☕️ HONEYPOT ☙ Friday, July 18, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

C&C Special Edition: Trump cracks the Epstein vault; Bondi moves to unseal grand jury files; Dems panic as trap backfires; media chaos begins; Disclosure Phase 1 is live—expect flares and fangs.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Friday! Once again, the news cycle was co-opted by late-breaking news. Once again, at the worst possible time during a C&C vacation hiatus. Today, we focus on the only news anybody wants to talk about— the first phase of the Epstein disclosure wars has officially begun. Unsurprisingly, it’s so much more than it appears. A special edition.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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The final battle is beginning. Yesterday, the New York Times excreted a top-of-page story cluster triumphantly headlined, “Trump Tells Bondi to Seek Release of Epstein Grand Jury Testimony.” The sub-headline sneered, “Even if the request succeeds, it would fall far short of critics’ demands to release all investigative materials.” In other words: it hasn’t happened yet; they don’t know what it will be; but already it isn’t good enough.

President Trump has them right where he wants them. I first must walk you through the fog, but the final dot will blow your mind.

The media and the internets burst into flames last night, after President Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to immediately seek court approval to release the sealed 2019 Epstein Grand Jury testimony.

The move came shortly after the Wall Street Journal published a salacious and thinly sourced birthday note allegedly sent from Trump to Epstein in 2003. The letter included “a sexually suggestive drawing,” hints of “shared secrets,” and an implied threat of blackmail-by-leak. Trump immediately denied the report and promised prompt lawsuits, accusing CEO Rupert Murdoch of reneging on a promise to “take care of it.”

Let’s take a moment to look at this “letter.”

🔥 The Wall Street Journal’s hit piece was headlined, “Exclusive - Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump.” Allegedly, the letter was included in a leather-bound scrapbook of birthday wishes that Ghislaine Maxwell collected for Epstein in 2003.

To say the letter was ‘thinly sourced’ is like saying the Titanic had a slight moisture problem.

First, the Journal has neither the Birthday Scrapbook nor the letter. It said it “reviewed” the letter. When? Where? How? Was it just read to them over the phone? What does “reviewed” even mean? For sure, it means they don’t have it. The Journal described the letter as being “among documents examined by Justice Department officials” —what officials?— “according to people who have reviewed the pages.” People? The Village People? Psychics?

“I’m sensing the letter was typed… I’m seeing small arcs… there’s… a signature? Yes! It’s forming… it’s… Donald!”

In other words: the whole Scrapbook story is double anonymous hearsay. Some unnamed “people” said some unidentified “officials” reviewed the birthday binder and the original letter. Even bad lawyers wouldn’t consider trying to admit that in court. “Um, your Honor, someone told us that some government officials may have seen a letter, which someone else described to us… and we’d like to enter that into evidence.” Okay.

Next, the Journal’s future defendants admitted they know nothing about the letter’s provenance. “It isn’t clear,” the Journal admitted, “how the letter with Trump’s signature was prepared.” Great. And there’s no chain of custody. Nobody’s ever even heard of this Birthday Scrapbook before. “The existence of the album and the contents of the birthday letters,” the Journal conceded, “haven’t previously been reported.”

No leaks, no mention in any of the court cases, nothing, in over twenty years.

It’s just too much. Biden’s DOJ raided Mar-a-Lago for newspaper clippings, indicted Trump four separate times, subpoenaed everyone but Barron, surveilled campaign officials, and criminalized memes. They even leaked photos from the Mar-a-Lago raid. But we’re supposed to believe Democrats sat on a perfectly gift-wrapped, visually grotesque, plausibly deniable Trump–Epstein letter since 2019 or earlier— and just … what? Forgot to use it? Even during impeachment one and two?

They leaked this, but not the Birthday Scrapbook?

Notwithstanding all those problems, the Journal glowingly described the “bawdy” letter. It waited till about three pages in, and then set out a very non-Trumpian, odd, quippy typed (not handwritten) fake dialogue between Trump and Epstein that sounds just like a scripted confession. “Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey,” the letter gushed. “Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it.”

To make sure we got the message, the carefully scripted, incriminating-sounding typed dialogue was allegedly placed inside a hand-drawn cartoon of a naked woman, with “breasts denoted by small arcs” (small breasts? pre-pubescent ones?) above “Donald,” scrawled as a signature in the sketch’s pubic region.

Get this— despite the obvious, explosive, salacious potential, the Journal did not publish a picture of the actual letter. It did not even explain the letter’s absence. Why not show the letter? Is it sealed? Confidential? Restricted? If so, why not just say that? Or is it possible the Journal never actually saw the letter but just “reviewed” an oral description?

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Journal did not mention any forensic analysis. The convenient fact the incredibly suspicious ‘dialogue’ was typed eliminates handwriting analysis of that part, but what about the signature? The drawing? You’d think they’d have cited six forensic handwriting analyses before going to print with something like this.

