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“Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
— George Orwell, 1946
EVERYTHING MR. EMORY HAS BEEN SAYING ABOUT THE UKRAINE WAR IS ENCAPSULATED IN THIS VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24
ANOTHER REVEALING VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24
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FTR#1269 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: In this broadcast, we continue our discussion with the heroic Jim DiEugenio, selected by Oliver Stone to write the screenplay for his documentary JFK Revisited. Jim also wrote the book containing transcripts of both the two-hour and four-hour versions of the documentary and supplemental interviews.
No discovery by the ARRB was more important than its uncovering of the Operation Northwoods contingency plan to set up a provocation to justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba.
The lawsuit filed by the Mary Ferrell Foundation aims at compelling further disclosure about Northwoods.
At loggerheads with then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Lemnitzer, JFK replaced him with Maxwell Taylor, unaware that Taylor and Lemnitzer were close.
The ARRB faced serious resistance from the Secret Service in its attempts to shed further light on the JFK assassination. Although prohibited by law from doing so, the Secret Service destroyed documents.
Particularly noteworthy are documents from the agency about two attempts on JFK’s life in 1963 that may very well have been part of the constellation of events leading up to Dallas on 11/22.
That agency was particularly reluctant to share records about the two attempts on JFK’s life.
ARRB member Douglas Horne uncovered some fascinating information about pay records of both Oswald during his last months in the Marines and TSBD manager Roy Truly, Oswald’s supervisor at the building.
1. No discovery by the ARRB was more important than its uncovering of the Operation Northwoods contingency plan to set up a provocation to justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba.
The lawsuit filed by the Mary Ferrell Foundation aims at compelling further disclosure about Northwoods.
At loggerheads with then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Lemnitzer, JFK replaced him with Maxwell Taylor, unaware that Taylor and Lemnitzer were close.
The ARRB faced recalcitrance when it attempted to gain access to the Zapruder film. They had to pay an enormous sum of money to gain access to the film, which, ultimately was given to the Sixth Floor Museum, which retains tight control over its use. The Sixth Floor Museum maintains a doctrinaire adherence to the untenable Warren Commission.
2. The ARRB faced serious resistance from the Secret Service in its attempts to shed further light on the JFK assassination. Although prohibited by law from doing so, the Secret Service destroyed documents.
Particularly noteworthy are documents from the agency about two attempts on JFK’s life in 1963 that may very well have been part of the constellation of events leading up to Dallas on 11/22.
That agency was particularly reluctant to share records about the two attempts on JFK’s life.
Key Points of Discussion and Analysis Include: The trumped-up charges against African-American Secret Service agent Abraham Bolden, who refused to go along with the cover-up of the Chicago plot; Similarities between Thomas Vallee—the apparent patsy in the Chicago plot and Oswald (both former Marines who had worked on the U‑2); Four apparent snipers with rifles and the motorcade route, none of whom was detained for any length of time by the Secret Service; The Tampa plot, featuring an apparent patsy who was affiliated with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee; The fact that both the Chicago and Tampa plots involved the motorcade going past a high-rise building; JFK’s expression of gratitude to the agents who blocked the Tampa plot; Secret Service agent Elmer Moore’s confession to Jim Goschenauer that he was ordered to pressure on the Parkland M.D. who performed the tracheotomy on JFK and said the throat wound was entrance wound; Moore’s evident satisfaction over the neutralization of Abraham Bolden.
3.—The ARRB faced recalcitrance when it attempted to gain access to the Zapruder film. They had to pay an enormous sum of money to gain access to the film, which, ultimately was given to the Sixth Floor Museum, which retains tight control over its use. The Sixth Floor Museum maintains a doctrinaire adherence to the untenable Warren Commission.
4.—ARRB member Douglas Horne uncovered some fascinating information about pay records of both Oswald during his last months in the Marines and TSBD manager Roy Truly, Oswald’s supervisor at the building:
. . . . You’re ready for this. This is all new stuff. Oswald’s last quarter of earnings in the United States before he defected to the Soviet Union should have been paid by the Marine Corps. And they weren’t. Because we asked to see his Marine Corps records that the Marine Corps deposited with the Social Security Administration. They did not pay him any money. That has serious implications to me because of all the speculation that he was a fake defector. So if he was in training for that, somebody else was paying his salary . . . .
. . . . The other information that that the public should know about is that there is another record that’s sequestered in the JFK collection. Just like Oswald’s earning records. The other information is about employees at the Book Depository who were paid and the name Roy Truly, Oswald’s supervisor, is not on the list of people who were paid. And I don’t understand that. . . .
It’s that time again. The 59th Anniversary of the JFK assassination. Or rather, the 59th Anniversary of the JFK assassination and subsequent official coverup. 59 year of ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’. No matter how much new damning evidence gets released, there’s always been this giant trove of still-classified files that government agencies have repeatedly refused to release. That was all supposed to change in 2017 when a supposedly concrete deadline for the release of all classified information related to the JFK assassination was supposed to be released. Instead, then-President Trump decided to side with the CIA and FBI and agreed to waive the deadline, which brings us back to where we are.
A new deadline for the release of materials was set for December 15 next month by President Biden. But as we’re going to see, the wording of that deadline appears to still allow for the same kinds of bureaucratic refusal to turn over the documents that’s been used in the past. So we’re going to see what ultimately gets released in a few weeks of the more than 14,000 JFK-related documents still classified. But in the meantime, it turns out we got a new batch of released files. Files showing the correspondences between the National Archives and the various government agencies that are still refusing to release these files. It turns out the correspondences were obtained via a FOIA request by Larry Schnapf, a lawyer who is representing the Mary Ferrell Foundation in a lawsuit filed against the President Biden and the National Archives, demanding release of all the still-classified assassination documents. Interestingly, while Schnapf filed the lawsuit against the National Archives, he actually praises them for their efforts. It’s the other agencies that are refusing to release the documents. That’s the story that unfolds in these released correspondences. The National Archives kept informing agencies like the FBI and CIA that they are not abiding by the law. For years.
It’s also notable that the National Archives has been telling the public not to expect any major bombshells when the documents are being released. So if the still-classified files aren’t filled with assassination bombshells, why are so many government agencies unwilling to allow their release? It’s part of the ongoing mystery. Maybe the Archives is just unaware of the full damning nature of some of these documents. Or maybe they’re damning, but in relation to other things like the CIA’s relationship with organized crime and not necessarily damning in relation to the assassination. Or perhaps each individual file isn’t really damning on its own, but the collection of them together paints a damning picture. We don’t really know what’s still hiding in those 14,000 still-classified documents. But it’s pretty damn clear the agencies that ran that coverup want that to be the case for as long as possible. And 59 years isn’t long enough:
“Newly released internal correspondence from the National Archives and Records Administration reveals that, behind the scenes, there has been a fierce bureaucratic war over the documents in recent years, pitting the Archives against the CIA, FBI and other agencies that want to keep them secret.”
A fierce bureaucratic war, with the National Archives on one side and agencies like the CIA, FBI, and State Department on the other side. That’s the picture depicted in the newly released internal correspondences obtained by Larry Schnafp, a lawyer whose clients include the Mary Ferrell Foundation. As Schnafp notes, while he ended up suing the Archives, he’s actually been impressed with the agency’s aggressiveness in trying to get documents released. That aggressiveness is part of what was revealed with these internal correspondences. Aggressiveness in the form of reminding agencies like the FBI and CIA that they are not abiding by the 1992 law that mandates these disclosures.
At the same time, as the article notes, the Archives have for years warned the public not to expect any bombshells. At least not easily detected bombshells. It’s part of the mystery here: the Archives are declaring that still-withheld classified documents aren’t going to be revelatory and yet its still running into steep resistance from the FBI and CIA despite those agencies recognizing that they are fueling the perception of a cover up. It’s the kind of situation that suggests the Archives isn’t fully aware of all of the different investigative threads that could be pulled should those still-classified documents get released:
As the article also points out, while the 1992 law requiring the release of the documents has yet to demonstrate conclusive proof of a conspiracy to kill Kennedy, the documents that have been released did reveal just how much evidence had been withheld from the Warren Commission. Like evidence related to Oswald’s alleged ‘trip to Mexico City’. A trip that the CIA initially claimed had no evidence about. And now we’re learning that some of the still-withheld documents are drawn from the CIA station at the US embassy in Mexico:
Then there’s the extensive classification of figures with organized crime ties, with the FBI and DEA and fighting particularly hard to keep the identities of any informants classified for as long as possible. This is a good time to recall the photo taken just before the assassination that appears to show a smiling 24-year old Barry Seal “seated at a nightclub table in Mexico City with [Watergate burglar] Frank Sturgis, [Iran-Contra operative] Felix Rodriguez, and William Seymour, all members of the CIA’s assassination squad, Operation 40.” Any sort of Barry Seal ties to the CIA assassination would obviously be some of the most damning and highly sensitive classified info the DEA could possibly possess. It’s a reminder that the reasons for the extreme sensitivity around these documents isn’t just going to be related to direct fears of having the assassination plot exposed. There’s all the other tangentially plots — like decades of CIA-sponsored major drug-trafficking — that could be revealed too:
Finally, there’s the latest promise to finally get all these remaining documents declassified. December 15 is the next due date. But it sounds like the exact same excuses that prevented the release of these documents could still apply:
So are they waiting for everyone involved to have passed? Or waiting for democracy and any form of public accountability to have passed? Either way, we’ll see how many documents are indeed released next month. And how many new excuses get deployed but why it is once again a major disappointment. A very guilty-looking major disappointment.
Time flies when you’re having fun. Less so when covering up. And yet there’s no denying the grim reality: it’s been a wildly successful cover up. 60 years and counting. Who knows how much longer it will go, but it does indeed appear that there will be no honest public accounting of the John F. Kennedy assassination while any of the figures involved are still alive. EVERYONE is going to be LONG dead before the truth is allowed to come out. Assuming that ever happens.
Recall how Congress passed a law in 1992 mandating a release of government documents on the assassination by 2017, a deadline that has been pushed back on by both the Trump and Biden administrations, resulting in thousands of documents still held back by the government.
So with the blatant cover up of this seminal event on track to continue indefinitely, here’s a piece in The Independent that contains a fun fact that the US public really should be more and more aware of as the years tick by and the cover up continues: a recent Gallup poll found hat 65 per cent of US adults think Oswald worked with others to eliminate Kennedy, while 29 per cent believe he was solely responsible. And that’s just this year’s poll. Gallup has been conducting that poll since 1963, and if you look at that history of polling there has NEVER been a point where a majority of US adults didn’t suspect a broader conspiracy. It’s another part of this overall story that could only emerge slowly over time, but here it is: the JFK assassination cover up has effectively been carried out in the face of a skeptical public the entire time.
