on the dancing horses and let the chips fall were they may.
Systems that require secrecy to function have already admitted their illegitimacy. The "stability" argument reveals the mechanism: elites conflate institutional preservation with social survival. They don't. Epstein's network persisted because opacity creates immunity thresholds—visibility collapses them. The real Pandora's Box isn't the files. It's a ruling class that mistakes its continuation for civilization itself.
Anyone who has watched the 1970s series I, Claudius, should understand that this is the end of our democracy and the absolute tyranny of Augustus down through Nero and Caligula -- unless we do indeed expose ALL the files.
There must be a reckoning so comprehensive, leaving no stone unturned or untouched, that not just the individuals who have been perpetrating these crimes against humanity, but all those who enabled them for decades, will be prosecuted and destroyed.
First, we have to recognize, acknowledge, and make known the fact that -- contrary to Dan Linehan's comment -- this was not made, and did not begin, in Moscow. This began in the good old United States in the aftermath of Barry Goldwater's utter defeat at the polls.
It was then, in the 1960s, that the right wing -- at the time the Kochs and the Hunts of Texas and several dozen others with long-term ties to the American Nazi Party of the 1930s, to Joseph McCarthy, to Roy Cohn and others -- began to regroup and plan for a slow, long-term return to power. They got Nixon elected, and got Lewis F. Powell, IV, onto the Supreme Court (the beginning of the takeover of the court by the Leonard Leo crowd). Powell articulated the doctrine that the only purpose of corporations is to ensure maximum returns to shareholders, thus overturning the entire system of competitive capitalism that had been forced into the country's polity after the rejection of the Gilded Age and the Depression from the Roaring Twenties.
And this was not just individuals: it was the same families, the sons of those families (the Koch brothers' father was a huge supporter of the John Birch Society; Trump's father was active with the KKK in New York, and his sons are the same scum), now the grandsons and great-grandsons of the same evil people. They have been working for 60 years with one purpose: to end democracy and gain power for themselves, i.e., for the Epstein Class around the world. In the 1980s they changed all the laws of inheritances and trusts so that now they can establish a family trust that not only supports an individual or a generation throughout their lives, but can continue to grow and then benefit another generation of trust fund babies, and another, and another, and NEVER pay a penny in taxes to any government.
That's why, when -- I will not say "if" but WHEN -- we expose and destroy them, we must do so down through generations. If Junior and Dumber Trumps Don and Eric did not participate in raping underage girls, they still need to be taken down. Same with Barron, and with the next generation of Trumps and Kushners and all the other families that have amassed this power and wealth for sixty, seventy, even a hundred years.
Every dime must be stripped from all of them; anyone who is 18 or over from those clans (klans) and who benefits from their vast accumulation of illicit, stolen wealth must be stripped of all rights as well. They must be exiled or deported or imprisoned for life -- yes, even the "innocent ones" who have yet to accomplish the sedition and theft and corruption of their elders. There must be, in other words, a real, new revolution, not just in the United States, but wherever these people can be found. A war against them. Think Paris, 1789.
And given that that class has spent 40 years also taking over the Supreme Court and many other courts in the US, the court must be eliminated and a new one, with new rules and strictures, be established -- and all six of the MAGA/Thuglican (in)justices be impeached, convicted, imprisoned for life, and, like their benefactors and masters, stripped of every last dime they have accrued.
It's time ... because this is Rome at the end of Democracy.
I haven't been able to stop thinking this very thing for ages, Andy. If we don't stop this, we devolve into Rome at it's nadir, with a world-spanning military and nukes. All of humanity will suffer under a cruel America, mutated into its worst, most base, tendencies.
Thank you, Lawrence, especially for your column, but also the support. I'm revising my comment a little (and expanding on it) for my own Substack [@ncdoug], which I haven't written for in ages (I have a job, and a life, and little time or focus for it -- until I get all het up!).
Thank you so much for this. I’ve known most of this in bits and pieces but written like this is really appreciated. I’m 62 and remember Reagan messing with my dead mother’s SS benefits when I was 16. That’s when I started to become a political junkie. Then GOP administrations messing with public education (my career of 38 years) beyond belief and with the goal of dismantling it all one day. And we are here now.