Only the original letter with the wet ink signature could be subjected to forensic analysis. Anything else could be copy-pasta. Stroke direction, pen pressure, ink composition, paper age and source— none of these things can be analyzed from a PDF or cell phone snap.

In other words, it’s thinner than Shell station toilet paper. It’s so thin, if you held it up to the light, you’d see the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover shaking his head. So, the alleged letter is a stinking pile of hot garbage, and Trump is about to get another fat settlement to fund the “Golden Defamation Wing” of his presidential library.

Now let’s get back to Bondi.

🔥 Before Jeffrey Epstein could face trial in 2019 for running a sex trafficking ring so depraved it made Eyes Wide Shut look like a summer church potluck, a federal grand jury had to greenlight the case. A grand jury is like a legal litmus test. It doesn’t decide guilt, just whether there’s enough sketchy behavior to let prosecutors haul someone into court. In Epstein’s case, the grand jury reviewed evidence and testimony about a conspiracy to commit sex trafficking and sex trafficking of minors, then issued the indictment that landed him in that now-infamous Manhattan jail cell, where the cameras flickered, the guards napped and … well, you know the rest.

The grand jury in the Epstein case likely saw a one-sided highlight reel from prosecutors—because that’s how grand juries work. No defense attorneys, no cross-examination, just prosecutors walking jurors through flight logs, victim statements, bank transfers, surveillance footage, and possibly a who’s-who of eyebrow-raising guest lists.

They probably heard tearful testimony from survivors, saw photos of underage girls at Epstein’s homes, and maybe even reviewed those infamous massage room schedules. The pitch wouldn’t have been subtle: “Here’s a billionaire who shipped teenage girls across state lines like Amazon packages. Now can we please charge him with conspiracy and sex trafficking of minors?”

The jurors, ordinary citizens locked in a private, secured courtroom with all this filth, only had one job: to decide whether there was probable cause to indict. They did. And that indictment probably contains some very awkward facts for very powerful people.

To get an indictment, prosecutors did not necessarily need to show the jurors the client list, Epstein’s intelligence connections, the blackmail ring, or even name a single customer. But in 2019, they were operating under the full assurance that the grand jury room was a legal black box. Prosecutors present evidence to a grand jury understanding that the proceedings are secret, and that any records, transcripts, or testimony will remain sealed, absent a very rare court order.

In a politically charged case like Epstein’s, federal prosecutors almost certainly and confidently assumed that the grand jury transcripts would never see daylight. Prosecutors try to make their best case to a grand jury. That’s literally the job. And in a case like Epstein’s, they might have made it with a firehose, believing no one would ever read the transcript.

🔥 If the court grants Bondi’s request to unseal the Epstein grand jury transcripts, don’t expect a Hollywood-style exposé with names, photos, and smoking-gun confessions. Expect a dense, heavily redacted legal document—probably hundreds of pages long—filled with euphemisms, “Witness A”-style pseudonyms, and enough black ink to empty a toner cartridge.

Victims’ identities will be shielded, uncharged third parties will be scrubbed out, and any still-classified investigative details will vanish beneath thick redaction bars. But what does remain —timelines, charges, patterns, and unredacted narrative structure— could still paint a damning picture of what prosecutors knew, when they knew it, and how close they may have gotten to people the public has never been allowed to name.

Still, if the Epstein grand jury transcripts are unsealed, it would be one of the most explosive document releases in modern American legal history. If Epstein was killed to prevent the trial, releasing the Grand Jury report will give us the best look at what evidence would have surfaced in public. Presumably, it was evidence worth killing for.

In a way, this is Trump’s Revenge.

The DOJ renewed the Epstein investigation during Trump 1.0’s first year in office. They indicted the Financial Man of Mystery (at the Grand Jury) in 2019, and were preparing to try his case when Epstein died in federal custody, driving the whole thing into a graveyard ditch. Now, President Trump is ordering Pam Bondi to expose what was about to come out at trial in 2019, but had never gotten the chance.

And this probably wouldn’t have been politically possible, absent the Democrats’ recent demands for transparency while they were drunk on scandal momentum. Now, it’s bipartisan.

🔥 What about the court? The case now lands into the lap of an unlucky federal district judge, who will probably have to wade through tons of opposition. Lawyers for the victims will probably oppose release. Shady third parties will probably file sealed motions to at least scrub references to themselves. Each of these opposing motions is entitled to due process. Absent a miracle, expect the process to take weeks or even months.

The New York Times sneered that unsealing the grand jury transcripts isn’t the same as releasing “the whole Epstein file.” That’s technically true; but it’s also deeply misleading.

