☕️ BEGINNINGS ☙ Saturday, July 26, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

The RussiaGate narrative armor officially begins cracking open, and the Epstein Drama just took its wildest, most promising turn yet. You won't believe what just happened and what it likely means.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Saturday! Which means it’s time for the Weekend Edition, vacation style. Only one more week of travel blogging, as we close in on August and begin racing toward the holidays. Prepare for pumpkin. In today’s roundup: New York Times’ RussiaGate narrative armor begins cracking like a peeled egg; and the most mind-blowing but under-reported development yet in the unfolding Epstein drama. I promise this will make you think about the Epstein saga in a whole new way.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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Uh-oh! Yesterday, the New York Times retreated from its “unsubstantiated” castle and began fleeing down the escape hill of messiness. The perfectly delicious headline:

Messy! The nuanced difference between a “News Analysis” and an “Op Ed” may escape most readers, but so far as I can tell, the distinction is that it was written by a staff reporter who came out of the closet with overt bias.

RussiaGate’s defensive ramparts are crumbling.

“Some of the information has not been made public before,” staff reporter Charlie Savage explained. “It provides some messy details about how the intelligence community assessment was hurriedly produced during Mr. Obama’s final months in office … (and) the newly disclosed material complicates (Obama’s) narrative.”

It’s messy and complicated.

I’ll give Charlie Savage some credit. Times readers finally discovered what the dispute is all about. “Mr. Trump has accused Mr. Obama of treason,” the story continued, “proclaiming that President Barack Obama and his team torqued the intelligence analysis process to deliberately discredit Mr. Trump’s election.”

While giving it his best to undermine the conclusions, and stretching the passive voice to a breaking point, Savage admitted that the 2017 assessment smells fishy. At first blush, it looks bad. It was an “unusually rushed and tightly controlled process,” Savage conceded, “in which senior leaders like John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director, and James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, played a more direct role than is typical.”

More damningly, Savage all but admitted that John Brennan lied to Congress. Here it is, in Savage’s own words, so I won’t be accused of cherry-picking:

An “annex” is a document attached to the main report to support its claims and conclusions. In the legal world, we call them “exhibits.” But Brennan swore under oath that the discredited dossier was “not used in any way.” But attaching the whole damnable thing to your intelligence assessment is clearly “using it,” and not just in “any way,” but more like directly.

In other words —words Savage did not use— Brennan lied to Congress. Five Pinnochios. Prepare for perjury charges, jackass. Had it been a former Trump official, the media would be camped on his front lawn with a forensic lip-reader and an indictment countdown clock.

On Wednesday —the day after Tulsi’s referral— the DOJ accepted the criminal referrals, and promptly announced launching a whole task force.

And just think: If Charlie Savage finds the process messy and complicated, wait till they see what’s coming next. Because things are about to get a whole lot messier and significantly more complicated for Obama’s shadow cabinet of 51 retired spooks who vouched for the laptop lie, ‘torqued’ the Russia narrative, and signed their names to the illusion of credibility like it was a group Valentine to the Deep State.

This scandal is traveling at Warp Six. It only took 24 hours to form a DOJ strike force. Criminal referrals are flying like subpoenas in a derecho. Brennan’s already halfway under the bus, and Clapper’s probably pricing extradition insurance. The narrative isn’t just complicated, it’s combusting. And all the natsec lifers who once thought “plausible deniability” was a strategy are about to learn that sometimes, strategic ambiguity is not a viable defense.

As if that weren’t bad enough for the deep state, the Epstein noose tightened yesterday, and things got a whole lot messier and even more complicated.

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Nobody saw this coming. I mean nobody. Yesterday, the Times ran another electrifying story headlined, “After Ghislaine Maxwell Interview, Concerns Mount Over Possibility of a Trump Pardon.” Pardon concerns mount! In the passive voice! By themselves!

Yesterday, in the warm, cozy, Sunshine State climate, “Todd Blanche, Attorney General Pam Bondi’s top deputy, concluded a second extraordinary day of interviews with Ms. Maxwell,” the article explained.

In other words, after years of Biden Administration stonewalling (and file padding), Ghislaine Maxwell got a two-day DOJ interview faster than Little Caesars could deliver a jailhouse pizza. And not just any random DOJ interviewer, either. They didn’t send some junior prosecutor with a legal pad who used to work for Maurene Comey.

They sent Trump’s former personal defense attorney turned Deputy Attorney General— the DOJ’s second in command.

Comparing it to a deposition, two days of DOJ interviews requires at least four days of prep time. In other words, DOJ’s number two cleared his calender for this. It wasn’t an interview; it was a mission.