There is so much more in my heart and mind and that you touch upon. How can we educate younger generations of this awful politically driven histories? It provides such important insights. When I try to share these historical references with my you g adult children, I sound very unwell.
I well understand your difficulty in explaining these realities to young adults. They have grown up in the midst of it, whereas we were at least alive during a time when they were nothing but theories -- and our views were in ascendance. It's like a fish and water: it swims along and extracts oxygen from its milieu, while we drown in it, and the fish "drowns" on dry land.
See if you can get your young adults to read Howard Zinn, and substacks like this one and mine, to get some sense of the history, context, and intensions of the people behind what we're facing.
Yup, totally agree. Rip the bandage off and pour in the alcohol. Let’s get rid of the putrid stench, no matter how hard, because this is taking us to hell.
There comes a point in every society when silence itself becomes a form of complicity. We are living in such a moment now. The recent release of the Epstein files has not merely exposed the sins of individuals; it has revealed the architecture of a system—one built to shield the powerful, silence the vulnerable, and bury the truth beneath layers of wealth, influence, and intimidation.
This is not a conspiracy theory. It is a moral indictment.
For decades, children—children—were exploited while men with money, titles, and connections moved in and out of private jets, private islands, and private circles of protection. And when the truth threatened to surface, the machinery of power did what it always does: it closed ranks. It hid evidence. It discredited victims. It bought silence. It weaponized influence to protect the reputations of the wealthy at the expense of the innocent.
Exhibit A: A culture where money can erase accountability.
Exhibit B: Institutions that bend when pressured by the elite.
Exhibit C: A society conditioned to believe that some people are simply “too important” to face consequences.
These are not just failures of law. They are failures of morality.
And so, I write this not only as a citizen, but as a human being who refuses to look away. I write for the children whose voices were stolen. I write for the families who were intimidated into silence. I write for every person who has ever been told that justice is only for those who can afford it.
Let it be known:
The truth is not a threat to a righteous society. It is a threat only to those who fear it.
The public deserves transparency. The victims deserve justice. And the powerful—no matter how wealthy, no matter how connected—deserve accountability. A society that cannot protect its children is a society that has lost its soul.
I refuse to accept that outcome.
I refuse to accept that money should outweigh morality.
I refuse to accept that the powerful are untouchable.
This letter is my statement of record:
We will not be intimidated. We will not be silenced. And we will not stop demanding the full truth, no matter how high it reaches.
Because justice is not a privilege.
Justice is a responsibility.
And it is long past time for this nation to shoulder it.
A former FBI Special Agent posts a warning. Releasing the Epstein files, he says, would unleash “a Pandora’s Box of national security threats and geopolitical ramifications unlike anything seen before in American history.”
I agree! We will not survive as a species and the Earth will not thrive if we allow these rapists and pedophiles to continue to rape and pillage. This needs to be the end of the toxic patriarchy. I'm not sure what the solution is--is it many more kind women running things, the end of the billionaire class through taxation, a different system altogether--I'm not sure. But I do know that we need accountability and justice; we need to know the whole truth, and we need positive change. Americans must take back our power. We have been under attack by psyops to divide us, because it's easier to control us. We have a government that lies to us. There are so many secrets and hidden truths. We have the most corrupt administration--but the conman did not even win the 2024 election--he cheated with help. He was installed by powerful people. Yet the Democrats, who must have known something was off, did nothing--not a peep. What the hell happened? There is information in the E-files showing interactions between Epstein and Putin, Musk and Putin, Thiel and Putin--they want to weaken democracies. Yet, not a word was said about the real stolen election. It's all connected. What about all the other secrets hidden from us. There are many. Will these be revealed? I hope all the files are released so we know the truth and people wake up. We need to decide what kind of country we want--and what kind of world. I vote for a kinder, more peaceful world.
In addition to a pardon, Maxwell's lawyers are negotiating a 24/7 taxpayer funded, security detail to ensure her safety. "Ms. Maxwell will need protection when she is released from prison". So, the Dept of Injustice abandons the victims but protects the perpetrators". Again.
The system is already broken, so burning it down and starting over isn't as scary as the elite class wants us to believe. It's scary for them because it might disrupt their power, and hopefully, it would do more than just that. This late-stage capitalism turned fascist state isn't doing anyone any good except for them. The trump files may very well spell their demise.
