The Epstein Endgame
The Justice Department has until midnight to release the Epstein files, MAGA billionaires buy TikTok, and Donald Trump announces a real-life Hunger Games?
🧻 On this day in 1973, a joke in Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show monologue about a supposed toilet paper shortage triggered a wave of nationwide panic buying, creating an actual, albeit temporary, shortage that lasted weeks.
Good morning! Peter here, with a packed suitcase and a train ticket to the boonies! Tomorrow I head home for the holidays, and that means I have a week of nothing but cows, corn, and a cache of childhood comic books before me (I was/am an X-Men stan, if you’re curious). Tell me in the comments if you’re trekking anywhere interesting over the next few days, and let me know if you, too, will be wining and dining any MAGA relatives…
In today’s ‘First Draft,’ the victims of disgraced financier and convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein may finally get justice, the Brown University shooting suspect is found dead, Donald Trump orders a reclassification of marijuana, the Democratic National Committee enrages voters nationwide, and some weekend reads!
Freaks and Geeks
For years, MAGA mouthpieces have offered myriad, conflicting accounts of just how close the sitting president was with the architect of a sprawling, international child sex trafficking ring. By late tonight, we’ll hopefully learn the truth.
Yesterday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released approximately 70 never-before-seen photos from the Epstein estate, amping up the pressure on Trump’s Justice Department to release what’s rumored to be an utterly mammoth trove of documents and pictures related to the late child sex trafficker before tonight’s legally mandated midnight deadline.
In this latest batch?