John Leake's latest dispatch (see link below) from the front lines of disillusionment hits like a gut punch from an old ally who's just realized the revolution was a rerun. After years of riding-or-dying for Trump, through impeachments, raids, and election-night nail-biters, he's staring at the Epstein files saga and seeing not a smoking gun, but a sleight-of-hand: ruses like "new investigations," "national security," and "victim protection" as fig leaves for stalling the full drop. Bondi's presser tease of "new information"? Smells like theatre. Larry Summers' email dump, with its harmless "I like adult women" zinger? Classic red herring, a sacrificial Harvard egghead to distract from the real sharks circling offshore. And Trump's flip-flop, from promising the files on day one to signing a bill last week that kicks the can 30 days down the road, feels like Deep State déjà vu.
Leake's pain is palpable: "Trump appears to be just another Deep State stooge." It's the cry of the betrayed MAGA diehard, echoing across X where even diehards like @BeckeySand48576 are raging that this is all a "clown show" to shield the establishment. @monsteroflove nails the absurdity: Trump could've released it all "at the stroke of a pen" since 2017, hell, he banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago back in the day, but here we are, with Bondi dangling "ongoing probes" like a sequel nobody asked for. The bill Trump signed on November 19 mandates a full dump within 30 days, but as @JeffDeCola warns, expect "heavily redacted" slop, followed by January hearings where Bondi yaps about Trump-hate to filibuster the truth.
But here's the colder, more cynical take that pieces like Leake's often dance around: the Epstein files aren't a powder keg that'll topple elites. They're a dud, because any evidence that could sink the untouchables was vapourised years ago. The real bombshells? Long gone, laundered through black budgets, shredded in panic, or never recorded at all. And the bigger riddle: Why would any apex predator whoever let themselves get caught on camera or tape in the first place? Only fools play with fire without an asbestos suit. The whole premise of "just drop the files and watch the dominoes fall" feels like a fairy tale for the furious, a cathartic myth that keeps the outrage engine humming while the machine chugs on.
Think like a kingpin, not a conspiracy theorist. Epstein wasn't some lone-wolf perv; he was a node in a network of intelligence ops, honeypots, and mutual-assured destruction. Mossad whispers, CIA cutouts, Saudi slush funds, the guy's island was less Lolita Express stopover and more geopolitical spiderweb. If you're a top-tier elite, say, a former president or a pharma titan, waltzing into that web, you're not allowing yourself to be filmed. You're demanding NDAs thicker than your Rolodex, body doubles for the optics, and kill-switches on every recorder. Paranoia isn't a bug; it's survival.
Remember the 2019 raids? FBI swarms Little St. James, carts off servers and safes, and... crickets. No flood of tapes, no ledger of Lolita flights naming every VIP. Why? Because the real dirt, blackmail vids of the powerful in compromising positions, gets scrubbed before the cuffs come out. Epstein's 2008 sweetheart deal? That wasn't justice; it was a cleanup crew. By 2019, when he "suicided," the autopsies (literal and figurative) were already done. As @Trillion0x quips on X, Bondi's just "figuring out all the names FBI needs to search and scrub" from the "Little Black Book" that's supposedly winging to Congress. Cute, but if that book's got juice, it's the watered-down tourist edition.
Leake's hunch about "astronomical liabilities" akin to COVID origins is spot-on: full disclosure could torch institutions, not just individuals. But power doesn't implode; it implodes the evidence. Wikileaks? Sanitised. Panama Papers? Offshore elites laughed it off with new shells. Epstein? The files we'll get are the B-sides, the Larry Summers emails about preferring grown-ups, Stacey Plaskett's Epstein-text coaching on smearing Trump (already leaked, no biggie). The A-list? Poof. Digital forensics experts whisper about "dead man's switches" and auto-wipes; why risk eternity on a hard drive when you can afford quantum-encrypted clouds?
This is the premise-cracking question: If Epstein's gig was elite entrapment, the smart ones — would've smelled the rat from orbit. No self-respecting power broker books a flight without countermeasures. Cameras? Hacked and looped. Guests? Comped with NDAs and "donations" to hush funds. The ones who did get sloppy? Mid-tier marks, useful idiots, or deliberate plants to feed the beast.
Maxwell's conviction? Guilty as charged, but she's the valet parking, not the Ferrari. She ran the front-of-house; the backroom was handled by spooks who don't do mugshots. The "victims protected" ruse Leake flags? Spot-on, FOIA redactions are child's play, but they're also the perfect cover for excising the elite cameos. As @Prisblader snarks, this is all "distraction" from the "treasonous" core: a half-release to sate the mob while the machine reboots.
The files might "sink" a few lower-rung elites, summer interns turned DAs, Hollywood has-beens, maybe a rogue academic. But the food-chain apex? They dined before the cameras rolled. Epstein was the bait; they were the anglers, reeling in favours, not fish.
Leake's arc, from 2015 true believer to "dreary demoralisation," mirrors the broader MAGA hangover. Trump as Deep State stooge? Oof. But it's not unique: The savior complex dies hard when the files fizzle. X is ablaze with it—@Unreliable_HQ mocking "forensically proving" Trump's in the files after Kash Patel's "scrub," @Soseeopath warning it'll "terminal" Republicans in '26. The bill's a win on paper, Congress forcing Bondi's hand after Trump's resistance, but as NPR timelines his "shifting stance," it's clear: promises evaporate when the heat hits.
So what now? Demand the unredacted drop, sure. But temper expectations: This isn't the elite-sinking nuke; it's a dud firecracker in a system built to swallow scandals. The real power move? Starve the machine, defund the NGOs, audit the intel ops, elect outsiders who don't flip. Leake's right to grieve the illusion. But in the rubble, build something that doesn't need a messiah. The files won't save us. We will save ourselves.
https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/trump-and-bondi-more-ruses-for-stalling