The lawfare campaign, involving criminal charges and civil lawsuits, was launched by elected Democratic prosecutors in Manhattan, New York State, and Georgia, as well as by appointees of the Biden administration in Washington. (In Colorado and other states, elected Democrats tried to disqualify Trump for office under the 14th Amendment.) The actions sought to 1) put Trump in prison; 2) otherwise make it impossible for him to run for, or serve, as president; and/or 3) destroy his business empire. 

That last goal was the point of a lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James in September 2022. The suit alleged that, a decade earlier, Trump inflated the estimated value of his properties when applying for bank loans. Prosecutors conceded that Trump had paid off all his loans in a timely manner; nobody, including the public at large, had lost any money in this alleged fraud. However, James alleged, and trial judge Arthur Engoron agreed, that Trump should pay a high price for something Engoron called a “venial sin,” a minor infraction. So Engoron, a Democratic donor, ordered Trump to pay a $355 million fine, the legal term is “disgorgement,” which, with interest, quickly grew to $450 million and was recently headed toward $500 million. (James structured the case so that Trump did not have the right to a jury trial, meaning Engoron alone determined Trump’s “guilt” and penalty.)

The news now is that on Thursday, a New York appeals court threw out Engoron’s $450 million-plus penalty. All of it. The verdict itself, that is, the ruling against Trump, has not been thrown out, although that might happen when the case goes to the state’s highest appeals court. But the crippling money penalty is gone.

There were five judges on the appeals court, and each seemed to have a different view of the case. One said the lawsuit should never have been brought in the first place. Two said it was tried so badly by James’s office and adjudicated so badly by Engoron that it should be sent back for a new trial. And two said the verdict should stand, at least until the highest state court has a chance to consider it. 

But even with their disagreements on the suit itself, all five judges agreed that Engoron’s penalty was so excessive that it violated the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, which says that “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”

The appeals court opinion is 323 pages long. I will not read the whole thing, and I doubt you will, either. It includes helpful summaries of the judges’ positions and a discussion of the issues. For you skimmers out there, try searching the text for the word “excessive.” You’ll get a lot of hits.

“The court’s disgorgement order, which directs that defendants pay nearly half a billion dollars to the State of New York, is an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution,” wrote Justices Peter Moulton and Dianne Renwick. In another part: “Is the disgorgement levied against the defendants an excessive fine barred by the Eighth Amendment? We believe that it is.” And: “A fine is excessive when it is ‘grossly disproportional to the gravity of the defendant’s offense’ … While harm certainly occurred, it was not the cataclysmic harm that can justify a nearly half-billion-dollar award to the state.”

Trump was delighted with the result, of course. “TOTAL VICTORY in the FAKE New York State Attorney General Letitia James case!” he wrote on Truth Social. “Everything I did was absolutely CORRECT and, even, PERFECT. Every single dollar was thrown out.”

Now what? The case will now go to New York’s highest appeals court for one final look. Who knows what will happen, but we know that a five-judge panel unanimously favored throwing out the massive financial penalty at this level of appeal. Also, a majority, three judges, favored either a new trial or throwing the case out altogether. If Letitia James is seeking vindication, those do not seem to be hopeful signs.

As far as Trump is concerned, the decision is a big step forward in the effort to reverse the James lawsuit. There is a long way still to go, but it’s a big step.

And then there are the other lawfare cases. In the big picture, remember this: Between March and August 2023, three Democratic prosecutors filed 91 felony charges against Trump. A Democratic law enforcement official, AG James, pursued a nearly half-billion-dollar lawsuit to destroy his business empire. Other officials went to court to disqualify him from the presidency. Others have still pursued legal action against him for different reasons. Now, Trump is trying to undo some of the immense damage done by that lawfare campaign. So far, he is making progress.

Newsom, who desperately wants to be president, has taken to composing tweets imitating Trump’s distinctive style, down to using Trump’s favorite words, unusual punctuation, and “Thank you for your attention to this matter!” sign-off. Perhaps Newsom thinks it is funny, and maybe some Democrats agree. Let’s just say Newsom’s imitation doesn’t have the original flair.

