A battle won, but not yet the war

After months of  Trumpian stonewalling, things are moving fast.  The bill to release the Epstein files passed both the House and the Senate yesterday, and Trump has said he will sign it.

The oddest feature of this saga was Trump's sudden about-face, just before the vote, claiming that he now supported the very thing he had spent months fighting tooth and nail to prevent.  The politics site Electoral-vote proposes several possible explanations for this, along with the flaws they see in each.  Another one I've seen proposed is that after the bill is signed, he plans to have the Justice Department refuse to release much or all of the material on the grounds that it would compromise an ongoing investigation, namely the investigation he himself recently ordered into Democrats suspected of being among Epstein's clients.  It's hard to imagine that such a ploy would work -- Congress voted almost unanimously for the release, so they obviously see no conflict between doing so and the bogus "investigation", nor would they be likely to let Trump get away with doing this.  Congress has subpoena power.  If they want the material, they can get it.

I suspect Trump's obviously worsening dementia, which Electoral-vote also mentions in a more limited context, may be playing a role here.  He's always been hazy on how the government is supposed to work, and he may be starting to believe he can get away with things that he actually can't.  Perhaps he hopes he can claim any evidence against him was faked.  Perhaps he believes that the hair-splitting and minimizing of sexual abuse being pushed by Megyn Kelly and others is swaying public opinion and that the backlash against him if the files incriminate him won't be so bad.  Indeed, perhaps he genuinely believes there was nothing wrong with what he did, especially when so many others were doing it.  Perhaps -- the most dangerous possibility -- he is planning a war with Venezuela and believes that such a large distraction would wipe the Epstein scandal from public attention.  There's also the point that, once it became clear that Congress was going to vote to release the files (probably by veto-proof majorities), he really didn't have any good options left.

In any case, whatever schemes or delusions are fluttering around in Trump's deteriorating brain, I don't believe that this fight is truly won quite yet.  There is obviously some reason why he fought so long and so vociferously against all efforts to release the files.  That reason may or may not be that they incriminate him personally, but there's clearly something.  Those in Congress who finally did the right thing need to be ready to play hardball and swat down any excuses or obstruction or efforts to only partially comply with their instructions.

Above all, they and the public need to keep firmly in mind that this is not about partisan politics, it's about the victims -- the thousand-plus children subjected to disgusting, traumatizing abuse by rich, perverted men who believed themselves untouchable.  This is not over until every one of Epstein's clients is publicly exposed, hounded out of office or career, and if possible prosecuted.  Every last one of them.  Nothing less will do.