But then there’s the other side of this story: it’s not like the US public has really prioritized this issue. Simply answering a pollster’s question the same as actually caring or doing something about it. It’s been 60 years of public suspicions, but extraordinarily passive public suspicions. The kind of extremely vague suspicions a largely disengaged public can’t really articulate or act upon.
With the 60th Anniversary of that dark day upon us with the in-your-face government cover up still very blatantly intact, it’s hard to think about what more there is to say about this story. It happened, it was blatantly covered up, that cover up is still in place, and while suspicions remain to this day no one actually cares. That’s the JFK assassination story in 2023: the extraordinary passivity of the US public in the face of 6 decades of blatant cover up. Two generations now of Americans suspecting some sort of big conspiracy surrounding the assassination of JFK, but not actually caring enough to do really anything about it:
“One reason why conspiracy theories in the case have remained consistent could be that the government has never released all its files. It was supposed to have been completed by 2017 but that date has been pushed back during both the Trump and Biden administrations.”
A consistent refusal to release the documents the law mandates be released. Gee, might that have something to do with persistence of all the ‘conspiracy theories’ around this event? Both Trump and Biden refused to release them all. Of course, this refusal to release all the documents is a relatively new reason for suspicions since that release deadline was only 6 years ago in 2017, 54 years after the assassination. But it’s been six years now of delays and pushbacks. It’s the kind of situation that would beg the question “What is the government hiding?”, if we already weren’t inundated with decades of evidence pointing towards a massive cover up. Evidence that now includes Secret Service agent Paul Landis’s recounting of events that further undercuts the absurd ‘magic bullet’ narrative that remains the official narrative to this day. Recall how Landis’s account is backed up by the recollections nurse Phyllis Hall publicly shared in 2013. The more time passes, the more evidence and insights gained, the more a picture has emerged of a gross cover up that remains in place to this day:
So with the 60 years now having past, and the official cover up still very much intact, it’s worth keeping in mind that it isn’t simply the case that 65 percent of US adults suspect there was a broader conspiracy. Take a look at Gallup polling going back to 1963 and you’ll find that a majority of US adults has NEVER believed the official story. it’s a part of this that only grows more and more prominent as the decades tick by: the cover up was executed in the face of overwhelming public suspicion. For 60 years now. And with no apparent end in sight. The end was supposed to be the 2017 deadline for the release of all those documents but that obviously isn’t happening
Of course, while the US public may have harbored suspicions about the nature of the assassination plot this whole time, you can’t really argue the public did much about it. Outside of a few figures on the fringes, there’s almost no real interest of concern about the long-term implications of a successful conspiracy to kill a president and then cover up it.
So while the world in 2023 may seem like it’s coming apart at the seems, it’s worth keeping in mind that the world in 2023 has very much been shaped by the powerful forces who executed that assassination and managed to maintain such a deep grip on power that we still can’t talk about them 60 years later. It’s their world and we’re just passively living in it.
He did it. The executive order promised by President Trump just a day before his inauguration to order the release of the remaining classified government files in assassination archives of JFK, RFK, and MLK was indeed fulfilled.
Sort of. The executive order was issued. And based on the language of the order it would appear to be a directive to release all the remaining documents and redactions, without exception. “I previously accepted proposed redactions from executive departments and agencies (agencies) in 2017 and 2018, but ordered the continued re-evaluation of those remaining redactions...I have now determined that the continued redaction and withholding of information from records pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is not consistent with the public interest and the release of these records is long overdue,” the executive order states. It sure sounds like he’s calling for a declassification of everything, without redaction. Huge, if true.
But the devil is the details when it comes to this kind of story, and there do appear to be details that could serve as a pretext for withholding some of the archives materials. Specifically, the executive order requires the director of national intelligence and attorney general to work with White House officials on a plan to release the records on JFK’s assassination and present it to Trump within 15 days. The reports on plans for the RFK and MLK assassinations similarly need to be delivered to Trump within 45 days. Which means the real test of this order will be whether or not those plans end up being filled with all sorts of exceptions and, in turn, whether or not Trump approves it.
The countdown begins. It’s hard to know what exactly to expect from this. But it’s a remarkable turn of events if Donald Trump, the president who arguably poses the great threat to US democracy in history, is the one who apparently has finally issued these orders. Remarkable, in part, because he was tasked, by law, with doing this back during his first term. And then went on to staged an insurrection. That’s the guy who ultimately made this historic call. Which is a reminder that every other president in the last six decades, including Joe Biden, utterly failed in their public duties on these matters. Trump was just handed back access to an orchard filled with all this historic low-hanging fruit and he finally picked the fruit. After skipping the opportunity the first time around. It’s a historic turn of events. Bad, but historic.
But as we’re also going to see, we did get a hint back in 2023 regarding what’s still sitting in those archives. Unfortunately, it’s a hint coming from one of the least trustworthy sources available: Roger Stone. According to a July 3, 2023, interview with Alt Right figure Jack Posobiec, Stone claimed that he asked then-Trump about the JFK records early on during Trump’s first year in office. “He said, ‘I can’t tell you, it’s so horrible you wouldn’t believe it. Someday you’ll find out.’ That was the sum total of it and he didn’t want to talk further about it. He kicked the can down the road to President Joe Biden.” That was Stone’s public claim roughly a year and a half ago. And while Stone might be a disreputable character prone to deceit, there’s no denying Roger is one of Trump’s oldest pals (who isn’t named Jeffrey).
It’s also worth noting a very interesting finding in the JFK case made by researcher Jefferson Morley back in December of 2022 in response to files obtained by the Mary Farrell Foundation following an October 2022 lawsuit. According to Morley, the documents obtained by the foundation related to a still-classified covert operation approved by CIA officials three months before Kennedy’s death. A covert operation that the documents suggested involved the use of Lee Harvey Oswald for intelligence purposes several weeks prior to the assassination. Which is the kind of document that, if their interpretation is correct, not only contradicts a core tenet of the CIA’s story but also suggests there really might be some explosive revelations still sitting in that archive. Because one of the big questions long looming over the assassination archives is the question of whether or not truly incriminating documents were going to be left in there at all. They could be destroyed, after all. But if there really are documents in there that could show Oswald was being used as an intelligence asset for the CIA just several weeks before the assassination, who knows what else is sitting in there? We’ll find out. Specifically, we’ll find out whether or not we’ll ever be allowed to find out. Soon. Maybe:
“The order requires the director of national intelligence and attorney general to work with White House officials on a plan to release the John F. Kennedy records and present it to Trump within 15 days. A plan for releasing the other records must be presented to Trump within 45 days.”
Ok, the promised executive order was indeed issued. Sort of. The order wasn’t for an immediate declassification of the remaining files. It’s an order for a set of plans to be presented to President Trump. Fortunately, those plans have to be presented relatively soon, in just 15 days for the JFK records. But that might just mean we’re going to find out in 15 days how the plan will somehow disappoint in the end. And yet, looking at the language of the executive order, it appears to be pretty explicit. Trump is calling for a release of all remaining files, including the previously redacted information. It’s an order that, if taken literally, would seem to leave the government little wiggle room in terms of keeping documents secret:
Now, assuming we really do see a massive release of the remaining files and redactions, what should we actually expect? Will there be devastating revelations? Or just a bunch of details but no meaningful revelations? Keep in mind that, even if there are devastating revelations sitting in those unreleased files, there’s nothing preventing the destruction of documents as long as the world doesn’t yet know about their existence. At the same time, previously released but redacted files will be a lot harder to keep hidden if the redacted sections are ordered released.
And that brings us to the following story for July of 2023 from a most untrustworthy source, but a source that has the status of being one of Donald Trump’s long-term close associates: Roger Stone. According to Stone, Trump confided during his first term in office that the then-still classified JFK files are ‘so horrible you wouldn’t believe it.’ As Stone put it, “He said, ‘I can’t tell you, it’s so horrible you wouldn’t believe it. Someday you’ll find out.’ That was the sum total of it and he didn’t want to talk further about it. He kicked the can down the road to President Joe Biden.” So Trump kicks the can down the road to Biden, Biden kicks it back to Trump, and here we are:
“He said, ‘I can’t tell you, it’s so horrible you wouldn’t believe it. Someday you’ll find out.’ That was the sum total of it and he didn’t want to talk further about it. He kicked the can down the road to President Joe Biden.”
Trump was spooked by what he knew. That’s more or less Roger Stone’s recounting of the conversation he had with Trump back during the early stages of his first term. And note this anecdote: Trump apparently asked “Why hasn’t anyone brought this to my attention?” just weeks before the October 2017 release date that was mandated by law. A date that Trump obviously didn’t meet in his first time. That’s also part of the context of this story: by law, all of these files were technically already supposed to be released back in 2017. But ‘reasons’ kept coming up to justify their continued withholding:
And as an example of the kinds of revelations that are probably sitting in these documents, it was Documents released in December of 2022 that apparently show Oswald being involved with a CIA operation just months before the assassination. A revelation that would utterly destroy the CIA’s decades old stance on Oswald:
And as we’re going to see in the following piece about those possible revelations, the documents showing this evidence of a CIA operation involving Oswald were obtained by the Mary Ferrell Foundation thanks to a lawsuit. Which makes these documents, obtained in December of 2022, examples of the kinds of documents Trump was convinced to keep classified back in 2017. And also suggests that if there aren’t eventually documents released describing a still-classified CIA operation that involved Oswald in the months before the assassination, there’s still some documents being withheld...or destroyed:
“In a Tuesday press conference at the National Press Club, Jefferson Morley—a veteran of the D.C. press corps and a preeminent expert on JFK’s assassination with the Mary Ferrell Foundation—told reporters that he and attorneys with the foundation obtained documentation relating to a still-classified covert operation approved by senior CIA officials three months before Kennedy’s death that suggested the agency used Oswald for intelligence purposes several weeks prior to shooting.”
Evidence of Oswald’s involvement just weeks before the assassination in a still-classified covert operation approved three months prior. Approved by senior CIA officials. That’s quite a finding. The kind of finding that utterly undermines narratives the CIA has been hiding behind for decades now. But also a revelation that was made public back in December of 2022, over two years ago, which raises the question: What kind of preparation have been since then in anticipation of the eventual release of files describing that still-classified CIA operation?