Now, Newsom, doing an all-caps Trump impression, has ventured into territory some fellow Democrats don’t want to talk about. Amid the Texas redistricting fight, which some Democrats have unwisely sought to nationalize, Newsom, writing on X, is threatening a new redistricting in California that will, he says, “END THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY.” In parentheses immediately after, Newsom added “(DEMS TAKE BACK THE HOUSE!)”

So, how can Democrats “end the Trump presidency”? Perhaps Newsom is just saying that a Democratic House victory in the 2026 midterm elections would stop Trump’s legislative initiatives cold, as it most certainly would. But of course, even if that were to happen, Trump would remain president, with all the executive authority involved. His presidency would not end.

A more reasonable reading of what Newsom wrote is that a Democratic House would end the Trump presidency by using the constitutional procedure to end presidencies — impeachment.

Republicans certainly believe that is what would happen should Democrats take the House next year. “Democrats would vote to impeach on their first day,” if they win, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said recently.

Does anyone think that would not happen? Sure, for the moment, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) is trying not to talk about impeachment. Some other Democrats, the hardest of the hardcore, favor impeachment right now, even though there is no chance that will happen with the current Republican majority. But if Democrats win a majority, of course, they will impeach.

And now the governor of California, a 2028 presidential contender, sounds like he is itching for it. Newsom’s stance illustrates a particular strain of thinking in the Democratic Party — that if the party just tries one more time to bring Trump down, this time it will work. That was the thinking behind impeachment number one, impeachment number two, and indictments one, two, three, and four, plus other Democratic initiatives that failed to have the desired effect of driving Trump out of politics.

That is not to say that impeachment would not damage Trump. But Newsom, turning himself into a parody of Trump while thinking the same old same old will succeed this time, is a good example of a man with someone else living rent-free in his head.

The announcement set off an uproar, in part because just a short time earlier, Attorney General Pam Bondi seemed to tease big news in what has become known as the “Epstein files.” But at the same time, the FBI focused attention on the fact that we already know quite a lot about the Epstein case, which stretches 20 years from the time authorities began investigating the serial sex offender in 2005.

Still, one question that remained was whether it would be a good thing for someone outside the Justice Department to look at the materials, or at least some of them, to see for himself, and the rest of us, whether there is something new and important that has not been made public. Now, that is what has happened in response to the Justice Department’s effort to show its commitment to transparency by releasing some Epstein materials. And the conclusion from a federal judge, at least for this part of the Epstein case, is that “there is no ‘there’ there.”

The material in question is the grand jury record from the prosecution of Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. Grand jury transcripts are kept secret by law. But when the Justice Department came under fire from all sides, from MAGA supporters to opportunistic Democrats, it went to U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer and asked that the material be made public. There was almost no chance that would happen — there wasn’t a compelling legal case to be made for release — but the DOJ still asked.

This week, the judge rejected the request. It wasn’t just a quick, pro forma objection. Instead, Engelmayer went on for 31 pages as to why the Justice Department fell far short of the high bar it would have to cross to win release.

As far as the public’s right to information is concerned, one part of Engelmayer’s order was particularly notable. The judge read the grand jury testimony involved and made clear that it revealed nothing that is not publicly known about the Epstein case. It’s worth quoting him at some length.

“The court’s review confirmed that unsealing the grand jury materials would not reveal new information of any consequence,” Engelmayer wrote. “A member of the public familiar with the Maxwell trial record who reviewed the grand jury materials that the government proposes to unseal would thus learn next to nothing new.”

“The materials do not identify any person other than Epstein and Maxwell as having had sexual contact with a minor,” Engelmayer continued. “They do not discuss or identify any client of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s. They do not reveal any heretofore unknown means or methods of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s crimes. They do not reveal new venues at which their crimes occurred. They do not reveal new sources of their wealth. They do not explore the circumstances of Epstein’s death. They do not reveal the path of the government’s investigation.”

Anyone reading the grand jury transcripts “expecting, based on the government’s representations, to learn new information about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes and the investigation into them, would come away feeling disappointed and misled,” Engelmayer concluded. “There is no ‘there’ there.”

That seems pretty definitive. Now, it should be said that the Maxwell grand jury transcripts do not represent everything in the Epstein files. In a July statement, the FBI said it reviewed a massive amount of information, which the FBI described as “digital searches of its databases, hard drives, and network drives as well as physical searches of squad areas, locked cabinets, desks, closets, and other areas where responsive material may have been stored.” All together, that totaled “300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence.”