The Grand Jury testimony represents the best version of the case the DOJ believed it could prove, before Epstein’s death, before redactions, and without political caution. It’s the raw indictment pitch, presented to citizens in private, without spin or PR filter. Unlike rumors, anonymous leaks, or pages of potentially related or unrelated documents, grand jury material is presented under oath. The witnesses are sworn. The evidence is carefully cataloged. It’s all been formally curated by prosecutors.

Releasing the transcript offers a way to pull back the curtain without doxing the victims or dumping volumes of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). It threads the delicate needle between secrecy and public interest. On the other hand, the full Epstein archive —meaning, the totality of what was seized by the FBI (photos, hard drives, flight logs, emails, letters, videos, contacts, interviews, account statements, etc.)— almost certainly contains a hopeless chowder of damning evidence, irrelevant junk, and misleading red herrings.

Any experienced litigator will agree that too much evidence is just as bad, or maybe even worse, than too little evidence.

🔥 Now we reach the most curious aspect of this developing ‘scandal.’ Some people have speculated that Biden’s DOJ invested its four years packing the Epstein file with misleading disinformation, or even manufactured evidence (like Birthday Scrapbooks nobody’d ever heard of), intentionally turning the full file into a politically useless powder keg of devastating ammunition aimed at Democrat enemies.

Let’s explore that notion a little further.

When Trump calls the Epstein scandal a “Democrat hoax” and “scam,” most people assume he’s gaslighting. But … what if he means something more tactical? Maybe Trump isn’t saying that Epstein didn’t commit crimes. Maybe he’s hinting that Democrats (and their deep state allies) weaponized the aftermath. Such as padding the FBI case file with misleading misinformation; creating just-plausible-enough “evidence” to entrap Trump or his allies; flooding the archive with innuendo, red herrings, and manufactured grotesqueries (like “bawdy letters” allegedly signed “Donald”); and intentionally making it too politically dangerous to release.

Maybe they aimed to put Trump in an impossible fix: either don’t release, and break his promises, or release, and get manufactured Epstein spooge all over himself and every other significant Republican. Headline from WaPo, Wednesday:

Democrats had four long years to get ready. This theory would explain why Bondi first said, “I have the file”— and then said, “there’s nothing to see here.” Maybe she wasn’t backtracking. Maybe she was dodging the trap. She didn’t flip— she recognized a setup. Ecstatic NPR headline, this week:

In other words, when Trump says Democrat hoax, maybe he means they sabotaged the file.

Did Bondi discover the Democrats had prepared a honeypot? They were aware of all the many promises made by Bondi, Kash, and Bongino to release the entire Epstein file. Did they prepare for it, by loading the file up with so many lies it would be impossible to untangle? Fine. We’ll pack it so full of so much scandalous crap that when it comes out, it destroys Trump’s people, not ours.

But Trump went sideways, and said, “we’re not releasing it.” It caused the Democrats to lose their marbles, turn on a dime, and suddenly start demanding it now! Hence the sudden surge of press coverage, calls from the left for “full transparency,” and suspiciously timed media grenades (like the mystery Birthday Scrapbook) that just happened to target Trump and no one else.

Unlike the bloated FBI archive, the grand jury transcript is court-sealed, time-locked (2019), prosecutor-curated, sworn and vetted, and immune to post-hoc deep-state meddling. It’s the version of the case built before Epstein’s death, before Biden’s DOJ, and before the cleanup crew arrived. It’s the last known account of the crimes as the Trump DOJ saw them.

When Democrats suddenly start demanding the release of the “full Epstein file” —after four years of DOJ silence, sealed records, and zero momentum— they mean they want their trap to spring. The last thing they want is for the grand jury file to be opened.

So Trump decided not to pry open the compromised FBI file, but the sealed courtroom vault. He outplayed them.

Finally, despite the overheated corporate media claims and wishful thinking, CNN found that the MAGA faithful are not leaving Trump. If anything, Trump’s approval rating among Republicans is climbing:

CLIP: CNN finds increasing Trump approval rating among Republicans (1:37).

The Epstein case’s global scale, and its involvement with some of the world’s most well-known celebrities and top political figures, make it potentially the greatest scandal in human history. Nothing else comes close. Not Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, or even perhaps the Church Abuse Scandal. So it should surprise no one that the route to the truth looks like something from a “Family Circus” cartoon drawn by a schizophrenic whistleblower with an LSD-infused Sharpie.

Forget about predicting it; the Epstein story defies description. It isn’t just a scandal, it’s a whole genre; somewhere between political thriller, true crime, and cold war noir. We’ll have to wait impatiently for the grand jury materials to appear. We’ve officially entered Disclosure Phase 1, thanks to Trump’s move to unseal the one document they didn’t get to rig.

Now, the game is on. Expect ‘them’ to pull out all the stops. It’s going to be lit.

Have a fabulous Friday! I hope to have a little more time tomorrow morning to catch you up on the week’s essential news and color commentary. See you in the Weekend Edition.

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