COMMENTARY– Protecting the PedoFiles: Whatever Happened to Draining the Swamp?

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Kevin Seraaj, J.D., M.Div.
Kevin Seraaj, J.D., M.Div.
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From the moment Epstein died in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019, officially ruled a suicide, survivors and advocates insisted that the government release every document, interview transcript, and investigatory lead— to prevent the next well‑connected predator from operating with a sense of impunity.

THE SERAAJ FILES by Kevin Seraaj

MAGA members were once united in calling for the swamp of powerful evil people in high places to be drained. When they realized that they had seen the swamp and the swamp was them– their moralizing, self-righteous, Bible-waving, hypocrital leaders, the word swamp disappeared from their vocabulary.

Let’s be clear: the transgressions of Jeffrey Epstein were known to previous administrations. Administrations of both parties had multiple opportunities to pursue the full scope of Epstein’s network and repeatedly fell short. Epstein got a sweetheart non‑prosecution deal in 2008 that was plainly wrong: do just enough in the name of enforcing the law to claim that some action had been taken, while leaving the largely white, rich-boy power structure– and the pedo-file network– intact.

It is disturbing and disappointing that neither Obama nor Biden pushed the Department of Justice to launch full-scale investigations of the global child sex trafficking network that reached into the boardrooms, homes and lives of the most wealthy fat cats. Money and power create their own set of priorities and rules, but the deal Epstein got was plainly wrong. And maybe even more egregious about the non-prosecution deal was that not one of the survivors was talked to about the proposed deal before it was worked out.

Donald Trump seized on these failures and campaigned on them, saying he was going to “drain the swamp.” MAGA went wild with righteous indignation and Trump-fueled expectation. Then, shortly after he began his second term, Trump’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi, announced on state media, FOX News, that the Epstein client files were “sitting on her desk,” about to be released. MAGA erupted into cheers, squealing with delight because their President was about to start the swamp-draining process.

Their joy was to be short-lived, however, because almost as soon as she said the files were on her desk Bondi backtracked and began denying that any Seychelles list existed. MAGA was stunned, but largely quiet.

Trump told Marjorie Taylor Greene his friends would be hurt by the release of the client list, so he probably told Bondi, too. But insiders suggested that it in actuality it was Trump himself who would be hurt.

So, adding insult to injury, the Justice Department and FBI issued a memo claiming an “exhaustive review” of Epstein documents had failed to uncover any evidence warranting investigations of people who had not been charged. Anyone buying that would probably go out of their way to buy pants for their pet snake.

Watchdog groups sued for records, arguing that the key decisions about what to release, when to release, and how heavily to redact, had been made to protect people in power, and not to seek justice for survivors. But what do you do when the Justice Department works for the man whose name appears in the files nearly 5,000 times?

MAGA members watched with a growing sense of betrayal as Trump, through Bondi, fought the release of the Epstein Files, while “the enemy” — Democrats– led the only fight being waged to pass the Epstein Transparency Act. When Trump announced, after increasing public pressure, that he was going to sign the measure into law, MAGA once again applauded their leader, holding on to the fast-eroding image of Savior Trump.

But make no mistake about it, it was the years of pressure from survivors, journalists, and a cross‑ideological group of lawmakers– not the munificence of Donald Trump– that finally produced the Epstein Files Transparency Act. But still the administration stonewalled.

The fact that four months after the signing of the Act, and mere days after the firing of Pam Bondi, her replacement, Todd Blanche, the lawyer who “defended” Trump into a 34-count fraud conviction, had this to say when asked if the public was going to finally find out the names of the men involved in abusing the Epstein survivors:

“Is the public going to learn about men who abused these girls? What does that mean? I mean, I don’t understand what that means.”

With that alarmingly stupid pushback by the new acting Attorney General, Trump’s intent to protect the pedo-files involved in the Epstein child sex trafficking ring could no longer be denied, excused or explained away. It finally became clear to most– though not all– of the MAGA diehards that the swamp they fought so desperately to drain was actually being protected by Donald Trump.

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It remains to be seen just how much the diehards will suffer before they, too, decide to leave the cult.

NOTE: It is unfortunate that we have come to a place in social media that using words like pe**hile will lead the algorithms to display negative images of little boys and girls. This leads to a circumstance where the words that convey the actual specific meaning of the thoughts being communicated have to be truncated, changed or filled with asterisks. A question to the owners of the online platforms: How about just fixing the algorithms so harmful images are not displayed?