But the Maxwell grand jury case is the first example of an outsider, Engelmayer, examining substantive material from the “Epstein files” for the purpose of deciding whether releasing them would benefit the public. The judge’s nothing-new finding comports with what others in the press who have followed the case have said. And as far as recent revelations are concerned, it’s worth noting that in more than a month of intense media interest in the Epstein matter, the biggest news we’ve seen is a bawdy birthday message from Donald Trump to Epstein 22 years ago, in 2003, before the two had a falling out and before Epstein got in trouble with the law. The president has denied writing it.

Polls show public interest in Epstein has declined precipitously in recent days. There’s a reason for that. People suspect that, with all the intense scrutiny of Trump in the 10 years since he first ran for president, and with the deeply partisan nature of that scrutiny, and with the Justice Department being in both Republican and Democratic hands during that period, it’s likely that if there were something huge to be learned, it would have been learned by now. That doesn’t mean it is impossible that there is something big still out there. But it seems more and more unlikely.

“The president taking over local control of [the Metropolitan Police Department] and putting the US military onto the streets of DC under the guise of public safety is wrong,” D.C. Councilman Charles Allen posted. “It’s an extreme, outrageous, and dangerous move for our city and the safety of all our residents.”

“Violent crime in Washington, DC is at a thirty-year low,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) posted. “Donald Trump has no basis to take over the local police department. And zero credibility on the issue of law and order. Get lost.”

The main argument of Trump’s critics is that violent crime in Washington is going down, so there is no reason for Trump to take over the MPD or call in the National Guard or direct federal law enforcement to the city’s streets. It is true that violent crime statistics are going down, although there have been questions about the accuracy of the police department’s crime reporting. But the undeniable fact is that crime is going down from some very high levels during the pandemic. Plus, just because the incidence of a particular crime is down from last year does not mean it is low today.

In any event, crime remains a serious, quality-of-life-changing issue in the district. In 2023, a bad year for crime in the district, there were 40 murders per 100,000 residents. In 2024, that number fell to 27 per 100,000. So is that good? It is certainly a positive thing to have fewer murders, but 27 per 100,000 is still quite a lot. In fact, according to figures compiled by the Rochester Institute of Technology Center for Public Safety Initiatives, the homicide rate of 27 per 100,000 is the fourth-highest among U.S. cities.

In raw numbers from the MPD, the city had 274 murders in 2023, followed by 187 murders in 2024. Now, in 2025, if current trends continue, it appears the district might be headed for around 170 murders. So you can look at it two ways: One, it’s good that murders might go down from 187 last year to 170 this year, or two, 170 murders is still a lot.

Beyond homicide and other violent crime, there’s no doubt that a sense of just-below-the-surface danger and disorder keeps many district residents in a state of unease. One of the reasons Trump decided to act was the attack on a former official in the Department of Government Efficiency effort, Edward Coristine, who was badly beaten in an attempted carjacking in the city. After the Coristine attack, Trump pledged to federalize law enforcement in the district.

Of course, the Coristine beating was not unusual. Events like it caused the city to impose a curfew on young people this summer. That is evidence enough that a city has a crime problem. But a recent Washington Post story added this: “Hours after Coristine was attacked, residents in a nearby block were rattled awake by shouting on their usually quiet, tree-lined street. One person described peeking out their window and seeing a rowdy crowd of youngsters, some in masks. Later, they saw a young man, beaten and bloodied.”

Police came and could not find any suspects or the young beating victim, either. That was another crime that will not go into the statistics. Then more from the Post: “The weekend’s incident unnerved residents. … ‘This is a safe city, but overhearing and witnessing gang threats and then watching the camera footage of the thuggery is disturbing,’ said one resident, speaking on the condition of anonymity over concerns of personal safety. The crowd of teens, he said, was roaming the street and appeared to be checking for unlocked cars and things to steal.”

On the one hand, the resident said the city is safe. On the other hand, he did not feel safe enough to speak on the record. What kind of safety is that?

The resident who was afraid to give his name also told the Post, “The language Trump uses to describe DC is wrong, but clearly there is something bad going on that needs to stop.” Living in Washington, he no doubt felt he had to denounce Trump. But he was still worried about crime.