Is the public really about to see all the ‘smoking-guns’ left sitting in the JFK assassination archives? The language of this executive order would seem to promise just that. But, again, the devil is in the details. There’s still time for obfuscation.
Still, based on all the available circumstantial evidence, we have reason to suspect some damning evidence of the successful coup waged against the US democracy over six decades ago could end up getting exposed. Which will make the eventual release, or lack of release, of the RFK and MLK files all the more interesting.
Look what the
cat>FBI just dragged in: 2400 previously undisclosed files on the JFK assassination. They were ‘just discovered’ as a result of President Trump’s executive order. An executive order that, as we’ve seen, promises the complete release of all documents, entirely unredacted. An order that is difficult to take at face value. And yet, it seems to be playing out and already yielding results.So what’s in the 2400 newly discovered documents? The three anonymous White House officials who are serving as sources for this reporting haven’t seen the documents. But they are assuring us that President Trump remains very serious about completely disclosing everything. In fact, the following Axios report that broke this story is filled with quotes from these anonymous White House staffers like, “When POTUS hears about this stonewalling, he’s gonna hit the roof,” or “This is total Deep State bulls**t,” and “Don’t be surprised if all these records just suddenly wind up online...He wants to move on and call this a promise kept.”
And it’s that “promises kept” desire that brings us to another dimension to this story: as Jefferson Morely of the Mary Ferrell Foundation warns, there is no deadline on the release of these documents. Which is why we should probably be highly concerned that all the political theatrics we’re seeing at this point is all we’re going to ultimately get from this. A loud, high profile ‘promises kept’ rollout of a disclosure plan that ultimately is never really completed.
As Morely also warns, Trump’s executive order only included files in the National Archives. But we shouldn’t assume all the relevant files are stored in the National Archives. For example, the CIA still has hundreds of records, according to Morely. And then there’s the private collections. Moreley goes on to argue that these private collections and other government archives should have been included in the executive order.
It’s also worth noting that the FBI’s disclosure of these 2400 ‘newly discovered’ FBI files could play a role in an ongoing lawsuit open by Morely and the Mary Ferrell Foundation in 2022 over the the Biden administration’s ongoing refusal to fully disclose all of the archives as required by law. Which is also a reminder that the legal battles over these archives is likely far from over. Especially if what is ultimately revealed ends up answer few if any of the major questions that have long loomed over this investigation. Just because Trump loudly and proudly issues the ‘disclose everything’ order doesn’t mean it’s actually going to be disclosed. And that’s why we have to ask: are we learning about this explosive new development from the FBI because we really are on the cusp of having this major chapter of US history revealed? Or are we learning about this because it’s been determined that there needs to be a lot of early excitement so Trump can declare ‘promises kept’ and just move on?:
“The FBI just discovered about 2,400 records tied to President Kennedy’s assassination that were never provided to a board tasked with reviewing and disclosing the documents, Axios has learned.”
2400 documents that were never turned over to the assassination review board for mysterious reasons. Reasons that are presumably going to remain a mystery. What’s in these documents? We don’t know. The story is based on three anonymous sources who haven’t actually seen the documents. So people inside the Trump administration are being warned by the FBI about all these new documents, but no one has been told what they contain. Which is a reminder that the most incriminating documents could be ‘disappeared’ and it’s unlikely anyone would know. At least not anyone who wasn’t involved with the disappearances. At the same time, as we can see, these anonymous sources are sending out signals suggesting that Trump is very serious about full disclosure, despite intelligence agencies still recommending redactions. We have public expectations getting set through anonymous sources assuring the public that all will be revealed, despite these sources not actually knowing what’s in the documents. It’s the kind of political theatrics seemingly designed to promote a ‘promises kept’ narrative despite us not actually having a compelling reason to assume all of these files will ultimately be revealed or haven’t already been altered or destroyed:
Also note one of the apparent reasons for ongoing calls from inside the intelligence community for the withholding of documents: officials might be unfairly implicated in the controversies that unfold from the disclosures. It sure would be interesting to know who exactly is apparently ‘unfairly implicated’ in these yet-to-be-disclosed documents because that sounds like an admission that there is some very incriminating evidence yet to be reveal. But we can’t know because that would unfairly implicate them, according to this logic:
And as we can see, the newly discovered files aren’t just relevant in relation to President Trump’s disclosure order. The Mary Ferrell foundation has an ongoing lawsuit from 2022 over the Biden administration’s refusal to fully comply with the 2017 full disclosure mandate. How might this admission by the FBI affect that ongoing lawsuit? It’s something to watch, especially since that lawsuit might be our best chance of getting an explanation for how these documents were ‘lost’ in the first place. And as the lawsuit alleged, that includes documents like the jailhouse recordings of Carlos Marcello or the CIA files of George Joannides. If those files really have been withheld from the public all these decades, they must either contain some very sensitive ‘sources and methods’ content or are contradictory of the official ‘lone gunman’ narrative:
This is also a good time to recall how an earlier FOIA suit by Morely to learn more about Joannides was blocked by Brett Kavanaugh shortly before his Supreme Court nomination hearings. And then there’s the evidence that Joannides was at the Ambassador Hotel on the night of the RFK assassination. Is evidence of Joannides’s ties to Oswald going to finally be revealed as a result of Trump’s executive order? We’ll see, but as the following article warns, we shouldn’t assume the archive of documents Trump ordered be fully released is the only archive of relevant documents. The order only includes documents in the National Archives, and as Jefferson Morley warns, the CIA still has hundreds of other records in its possession like CIA situation reports on Cuban exiles in Florida. Beyond that, some documents are held by the Kennedy family and other private collections. And as Morely also warns, there’s no deadline for the eventual release, meaning this could all be theatrics designed to give a ‘promises kept’ narrative while the can is once again kicked down the road:
“Some Trump insiders are reportedly concerned that the discovery of the new documents could be a stalling tactic to delay Trump’s ordered release.”
Is this all stalling theatrics? Make a big splash with the executive orders and reporting on the plans for disclosure, while just kicking the can down the road? That’s what experts like Mary Farrel’s Jefferson Morley fears, given that there’s no deadline in the order:
But also note how we already know so much about this history that experts have a pretty good idea of what should be in these still-unreleased files. Like information on whether or not the CIA was aware George Joannides’s psychological operations outfit was in contact with Oswald. We know what should be in these files. And the intelligence community knows we know. That’s part of the theatrics at play here: there are expectations that must be met for this to be a plausible ‘final story’ on the issue:
And then there’s the giant gap found in the FBI file on Harminio Diaz, someone who a witness claimed admitted to taking part in the assassination. It’s worth noting that Diaz is on the list of the likely shooters in that massive list of suspected posted by Monty. It’s a reminder that the lack of disclosure thus far isn’t limited to yet-to-be-revealed documents. Plenty of already-released documents are full of redactions that need to be unredacted too:
Finally, note how the documents of interesting aren’t just FBI and CIA documents. There’s Kennedy White House documents that also have yet to be fully revealed, like the ‘CIA Reorganization’ memo written by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. where he suggests Kennedy break up the CIA. The public has yet to see those redacted parts, but we can be confident the CIA knows what’s in that full memo. Are we going to finally get to see that complete memo?
Given everything we know today about the CIA’s history of treatment towards world leaders it determined had a ‘weakness against communism’, it almost would have been odd had the CIA not decided to remove Kennedy from office. And that’s before we factor in the ‘splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds’ memo. Are we going to learn about about the CIA’s concerns about Kennedy’s softness towards communism when all these files are released? It would be odd if we didn’t. And yet, it would be beyond plausible to imagine the voluntary release of any documents that strongly suggest CIA culpability in Kennedy’s assassination.
Decades of circumstantial evidence points strongly towards CIA responsibility. And while we can’t realistically expect any sort of ‘smoking gun’ revealing that culpability, we can certainly expect more circumstantial evidence. But that’s assuming all these documents are eventually released. Promises made. Promises not yet kept. Let the preemptive celebrations and other theatrics commence.
It keeps getting more interesting. And perplexing: the Trump administration’s pledge to disclose long-standing state secrets of public interest appears to have a new congressional counterpart. Yes, a new congressional task force has just been declared. And this task force isn’t just promising to disclose documents found in archives. The leaders of the commission appear to promising new investigations into these chapters of history. Chapters ranging from the assassinations of JFK and MLK, to 9/11, the origins of COVID, and even the Jeffrey Epstein story. In fact, the new of the task force, Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna, has even said she wants to interview the still-living attending physicians who oversaw the initial medical treatment of JFK after he was shot, which is presumably a reference to revelations disclosed in a 2023 documentary JFK: What the Doctors Saw where surviving members of that medical team recounted the compelling forensic evidence for multiple shooters and the coverup they were forced to impose. This is a good time to recall that September 2023 story about the interview ER nurse Phyllis J. Hall gave back in 2013 about witness a “pristine bullet” sitting on JFK’s stretcher next to his head, an account that backed up the 2023 account from Secret Service agent Paul Landis — who was protecting JFK’s limousine — that not only refuted the “magic bullet” narrative but also strongly pointed towards shots coming from the front. As we’re going to see, Rep. Luna has come out saying she believes multiple shooters were involved. And she just might be able to provide eye witness testimony of that in coming months. This new congressional task force is potentially a very big deal. A big deal that, of course, is coming at the same time the remaining archives on these assassinations are purportedly going to be finally revealed under Trump’s executive order. Epstein’s client list might also be revealed too, according to Rep Luna.
Big bold promises are being made by Rep. Luna. Which makes this a good time to recall that bizarre story from back in 2021 about an apparent assassination plot against Luna herself. That would be the story of how Luna’s rival in the 2022 GOP congressional primary, William Braddock, was recorded telling another local Republican to stay away from Luna because Braddock was going to have his ‘Russian Ukrainian’ mafia friends assassinate Luna. Why did Luna need to be assassinated? Well, according to Braddock’s explanation during the phone call, Luna didn’t stand a chance of winning in the highly competitive district. Luna had lost her 2020 congressional race but went on to win the 2022 race. It’s a chilling reminder about the mafia-like nature of contemporary GOP politics.
Now, given that all these big bold promises are being made by far right Republicans, we’re faced with the same underlying question surrounding Trump’s own promises to make all these historic disclosures: how can these far right mafia-like politicians possible be expected to honestly treat topics that are virtually all conspiracies perpetrated by powerful far right networks? The answer, of course, is we can’t trust them to honestly handle this enormous task. But that’s not going to stop them from going ahead with it. It’s a historic opportunity to inject far right distortions and whitewashing officially into our understanding of our own history, after all. They’re not going to pass up this opportunity.