You know I'm beaming about the Echo & the Bunnymen reference...
There must be long overdue accountability. I have said many times that the corruption in this administration is far reaching and goes deeper than we can imagine. It ties in totally with the Epstein criminal activity. We are looking at decades of widespread corruption encompassing all sectors - big business, big money, finance industry and politics on a worldwide level. Learning some of what has been revealed in the released Epstein files is so appalling, so unimaginable, so horrific that it is crippling. If these are the files they released, what the hell are they hiding in the unreleased files??? And I realize it is not just trump and his regime at fault here, but do not be fooled - they are key players from the word go. Think about it, it explains a great deal - the unending support of billionaires and big business, the conflict of interest investments around the world, the buddy of Putin, the stifling of free speech, the endless cruelty and lack of humanity, the purging of people they seem lesser. It all comes together and is understandable when the Epstein files surfaced. They are twisted, privileged, power hungry, evil and money hungry. No matter what the effects are, it's more than time to make the real criminals pay for their crimes. No more I'm above the law because I can buy my way through life.
100% Susan!
Vietnam vet here. Susan goes to the head of the class. I would guess that most people here understand the long term ramifications of her post. Bondi has alluded to the fact that if all these files were released unredacted the entire paradigm political and financial might crumble. .then what? As Jack Nicholson yells toward the end of the movie A Few Good Men
“You Can’t Handle The Truth”. . .maybe that applies here.. however if this be the case as Bondi alludes to then maybe a system with that depth of corruption needs to fail.
It will most likely all be laid bare in November for this regime, the power and monied elite, our owners must not and can not allow their grip on power be put into jeopardy. Listen to what Bannon and Drump are telegraphing, almost saying out loud. They will stop at absolutely nothing to protect themselves and usher in Tyranny, the end of the Constitutional Republic. The Democrats writ large have only the slightest inkling of the depths these people will go to protect themselves and they are doing almost nothing to thwart those efforts, to completely compromise the mid-term election, to ensure they remain in control of both chambers. .and by extension all three branches of government.
listen to Sen. Chris Murphy’s speech on the Senate floor . .think it was yesterday (not sure) . .it was a good one. Like he says “all empires come to an end, it is our job to see to it that it doesn’t end on our watch”. ..admirable sentiments indeed but history shows that when the political center collapses that’s when societies fracture. the wheel of history is turning now yet again and history teaches that once a nation goes this far down the path of authoritarianism, tyranny there is no smooth off ramp, no easy return to sanity. It’s gonna be one shitty ride. Hope america proves the exception to what history indicates.
Frightening to think what lies ahead. We can stay on the road to tyranny which is not what any true American wants. Or we can hold those responsible for a system that has turned corrupt, accountable for their crimes. I choose accountability without a doubt. We may not know how difficult that road will prove to be, but we know the road we're on now is tragically horrible.
Thank you. Thank you. For years I've talked to friends about how we have shifted to an extraction model vs an investment model. How Private Equity and much of finance is essentially legalized looting. How real shareholder value comes from long term reinvestment of earnings, not share buybacks and multimillion dollar CEO comp. I just get blank stares.
Thank you for describing our "system" so clearly. Hopefully minds will start to change.
Thank you, Virginia. We're with you!
That Pandoras Box was made in Moscow. I bet my life that Epstein was funded by Putin. All those sex tapes of powerful billionaires and elected officials raping minors were sent to Putin for him to control them and by extension, us.
Follow the money. Epstein did not commit suicide. We will bring to justice his murderer and the people that allowed it. This cabal needs to be exterminated.
Bring on the dancing horses and let the chips fall were they may.
Israel
Systems that require secrecy to function have already admitted their illegitimacy. The "stability" argument reveals the mechanism: elites conflate institutional preservation with social survival. They don't. Epstein's network persisted because opacity creates immunity thresholds—visibility collapses them. The real Pandora's Box isn't the files. It's a ruling class that mistakes its continuation for civilization itself.
Anyone who has watched the 1970s series I, Claudius, should understand that this is the end of our democracy and the absolute tyranny of Augustus down through Nero and Caligula -- unless we do indeed expose ALL the files.