Now comes the political debate. In opposing Trump, will Democrats end up defending crime in the district or defending its right to have a high crime rate? Some are already doing just that. It puts them on the wrong side of another lopsided issue, like they are with the border.

But here is the thing. Trump is imagining a Washington with a far lower crime rate than its residents have become accustomed to. Even though they stand to benefit enormously if he succeeds, many of those residents and their political representatives will oppose Trump for trying. In the process, they will become almost protective of their crime rate now that Trump is threatening it. That is crazy. But it might be where we are headed.

Trump made the pledge after a former official in the DOGE effort, Edward Coristine, was badly beaten in an attempted carjacking in the city. “Crime in Washington, DC is totally out of control,” the president posted on Truth Social. “If DC doesn’t get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take federal control of the city, and run this city how it should be run, and put criminals on notice that they’re not going to get away with it anymore. Perhaps it should have been done a long time ago, then this incredible young man, and so many others, would not have had to go through the horrors of violent crime. If this continues, I am going to exert my powers, and FEDERALIZE this city.”

As president, Trump has considerable powers over law enforcement in the District. Of course, the Metropolitan Police Department is controlled by the city. But the District is full of federal law enforcement, as well — all sorts of agencies have uniformed security services. On Thursday, Trump ordered those agencies — U.S. Marshals, Department of Homeland Security, ICE, Park Police, and others — to take a larger role in law enforcement in the city. 

Even before the Coristine incident, some agencies had been exercising more stringent enforcement. In the past few months, for example, the Park Police have made nearly 500 arrests for crimes like public consumption of marijuana. Now, there will be more.

For Trump to go further afield, though, would require the approval of Congress, which has the absolute authority to run the District of Columbia. The Constitution’s Article I, Section 8 gave Congress the power “to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever” over the District. 

One might point out, though, that Congress granted the District the power to run itself with the Home Rule Act in 1973. But look at the text of the Act. A passage entitled “Retention of Constitutional Authority” says that “the Congress of the United States reserves the right, at any time, to exercise its constitutional authority as legislature for the District, by enacting legislation for the District on any subject, whether within or without the scope of legislative power granted to the [city] council by this Act, including legislation to amend or repeal any law in force in the District prior to or after enactment of this Act and any act passed by the council.”

You can’t get any clearer than that. When the framers of the Constitution wrote “in all cases whatsoever,” they meant everything. When the Congress that passed the Home Rule Act recognized Congress’s authority to pass legislation “on any subject … at any time … on any subject” — that’s very clear. Ultimately, Congress runs the District of Columbia.

Over the years, lawmakers, both Democratic and Republican, have used that power. In 2023, when the all-Democrat, deeply woke city council passed a crazy crime bill that would have reduced penalties for homicides, carjackings, home invasion burglaries, and robberies, as well as penalties for all violent felonies committed with a gun, Congress, on a bipartisan basis, stepped in and threw it out. One headline for the story read, “Congress overturns DC crime bill with President Biden’s help.”

Now, if Congress wants to step in again, it can. Certainly the president is on board. Republicans will be, too. But the question is whether Democrats, who in 2023 were willing to step in behind a Democratic president, would stop an effort to pour more resources into public safety under President Trump.

You’ve probably heard the argument that crime is decreasing in Washington. That’s certainly true if you compare it to the highly elevated levels of crime during the pandemic years. But crime is still a serious, quality-of-life-changing issue in the District.

The rate of homicides was relatively low at the beginning of Trump’s first term — 17 murders per 100,000 population in 2017. By 2023, that number had more than doubled, to 40 per 100,000. In 2024, it fell to 27 per 100,000. That was better than 40, but by one measure, the District still ranked fifth among U.S. cities, according to figures compiled by the Rochester Institute of Technology Center for Public Safety Initiatives. And in any event, homicides are still higher than they were in the early 2010s, when they fell to a rate of 14 per 100,000 population.

Now, Democrats say, murders in the District are still falling, and therefore Trump and the GOP should not step in. It seems odd to argue against increased law enforcement in a city with a serious crime problem. But that might be what Democrats do if Trump and his party try to step up the fight against crime. But remember — the president has some power, and Congress has complete power, to intervene.

On the other hand, some elements of the Democratic Party are filled with passionate intensity. We’re seeing two examples of that now.