Democrats, who ten minutes ago were pounding podiums demanding full transparency of the carefully curated Biden FBI files, were shocked to discover that Trump has another untainted source of information— Ghislaine Maxwell, chilling in a Florida prison like a long-forgotten, sealed box in the bottom of the evidence locker.

Now Democrats are suddenly sweating like an OnlyFans producer in church.

“The Blanche-Maxwell discussion,” the Times soberly reported, “has stoked concerns from critics of Mr. Trump that he may grant Ms. Maxwell a reprieve.” (Unnamed critics, of course.)

🔥 Ghislaine is unspoiled evidence. Astonishingly, no one had ever bothered interviewing her before. Not during the original Epstein investigation, not during her trial, not during five years of media blackout, strategic amnesia, and hot-potato footwork with the Epstein client list. And now, after she spilled the tea for ten hours over two days to Trump’s former lawyer turned top DOJ official, suddenly it’s a constitutional crisis.

Maxwell’s lawyer, David Markus, said DOJ officials had “asked about every possible thing imaginable.” Todd Blanche asked Maxwell about over 100 named individuals, and she dished the dirt. Markus said his client “answered every single question asked of her over the last day and a half.” Uh oh.

It was the most hilariously ironic twist yet. Late yesterday, reporters (obviously primed by someone) demanded to know whether Trump would pardon Maxwell in exchange for her testimony. President Trump, classically noncommital, replied, “I’m allowed to do it, but it’s something I haven’t thought about.”

🔥 Democrats are losing their minds. Senate minority leader Chuck “Chuckie” Schumer wildly speculated it was “some kind of a corrupt deal so that she can exonerate Donald Trump.” A lone protester (haha!) at the courthouse, Lisa Lloyd, 64, told rapt Times reporters, “This is wrong. Anyone who is concerned with justice should be appalled by this.”

The reporters didn’t get the pardon idea from Trump, Todd Blanche, or Maxwell’s lawyer. “We haven’t spoken to the president or anybody about a pardon just yet,” Markus said. “The president this morning said he had the power to do so. We hope he exercises that power.”

So let’s add this up. First, Democrats demand full transparency. Then, as soon as Trump sends DOJ’s second-in-command to find the facts, they started rioting like caged rhesus monkeys who just found out the banana shipment got rerouted to El Paso and incinerated. A pardon would be a travesty of justice!

Reporters sure have short memories. What about Biden’s pardons? That was what, less than 12 months ago? Remember that aging but remarkably spry human cockroach, Fauci? Or Biden’s entire family? Or the grotesque January 6th Committee— none of whom refused their pardons in principle?

🔥 Apart from Epstein himself —who is currently unavailable due to an unfortunate mishap of being suicided in a poorly run, high-security federal facility in New York— there is no better witness on Earth than Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell might even be better than Epstein.

As Miami Herald investigative reporter Julie K. Brown has said many times, man-baby Epstein never did anything for himself. No. Maxwell did it for him.

Epstein was the front of the house. Maxwell was the kitchen, the accounting department, and the security system. She holds the map, the manifest, and —most importantly— the motive. This is exactly why the political class is panicking. Because it wasn’t just an airy, high-level interview. This was an authorized data download from the last living hard drive, carefully preserved in a Florida (not New York) prison.

The reason they are floating the pardon issue is simple: they’re desperately trying to discredit Ghislaine Maxwell before her testimony surfaces. It’s narrative preemption—classic information warfare. If she names someone inconvenient, say, Chuck Schumer, the response is already baked into the narrative custard: She only said that to get herself out of prison!

But it won’t work. The reason will become clear in a couple more paragraphs.

The FBI’s years-long non-investigation of Epstein is backfiring spectacularly. In a sane world, by now Maxwell would have sat for thousands of hours of interviews, if only to get herself out of ‘the hole’ and be assigned to laundry duty.

The Times insinuated (not very subtly) that Trump is dangling a pardon to get Maxwell to clear his name. But … what is he supposed to do? Not question the best living witness? And as recently as yesterday’s edition, the Times demanded all the Epstein evidence come out.

Seriously, you just can’t please these people.

🔥 They thought they had Trump right where they wanted him, dead to rights, with a compromised FBI file. But one news cycle later, the press, the Democrats, and the entire institutional ecosystem are flailing like they just realized the ground they’ve been standing on might be made of quicksand.

Trump didn’t resist interviewing Maxwell. He didn’t drag it out. He didn’t get into a highly public battle with Maxwell’s lawyers. He could’ve easily put Maxwell in a legal box where she’d have pleaded the Fifth Amendment if they’d asked her whether she wanted bologna or plain rice for lunch.

Now, haha, Democrats are being forced to pivot again, and pre-bunk the exact same evidence they were just demanding be produced.