Part of what makes this new task force such as bizarre development is the bizarre biography of the person leading it. A biography that appears to have undergone a whitewashing of its own. Because Rep. Luna appears to have experienced what can be candidly referred to as some sort of identity crisis. A crisis that started after he started her career in politics as the director of Hispanic outreach for the far right Turning Points USA outfit. It sounds like Turning Point’s founder, CNP member Charlie Kirk, personally recruited her for the job. Kirk’s apparent sponsorship of her political rise is notable in that is puts her more directly in the orbit of the Council for National Policy (CNP) faction of the GOP. The Christian Nationalist theocratic faction that played a key role in planning the January 6 Capitol insurrection, planned Project 2025, and is effectively the dominant faction of both MAGA and the Republican Party at this point. So it’s also worth noting that one of Rep. Luna’s first acts as a new member of Congress in January of 2023 was to align herself with the faction of Republicans who forced that politically awkward 14 rounds of voting in order to elect Kevin McCarthy as the Speaker of the House. An ‘make hell for McCarthy’ faction that was effectively organized by the CNP. That’s part of the context of Rep. Luna’s Kirk-back political career.
And as we’re going to see, up until the point when she started that career as Turning Point’s Hispanic outreach director she wasn’t Anna Paulina Luna. She was Anna Paulina Mayerhofer. In fact, her 2015 voter registration form lists her ethnicity as “White, not of Hispanic origin”. It was only after taking that position at Turning Point that she changed her last name to Luna and in 2019 her voter registration ethnicity was updated to Hispanic. Later, her mother also changed her name to include Luna too. It appears the embrace of their Hispanic heritage has very much been a mother/daughter project, along with the erasure of the Mayerhofer side of the family in Luna’s upbringing.
Now, in fairness, it’s not like Rep Luna has no Hispanic heritage and was just making that all up. Her mom, Monica, is Hispanic and Luna was Monica’s mother’s last name. But the puzzles around Luna’s biography aren’t limited to this politically convenient surname-switch. Luna’s work for Turning Points in 2018 quickly turned into a 2020 congressional run, which she lost before ultimately winning in 2022. And as part of that political persona, Luna insisted that she had grown up in poverty, raised by a single-mother and with virtually no other support. Her father, George Mayerhofer, was a drug addict in and out of prison during her childhood. That’s the narrative she ran on but it’s a narrative her extended family other her father’s side disputes. Instead, they claim she was given extensive extended family support and were very much a part of her life growing up. It’s a dispute her uncle, Edward Mayerhofer, even made public on social media during her congressional runs, resulting in Luna filing an stalking injunction against her uncle. Edward’s daughter, Nicole, is now similarly estrange from the cousin she grew up with over these disputes.
Other biographic disputes include Luna’s claims that she was actually raised as Messianic Jew by her father, and even has a small amount of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. It’s a claim made in an interview with Jewish Insider, made all the more interesting by her prior claims that her father wasn’t actually part of her childhood. Notably, her mother does concur that her father did eventually get involved with Messianic Judaism after cleaning himself up from his drug addiction. And yet three member of the extended family tell reporters they have no recollection of this Messianic Jewish phase and that her father was instead a Catholic. Is this some sort of biographic embellishment done purely for crass political appeal? Or something else?
And then we get to the dispute over her grandfather, Nicholas Mayerhofer. As we’re going to see, Luna claims her grandfather had no role at all in her upbringing. And yet, according to relatives, Nicholas would pick his grandfather up from daycare when her mother was busy with classes, which would appear be to another example of how this extended family from her father’s side was very much a part of her childhood.
Why the decision to excise this grandfather from her biography? Again, is this just crass politics? Maybe, but there’s another possible motive at work here: Nicholas has an interesting biography of his own in that he served in the Wehrmacht in Nazi Germany in the 1940s while he was a teenager. Luna’s mother insists she never knew anything about her father-in-laws’s history in the Nazi military. But as we should probably expect, her extended family claim Luna’s grandfather was always very open about this chapter in his history.
Now, it’s important to point out that we have zero indications that her grandfather was an ideological Nazi or participated in war crimes. Instead, he apparently was just drafted and felt like he had no choice and didn’t hold bigoted or antisemitic beliefs, according to the extended family. So it doesn’t sound like Luna is somehow covering up a Nazi influence from her childhood. Or at least we have no direct evidence of that. But there’s also no denying the sad reality that Rep Luna, as a MAGA-member of today’s GOP, is now operating in a Nazi-adjacent role and has surrounded herself with many far right fellow travelers.
There’s another biographic discrepancy that doesn’t involved Luna’s family but does involve her capacity for publicly distorting the truth: According to the narrative that has emerged as she’s become a public figure, Rep. Luna had an experience that inflicting “enduring trauma” on her during her time serving in the Air Force at Whiteman Air Force Base. An enduring trauma that shaped her worldview to this day: One night, at 4 a.m. she woke up to a home invasion of her apartment by her landlord. As Luna recounted in 2019 on her Youtube channel, “Had my friend Jeremy not been there to protect me, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be standing right here in front of you guys right now...[My landlord] was not breaking into my house at 4 a.m. to see how I was doing.” She pretty clearly publicly accused her then-landlord of murderous intent. And yet, according to her then-roommate, the pair had indeed been experiencing a problem with the lock on their back door and had asked the landlord to fix it. But the only break in that the roommate recalls is one that happened during the day while the two were staying elsewhere while the door was getting fixed. And the police report from that break in supports the roommate’s account. Again, Rep. Luna publicly accused her old landlord of trying to murder her one night as part of her political ambitions and it appears to be a complete fabrication.
That’s all part of what makes this story about the new Rep. Luna-led congressional ‘state secrets’ task force such a bizarre new development. Some sort of congressional task force of this nature is long overdue. But it’s hard to imagine someone less qualified to lead it. Well, ok, it’s not actually that hard to imagine someone less qualified to lead it. Nearly about any member of today’s Republican caucus will likely be just as dutiful in whitewashing the far right connections to all of these still-undisclosed chapters of history. Rep. Luna biographic mysteries just makes her a little less qualified than the rest of her fellow travelers. So of course that’s who get tapped to run this:
“The announcement follows Trump’s signing an executive order last month pledging to declassify records surrounding the assassinations of JFK, Senator Robert F Kennedy and Dr Martin Luther King – a move which prompted calls for the president to release the pedophile’s elusive list.”
Well that’s a bit awkward: The executive orders on the Kennedy and MLK assassinations ended up generating calls for the release of Jeffrey Epstein’s client list. Does that list include Donald Trump, the person Epstein described in a 2017 interview — released days before the 2024 election day — as his “best friend”? We will apparently find out since the release of that client list is one of many major disclosures already promised by the leader of this newly announced congressional task force. As Republican Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna promises, the public is not just going to see the release of that client list but whole new investigation into the 9/11 attacks, the origins of COVID, JFK’s and MLK’s assassinations (no RFK?) and UFO. It’s a remarkably bold agenda, made all the more remarkable by the fact that it’s going to be lunatic Republicans leading these investigations. What kind of warped distortions of history are we about to see unfold?
And as we can see in the following article about the leader of this new congressional task force, Rep Anna Paulina Luna, this task force is going to be led by someone who very much fits the ‘far right wing-nut’ mold. And as we can also see from her statements on the new task force, she sounds very intent on leading new investigations into all of these long-standing state secrets. That includes expressing a hope to interview the attending physicians who directly witnessed JFK’s medical treatment, which is presumably a reference to the revelations disclosed in a 2023 documentary JFK: What the Doctors Saw where surviving members of that medical team recounted the compelling forensic evidence for multiple shooters and the cover up they were forced to impose. Is that really going to be allowed happen? How interested is a far right member of congress really going to be in finally uncovering what was ultimate a highly successful far right plot to assassinate the president? It’s not like the CIA was the only entity involved. This is explosive history she’s threatening to uncover. And that’s just the JFK assassination. What about all these other explosive topics? Plans for major theatrics are clearly in the works. That’s becoming increasingly clear. What remains unclear is how exactly all these theatrics are going to play out without implicating the powerful far right network that are ultimately very ideologically aligned with Rep Luna and the rest of today’s Republican Party:
“The government has spent years investigating political assassinations and “other government secrets without success,” she claimed, and “it is time to give Americans the answers they deserve.””
The government failed in its past investigations and it’s time to give the public the answers they deserve. It’s not just a call for disclosures of state secrets. Rep Luna is promises a broad range of new investigations, like the “truth” about the JFK assassination. Which might include an interview of the attending physicians on the day of JFK’s assassination, which is likely a reference to the explosive revelations disclosed in a 2023 documentary JFK: What the Doctors Saw where surviving members of that medical team recounted the compelling evidence for multiple shooters and the cover up they were forced to impose. It’s great to hear Rep Luna committing herself to investigating this chapter of history. And yet, again, this is one of the last person we can expect to honestly handle these topics. How can we possibly expect far right Republicans to honestly investigate a crime of this nature? A crime committed for the advancement of far right goals?
And then we get to these important details on Luna’s rise as a young MAGA Republican: after graduating college, Luna went on to serve as the director of Hispanic engagement for Turning Point USA, the far right political outfit founded by CNP member Charlie Kirk. So when we see how, soon after joining congress, Luna was part of the group of Republicans who initially refused to support Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House in January of 2023, leading to an awkward round of one failed vote after another, its worth keeping in mind how the CNP’s fingerprints were all over that effort to temporarily block McCarthy’s Speakership (presumably so more concessions could be extracted from him). That’s the congressional coalition Luna is loyal to: the CNP coalition. Which is the last coalition we can expect to honestly address all of these decades-old scandals:
And then we get to this very intriguing piece of Luna’s biography: For most of her life, she went by Anna Paulina Mayerhofer, using her father’s surname. And it turns out her grandfather on her father’s side served in the Wehrmacht in Nazi Germany. Now, as we saw, Luna’s political career started as the head of Hispanic outreach for Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, so it’s not particularly surprising that she would embrace her Hispanic heritage by switching to her mother’s maiden name Luna at that point. Still, given that the US is in the middle of a far right constitutional coup and is being run by an unelected co-president who did multiple Sieg Heil’s at the inauguration, you have to wonder what’s under this ‘Nazi grandfather’ rock. Especially with Luna leading this new task force:
And those many questions over Luna’s biography brings us to the following Washington Post article from February of 2022, roughly a month into Luna’s first term in office. And as the article describes, the questions over Luna’s biographic aren’t just extensive and troubling in and of themselves. They’ve effectively torn her extended family apart, with Luna having filed a stalking injunction against her own uncle, Edward Mayerhofer, over his repeatedly bringing up her biographic contradictions on social media during her runs for office. She’s also reportedly now estranged from her cousin, Nicole Mayerhofer, Edward’s daughter, over what is now a kind of extended family dispute over her public biography. A dispute largely over Luna’s attempt to publicly dissociate herself with the Mayerhofer side of her family in favor of a ‘raised alone by a Hispanic single-mom’ politically convenient narrative. A dispute that includes excising the role her grandfather played in her upbringing too. Except it doesn’t sound like he was an ideological Nazi, despite serving in the Nazi Army. Instead, she just doesn’t want to acknowledge him and anyone on that side of the family as playing a role in her upbringing. She whitewashed the Mayerhofer out of her, leaving her Hispanic heritage to embrace. So when it comes to questions about whether or not Rep. Luna is going to turn this task force into a historic act of whitewashing, it’s worth keeping in mind that at her political career is predicated on a personal whitewashing that included estranging herself from her extended family in order to keep up a politically convenient narrative:
“Luna’s sharp turn to the right, her account of an isolated and impoverished childhood, and her embrace of her Hispanic heritage have come as a surprise to some friends and family who knew her before her ascent to the U.S. House this year. A cousin who grew up with Luna said she was regularly included in family gatherings. Her roommate in Missouri had no recollection of the “home invasion” Luna detailed, describing instead a break-in at their shared apartment when they were not home, an incident confirmed by police records.”
