NEWS: The BIGGEST part you missed about the Epstein scandal

The President is using the controversy as cover for his unconstitutional efforts to persecute private American citizens.

There is a central absurdity at the heart of the latest Jeffrey Epstein drama, and it is so blindingly obvious it’s almost easy to overlook. Donald Trump’s Justice Department shut down the Epstein investigation in July by effectively declaring, “Case closed. Nothing more to see.”

And then (coincidentally, of course) the same week new emails emerged showing Trump’s own name peppered throughout correspondence from the Epstein estate, the President suddenly announced the case must be reopened. He didn’t order to Justice Department to examine himself, naturally, but to investigate a slate of people he personally listed like a grocery order: Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, JPMorgan Chase, and “many other people and institutions.”

There is no new evidence or no new leads to speak of. There’s only the eternal bonfire of presidential rage over that fact that his name continues to be entangled with a deceased sex offender whose crimes horrified the country.

Trump even let slip his true justification for the new federal investigation, writing in the opening line of his social-media screed: “Now that Democrats are using the Epstein Hoax … I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi…” In other words, the President is ordering a federal investigation because he is politically irritated. That’s the motive. And within hours, the Justice Department complied.

This, however, is not the biggest story.

The political drama around Epstein has been the primary fodder for the headlines, yet they are not the true emergency. We have grown so accustomed to the chaos of Trump’s second term that we’ve almost stopped noticing the historic lines being crossed. The real story is a constitutional earthquake hiding beneath the week’s news circus.

The President of the United States is openly ordering more federal investigations into private American citizens, by name, as instruments of revenge.

This morning, I reminded listeners “why” this is so unusual on our latest DEFIANCE Radio broadcast (click the image below to listen to today’s broadcast, or read on for details).

I put forward a quiz question. Who was the last American president to personally issue written directives to investigate named, individual citizens who were his critics? The answer is no one. No one before Donald Trump, that is. No other U.S. president (not even John Adams or Richard Nixon or LBJ in the FBI’s shadowy Hoover era) has publicly directed federal law enforcement like this to target specific citizens because they angered him or stood on the other side of the political aisle.

But Bill Clinton, Reid Hoffman, and Larry Summers are all on the receiving end of such extraordinary public directives, though it didn’t start there.

It all began on April 9, 2025, when Donald Trump issued the first-known executive order directing federal agencies to investigate a personal critic and private citizen by name. Me. The retaliatory order was so blatantly unconstitutional that every serious legal scholar who has examined it has said the same thing to me, i.e. that it’s a textbook violation of the First Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, and the Fourteenth Amendment. Conservative Judge Michael Luttig called it the president’s “most constitutionally corrupt executive order to date,” and even the Wall Street Journal branded it a “fishing expedition…tainted from the start.”

I’m not pointing back to this for my benefit. I’m reminding you because that was only seven months ago. And since then, such misconduct has apparently become routine.

For 249 years, American presidents understood, however imperfectly, that the powers of the state may not be used to punish critics. The foundational principle was born from the abuses against King George listed in the Declaration of Independence itself: “sending hither swarms of Officers to harass our people”… “subjecting us to arbitrary government”… “transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.” (A few presidents nevertheless found backdoor ways to strike back at their opponents before getting reprimanded or ousted for weaponizing power against their enemies).

And yet much of the media spent the weekend absorbed in the question of who appears in Epstein’s email address book, rather than the more staggering fact that a sitting president is continuing to use the Department of Justice as an instrument of personal vengeance. I take this as clear evidence that the conduct has now been “normalized.” Donald Trump has so acclimated us to revenge investigations that the loud shattering of constitutional safeguards scarcely gets anyone’s attention.

Reid Hoffman said it plainly in his own response, writing that this investigation is “political persecution and slander.” He is correct. But what Hoffman and the others now targeted by name are experiencing is only the tip of the spear. The concept of a president ordering investigations into political enemies knows almost no boundaries if it’s not relentlessly called out by and opposed by the masses. Otherwise, it becomes a high crime that’s forgiven by mass indifference.

When CNN’s Kaitlan Collins pressed Trump on whether he believes presidents should have this power, his answer was a slipcovered confession.

“I am considered the chief law enforcement agent in the country. And I’m allowed to do it. I don’t want to do it. I’m not doing it… I had nothing to do with that…That came from Pam Bondi, from the DOJ.”

A constitutional scholar could spend a semester unpacking that single paragraph. He claims the authority. Then he says he doesn’t want to use it. Then he denies he used it. Then he pointed his finger at the Justice Department. This is the language of a man stumbling into the truth that the act itself is indefensible. Regardless of our present distractions, what history will record is that Donald Trump became the first American president to weaponize the federal investigative machinery, so publicly and so explicitly, against his critics.

And while the Epstein frenzy will fade, the constitutional damage from this weekend’s events will not. Years from now during congressional inquiries, special counsel investigations, and the legal reckonings that I hope will follow — the United States will hopefully confront the magnitude of what started in 2025.

We are watching LIVE as an elemental constitutional safeguard gets torn down. The founders packed the house they built with insulation to protect the citizenry from retaliatory state power. This year, an observably deranged man walked up to that house and took a sledgehammer to the drywall and began ripping out the insulation while we sat inside drooling over Netflix episodes of Love Is Blind.

Long after Donald Trump’s political fortunes and unsightly corporal form have faded from view, these investigative orders — his fat-fingered persecution directives on the ironically named Truth Social — will live forever. So, too, will the shame of being the first and only president to so brazenly mimic the abuses that once led a nation of colonists to revolt. But what will history record of us?

Will historians recount that the nation quietly acquiesced to these injustices, or that it defied them? I really don’t know. The story this weekend wasn’t fresh revelations about a dead pervert but the erasure of a boundary no president should ever cross. Whether America will abide such gross misconduct remains to be seen. I, for one, have made up my mind. I will not shut up about it. And I hope you don’t either.

Your friend, in defiance,

P.S. WHAT’S HAPPENING ON DEFIANCE NEWS

Here’s what’s coming up.

1. TOMORROW/ Tues, Nov 18 @ 7am ET - Join me for another LIVE broadcast from DEFIANCE Radio. And guess what? As of right now, Anthony Scarmucci will be joining me for a rollicking conversation about everything happening right now in our country. You can join here.

2. TOMORROW/ Tues, Nov 18 @ 3pm ET - I’ll be joining Brian J Karem for his JUST ASK THE QUESTION podcast. Tune in via Brian’s Substack!

3. WEDNESDAY / Weds, Nov 19 @ 12noon ET - Our Weekly Wednesday Coffees are BACK! For subscribers only. Join here.

4. WEDNESDAY / Weds, Nov 19 @ 5pm ET - DO. NOT. MISS. IT. The upcoming DEFIANCE.org Weekly Spotlight — “Blowing the Whistle on Trump” — is going to be great. And it’s your weekly dose of how you can fight back. You can find out more about how to join HERE. That link also has instructions on how paid subscribers can redeem their “free” Member-only access to DEFIANCE.org content.