There must be a reckoning so comprehensive, leaving no stone unturned or untouched, that not just the individuals who have been perpetrating these crimes against humanity, but all those who enabled them for decades, will be prosecuted and destroyed.
First, we have to recognize, acknowledge, and make known the fact that -- contrary to Dan Linehan's comment -- this was not made, and did not begin, in Moscow. This began in the good old United States in the aftermath of Barry Goldwater's utter defeat at the polls.
It was then, in the 1960s, that the right wing -- at the time the Kochs and the Hunts of Texas and several dozen others with long-term ties to the American Nazi Party of the 1930s, to Joseph McCarthy, to Roy Cohn and others -- began to regroup and plan for a slow, long-term return to power. They got Nixon elected, and got Lewis F. Powell, IV, onto the Supreme Court (the beginning of the takeover of the court by the Leonard Leo crowd). Powell articulated the doctrine that the only purpose of corporations is to ensure maximum returns to shareholders, thus overturning the entire system of competitive capitalism that had been forced into the country's polity after the rejection of the Gilded Age and the Depression from the Roaring Twenties.
And this was not just individuals: it was the same families, the sons of those families (the Koch brothers' father was a huge supporter of the John Birch Society; Trump's father was active with the KKK in New York, and his sons are the same scum), now the grandsons and great-grandsons of the same evil people. They have been working for 60 years with one purpose: to end democracy and gain power for themselves, i.e., for the Epstein Class around the world. In the 1980s they changed all the laws of inheritances and trusts so that now they can establish a family trust that not only supports an individual or a generation throughout their lives, but can continue to grow and then benefit another generation of trust fund babies, and another, and another, and NEVER pay a penny in taxes to any government.
That's why, when -- I will not say "if" but WHEN -- we expose and destroy them, we must do so down through generations. If Junior and Dumber Trumps Don and Eric did not participate in raping underage girls, they still need to be taken down. Same with Barron, and with the next generation of Trumps and Kushners and all the other families that have amassed this power and wealth for sixty, seventy, even a hundred years.
Every dime must be stripped from all of them; anyone who is 18 or over from those clans (klans) and who benefits from their vast accumulation of illicit, stolen wealth must be stripped of all rights as well. They must be exiled or deported or imprisoned for life -- yes, even the "innocent ones" who have yet to accomplish the sedition and theft and corruption of their elders. There must be, in other words, a real, new revolution, not just in the United States, but wherever these people can be found. A war against them. Think Paris, 1789.
And given that that class has spent 40 years also taking over the Supreme Court and many other courts in the US, the court must be eliminated and a new one, with new rules and strictures, be established -- and all six of the MAGA/Thuglican (in)justices be impeached, convicted, imprisoned for life, and, like their benefactors and masters, stripped of every last dime they have accrued.
It's time ... because this is Rome at the end of Democracy.
I haven't been able to stop thinking this very thing for ages, Andy. If we don't stop this, we devolve into Rome at it's nadir, with a world-spanning military and nukes. All of humanity will suffer under a cruel America, mutated into its worst, most base, tendencies.
Thank you, Lawrence, especially for your column, but also the support. I'm revising my comment a little (and expanding on it) for my own Substack [@ncdoug], which I haven't written for in ages (I have a job, and a life, and little time or focus for it -- until I get all het up!).
Thank you so much for this. I’ve known most of this in bits and pieces but written like this is really appreciated. I’m 62 and remember Reagan messing with my dead mother’s SS benefits when I was 16. That’s when I started to become a political junkie. Then GOP administrations messing with public education (my career of 38 years) beyond belief and with the goal of dismantling it all one day. And we are here now.
There is so much more in my heart and mind and that you touch upon. How can we educate younger generations of this awful politically driven histories? It provides such important insights. When I try to share these historical references with my you g adult children, I sound very unwell.
Hi, Tricia.
I well understand your difficulty in explaining these realities to young adults. They have grown up in the midst of it, whereas we were at least alive during a time when they were nothing but theories -- and our views were in ascendance. It's like a fish and water: it swims along and extracts oxygen from its milieu, while we drown in it, and the fish "drowns" on dry land.
See if you can get your young adults to read Howard Zinn, and substacks like this one and mine, to get some sense of the history, context, and intensions of the people behind what we're facing.
Thank you so much!