The person who was once Anna Paulina Mayerhofer, someone who had only a passing association with the Hispanic side of her family background, suddenly become the very Hispanic Anna Paulina Luna with a whole new personal biography about childhood improverishment and chilling events like a “home invasion” that purportedly deeply impacted and shaped Luna’s worldview. As well as a father, George Mayerhofer, who spent much her childhood dealing with drug addiction and stints in jail. It was her mother, Monica Luna, who raised her single-handedly with “no family to rely on.” It’s the kind of biography that has obvious political appeal, which explains why her campaign keeps promoting it:
But also the kind of biography that appears to contradict the recollections of extended friends and family. Including family from her father’s side who claims to have been very involved with her life. And yet, as we can also see, her mother, Monica, is very much supportive of the single-mother “no family to rely on” narrative Luna’s campaign has been running. Someone is lying here:
And as we can see, that embrace of her Hispanic heritage happened to coincide with her 2018 recruitment by Charlie Kirk to serve as Turning Point USA’s Hispanic engagement director. In fact, she self-identified as “White, not of Hispanic origin,” when she registered to vote in Okaloosa County, Fla., in 2015. That Turning Points USA job sure kindled her Hispanic pride. And launched a political career that started with an unsuccessful 2020 congressional run followed by a successful 2022 rematch. That’s quite a political trajectory:
And as we can see from the contradictory recollections of her “home invasion” experience while stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base that she claims inflicted “enduring trauma” on her, it appears the story was first publicly shared in 2019, after she embarked on this new political career at Turning Points USA. An experience that is in wild conflict with her then-roommate’s recollections. According to Luna, her landlord broke into her apartment at 4 a.m., seemingly with murderous intent, with Luna asserting “Had my friend Jeremy not been there to protect me, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be standing right here in front of you guys right now...[My landlord] was not breaking into my house at 4 a.m. to see how I was doing.” She’s literally accusing her landlord of breaking in with the intent of murdering her. And yet her roommate recounts a break-in that happened during the day when Luna wasn’t home. Now, as we can see from the police reports, the roommates reported to police a faulty lock on the rear door and kept finding it hanging open. And as the report also states, the girls were staying at a different place during the time of the break-in, which doesn’t sound consistent with a 4 a.m. home invasion. So it sounds like there really was some sort of lock issue. But the fact that both the roommate and police report contradicts the traumatic 4 a.m. invasion by a murderous landlord either means the roommate wasn’t there and Luna never shared it with the roommate and police, which seems very unlikely. Or the roommate has memory issues. Or Luna made it up. It sounds like “Jeremy” could help clear some of this up:
And then we get to the many interesting questions regarding Luna’s relationship with her father, George Mayerhofer, who Luna and her mother insist was barely present during Luna’s childhood. According to a 2022 interview with Jewish Insider, Luna claims she was raised as a Messianic Jew by her father. That’s a somewhat difficult claim to square with the ‘I was raised by my single-mother’ narrative we’re also getting. Luna even claims to be “a small fraction Ashkenazi.” And yet, as we can also see, her relatives have no recollection of her father going through this Messianic Jew phase while Luna was growing up and only remember him as a Catholic:
But it’s the biographic discrepancies regarding Luna’s paternal grandfather, Heinrich Mayerhofer, that are especially intriguing when it comes to questions about who Luna might be trying to hide about her past: Jolanta Mayerhofer, Luna’s aunt who is married to George’s brother Edward, recalls how Heinrich would pick up Luna from day care when her mom was studying, adding, “She had everything. What she needed and more...And not only did Monica provide for her, but my father-in-law did, too.” Another anonymous family member concurs with this take. And yet Luna’s mother insists Luna “barely spent any time with them in her entire life,” and called it a “complete fabrication” that Luna’s grandfather provided for her daughter. These are major disputes about basic facts of her childhood. Why? Is this purely about crafting the ‘single-mother impoverished Hispanic childhood’ narrative? Or is Heinrich’s history as a member of the Wehrmacht playing a role here? Now, on the one hand, being a member of the Wehrmacht isn’t a big a red flag as, say, being a member of the SS. And it sounds like this grandfather never professed Nazi ideologies to his family. So it doesn’t appear that Luna was somehow secretly being influenced by a Nazi grandfather in her youth. And yet, we have to ask, whyBut that doesn’t mean there isn’t some sort of dark history here. And It doesn’t sound like he is associated with specific Nazi war crimes. Although, as we’ve also seen, Canada was shockingly accepting of Nazi war criminals and the subsequent decades covering this up. Still, we can’t assume every last Nazi emigre to Canada was necessarily a war criminal. And yet, we’re still left with this strange conflict in Luna’s biography. Was Heinrich Mayerhofer a major part of her childhood or not? And if we was, why all the efforts to hide this past? Again, is this purely about projecting an ‘impoverished single-mother-and-daughter-against-the-world’ narrative for political purposes? Or is something else being hidden here?
And with all these very conflicted accounts between Luna and her mother’s account, on the one hand, and her extended family’s accounts on the other hand, it’s rather notable that Luna is now apparently estranged from her father’s side of the family. She even filed a stalking injunction against her uncle Edward Mayerhofer, George’s brother, in response to him raising inconsistencies with Luna’s biography on social media after she started running for public office. At the same time, her mother insists that she never knew anything about her father-in-law’s Nazi past, despite Luna’s cousin’s recounting how this was not at all a family secret. Luna seems quite desperate to distance herself as much as possible from her grandfather’s Nazi ties. So much so that she’s effectively cut herself off from the Mayerhofer side of the extended family:
It’s pretty clear the Mayerhofer side of the family doesn’t agree with or appreciate Rep. Luna’s public whitewashing of her family background. It’s a sad story overall for the family. And likely to only get sadder as Luna’s public profile continues to grow, along with the size of her distortions.
But, at the same time, there’s no denying that things like inviting the attending physicians who witnessed JFK’s body to testify before Congress is something that was previously absolutely unimaginable in today’s political environment. Major rocks really could end up being overturned by a congressional task force like this and it’s not at all clear that Republican figures like Rep. Luna acting all excited about finally revealing all these secrets really understand that what they threatening to reveal. Who knows how sincerely ‘QAnon’-ed she really is? She might genuinely think there’s a vast left-wing Deep State that she is about expose. But we can be confident she will be quietly made well aware of the far right nature of these chapters in history once the ‘re-opened investigations’ begin. How will Rep. Luna ultimately spin her investigative findings? Will it be left at “we couldn’t find an answer?” vague conclusions? Or something a more QAnon-ish ‘Communist Jewish Illuminati were behind it all!’ narrative? We don’t know yet but we can be confident it will involve some sort of distortion to cover up the far right roles in all of these chapters. Which, in a cynical sense, makes Rep. Luna actually very highly qualified to lead the effort.
The revelations await. But the theatrics are just getting started. That’s the weird state of affairs emerging between Republican members of congress and the Trump administration regarding the state secrets disclosure agenda that Trump has made one of his earliest priorities. The kind of theatrics that appear to be setting the stage for a series of disappointing non-revelatory disclosures that can potentially be blamed on some sort of last-minute ‘deep state’ actions.
It started with an interview on Fox News with Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi, where Bondi was asked about the Jeffrey Epstein client list and replied that she already had the list and was reviewing it. She also indicated she’s already started reviewing files on the JFK and MLK assassinations. When asked if she’s “seen anything”, Bondi replied “not yet.” This is a good time to recall how a 2017 interview of Epstein was revealed just days before the 2024 election where Epstein referred to Trump as his “best friend” for a decade.
Bondi also made a recent appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where she was again asked by conservative commentator Benny Johnson about when the Epstein client list will be released. Bondi replied that she’s been briefed on it but wasn’t able to talk about it publicly. Then, days later, Johnson hosts a guest on his show who made a remarkable claim regarding the FBI’s role in this disclosure process: According to former FBI agent Garret O’Boyle, the FBI is actively destroying all sorts of evidence that is slated to be revealed according to Trump’s disclosure executive order.
Following that ‘report’ on Benny Johnson’s show, a number of Republican members of congress of made tweets on X.com calling on Bondi to release all the files. Including Representative Anna Paulina Luna. As we’ve seen, Luna is the far right member of the ‘Freedom Caucus’ who is now heading the new congressional task force on national secrets. As Luna tweeted, “Reaching out on X because we can’t seem to get a response from the AG...What is the status of the documents?”
Other Republican members of congress who have also taken to Twitter to make similar demands of Bondi include Representatives Tim Burchett and Mike Collins, along with Senator Mike Lee, with all three calling for the release of the Epstein client list. Interestingly, both Collins and Lee make a reference to the release of the FBI’s files on the Las Vegas shooter. Now, as we’ve seen, while the FBI utterly refused to even acknowledge a potential far right motive for Steven Paddock’s Las Vegas massacre, witnesses reported hearing him talking like a Sovereign Citizen and about the need for someone to ‘wake up’ the American people in the weeks leading up to the attack. Are these congressmen seriously demanding that files showing Paddocks’s Sovereign Citizen sympathies be released to the public? That’s hard to imagine. So what exactly are they expecting to get released? That’s all part of what makes these claims about the FBI’s destruction of evidence so interesting: we’re seeing the beginnings of a narrative that follows along the lines of ‘we would have released all the evidence showing decades of abuse by the liberal Deep State, but the documents were destroyed by that Deep State before Donald Trump had a chance to destroy the Deep State.’ The pieces are being put into place.