I’ll end with this bit of speculation: In legal terms, the new Epstein timeline is meteoric. It has been only about three weeks between the DOJ’s release of its weird, unsigned, “case closed” letter and Ghislaine Maxwell’s interview by Trump’s former lawyer and DOJ number two.

One wonders whether this whole timeline existed before the “case closed” letter surfaced or was even drafted.

Interviews like this don’t materialize overnight. They require vetting, security clearance, strategy meetings, draft immunity parameters, and agreement from both sides. It all looks much more like a carefully orchestrated plan than a knee-jerk reaction.

🔥 Okay, are you ready for the really mind-blowing part? Because I think we are beginning to see where all this is headed. And it is glorious.

With Ghislaine’s interview already in the can, President Trump now has his finger on the trigger. And it’s a light pull. He doesn’t need hearings. He doesn’t need press conferences. He only needs one line —one beautifully improvised, brutally effective off-the-cuff Truth Social post— and the hidden sinkhole will open underneath his enemies’ feet, dropping them into political Hades. Something like this:

“Merrick Garland’s investigation was a total joke! One of the WORST investigations EVER! Completely pathetic. He never even talked to the best witness we have—the best, by far. Didn’t ask her a single question. NOT ONE! So now, we’re doing it right. We’re starting over. It’s going to be a brand-new investigation, the most transparent investigation you’ve ever seen. Totally open, totally honest. People are demanding we get to the truth and WE ARE! MAGA!”

If he does it, well, Moses, smell the roses.

With the FBI now headed by two Epstein hawks —Kash Patel and Dan Bongino— and primed by the one witness interview that should have kicked off any legitimate FBI investigation, now, finally, the real Epstein investigation can begin. They can launch a brand-new, untainted investigation with Maxwell’s help.

If I’m right —and I think I am— that single Truth Social post would tie off every loose Epstein thread and launch the global, all-out attack the QAnoners have predicted since 2017. Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, who’ve waited their whole lives for this, would be finally loosed from their cages. No more talk about resignations or heated infighting.

As for Trump, he’d prove he is obviously unconcerned, vaporizing whatever political “problem” he might have had with his base. And the President would have —once again— turned the politically unthinkable into something not only possible but demanded by his enemies.

Don’t make me speculate on the possible implications of a new, “totally transparent” Epstein investigation on the midterm elections next year. Added to RussiaGate, it would make two Watergate-sized scandals further shredding the already-fractured Democrat tent.

Last week, the case was closed. This week, the DOJ just got an evidentiary goldmine. It’s a fresh batch of never-before-heard evidence that justifies setting the “case closed” memo to the side.

Wait. It gets better. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 6(e) governs Grand Jury Secrecy. Under DOJ guidelines, any credible new evidence tied to a case’s original scope (or even a parallel matter) lets prosecutors seek reauthorization of the grand jury process.

They can impanel a new Grand Jury.

Even better, the existence of a Rule 6(e) grand jury proceeding is itself secret. If Bongino’s FBI and Bondi’s DOJ start pulling in records, bank statements, flight manifests, or issuing subpoenas, they don’t have to explain why. They can just invoke Rule 6(e), and boom— they’re off to the races, and no one outside the courtroom has any right to know what’s happening.

A Rule 6(e) motion can be filed under seal. It can be decided ex parte, without any opposing lawyers present. All the DOJ needs to say is, “We’ve received new evidence. We need to reopen the Epstein matter under appropriate grand jury authority.” Once approved, it allows DOJ to disclose grand jury material to new investigators and bring in key witnesses like Maxwell without tipping off targets.

It could have already happened. Or, Maxwell’s testimony could be the new evidence they needed to support a Rule 6(e) motion.

Rule 6(e) may be the key that explains the whole timeline, including how and why Todd Blanche —Trump’s former lawyer qua Deputy Attorney General— suddenly showed up in Tallahassee, ready to spend eight hours in prison with Ghislaine Maxwell.

Maxwell’s value isn’t about whether she can clear Trump, whether she’s sympathetic or deserves a pardon, or whether her testimony is reliable. She’s a key witness —the key witness— and her testimony is inarguably material. And Trump’s lawyers just secured her testimony into the record before any rogue judge or mystery assassin could stop it.

Folks, unless I’m way off base, the drama is about to be multiplied times infinity. This isn’t the inglorious, sputtering end of an inconvenient scandal. This looks exactly like the beginning of a Reckoning.

I’ve previously counseled patience with the Epstein case. We don’t and shouldn’t know the plan. Let the man work!

Have a wonderful weekend! Coffee & Covid will return on Monday morning, bright and (mostly) early, with the latest roundup of essential news and commentary.

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