The Sturm Has Arrived: How Far Will Epsteingate Spiral?
Trump’s narcissistic collapse is shrieking to the bottom. Batten down.
One of the deepest fantasies of the MAGA-QAnon cult is the arrest of Trump’s political opponents, starting with the infamous chant “Lock her up!” at the 2016 Republican Convention, which was started by Mike Flynn, who sued me for correctly identifying him as the man behind QAnon, and lost.
The very first official “Q drop” was a hoax about this very subject, a totally fabricated story about Hillary being arrested that Q believers just forgot about, or simply dismissed after it didn’t pan out. Despite this failure to deliver on day one, a huge part of the QAnon mythology is about “The Storm” and how Donald Trump will be arresting a Deep State cabal of elite pedophiles, including Barack Obama.
Well, what we’re seeing is not the Storm, it the sturm und drang, the storm and stress, of a collapsing man and a collapsing coalition.
This afternoon, the Director of National Intelligence, Russian asset and Hare Krishna cult member Tulsi Gabbard, published a memo accusing Obama of a complex “coup” along with a QAnon-style graphic summarizing it on social media.
Out of interest, I asked Grok how Gabbard’s graphic resembled a Q drop, here is what it said:
The infographic depicts a timeline alleging Obama officials fabricated the "Russia Hoax" post-2016 election, using suppressed intel, secret meetings, and media leaks to undermine Trump. It mirrors Q drops by promoting deep state conspiracy narratives (e.g., Q calls Russia probe "ALL FAKE"), employing dot-connecting visuals, cryptic annotations, and anti-establishment rhetoric to "reveal" hidden truths, akin to QAnon's style of encouraging self-research into alleged cabals.
Mike Flynn, Stephen Miller and many others in the MAGA propaganda network are delighted by this move, despite it having no basis in reality. Taking a preposterously mischaracterized memo and cherry-picked emails, they are now accusing Barack Obama, who fired Flynn, of a “coup” and “seditious conspiracy.” The phrase “Arrest Obama” is trending on Twitter.
The big accusation is that a draft internal memo during the 2016 transition said “Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent US election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure.” But no one ever said that’s how Russia interfered in 2016. It’s just a straw man, a trivial fallacy.
Gabbard’s purpose, to distract from Trump’s Epstein problems, couldn’t be any more obvious. Nevertheless, the regime and part of MAGA are running with it. The question is how far they will take it.
Last night this story [archived WSJ] was published which explains a lot about what Trump has been doing for the last few days. There is, apparently, a “bawdy” letter, written to Epstein for his 50th birthday, in 2003.
The letter bearing Trump’s name, which was reviewed by the Journal, is bawdy—like others in the album. It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.
The letter concludes: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
It isn’t clear how the letter with Trump’s signature was prepared. Inside the outline of the naked woman was a typewritten note styled as an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein, written in the third person.
NOTE: I crudely drew this from the description. The actual letter has not been published.
The faux-dialogue between Trump and Epstein is deliberately veiled and secretive, but it doesn’t take a psychologist or a linguist to understand that these men were connected through sexual activity. The reference to “Enigmas never age, have you ever noticed that?” was written within a few months of the time Trump said this:
"I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it - Jeffrey enjoys his social life."
Trump’s sudden explosion against his own followers Wednesday, calling them “weaklings,” “PAST supporters” and “stupid people“ for falling for the “Jeffrey Epstein Hoax,” was a prebuttal to the WSJ article—which had been rumored in DC for a week.
Trump denies in the story that the letter is his and has already sued the WSJ, News Corp and the reporters who published it for $10 billion. In his own defense, he claimed that he doesn’t draw, when there is plenty of evidence that he does. He is spiraling, and he doesn’t care who he has to throw down the vortex first to slow down his descent.
This is extremely dangerous territory for Trump, and while his sycophants have already dismissed it as “FAKE NEWS,” the people who have been told for a decade that “the Storm is Coming” have to ask themselves some questions:
If you wanted to find a cabal of elite pedophiles, wouldn’t a book full of “bawdy” birthday letters to the most notorious pedophile in American history be the first place you’d look? Is the book, in effect, the “Epstein list”?
Moreover, Senator Dick Durbin, freed of the bonds of reelection, is now demanding information from Trump’s DOJ about the handling of the “Epstein Files,” and why when the evidence was gone over months ago, everything connected to Trump was “flagged.”
But perhaps the most dangerous threat to Donald Trump from Epstein is the financial records. Ron Wyden says prosecutors have information about $1.5 billion passed through over 4,700 transfers out of Epstein’s bank accounts, including two in Russia, and Wyden’s calling for it all to be released.
But instead of revealing any of the information the government already has, Trump is sending Pam Bondi off to ask a federal judge to unseal selected grand jury transcripts.
Here’s a ChatGPT summary of the process required to do this and the potential hurdles:
In the case of the Mueller investigation, it took nearly two years, and Mueller had an actual need. Bondi doesn’t. There is almost no way any judge would unseal sensitive information when Trump has already said it’s about satisfying a political demand. Trump is delaying, lying and distracting as he always does, hoping that his followers will just move on if he gaslights them hard enough.
The biggest danger of this situation, for all of us, is that his excuses are just not working. He’s been told for many months that it’s time to “start arresting people” by his most rabid followers, and now he’s desperate to win them back.
If anyone thinks “Obama Arrested By FBI” is out of the question, you haven’t been paying attention. Every leader Trump admires, and every leader he resembles, historically and psychologically, has abused the power of the state to persecute his political opponents.
The Sturm is Coming. Batten down.
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Great reporting, Jim. I think we should ask the following question. How does the release of the Trump birthday card to Epstein benefit the Wall Street Journal when it clearly is enough to blow up Trump's presidency, a president that they installed through endless fraud? Answer: Corporate America (Eisenhower's old military-industrial complex), the actual deep state, has had enough of Trump. They got their desired tax cut and the decimation of the federal government and are well on their way to imposing devastating austerity to enrich themselves to unimaginable levels. Trump and his idiotic tariffs must go. The letter to Epstein effectively assassinates the president, who is mentally and physically finished. They are ready to move on to the next guy, who will be worse. It has nothing to do with legal or moral justice, two aspirations that have no meaning whatsoever.
Read Seth Abramson just-released Substack. It’s an in-depth analysis of the birthday card. Conclusion: Epstein and Trump enjoyed raping underage girls. I believe this is the correct analysis and that our 2-term president and cult leader appears to have been be a predatory child sex abuser. Congratulations voters of the USA and the GOP who has enabled this dangerous sicko for years. Moving forward we should be more careful about who we elect into office and stand by through thick and thin. The girls deserved better. America deserves better. Release the entire Epstein files!