How worried is Trump about the potential release of the Epstein files?
It sure seems like Trump is planning to start a war with Venezuela to distract attention from the release of the Epstein files.
Before addressing the facts supporting that inference, let’s pause here to reflect on the fact that Trump has converted the executive branch into a corrupt enterprise whose sole purpose is to protect and enrich the president.
Sex scandal that needs covering up? Send in the DOJ to conduct a sham interview with the key co-conspirator in the sex trafficking ring. Impending release of potentially incriminating files? Ask the military to start an illegal war. Short on funds? Launch a cryptocurrency through the Trump family business and incentivize purchases by granting a presidential pardon to a convicted felon whose company facilitated a $2 billion purchase of the Trump-affiliated cryptocurrency.
So, while we should not be surprised that Trump would start an illegal war to create political cover for a sex scandal, we should be outraged that Trump has turned the federal government into a “long con” in which the American people are the “mark.” The reprehensible situation is made worse by the fact that it could not happen without the cowardly acquiescence of the Republican Party.
We need to vote out every single GOP officeholder who has provided aid, comfort, lies, and disinformation to perpetuate the corrupt enterprise that masquerades as the second term of Donald Trump.
The good news is that Democrats, independents, and disaffected Republican voters demonstrated on Tuesday, November 4, that Americans are fed up and ready to reassert control over the government. The end of Trump’s “government as grift” has an expiration date, so long as we stay the course.
It sure sounds like Trump will start a war to distract from the Epstein files
On Thursday, as Trump and JD Vance maintained a stony silence about the Epstein scandal, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth spent the day posting on social media about “Operation Southern Spear,” a euphemism for land strikes against drug cartels in Venezuela. See The Hill, Pete Hegseth announces operation ‘Southern Spear’ to quash ‘narco-terrorists’ .
Per The Hill,
Hegseth said the mission is being led by Joint Task Force Southern Spear and U.S. Southern Command (Southcom) to defend the “Homeland, removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere, and secures our Homeland from the drugs that are killing our people.”
“The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood – and we will protect it,” he wrote on social media.
Although Operation Southern Spear has been in the works since January 2025, Hegseth and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs briefed Trump on Wednesday about military options for attacking Venezuela—the very day the discharge petition obtained the last signature necessary to force a vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Per The Hill,
The announcement comes as Hegseth, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Dan Caine and other senior military leaders reportedly briefed President Trump on Wednesday at the White House regarding military options for the region, including potential land strikes against Venezuela.
If the US military kills residents of Venezuela for the uncharged criminal offense of distributing illegal drugs, that will be a continuation of an unlawful use of military force against non-combatant civilians.
As explained below, many experts believe such use of force against civilians is both murder and a war crime under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and applicable international treaties and norms.
The NYTimes reported on Thursday about the still-secret internal memo that purportedly justifies the use of military force against alleged drug smugglers. I describe the memo in more detail below, but it essentially says, “Trump says that members of drug cartels are engaged in a war against the US, so the military can kill them.”
Of course, what “Trump says” is not legally or factually binding. Whether cartel members are engaged in an armed conflict against the US is a question of fact and law that will be determined by judges, courts-martial, and international courts.
But let’s get real. No one believes that Venezuelan drug cartels are engaged in armed conflict against the US. The rationale is a sham, and anyone who relies on it risks criminal and military prosecution for killing non-combatant civilians. See NYTimes, Memo Blessing Boat Strikes Is Said to Rely on Trump’s Claims About Cartels. (Accessible to all.)
Per the Times,
[The memo said] extrajudicial killings of people suspected of running drugs were lawful as a matter of Mr. Trump’s wartime powers.
In reaching that conclusion, the memo contradicts a broad range of critics, who have rejected the idea that there is any armed conflict and have accused Mr. Trump of illegally ordering the military to commit murders.
An analysis in The Independent is more direct in rejecting the legitimacy of the memo. See The Independent, ‘Just following orders’? Experts doubt legal memo shields troops from prosecution over Trump’s boat strikes.
Per The Independent, quoting expert Brian Finucane,
“The term for premeditated killing outside of armed conflict is murder,” said Brian Finucane, senior adviser with the International Crisis Group, a conflict policy nonprofit.
