The Justice Department Is Skipping Out on Epstein Accountability

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Hey everyone, Ellie here, wishing you a happy Friday. Well, last Friday after this podcast dropped. We got the US Supreme Court's tariff ruling striking down President Trump's emergency economic powers. Tariffs. I did write an emergency column for New York magazine breaking down the opinion. You can check that out, but we did not do a separate podcast. So looking forward, a couple things. One of the big remaining questions is.

What happens with the one hundred thirty plus billion dollars, maybe as high as two hundred billion dollars now, but we know hundred thirty billion as of the end of twenty twenty-five. What happens to all that money that was collected under these tariffs, which turn out to be unconstitutional? And man, it must be nice to be the US Supreme Court because they knew this was a big, messy issue. They raised it several times at oral argument. Amy Coney Barrett.

seemed especially worried about how are we gonna work out the money if we rule this unconstitutional. And what does the Supreme Court do? They ignore it. Must be nice, right? Just some messy problem and just go, how about if I just say nothing about it? And then maybe I won't have to deal with it, at least now. Justice Kavanaugh did address it in dissent. He said it would be, quote, a mess, and he's exactly right about that.

If you saw Donald Trump's unhinged rant after this ruling, I won't dignify it with much of a repetition here, but you've seen it where he attacks the justices and says they're foreign agents and their embarrassments to their families, a ridiculous, historically outrageous rant by the president. He does say one thing, one thing that I will sign on to where he says something like,

Boy, the Supreme Court spends all this time putting together this opinion and they don't even tell us what to do with the money. Um, that I agree with. Pretty much that one sentence out of everything Trump said over the whole entire rant. So what happens now? We're gonna get lawsuits, surely, from these importers who've paid these tariffs. And by the way, the people who pay tariffs are US importers, they're not foreign countries, as some have suggested.

We'll see lawsuits. And and one thing is I saw Scott Besson, who was interviewed this past weekend by Dana Bash on CNN. And Dana asked him, Will you choose to refund the money? And he just kept saying, Well, we're gonna wait for the courts. We're gonna wait for the courts. So first things first.

The administration absolutely could make a decision we're going to pay this money back. Clearly they're not going that route. But now this is gonna get fought out in the courts and probably all the way back up to the Supreme Court and probably gosh knows, a year from now or whatever. So it is a mess. The Supreme Court could have addressed it.

but chose not to. The other thing that I want to address is Trump immediately announced that he was going to try again under other tariff laws, 10% at first, then 15% at first. So the first point I want to make is he can do this. The Supreme Court doesn't rule, well, Trump's tariffs, writ large, are unconstitutional. What the Supreme Court ruled is

Trump's tariffs as imposed under this specific emergency law, those are unconstitutional. But the fact is there are other laws that allow him to try to impose tariffs. They're much more limited. in number. They're much more limited in scope, duration. He has to make certain findings first. He has to go to Congress for some of them. The details vary. He tried to give himself a blank check with the Emergency Powers Act, and the court said, no, that doesn't work.

But he certainly can try under other laws. Um, there's a funny moment on the Daily Show's podcast this week. It wasn't on the TV show, but Desi Lied. was doing a bit on there. She's great. She's hilarious. And she basically said something like, This feels like a guy getting kicked out of a bar and then putting on a mustache costume and trying to come back in. Which it does feel like. She's absolutely right. But it also

Is allowed. Um, and Joe Biden tried the same thing. He lost student loan debt repayment on a particular statute that he tried to give student debt relief on. He lost that. And then he came back and said, Well, I'm gonna try again on another statute.

Conservatives complained at the time. They said, oh, he's defying the law. No, he's not. You're allowed to try something under statute A. Then if it fails, try it under statute B. It takes more time. It's not ideal, but it is allowed. So we're gonna have ongoing fights. About Trump's other tariffs. One last thing. He also tried to say: well, the Supreme Court, in this opinion, gave me the green light, said I could automatically go ahead and do these tariffs under other statutes.

That is not what the court said. Even the dissent just said basically he can try under other statutes. It'll still be challenged. And the majority opinion basically said, yeah, he can try under other statutes, but he's got to comply with those laws. And again, we will see those attempts challenged. So they said go ahead and try. They didn't say you're gonna win.

Okay, so that is the tariffs ruling. Lots to come here. On to this week's podcast. As always, love hearing your thoughts, questions, comments. Keep them coming. Letters atcafe.com.

The United States Department of Justice is getting lapped by both Congress and the British authorities on follow-up investigations around the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. There's no excuse for either. As the British police arrest astonishingly powerful men, including Royals and Royals adjacent, for their dealings with Epstein, and the US House of Representatives tries to force financial and political titans to answer tough questions.