The first is in Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) called a special session of the legislature this summer to deal with the question of redistricting, which is, of course, always a contentious topic. In Texas’s case, the legislature is dominated by Republicans, who have an 88-62 majority in the state House and a 19-11 majority in the state Senate.

Rather than deal with a defeat on redistricting, which would result in more Republican congressional seats, Democrats in the Texas House decided to flee the state to block a vote. The rules of the 150-member Texas House require a two-thirds quorum, that is, 100 lawmakers, to be present to do business. The 88 Republicans can’t do that by themselves — they have to have at least 12 Democrats show up.

Instead, House Democrats boarded a chartered jet and fled to Illinois, where Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL) welcomed their arrival. And not just welcomed — Pritzker, who wants to be president and believes Democrats have not been aggressive enough in resisting President Donald Trump, had his staff assisting the Texas Democrats for weeks. “This is a righteous act of courage,” Pritzker said.

It was also an audacious blockade of … democracy. In one beautifully ironic moment, the Texas House Democrats posted a photo of themselves outside their private jet wearing T-shirts that said “LET THE PEOPLE VOTE.” Of course, they were acting to prevent a vote in the legislature, not allow one.

We have seen maneuvers like this before. In 2011, Wisconsin Democratic legislators fled the state to stop legislation they didn’t like. They stayed away for weeks, but in the end, the bill was passed. The Democrats lost, but the point was to get publicity and create at least the temporary appearance of widespread public support for their action. That’s what’s going on in Texas now.

The second example of Democratic intensity is in Nebraska, where Rep. Mike Flood (R-NE), of the state’s 1st Congressional District, held a town hall Monday evening. It’s a Republican district. Flood has been elected twice, with 58% of the vote in 2022 and 60% in 2024. Trump won the district in 2016, 2020, and 2024, most recently with 56% of the vote.

Nevertheless, the crowd at Flood’s town hall seemed a little one-sided. Annie Karni, a reporter for the New York Times who was there, posted on X that the huge crowd — “I’ve never seen a crowd like this for a town hall for a House member” — gave a “full standing ovation for a question that accused Flood of being a fascist.” At another point, Karni posted, “This is complete mayhem. Entire auditorium of 700+ people are chanting TAX THE RICH.” And finally, “The town hall ends with Mike Flood thanking the crowd for coming, over jeers of VOTE HIM OUT. VOTE HIM OUT.”

So what was that about? A few points. One obvious observation is that the majority of voters in the district who support Flood and Trump did not come to Flood’s town hall. That’s not a big surprise — it took place in Lincoln, not in the more rural areas of the district.

It also seems unlikely that many Republicans of any stripe attended. It is generally safe to assume that a Republican crowd does not break out into chants of “tax the rich”. They also don’t call Trump a fascist. The same is mostly true for independents and moderate Democrats. So, without doing a detailed census of every attendee, it’s probably safe to say that, as far as the political spectrum is concerned, they were the type of people who call Trump a fascist and chant “tax the rich.”

Now, the political commentariat will debate what significance the event might have. Already, Politico Playbook has called the crowd “a stand-in for the 2026 electorate.” That’s unknowable at this point, but it is certainly what Democratic strategists would want you to believe: The public’s anger at Trump and his party, the story goes, is boiling over and will result in a huge victory for Democrats in next year’s midterm elections.

Maybe that will happen. It’s impossible to say with a lot of confidence for Trump, because while he is a second-term president, he is not a consecutive second-term president, and it’s hard to know if that will have any effect. But the president’s party usually loses seats in midterm elections, and with Republicans’ narrow, narrow advantage in the House, it is more likely than not that the GOP will lose control of the House.

But if Republicans do lose the House, it will not be due to the “Trump’s a fascist,” “tax the rich” chanters who showed up at Flood’s town hall. It will be due to more moderate voters losing faith in Trump and his party’s ability to solve the problems they were elected to solve. What happened in Nebraska, and in Texas, too, is just show business.

There’s a simpler way to read it: Just focus on what we know the Hillary Clinton campaign actually did in the 2016 presidential campaign against Donald Trump. Leave speculation and judgments of motive out of it. 

The best way to do that is to start not with the Durham annex but with the actual Durham report, which was released in 2023. In it, Durham discussed what he called the “Clinton Plan intelligence,” that is, his discovery that U.S. intelligence learned about what Russian intelligence learned — yes, it’s complicated — about an alleged Clinton campaign plan to accuse Donald Trump of collusion with Russia.