Although the memo claims that people relying on the memo would be covered by “combat immunity” for killing civilians, The Independent notes that such legal reasoning would protect military personnel only during the current administration. “A future [Office of Legal Counsel] or a federal judge could . . . find that this practice is illegal.”
An attack on Venezuela’s sovereign territory to kill civilians would be an unprovoked act of war and (as explained above) likely murder under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
The House vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act is scheduled for next week, which may define the timeframe for Trump’s “war of distraction.”
While it may be audacious to predict that Trump will start a war to create a diversion, who could have believed that Trump would order the House of Representatives to shut down for 40 days to prevent a vote on the discharge petition?
I dearly hope that I am wrong about Trump’s war plans. But Hegseth’s public statements and Trump’s meetings with military leaders are worrisome, at least. If war happens, all Americans should condemn the perversion of the US military into a political diversion for a sex scandal (and potential crimes) involving the president.
DOJ intervenes in suit by California Republicans to invalidate Prop 50 redistricting
The Trump administration is officially regretting its attempt to call for mid-census redistricting to give Trump more “safe” Republican districts in the 2026 midterms. On Thursday, the administration joined a lawsuit by California Republicans to invalidate the passage of California’s redistricting initiative, Proposition 50. See The Guardian, US justice department joins lawsuit to block California’s new electoral map.
Giving new meaning to the definition of hypocrisy, Attorney General Pam Bondi said,
California’s redistricting scheme is a brazen power grab that tramples on civil rights and mocks the democratic process. Governor Newsom’s attempt to entrench one-party rule and silence millions of Californians will not stand.
Of course, California allowed the people of the state to vote on the initiative, unlike Texas, which created gerrymandered congressional districts through a gerrymandered state legislature. Moreover, California’s effort is specifically designed to combat Trump’s effort to “entrench one-party rule” in Congress.
The DOJ’s effort comes as Trump’s effort to rig the 2026 election is encountering obstacles in multiple states. See Talking Points Memo, Trump Admin’s Nationwide Gerrymandering Assault Faces Setbacks, noting that efforts in Utah, Kansas, and Indiana have stalled.
Moreover, the wide margins of victory on November 4 and shifts in support for Trump among independents, Latinos, and young voters suggest that the newly created “safe” Republican seats in Texas may be vulnerable to being flipped by Democrats in 2026.
Trump is in a downward spiral; virtually every new action creates new controversy and unhappiness among some portion of the electorate. Starting a war in Venezuela will not boost support for Trump, nor will his veto of the Epstein Transparency Act bill if it passes in Congress.
Trump may have been better off leaving the Texas congressional districts as they were. Let’s do our best to make certain that Trump regrets his decision to encourage partisan gerrymandering.
Speaking of regret, Todd Blanche is now regretting his sham interview with Ghislaine Maxwell.
Former Trump lawyer (and current Deputy Attorney General), Todd Blanche, engineered a sham interview of Ghislaine Maxwell. The interview was designed to elicit answers exonerating Trump from wrongdoing in the Epstein sex trafficking ring.
The transcript of the interview reveals that Blanche led Maxwell to make exonerating statements, while failing to challenge Maxwell’s statements with publicly available evidence or statements that contradicted her story.
The emails released by the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday contradicted Ghislaine’s “staged managed” answers in several key respects. When George Conway noted that fact on social media, Todd Blanche attempted to defend his softball interview by claiming that the emails were “hidden” by the Epstein estate at the time he conducted his interview with Maxwell. See Raw Story, Todd Blanche buried for ‘huge admission’ on Ghislaine Maxwell: ‘Charge her if she lied’.
Blanche posted in reply,
When I interviewed Maxwell, law enforcement didn’t have the materials Epstein’s estate hid for years and only just provided to Congress.
Pathetic! Of course, the emails were not “hidden” by the Epstein estate. They were available to anyone with the ability to sign a subpoena and the intelligence to assume that the Epstein estate would have Epstein’s personal emails.
Apparently, Todd Blanche had neither the ability to sign a subpoena nor the intelligence to figure out that Epstein’s estate would have his emails.