And that all brings us to the interesting ‘whistleblower’ pedigree of Garret O’Boyle, the former FBI agent who started these ‘FBI document destruction’ claims: it turns out O’Boyle was one of the FBI agents who was invited to testify about the FBI’s alleged anti-conservative bias back in 2023 before the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. As we’re to see, O’Boyle’s testimony actually resulted in Democrats calling for his prosecution for perjury when he denied that his suspension from the FBI had to do with leaking sensitive documents to Project Veritas. As we’ve seen, Project Veritas basically operates like a far right disinformation outlet tasked with concocting frequently-doctored ‘evidence’ to push far right narratives.
So an FBI agent who was suspended for leaking information Project Veritas — and then lying about it to congress — and who served as a ‘whistleblower’ for the Republican-led Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is the guy who made the claims about all the FBI document destruction served as the trigger for this group of Republican members of congress suddenly asking Bondi about all these documents. We are already seeing the ‘Deep State destroyed all the documents before Donald Trump could destroy the Deep State!’ narrative being established:
““Reaching out on X because we can’t seem to get a response from the AG,” said Luna, whose Florida Gulf Coast district was redrawn in 2022 to favor a more MAGA-friendly electorate. “What is the status of the documents?””
What is the status of the documents? That’s the question publicly posed to AG Pam Bondi by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, head of the new congressional task force on national secrets. A question posed in the wake of ‘reporting’ from right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson, who was claiming that the FBI is “working day and night to destroy files” related to Epstein and maybe even the hidden secrets of the “two shooters” Luna believes were involved in the JFK assassination. What was Benny Johnson basing these claims on? That’s very unclear. But we seem to be seeing a right-wing narrative already emerging that would purportedly explain why the files eventually released on these matters will ultimately disappoint. A narrative predicated on the FBI — now run by Kash Patel — engaging in the destruction of evidence. In other words, we’re seeing a narrative about ‘Deep State’s final revenge’. Or at least that will presumably be the spin. And this all comes after a Friday interview with Fox News were Bondi told the public she was in possession of the Epstein client list and reviewing it. Strange far right theatrics around this ‘disclosure’ mandate are underway:
Interestingly, it appears that the segment of the public that has been eagerly awaiting the release of these troves of secrets documents ridiculed Rep. Luna on X following her announcement of a March 26 opening hearing for her new state secrets disclosure task force. Which gives us a clue as to part of the motive behind the theatrics we’re seeing deployed. Because the reality is that the secrets that have long animated the conservative base are consistently secrets about far right malevolence. And yet, thanks to the reality-warping power of far right propaganda outlets like InfoWars that systematically excise the far right element out of their ‘conspiracy theory’ analysis, much of that conservative base is expecting some sort of QAnon-style series of revelations about decades of vast left-wing conspiracies. The GOP, quite simply, made a number of promises it can’t realistically keep without exposing decades of far right treachery. Theatrics are going to be required to handle this situation:
Also note, when we see the article assert that it’s unclear who Rep. Luna was referring to when she talked about bringing firsthand witnesses to the JFK assassination to testify, recall how Rep Luna had called for the “attending physicians at the initial assassination and then also people who have been on the various commissions looking into — like the Warren Commission — looking into the initial assassination.” She wasn’t specifically referring to people at Dealey Plaza. That said, it’s rather notable that Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent who dove into the back of Kennedy’s limousine, just died. He was 93, so in that sense the timing wasn’t exactly surprising. Still, quite a time to die. Literally weeks before the start of this new congressional task force:
And, again, all this public questioning about “where are the files” started after Bondi gives an interview to Fox News where she acknowledged that she had the Epstein files and was already reviewing them. So it’s worth noting that in that same interview Bondi indicated that she also had already started reviewing the JFK and MLK files too. Although, when asked if she had “seen anything”, Bondi replied “not yet”:
“Bondi also stated she is “reviewing” the JFK and MLK files, which the president signed an executive order to declassify at the start of his second term. ”
It’s not just the Epstein Files. AG Pam Bondi is already reviewing JFK and MLK files. So had she “seen anything” in those files? “Not yet”, according to Bondi in that Fox New interview. Now, if the FBI really was destroying all the incriminating files as Benny Johnson claims then, sure, seeing “nothing” is exactly what we should expect. Are we getting set up for a ‘no revelations (because the Deep State destroyed it all to save the Democrats)’ narrative?
And as we can see in the following article, the members of congress openly questioning AG Bondi over the release of these documents includes Representatives Tim Burchett and Mike Collins, along with Senator Mike Lee. All three have recent tweets on X.com calling on Bondi to release the Epstein files. With Collins and Lee both calling for the release of the files on another major event in US history: the Las Vegas massacre. Again, as we’ve seen, while the FBI utterly refused to even acknowledge a potential far right motive for Steven Paddock’s Las Vegas massacre, witnesses reported hearing him talking like a Sovereign Citizen and about the need for someone to ‘wake up’ the American people in the weeks leading up to the attack. Is the FBI sitting on files of evidence of Paddock’s far right ideology? That would be quite a revelation. The kind of revelation that Collins and Lee probably aren’t super keen on publicly revealing. So what exactly is it that they’re expecting to see revealed in the Las Vegas shooter files? That’s all part of the growing mystery of the growing far right demands for the release of state secrets. Demands that, if honestly carried out, are highly likely to include all sorts of revelations of not just far right plots but, thus far, successfully covered-up far right plots:
“Now, less than a week after Bondi indicated the files would be released, Republicans are questioning why the files are not yet public. Representative Anna Paulina Luna, who recently announced that she will lead a task force focused on declassifying federal secrets, including documents related to Epstein, took to X, formerly Twitter, to question why the files are yet to be released.”
The public questions are already growing just days after Bondi’s Fox New appearance. Public questions raised exclusively by very conservative lawmakers and personalities. Bondi was even asked about the document releases by Benny Johnson at the recent CPAC gathering, which is presumably part of the pretext for Johnson’s ‘reporting’ about the FBI furiously destroying all the evidence:
And then we get to the questions raised by other members of congress like Representatives Tim Burchett, Mike Collins, and Senator Mike Lee. As we can see, both Lee and Collins specifically brought up “the Las Vegas Shooter”. Again, recall how the FBI utterly refused to even acknowledge a potential far right motive for Steven Paddock’s Las Vegas massacre, despite witnesses hearing him talking like a Sovereign Citizen and about the need for someone to ‘wake up’ the American people in the weeks leading up to the attack. How much real interest is there among these conservative congressmen in revealing what the FBI knows about Paddock’s Sovereign Citizen sympathies?
Get ready for an ‘all the files showing Steven Paddock was a pro-trans flaming liberal were destroyed by the liberal FBI’ narrative. A narrative that, again, appears to be rooted in the claims made on Benny Johnson’s show by former FBI agent Garret O’Boyle. A former agent who previously testified about the alleged anti-conservative bias inside the FBI back in 2023 as part of the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Yes, the source for claims of the FBI’s hurried destruction of evidence related to all these state secrets is the same former agent who publicly insists that the FBI is actually super-anti-conservative:
“O’Boyle testified before the Weaponization subcommittee last month at a hearing focused on alleged anticonservative bias at the FBI. He testified alongside two other self-proclaimed FBI whistleblowers whose security clearances were suspended because their conduct in Jan. 6 cases brought into question their allegiance to the U.S., a bureau official wrote to Congress.”
What kind of ‘whistleblowing’ did Garret O’Boyle engage in? Whistleblowing about the alleged anti-conservative bias at the FBI. That laughable assertion ended up with O’Boyle testifying before the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government in 2023, during which O’Boyle denied allegations that he leaked sensitive information to Project Veritas. A denial that was in stark contrast with the FBI’s explanation for who O’Boyle was suspended. And yet, as we can see in the response O’Boyle gave to NBC News back in June of 2023 as this story was playing out, he continues to deny being the source of the leak:
It’s worth noting that the lawsuits over O’Boyle’s suspension at the FBI are still ongoing. But regardless of whether or not he was properly suspended or not, the fact that the guy was the ‘anti-conservative bias at the FBI’ whistleblower tells us what we need to know about the veracity of his claims. After all, claiming the FBI is anti-conservative is about as ahistorical as claiming ‘Deep State’ is run by a bunch of liberals. But that’s the ahistorical narrative getting pushed right now...just in term for the impending ‘state secret disclosure’ let downs.
Promises made, promises
keptbroken, but it’s totally not the Trump administration’s fault. Blame that FBI. That’s the fascinating narrative that has already erupted around the ‘Phase 1’ release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Yes, it turns out the long awaited Epstein file dump was a dud. Surprise! Everything that was released had either already been published or was redacted. This is a good time to recall that 2017 interview of Epstein was revealed just days before the 2024 election where Epstein referred to Trump as his “best friend” for a decade.As one of the journalists in the White House press pool put it, “what we were looking for was hidden from us.” Or, rather, one of the ‘journalists’ in the White House press pool. Because it turns out the group of ‘journalists’ invited to the White House and given binders of this ‘Phase 1’ release consisted of 15 far right internet influencers. A group that included Jack Posobiec, Scott Presler and the people behind the accounts DC_Draino and LibsofTikTok. The public handling of this anticipated bombshell, that turned out to be a dud, was effectively done by right-wing internet trolls.
Which is not to say that these influencers didn’t express disappointment. They were openly disappointed. But as we’re going to see, it was disappointed that wasn’t specifically focused on the Trump White House. Because this disappointing ‘Phase 1′ Epstein file release was given to them with an acknowledgment by Trump’s AG Pam Bondi that it was going to disappointing and just the start. Future releases should be more interesting. Maybe. If rogue elements in the FBI don’t somehow block it first. That’s the meta-message Bondi first communicated to these influencers during their private pre-release handover of the ‘Phase 1’ binders and later communicated in a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel that was publicly released. As Bondi tells it in the letter, “the FBI Field Office in New York was in possession of thousands of pages of documents related to the investigation and indictment of Epstein.” Those thousands of pages of documents have yet to be turned over by the field office, according to Bondi. So the FBI Field Office in New York is the reason for the dud. That’s the unspoken message from Bondi to the public, using far right influencers as co-messengers.