This is perhaps the most important paragraph in Durham’s 306-page report. It’s worth reading carefully:

The Clinton Plan intelligence itself and on its face arguably suggested that private actors affiliated with the Clinton campaign were seeking in 2016 to promote a false or exaggerated narrative to the public and to U.S. government agencies about Trump’s possible ties to Russia. Given the significant quantity of materials the FBI and other government agencies did in fact receive during the 2016 presidential election season and afterwards that originated with and/or were funded by the Clinton campaign or affiliated persons (i.e., the Steele Dossier reports, the Alfa Bank allegations, and the YotaPhone allegations), the Clinton Plan intelligence prompted the [special counsel’s] office to consider (i) whether there was in fact a plan by the Clinton campaign to tie Trump to Russia in order to “stir up a scandal” in advance of the 2016 presidential election, and (ii) if such a plan existed, whether an aspect or component of that plan was to intentionally provide knowingly false and/or misleading information to the FBI or other agencies in furtherance of such a plan.

This is what we know, as outlined in the Durham report. On April 1, the Democratic/Clinton law firm Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS, an opposition research term, which in turn hired former British spy Christopher Steele to investigate allegations of Trump ties to Russia. Steele was also a CHS, or confidential human source, for the FBI, going back several years. 

On June 14, 2016, there were media reports the Russians had hacked the Democratic National Committee. On July 22, the Friday before the Democratic National Convention was scheduled to begin on Monday, stolen DNC emails were published in the press, causing embarrassment to the Democratic Party. (The emails showed clearly that Clinton and the party had worked to undermine rival Bernie Sanders.)

On July 24, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook took to the Sunday shows to claim that Russia was behind the DNC hack — a lot of people were saying that — and further, that “experts” were saying “this was done by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.”

Mook had no evidence to support his charge. “It was a remarkable moment,” the New York Times reported the same day, July 24. “Even at the height of the Cold War, it was hard to find a presidential campaign willing to charge that its rival was essentially secretly doing the bidding of a key American adversary. But the accusation is emerging as a theme of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign….” With that, the effort to smear Trump as a “Russian asset” was off and running.

But smearing your opponent is part of politics, however unsavory. What if what Clinton did was just opposition research? “Steele was hired by Fusion GPS to essentially conduct opposition research against then-candidate Trump in the midst of a U.S. presidential election,” the Durham report notes. “While many may find this practice unseemly, political opposition research is a firmly entrenched feature of U.S. electoral politics.”

On the other hand, what if the Clinton team went beyond oppo research? That is what Durham was getting at when he wanted to know if Clinton’s plan was to “intentionally provide knowingly false and/or misleading information to the FBI or other agencies.” That’s more than just opposition research.

The answer is in the Durham report, with new details provided by the Durham annex. Among those new details is that the FBI received from a secret source a Russian communication from early March saying that Clinton’s staff was “preparing scandalous revelations of business relations between Trump and the ‘Russian Mafia.'” That certainly lines up with the campaign’s hiring of Christopher Steele and the plan to tie Trump to Russia.

Then we learn, from another Russian communication provided by the secret source, that on July 26 — remember the leaked emails were made public on July 22 and Mook made his accusation on July 24 — Clinton “approved a plan proposed by one of her foreign policy advisers … to ‘smear Donald Trump by magnifying the scandal tied to the intrusion by the Russian special services in the pre-election process to benefit the Republican candidate.'”

Democrats and their allies in the media immediately pronounced that information fake. Durham’s investigators, experienced prosecutors, felt otherwise. But leave that question unsettled. Focus instead on what we know, from the Durham report, and now from the Durham annex, about what Clinton actually did. Consider five data points:

1) By April, 2016, the Clinton campaign already had a contractor — Steele — working on developing damaging information on Trump and Russia.

2) By July 24, the campaign was publicly raising the charge of Trump-Russia collusion, and the New York Times reported the topic was “emerging as a theme of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.”