Our Justice Department lags far behind. It's not even clear that DOJ is doing anything at all. Over in the UK, law enforcement officials have now arrested both former prince Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. And former ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson. Technically, both have been arrested, but not yet formally charged. It's a wrinkle of British law. The putative defendants reportedly face potential charges of quote misconduct in public office and quote.

for providing confidential government documents, including sensitive financial information about investment opportunities to Jeffrey Epstein. British authorities have accused neither man of participation in Epstein's child sex trafficking ring. The British case is based in part on emails contained in the US Justice Department's own Epstein files, which were released.

less than a month ago. In just those few weeks, British police have investigated and arrested a former prince and a lord, maybe a soon-to-be former lord. They've subjected both men and others around them to extensive questioning, and they've conducted searches at properties associated with the subject. Meanwhile, here in the United States, we've seen no signs of investigative life. The most memorable step taken by our Justice Department since the release of the files.

was Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche's public service announcement that, and I quote, the American people need to understand that it isn't a crime to party with Mr. Epstein. Note the difference in responses from the top tiers of power in the respective countries. King Charles, an actual monarch who wears a literal crown and carries a scepter to work, has told British investigators to put it in American parlance,

to do what you gotta do. Here's his quote in the proper King's English, I guess, literally. What now follows is the full, fair, and proper process by which this issue is investigated in the appropriate manner and by the appropriate authorities. In this, as I have said before, they have our full and wholehearted support and cooperation. Let me state clearly: the law must take its course. End quote.

Other heads of state should follow the king's hands off example in the case against his own brother, Andrew, no less. Our own president isn't of quite the same mind. He has long dismissed the Epstein case as a quote hoax, though it's unclear what exactly he claims is fake. And he recently urged the American public. To just get over it already. I think it's time now for the country to maybe get onto something else, like healthcare, Trump proclaimed of the Epstein files.

DOJ has dutifully adopted Trump's recommended approach myopia, blended with dissembling and a pinch of proactive excuse making. As Blanche explained earlier this month, quote, there's a lot of correspondence, there's a lot of emails, there's a lot of photographs, but that doesn't allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody, end quote. Not exactly the tenacious investigative posture that Blanche and I learned during our concurrent early days at the Southern District of New York.

But hey, if our Justice Department isn't going to make meaningful use of its own Epstein files, at least the British cops are willing to do the tough investigative work. And then there's Congress, which has taken a flawed but reasonably effective approach to its Epstein investigation. While a bipartisan but mostly democratic coalition of lawmakers forced passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

The Republican-led House Oversight Committee has pressed forward with a series of aggressive subpoenas for testimony. Yes, the subpoenas are largely for political show, and no, the House has not extracted any damning admissions. But they're putting powerhouses on the spot and making them face meaningful questioning under oath.

Last week, billionaire Les Wexner, whose name was originally redacted by DOJ from a document listing him as an unindicted co-conspirator, but then unredacted after Representative Thomas Massey publicly called out the redaction. Well, Wexner faced five hours of questions from the Oversight Committee. Wexner, a close associate of Epstein's

claimed no knowledge of Epstein's criminality. Wexner also denied allegations that he had sexually abused Virginia Duffray, who testified in twenty sixteen that as a minor she was forced to have sex with Wexner multiple times. Juffrey, of course, died by suicide last year.

The beauty of being a federal prosecutor is you don't have to take a blanket denial as the final word, even from an arrogant billionaire. People disclaim wrongdoing all the time. Sometimes they're telling the truth, other times they aren't. So ordinarily, given the lead provided by Congress, The OJ prosecutors might take Wexner's testimony and subject it to rigorous testing, talk to other witnesses, examine emails and texts, check out phone, financial, and travel records.

Yet we've seen no indication of DOJ doing any such thing. This week the Clintons take their turns at the Oversight Committee's deposition table. After a prolonged back and forth during which they played themselves into a strategic corner. The former first couple relented and agreed to testify under the looming threat of a contempt of Congress charge supported by a bipartisan majority.

Now, the Hillary Clinton subpoena was an obvious stretch by a congressional committee seeking to drag in a boldface name. She had essentially nothing to do with Epstein. Now I'm recording this before we actually know what she said during her testimony on Thursday, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and tell you that nothing much is going to come of it.

But Bill Clinton might squirm when he's questioned today, Friday, about photographs that show him partying with Epstein, not a crime, remember, per the deputy A. G. Photographs that show him swimming in a pool at night with Ghlaine Maxwell and a female whose identity has been redacted, and another photo that shows him reclining, hands behind his head, in a hot tub at night, along with a female whose image has been blacked out. The photos are ugly for Bill Clinton. You can check them out online.

Meanwhile, we've seen no sign that the Justice Department has subpoenaed or otherwise sought to interview Wexner or Clinton or any other powerful Epstein associates. Notably, even the aggressive House Oversight Committee hasn't sought testimony from the current president, who had a long and close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.

DOJ's apparent inaction is especially galling, given that prosecutors hold far more potent investigative tools than Congress does. Prosecutors have the vast resources of the Justice Department and the FBI at their disposal, while Congress must make do with minimal investigative staff. Prosecutors can obtain search warrants and wiretaps while Congress cannot. And prosecutorial subpoenas generally can be broader in scope than congressional subpoenas and are enforced more rigorously by the court.

The Justice Department has been flailing for months now to justify its inaction. Back in July 2025, DOJ's top officials released a memo declaring that after an exhaustive review of over 300 gigabytes of information, quote, we did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties. End quote. Since then, the Justice Department has offered mixed messages at best about its ongoing investigative efforts.

And while prosecutors could be moving stealthily behind the scenes and entirely undetectable to the public, I'm dubious. but I guess it's possible. We've seen zero public indication of actual in-the-field enforcement activity. No search warrants, no subpoenas, no interviews with key players, certainly no arrest.

Meanwhile, the British authorities and Congress forge ahead. It's an embarrassing moment for our Justice Department's leadership and a telling indictment of their own stubborn and perhaps purposeful indifference. Thanks for listening everyone. Stay safe and stay informed.