Hey Everyone,
So yesterday, while Argentina were scoring two goals in the final minutes of the World Cup semi-final against my native country — ugh! — fortunately I was distracted by a great conversation with Adam Klasfeld.
We discussed the three Congressional hearings happening (strangely) simultaneously: confirmation hearings for both Todd Blanche and Jay Clayton, and testimony to the House Oversight Committee by Kathryn Ruemmler, the former Goldman Sachs General Counsel who stepped down after her flirtatious “joking” emails with Jeffrey Epstein were published in the Epstein Files.
We started with Blanche.
Adam broke down what the senators should have asked him but did not. (He also asked: why didn’t they get more coordinated and organized for this? Blanche is an easy target in that you don’t need to take his word for what he’ll do in the future — there’s plenty to see in his recent past.)
Adam gave props to Sen. John Cornyn, the lame-duck senator whose swing vote is likely pivotal for Blanche’s confirmation, and who cornered Blanche on the thorny legal details suggesting that the $1.8 billion slush fund related to Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS (in which he demanded $10 billion after his tax records were published) is not truly dead in the water. He also focused on Blanche’s role in approving the unprecedented settlement that now gives the Trump family immunity from prosecution for tax crimes.
So that was good. But both of us felt Blanche was not properly pressed on the delayed botched roll-out of the Epstein Files or that infamous sit-down with Ghislaine Maxwell — after which she suddenly moved to a far nicer, more relaxed prison.
For my part, I felt that at least Blanche acknowledged the Epstein survivors’ presence in the room (unlike his predecessor Pam Bondi). And at least he gave an explanation for why he can’t commit to meeting them personally — by law, he isn’t allowed to if they have legal representation. He can, however, meet with their attorneys. So my question is: where are those attorneys? They have been strangely silent, in my view, when it comes to giving up the names of Epstein’s male co-conspirators.
We moved on to Jay Clayton’s ties to the Epstein story, which, as you may recall, Nina Burleigh and I discussed last week — and to Ruemmler’s testimony.
We closed on Regime Change, the new epic Trump tale from Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. According to their reporting, all the topics that Adam and I typically talk about — lawfare, the weaponization of the Justice Department, the attempted rewriting of the Constitution — generate from the brain of Stephen Miller.
Enjoy!
Thank you Cash Flow Collective, Lesley Jane Seymour, Courtney, Cheryl Young, Jeanne Elbe, and many others for tuning into my live video with Adam Klasfeld! Join me for my next live video in the app.