3) Also in July, Steele contacted an FBI agent and “requested an urgent meeting,” according to the Durham report. There Steele gave the FBI one of his first reports. It alleged, famously, that “Russian authorities had been cultivating and supporting US Republican president candidate Donald Trump for at least five years,” an operation that was “both supported and directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.” It also alleged, infamously, that Russian spy cameras had recorded “Trump’s (perverted) conduct in Moscow” including “employing a number of prostitutes to perform a ‘golden showers’ (urination) show in front of him.” That was the salacious and wildly false allegation that later became known as the “pee tape.” It is without any doubt an example of the Clinton campaign, working through its contractor Steele, providing “false and/or misleading information to the FBI or other agencies.”

4) After July, Steele worked hard to funnel his anti-Trump material into the media. For journalists, the dossier’s unsupported gossip would be legitimized by the fact that the FBI was investigating it.

5) In September, a Democratic lawyer working on behalf of the Clinton campaign, Michael Sussmann, planted a false allegation about Trump and Russia — the so-called Alfa Bank story — with the FBI. At the time, Sussmann denied he was acting for the Clinton team, even though he billed the campaign for the outreach to the FBI.

In light of that, look at Durham’s two questions: “(i) whether there was in fact a plan by the Clinton campaign to tie Trump to Russia in order to ‘stir up a scandal’ in advance of the 2016 presidential election, and (ii) if such a plan existed, whether an aspect or component of that plan was to intentionally provide knowingly false and/or misleading information to the FBI or other agencies in furtherance of such a plan.”

The answer to (i) is yes, there was a plan. The answer to (ii)? Well, there is no question that the Clinton campaign provided false and/or misleading information to the FBI. Whether it did so knowing the information was false and/or misleading is still a point of argument, at least among Democrats. In light of the entirety of what is now known, it seems extremely hard to believe the campaign did not know its feeds to the FBI were false and/or misleading.

Still, in the most basic sense, we know what Hillary Clinton did. It wasn’t just opposition research. She and her campaign team accused Trump of collusion and then fed false and/or misleading information relating to that accusation to the FBI, after which it became the subject of alarmist reporting in the press. In the short run, it didn’t work — Clinton lost and Trump won. But in the long run, it upended American politics for years, and no one is the better for it.

But the president’s opponents did not care about such nuance. For Democrats and their allies in the press, the first quarter GDP numbers were an opportunity to attack, attack, attack. From the newsletter on April 30: 

You will not be shocked that Democrats jumped on the news to declare that President Donald Trump has crashed the economy in just 100 days. (The GDP report included the last few weeks of the Biden administration.) “A crashing economy heading toward a RECESSION,” tweeted House Democrats. “Crashing the economy,” said House Democratic leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries. “Crashing the economy,” said Trump impeacher Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin. 

That was then. Now, the government has just released GDP numbers for the second quarter of 2025, and they show the economy grew at a healthy annual rate of 3.0% during that time. It was a good number.

So what about Trump crashing the economy? If he was doing that in April, surely it would be crashed by now, or at least seriously dinged up, wouldn’t it? This time around, Democrats realized there was no way to interpret 3.0% economic growth as “crashing” the economy. That was a bit too much even for the most aggressive Trump critic.

So what to say? It was also a bit too much to allege that the numbers were fake — after all, they were produced using the same methods the Commerce Department always uses to come up with GDP figures. 

But how about saying the GDP numbers just weren’t what they appeared to be? Yes — that might work. Maybe say the 3.0 figure, which appears to show solid economic growth, is really a “mirage.” “While the Trump administration will try to wave rosy headlines about the second quarter number,” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer said Wednesday, “today’s GDP number is, in fact, a mirage.”

Is that true? First of all, there’s no doubt that an annual GDP growth of 3.0% is a good report. But, just as the first quarter figure was low because of tariff-related increased imports, so the second quarter figure was high because of tariff-related decreased imports. So you can mentally take a little off the top. But remember that, even taking into account a drop in imports, the prediction for second quarter GDP was 2.3% — and then it came in at 3.0%. So it is good news. 

And it is not a mirage. And it is not crashing the economy. Obviously, Democrats want to diminish President Trump’s accomplishments in any way they can. That includes talking down the economy. But when they say the president is crashing the economy, or that economic growth is a mirage, they only make themselves look less credible.

The Washington Post made the not-particularly-earthshaking discovery that a lot of people are paying “at least some” attention to the Epstein story, that most support releasing “all files” in the case, that they “suspect” the files will contain “embarrassing information about Trump, Democrats, and billionaires,” and that Democrats disapprove of Trump’s handling of the issue.