“ Release the Kraken “
YES!! 🦑🦑
Tear them all down. All of them every last one. ☝️
Yes! I don't care WHO is on the list. IF they did these crimes, they must do the time. They must be held accountable.
Maybe it's the dancing horses on your mind that led to this typo, but I think you mean "nigh," not "neigh unto suicide."
Thanks, Jim! Fixed it - and that's exactly what happened. LOL
Yup, totally agree. Rip the bandage off and pour in the alcohol. Let’s get rid of the putrid stench, no matter how hard, because this is taking us to hell.
There comes a point in every society when silence itself becomes a form of complicity. We are living in such a moment now. The recent release of the Epstein files has not merely exposed the sins of individuals; it has revealed the architecture of a system—one built to shield the powerful, silence the vulnerable, and bury the truth beneath layers of wealth, influence, and intimidation.
This is not a conspiracy theory. It is a moral indictment.
For decades, children—children—were exploited while men with money, titles, and connections moved in and out of private jets, private islands, and private circles of protection. And when the truth threatened to surface, the machinery of power did what it always does: it closed ranks. It hid evidence. It discredited victims. It bought silence. It weaponized influence to protect the reputations of the wealthy at the expense of the innocent.
Exhibit A: A culture where money can erase accountability.
Exhibit B: Institutions that bend when pressured by the elite.
Exhibit C: A society conditioned to believe that some people are simply “too important” to face consequences.
These are not just failures of law. They are failures of morality.
And so, I write this not only as a citizen, but as a human being who refuses to look away. I write for the children whose voices were stolen. I write for the families who were intimidated into silence. I write for every person who has ever been told that justice is only for those who can afford it.
Let it be known:
The truth is not a threat to a righteous society. It is a threat only to those who fear it.
The public deserves transparency. The victims deserve justice. And the powerful—no matter how wealthy, no matter how connected—deserve accountability. A society that cannot protect its children is a society that has lost its soul.
I refuse to accept that outcome.
I refuse to accept that money should outweigh morality.
I refuse to accept that the powerful are untouchable.
This letter is my statement of record:
We will not be intimidated. We will not be silenced. And we will not stop demanding the full truth, no matter how high it reaches.
Because justice is not a privilege.
Justice is a responsibility.
And it is long past time for this nation to shoulder it.
A former FBI Special Agent posts a warning. Releasing the Epstein files, he says, would unleash “a Pandora’s Box of national security threats and geopolitical ramifications unlike anything seen before in American history.”
You say that like it's a *bad* thing.
Unleash them. I want to see them.
I agree! We will not survive as a species and the Earth will not thrive if we allow these rapists and pedophiles to continue to rape and pillage. This needs to be the end of the toxic patriarchy. I'm not sure what the solution is--is it many more kind women running things, the end of the billionaire class through taxation, a different system altogether--I'm not sure. But I do know that we need accountability and justice; we need to know the whole truth, and we need positive change. Americans must take back our power. We have been under attack by psyops to divide us, because it's easier to control us. We have a government that lies to us. There are so many secrets and hidden truths. We have the most corrupt administration--but the conman did not even win the 2024 election--he cheated with help. He was installed by powerful people. Yet the Democrats, who must have known something was off, did nothing--not a peep. What the hell happened? There is information in the E-files showing interactions between Epstein and Putin, Musk and Putin, Thiel and Putin--they want to weaken democracies. Yet, not a word was said about the real stolen election. It's all connected. What about all the other secrets hidden from us. There are many. Will these be revealed? I hope all the files are released so we know the truth and people wake up. We need to decide what kind of country we want--and what kind of world. I vote for a kinder, more peaceful world.
If sunlight is the best disinfectant, let's drag these monsters out of the shadows and into the bright light of truth and consequences.
In addition to a pardon, Maxwell's lawyers are negotiating a 24/7 taxpayer funded, security detail to ensure her safety. "Ms. Maxwell will need protection when she is released from prison". So, the Dept of Injustice abandons the victims but protects the perpetrators". Again.
The system is already broken, so burning it down and starting over isn't as scary as the elite class wants us to believe. It's scary for them because it might disrupt their power, and hopefully, it would do more than just that. This late-stage capitalism turned fascist state isn't doing anyone any good except for them. The trump files may very well spell their demise.