And, of course, this all played out soon after we saw a ‘FBI is destroying all the evidence!’ narrative emerge out of right-wing media. Which raises the question as to whether or not we’re seeing the initial stage of the excuse for why the most incriminating parts of the Epstein Files will ultimately not be released. An excuse that doubles as fuel for the Project 2025. If the New York FBI field office is destroying Epstein evidence, that’s all the more of a justification for Kash Patel’s QAnon-themed purge at the FBI. And the kind of excuse that can serve as a template for the destruction of a whole lot more evidence on the rest of these ‘state secrets’. It’s a recipe for the systematic destruction of whatever real evidence left in government archives that can be blamed on ‘the Deep State’. A Deep State defined by the MAGA movement as a cabal of communist bureaucrats secretly running everything who are only now being exposed and overthrown.
As we should expect, Representative Anna Paulina Luna, who was recently tasked with heading up the congressional task force on disclosing state secrets has already taken to social media, declaring “THIS IS NOT WHAT WE OR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ASKED FOR and a complete disappointment. GET US THE INFORMATION WE ASKED FOR!” And who knows, maybe ‘Phase 2’ of the Epstein release will fulfill Rep Luna’s demands. But if not, who is she going to blame? The Trump administration? Or the New York FBI field office? The same question applies to all these influencers. It’s a question about a hypothetical. But it’s a hypothetical that’s already started playing out with this opening dud.
And then there’s the other journalistic dud in the room: the fact that these 15 far right influencers were part of the White House press pool in the first place. Because it turns out there’s a new front in Trump’s Unitary Executive-inspired Project 2025 power grab: the composition of the White House press pool is no longer self-regulated by the White House Correspondents’ Association. The White House has taken control. With immediate consequences like the ousting of the Associated Press — due to its refusal to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” — and the invitation of outlets like Gateway Pundit, Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, and Mike Lindell’s Lindell TV.
This is a good time to recall the many frivolous lawsuits against media outlets like CBS’s parent corporation, Paramount, over a supposedly doctored interview of Kamala Harris. The takeover of the White House press pool is just one more piece of a much larger campaign designed to create a tamed media landscape. This is a good time to recall how Mike Lindell showed up at the White House on December 11, 2020, and lobbied for a plot to replace CIA Deputy Director Vaughn Bishop with Kash Patel. It’ll be interesting to see how Lindell TV handles questions about Kash Patel and the FBI’s requirement to hand over secret files.
It also turns out the Pentagon has implement a similar purge of its own press corp. In fact, the “DOD rapid response” social media account recently posted “Since real journalism is dead, we’ll do it for you.”
Beyond the White House and Pentagon press pool takeovers, we’re learning about the White House’s plans for Voice of America (VOA). As we saw, the first Trump administration tried to carry out an ideological purge of the VOA in 2020 under Michael Pack’s leadership at the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM, formerly the BBG). Also recall how Pack is not only a close ally of Steve Bannon but was also the President of the Claremont Institute. A further purge of the VOA was to be expected. And it’s happening.
Chronic election denier Kari Lake has been selected as the new VOA head. Another figure who is joining returning as an adviser to the USAGM after working their during the first Trump administration is Mora Namdar. She wrote the section on the agency for Project 2025.
That’s the disturbing series of developments encompassing the ongoing cover up of the various state secrets Trump pledged to disclose. Promises were made to release everything. But, so far, it’s promises not kept, with the FBI field office publicly taking the blame at the same time Kash Patel’s FBI QAnon-inspired purge is getting underway. The narrative to turn evidence destruction into further fuel for these ‘Deep State’ purges is being established. One dud and power grab at at time:
“Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the assembled reporters the White House would make that determination instead. Leavitt said the media association previously had “dictated” who was able to report directly on Trump and with this move, she was returning “power to the people.””
The White House was returning “power to people” with its takeover of the White House press pool. A takeover that doesn’t just include the insertion of an array of far right media outlets like Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast and Lindell TV. Again, recall how Mike Lindell showed up at the White House on December 11, 2020, and lobbied for a plot to replace CIA Deputy Director Vaughn Bishop with Kash Patel. It also includes the implicit threat that the remaining outlets that have yet to be purged had better not anger the White House with too many inconvenient questions:
But the “power to the people” press pool purges aren’t limited to White House press pool. The Pentagon press pools is getting purged too. And note that when we read how the new media outlets invited into the press pool consist of seven conservative and right-wing news outlets plus the Huffington Post, keep in mind that the Huffington Post was one of the outlets kicked out of the White House press pool in recent days. Which is going to make it grimly interesting to see how ‘well behaved’ the Huffington Post reporters are with their Pentagon duties:
And, of course, this press pool purge is just one aspect of a multifaceted campaign of ‘taming’ the US media and ensuring compliant reporting. Taming that includes a slew of frivolous lawsuits that media outlets have been eagerly settling or at least seriously pondering settling, like the ongoing frivolous lawsuit against CBS’s parent corporation, Paramount, over a supposedly doctored interview of Kamala Harris. Or the attempts to punish the AP over its refusal to go along with the ‘Gulf of America’ trollish renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. The media will be tamed one way or another. Power to the people, apparently:
And then we get to Trump’s choice to lead Voice of America: chronic election-denier Kari Lake. A choice Trump appears to have made despite the fact that the appointment is actually made by the by the head of VOA’s parent agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM, formerly the BBG), and approved by a bipartisan board. Which raises the question as to whether or not that bipartisan board approval process is even going to happen at this point given the Unitary Executive theory that is guiding this administration:
And that Unitary Executive theory guiding Trump administration of course being put into place heavily through the actions of Project 2025. So it’s rather notable that one of the new advisers to VOA, Mora Namdan, wrote the Project 2025 section on their plans for the VOA. Which is a reminder that any upcoming purge of the VOA is going to be a Project 2025 guided purge. And when we see how Namdan was part of the efforts of the first Trump administration to carry out an ideological purge of the VOA under Michael Pack’s leadership at the USAGM, recall how Pack is not only a close ally of Steve Bannon but was also the President of the Claremont Institute. So when we read about how a federal judge found that Pack violated constitutional protections in the carrying out of that purge, keep in mind that whatever he was doing in 2020 is going to seem like child’s play compared the purges planned today:
What are the consequences going to be of this press pool power grab? Well, as the following articles make clear, we won’t have to wait long to find out. Because it turns out a group of 15 far right ‘influencers’ were just invited to the White House to get what appears to be exclusive early access to the ‘Phase 1’ roll out of the long-promised Epstein files. Influencers like the people behind the DC_Draino and LibsofTikTok social media accounts. Right-wing influence antics dominating the initial coverage of the Epstein files release was the obvious plan. Except their antics were mostly disappointment thanks to the fact that the released documents had either already been previously leaked to the public or were heavily redacted. It was the kind of let down that resulted in these influencers mostly expressing disappointment. But AG Pam Bondi had an excuse for the disappointment all ready to go. An excuse very much in line with the ‘FBI is destroying all the evidence!’ narrative that has already emerged in right-wing media: according to Bondi, the FBI and prosecutors in the Southern District of New York had failed to turn over other documents that Bondi had ordered them to produce:
“A total of 15 influencers were on hand for the meeting, according to Kraus. Others included conspiracy promoter Jack Posobiec, election denier Scott Presler and Rogan O’Handley and Chaya Raichik, the people behind the accounts DC_Draino and LibsofTikTok, respectively.”
Yes, far right influencers like DC_Draino and LibsofTikTok are now invited into the White House press pool. Invited by the Trump White House, of course, which has now asserted the authority to make such decisions. But they weren’t just invited into the pool. It was these influencer who were given binders of the ‘Phase 1’ release of the Epstein files. A wildly disappointing release by all accounts. Why so disappointing? Well, this is where it gets grimly interesting: AG Pam Bondi is already blaming the FBI and prosecutors in the Southern District of New York for failing to turn over the relevant documents. A claim that is very much aligned with the stories getting loudly pushed on right-wing media outlets about the FBI frantically destroying evidence. The ‘FBI destroyed all the evidence at the last minute’ narrative is getting buttressed:
And as we can see from the letter to FBI Director Kash Patel made public Thursday afternoon, Bondi is making sure the public message for the lack of any explosive revelations is blamed on the FBI Field Office in New York. The kind of public charge that is only going to fuel Patel’s ideological purge of the FBI:
“Bondi later suggested more details will be coming. In a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel made public Thursday afternoon, she claimed that she had been told “the FBI Field Office in New York was in possession of thousands of pages of documents related to the investigation and indictment of Epstein.””
More documents are forthcoming. Thousands of documents currently in the possession of the the FBI Field Office in New York. That’s the message Pam Bondi is delivering to the public, along with a demand for “full and complete Epstein files to my office, including records, documents, audio and video recordings, and materials related to Jeffrey Epstein and his clients” by 8 a.m. the next day. A deadline that has already passed. Did Bondi get the files?
And when we see how the names of some Trump family members were listed on the Epstein client list but not Donald Trump himself, this is a good time to recall that 2017 interview of Epstein was revealed just days before the 2024 election where Epstein referred to Trump as his “best friend” for a decade. Which is a reminder that Trump wasn’t just Epstein’s client. They were much much more:
Finally, we get to the loud theatrics of Rep Anna Paulina Luna, the head of the new ‘state secrets’ congressional task force. “GET US THE INFORMATION WE ASKED FOR!” Rep Luna demanded on social media. Demands that, if not met, will presumably result in the FBI Field Office in New York taking the blame:
Rep Luna is clearly unhappy. Or at least that’s the thrust of her public theatrics. But who will she ultimately blame if ‘Phase 2′ and ‘Phase 3’ are duds too? And what will she demand? Will she demand an investigation of a Trump administration cover up? Or will she demand more purges by Kash Patel? It’s not hard to guess the answer. Which is why it’s not hard to guess whether or not Rep Luna’s task force is ultimately going to be a dud too. Along with an excuse for more purges.
Get ready. It’s happening for real this time! With a few minor strings attached.
That was the message Attorney General Pam Bondi delivered to the increasingly skeptical MAGA base over the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein disclosure dud. A dud that, as we’ve seen, started with allegations in right-wing media that the FBI offices in New York were destroying evidence soon followed by a woefully underwhelming ‘Phase I’ release of already-released files. A dud of a release that Bondi publicly blamed on the New York FBI for refusing to turn over documents. And now, Bondi has revealed that an entire “truckload” of Epstein-related files was just delivered to Bondi’s office from the New York office of the FBI and Bondi is readying their release.
