Donald Trump the Megathread part II - Mod Warning updated in OP 12/2/26

if Maxwell is not ‘too upset’ about telling ‘alternatives to the truth’ then I can see Trump pardoning her if she agrees to go before Congress to say what Trump wants her to say. I’d say that if the above is to happen that she will have to , beforehand, sign a long winded document containing all the necessary statements favourable to Trump.

I think really it's the other way around. Trump seemed to use other events at the time such as his big bullsh*t bill, Israel, and tariffs, to have Bondi casually slip in that they were closing the case on Epstein, in the hopes it would largely go unnoticed/ignored.

It had the opposite effect though where they were instantly pulled up on it, even by a lot of his own most ardent supporters, and it became a bigger story than all those things. The Streisand Effect; the more you try to censor or hide information, that in itself draws more attention to it.

The prevailing theory by most is that there's nothing actually incriminating in the files against Trump, but that if the files were released, Trump's ties with Epstein would be shown to be far more prevalent than previously known. Likewise with others who were probably friends with both Trump and Epstein. What's in the files may not be incriminating, but would still be hugely publicly damaging. We know Trump & Epstein were friends for a long time. The files could show a lot of visits, trips etc that they had.

That seems to be what Trump is trying to limit/prevent. He's said previously that he'd be hesitant to release the files because "some people" may be mentioned in them even though they did nothing wrong.

Likewise it would explain why the DoJ under Biden didn't release them, because there may not actually be enough incriminating evidence in them to justify criminal investigations into people, and releasing the files could have been seen to be defamatory. Biden/Harris wouldn't have ordered the DoJ to do so just to help themselves out politically.

I can see Trump ultimately snookering himself. If they arrange for Maxwell to go before Congress or similar and defend Trump, if she gets any benefits from that (nicer prison, reduction in sentence or even a pardon), it's pure quid pro quo especially since there were no plans for anything to do with Maxwell when Bondi announced they were closing the case on Epstein.

Any benefit to Maxwell whereby she defends Trump at all, and it is clear as day she's covering for him, and I even think a lot of Trump's own supporters won't just accept it (particularly those already criticising Trump for closing the case on Epstein).

100% of €20 is €20. You can't reduce it by 1000%. Basic maths.

Mathematically it may be possible to reduce by 1000%, but practically, in the real world, it is not. No one mentioned increase the discussion was about reduction. This is a stupid discussion.