Todd Blanche is going to be pressured to redo his interview with Maxwell with the emails in hand to determine if she lied to Blanche. If she did, Maxwell committed a felony. See US Criminal Code Section 1001. (Providing a five-year prison term for willfully making a materially false statement in any investigation by the executive branch.)
It appears that US Attorney Lindsey Halligan may be disqualified
James Comey and Letitia James have filed a motion to dismiss their respective indictments on the grounds that Acting US Attorney Lindsey Halligan was not legally appointed to her position. The arguments are technical and the evidence complicated, but at the hearing on Thursday, it appears that the judge assigned to the matter has serious doubts about Halligan’s appointment. See David Kurtz in Talking Points Memo, Pam Bondi Takes a Beating in Court Over Lindsey Halligan.
Per David Kurtz,
The top line was pretty straightforward: [Judge] Currie gave no indication that she thinks Halligan was lawfully appointed as interim U.S. attorney. None, zero, zilch. But it wasn’t at all clear what Currie will do about it now. Almost all of her questions were either skeptical or challenging of the Trump administration’s position. None of her questions seriously challenged either defendant [James Comey or Letitia James].
If the judge determines that Halligan was not properly appointed, it may not be possible to re-indict James Comey (due to the statute of limitations). It is possible that Letitia James may be re-indicted, or not. Either way, the Trump administration’s weaponization of the Department of Justice is hitting the brick wall of incompetence of Trump’s appointees.
Concluding Thoughts
Well, that was some week! (And we don’t yet know if we will add “Trump starts war with Venezuela” to this week’s list of unbelievable events.)
The week began with grassroots activists reeling from the sudden capitulation by eight Democrats, which ended the shutdown in exchange for an illusory promise. For forty-eight hours, the nation’s focus was on Democratic disunity.
And then we were reminded that the current president was described by a sex trafficker as his “best friend” for more than a decade when the illegal sex trafficking was transpiring. As usual, the Trump administration’s response only fueled suspicions of corruption, criminality, and a cover-up. And just like that, Trump’s depravity was once again the lead story.
As I noted yesterday, if a sex scandal involving the trafficking of young women and girls is what effectively ends Trump’s presidency, we should be grateful. But his use of the military to attack non-combatant civilians and his use of the DOJ to persecute his political “enemies” raise grave constitutional issues justifying impeachment, conviction, and removal. Meanwhile, the economy appears to be faltering—a fact that is difficult to prove because the Trump administration is not producing monthly reports on jobs and inflation.
Is there a lesson in the torrent of the week’s events? Yes! It is that we must remain steadfast even during the darkest moments. Trump sits atop an unstable perch of improbability and fortunate circumstance. He is vulnerable to those who remain vigilant and strong. We must not waver or give up, even when facing temporary setbacks. We will win in the end; it is just a question of time.
Talk to you tomorrow!
Pro-democracy protest photos
From reader Deborah C. in Oscoda, Michigan.
This protest sign has removable numbers for updating and is from our weekly protest on 11/08/2025 in Oscoda, Michigan. Tragically, the numbers already need to be changed for next week. The incidents are dreadful and revolting.
Columbia, Missouri
Tukwila, WA
Freeport Visibility Brigade
Minneapolis, MN
Oxford, England
“We are two friends from California who stood up for democracy while traveling in England on the “No Kings” day of protest. Our two-person demonstration drew thumbs up and questions, soon becoming an impromptu rally with participants from the U.S., U.K., and all over the world, including Oxford students who happened to be matriculating that day. (We urged them to go forth and make a difference.)”
Madison, WI
I was in the hospital during NKD#1 and have been recovering from major surgery since then.
I had enough strength back by NKD#2 to make signs and stand with my friend at a very busy intersection near my house on the near East side of Madison WI. We were a satellite location for the protest - I didn’t have the strength to endure the huge crowd at our Capitol just a mile away.
We got lots of honks for democracy in the two hours we were there.
Daily Dose of Perspective
And, finally, my wife’s blog, Every Day with Jill, is particularly calming today. See Late Fall in Mineral King: Farewell until the Spring
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