But not their entire release. Expect some redactions. What kind of redactions can we expect? Well, during an interview with Sean Hannity, Bondi indicated that the names of victims will be redacted. Which makes sense. But then she gets to this second category of redactions: national security concerns. It also appears Bondi included national security concerns as grounds for redactions in other cases like the JFK and MLK assassinations.
So what are the potential national security concerns surrounding the Epstein files? Bondi doesn’t say. But it should be pretty obvious that someone like Epstein — who was likely running some sort of government-protected sexual honeypot/blackmail operation target powerful people and long suspected of serving as an intelligence asset — just might have possessed troves of highly scandalous documents that could create all sorts of international scandals. Don’t forget that Alex Acosta — the federal prosecutor who handed Epstein his initial sweetheart plea deal — claimed he was told Epstein “belonged to intelligence” and that he should just leave it alone. All indications are that a full disclosure of the Epstein files could be wildly embarrassing not just to powerful individuals but also governments. Beyond that, there’s the reality that Epstein claimed in a 2017 interview revealed just days before the 2024 election that Donald Trump was his “best friend” for a decade. What kind of ‘national security’ concerns could revelations like that create now that Trump is back in the White House? In other words, Bondi just gave herself the freedom to effectively redact the most important and explosive Epstein revelations. At the same time she just pledged to release the ‘truckload’ of documents that the New York FBI office was allegedly withholding.
And that brings us to another update on Bondi’s highly public spat with the New York branch of the FBI: the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York field office, James Dennehy, was just ordered to resign without any explanation. Now, it’s important to keep in mind that Dennehy’s firing was almost a given at this point after he wrote a memo to FBI staff members last month calling on them to “dig in” and resist the Trump administration’s ongoing institutional purge and that letter was reported on by the New York Times. There was no way he wasn’t going to fired at some point after that. But that’s part of what makes the timing of this firing all the more interesting. Instead of firing him right away, he was apparently allowed to stay on the job long enough to allow this ‘FBI in NY is withholding/destroying all the Epstein files’ narrative take hold. Interesting timing.
But despite all the theatrics coming out of the Trump administration over the release of these files, it’s not like there’s no reason to suspect the FBI — along with all sorts of other government agencies — really are resistant to the full disclosure of the Epstein files. After all, if he really was a US intelligence asset there’s no way that’s going to be allowed to be revealed. Hence all the necessary theatrics. Which brings us to a remarkable update on the Epstein investigation that we got back in January of 2024. An update that emerged during the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell when FBI agent Kelly Maguire testified about the FBI’s handling of the evidence recovered from the safe that was found in Epstein’s New York residence during an 2019 raid of the property. Recall how, as we learn at the time, that safe contained a number of very interesting items including a Saudi Arabian passport issued in the 1980s. The passport had Epstein’s photo but a fake name. And listed Saudi Arabia as Epstein’s place of residence. Well, guess what happened to the contents of that safe following the FBI raid: nothing. They literally did not remove the contents of the safe because they lacked a warrant to allow it, according to agent Maguire. Instead, the items in the safe were photographed. And when FBI agents returned to the New York residence later that year to retrieve the contents of the safe, they discovered the contents had all been taken. They were later returned by Richard Kahn, Epstein’s former lawyer and executor of his estate. Maguire could not confirm if the content on the returned CDs was the same as the ones photographed but asserted that all items had been accounted for.
So in 2019, during Trump’s first term, Epstein’s New York residence was raided and the contents of his safe were allowed to be taken and then returned by his lawyer. And the FBI apparently haplessly allowed this all to happen. It’s certainly not a great look for the New York branch of the FBI. But, again, it’s hard not to notice how this was all under Trump’s first watch. A watch that included the still-unexplained and highly suspicious ‘suicide’ of Epstein in federal jail cell. It’s all a reminder that the Trump administration’s high profile theatrics around the release of the Epstein files is probably being done with the knowledge that much of that evidence that’s supposed to be disclosed today was likely quietly destroyed already during the first Trump administration and some sort of cover story is now needed:
“Bondi now claims that a “source” told her that there were thousands of pages pertaining to Epstein that remained in the Southern District of New York, the district where Epstein was being tried for sex trafficking when he died in 2019. Bondi has intimated that the FBI and the SDNY withheld those documents from her when she requested the full Epstein dossier. She now says that, with the help of new MAGA FBI director Kash Patel, a “truckload” of documents have been acquired from SDNY and that those documents will soon be made public.”
A “truckload” of Epstein-related files have been acquired from the SDNY and will soon be made public. That’s the remarkable pledge AG Pam Bondi just made, days after publicly accusing the SDNY and New York branch of the FBI of refusing to hand over thousands of documents. What’s the excuse for the next round of underwhelming releases going to be? Well, we already have our hint: national security concerns. Yes, get ready for partially redacted releases. Redacted, in part, to protect victims. But also redacted for vague “national security” reasons. Also note how it’s unclear if Bondi’s ‘national security’ considerations were specific to the Epstein case or if it applied to the other state secret topics like the JFK and MLK assassination. Now, on the one hand, we should expect national security concerns to apply to all of these cases. And yet, as the article notes, the JFK and MLK cases are decades old. If there’s are national security concerns remaining in those cases after all these decades, it’s presumably massively scandalous national security concern. Also keep in mind that when we are presented with the twin possibilities — 1) there is some sort of conspiracy involving a rogue wing of the FBI and the legal system in New York or 2), Bondi is basically inventing a narrative to justify the government’s resistance to disclosing the files — those aren’t actually mutually exclusive scenarios. It’s very possible the FBI and SDNY is withholding some highly sensitive documents and it’s very possible the Trump administration is fine with that and also fine with pinning the blame on the FBI and SDNY:
And then we get to that very interesting history around Bondi’s own work as a Florida AG from 2011 to 2019, a period of time when Bondi had every opportunity to reopen the case or launch a probe. Why did that never happen? Could it have something to do with the remarkable claim made by Alex Acosta, the federal attorney accuse of arranging the sweetheart non-prosecution federal plea deal for Epstein? Acosta, who was working for the Southern District of Florida at the time, claims he was told Epstein belonged to intelligence and should be left alone. What are the odds Bondi, as Florida’s AG, never caught wind of that? Keep in mind that getting tipped off that Epstein was a protected intelligence asset might be incredibly scandalous for the US government but it’s probably one of the best excuses individual officials can give for their inaction:
And as the article also reminds us, it’s not like we don’t already have a preponderance of circumstantial evidence indicating a government desire to silence Epstein for good. A forensic pathologist hired by Epstein’s brother did conclude that he was likely killed in jail, after all:
And as were going to see in the following piece, this latest ‘update’ of sorts by Bondi about the “truckload” of Epstein documents just turned over by the FBI — with all of the implied hope for big revelations to come that are implied in such a statement — comes at the same time we’re learning James Dennehy, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York field office, was just ordered to resign without any explanation. Although, to some extent, no explanation was really needed given that this same assistant director who sent a memo last month to the FBI staff serving under him calling on them to “dig in” in the face of the Trump administration’s FBI purge. Granted, calling on agents to “dig in” in the face of what appears to be an unconstitutional executive branch power grab that amounts to the re-implementation of the spoils system, isn’t really the kind of action that should justify getting fired. And, of course, Dennehy’s firing comes days after Bondi publicly accused the New York branch of the FBI of withholding thousands of Epstein-related documents:
“James Dennehy, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York field office, said in a note to staff that he was told to put in his retirement papers without any explanation.”
It’s not exactly a surprise firing. But the timing sure is interesting. Interesting, and yet presumably inevitable after Dennehy, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York field office, declared in a letter to the FBI staff that was ultimately reported in the New York Times that it was “time for me to dig in”. As we can see now, digging in didn’t work:
And while the forced resignation of the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York field office should raise all sorts of questions about whether or not the FBI really was withholding damning Epstein-related files, here’s a story from January 2024 about a pretty incredible question related to the FBI’s handling of the most sensitive evidence discovered at Epstein’ s New York city residence: during the FBI’s 2019 raid of Epstein’s NYC residence, the contents of a safe containing all sorts of materials including tapes, CDs, passports, and pictures were NOT immediately seized by the FBI. Why? Well, the FBI claims their warrant didn’t allow for the removal of the contents. Instead, they just photographed the contents. Later, when agents returned to seize the evidence, it turns out the contents of the safe had been removed. They were only later returned by Richard Kahn, Epstein’s former lawyer and executor of his estate. We only learned of all of this thanks to the testimony of FBI agent Kelly Maguire during Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial. Maguire could not confirm if the content on the returned CDs was the same as the ones photographed but asserted that all items had been accounted for. So when it comes to the FBI’s role in the disappearance of the most incriminating Epstein-related documents, it’s important to keep in mind that the FBI apparently allowed Epstein’s lawyer to remove the contents of Epstein’s honeypot safe and return them later:
“Among the items said to be missing are tapes, CDs, passports and pictures all located inside a safe within the property during a siege on the home in July 2019, shortly after Epstein was arrested.”
Well that’s all sorts of interesting: tapes, CDs, passports and pictures found inside a safe inside Epstein’s New York home had gone missing. Hundreds of items. Which sure sounds like Epstein’s blackmail treasure trove. And yet, during Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial, FBI agent Kelly Maguire testified that the FBI agents that conducted the initial 2019 raid of the home did not have a warrant for the removal of the items found in that safe. Instead, they only photographed the contents. And when agents returned, the contents had vanished but were subsequently returned in two suitcases by Richard Kahn, Epstein’s former lawyer and executor of his estate. Was it confirmed that Kahn returned everything in the photographs? Nope:
It’s just one more remarkable twist in a legal saga of remarkable twists. A legal saga that, by all appearances, centers around some sort of government protected honeypot operation. The kind of operation that could be used to blackmail powerful figures around the world. Which is part of what makes the ambiguity about which government’s intelligence agencies Epstein may have been working for so intriguing. Was he feeding blackmail information to the CIA? Mossad? Both? Anyone else?
And as Pam Bondi warned us, national security risks are going to be reason enough for redactions. Which makes this a good time to remind ourselves that this whole sordid state of affairs keeps posing the same sad meta-question about our civic responsibilities: if a series of revelations are so scandalous that they would destroy public and international faith in the basic decency of the ruling establishment, would the disclosure of those scandals pose enough of a threat to social order to justify their further non-disclosure? Because that appears to be the extremely sad question the US government is dealing with when it comes to these Epstein files. An extremely sad question that presumably applies to all the other mega-scandals the Trump administration has promised to finally reveal. Finally. Eventually. Any day now. With a few redactions. But don’t worry, it will only be the most explosive stuff, redacted for the sake of the nation and its security, of course.