Here’s an important question that was not included in the Washington Post’s survey: What is the issue? It would be interesting if a reputable pollster asked an open-ended question along the lines of “What do you think Trump did in the Epstein affair?” Another interesting question would be to ask when Trump did whatever it is the respondents suspect him of doing.

The questions hint at the amorphousness of the Epstein matter. We know what Epstein did, at least his criminal acts. “From at least 2002 through at least 2005, Epstein enticed and recruited, and caused to be enticed and recruited, dozens of minor girls to visit his mansion in New York, and his estate in Palm Beach, Florida, to engage in sex acts with him, after which he would give the victims hundreds of dollars in cash,” says his 2019 federal indictment. “In order to maintain and increase his supply of victims, Epstein also paid certain victims to recruit additional underage girls whom he could similarly abuse. In this way, Epstein created a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit, often on a daily basis, in locations including New York and Palm Beach.”

So what do we know about Epstein and Trump? We know that Trump met Epstein nearly 40 years ago — sometime in the late 1980s. We know that the two were friends in the 1990s. We know that Trump, who, as a flamboyant developer-turned-reality TV star, talked to the press a lot, spoke publicly about his friendship with Epstein.

We know that Trump, in 2002, said Epstein “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” We know that Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet seven times between 1993 and 1997, although there’s no evidence Trump ever visited Epstein’s notorious private island. And then we know that Trump and Epstein had a falling-out in 2004, when Trump apparently banned Epstein from coming to his Mar-a-Lago club. There are no known contacts between the two men after 2004. Two years later, in 2006, Epstein was indicted for the first time, in Florida. 

We know that in 2019, when Epstein was indicted a second time, reporters asked then-President Trump, “Did you have any suspicions that he was molesting young women, underaged women?” and Trump answered, “No, I had no idea. I had no idea. I haven’t spoken to him in many, many years.” We also know that Trump said, after Epstein’s arrest, “I want a full investigation, and that’s what I absolutely am demanding.”

We don’t know of any evidence that Trump partook in Epstein’s misconduct. We also do not know of any evidence that Trump knew about Epstein’s criminality and did nothing about it. We have Trump’s denial on that. But what about Trump’s statement, to New York magazine, that Epstein liked women “on the younger side”? Make of it what you will, but it appears to have been said in the 50-year-old-man-who-has-a-25-year-old-girlfriend sense, and not in the Epstein criminal sense.

So it would be useful if pollsters asked people: Just what do you think Trump did that was wrong during those years he socialized with Epstein? And while the pollsters are at it, they can ask whether respondents believe it is possible to know definitively about events that took place so far in the past.

Sorry to engage in elementary math, but 1990 was 35 years ago. Which means the Trump-Epstein friendship began more than 35 years ago. And if the friendship was over in 2004, it ended 21 years ago. 

The current frenzy suggests how far back in time the press will go in the effort to find something on Trump. For example, many partisans strongly supported the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit, which was filed in 2022, over an alleged sexual assault that took place either 26 or 27 years earlier — the purported victim could not remember which it was.

Now, in the Epstein case, the accusations go back even further — 35 years. Obviously, anything that took place back then is beyond the statute of limitations. (In the Carroll case, the alleged events were beyond the statute, too, but the New York legislature had given sexual assault accusers one free year in which to accuse anybody of anything at any time, even if it allegedly took place decades earlier. That’s how Carroll got to take Trump to trial.) In any event, 20 or 25 or 30 or 35 years ago is a long time. 

Back in the 1992 presidential campaign, many in the press got excited over reports that Bill Clinton had been involved in a suspicious real estate development called Whitewater back in 1978 — that is, 14 years earlier. Clinton called it “ancient history,” but due to some weird legal circumstances at the time, mainly the existence of a terrible law called the Independent Counsel Act, a long investigation ensued. (Through even weirder circumstances, it indirectly led to the investigation of the Lewinsky matter.)

Now, some of Trump’s adversaries would like to see an investigation into even more ancient history. You can see the political benefit. If there is enough political pressure, an inquiry can be started on the basis of very little evidence, and then, if you just keep investigating, you can never tell what might pop up. 

That’s what Trump has to deal with. Yes, he should release all the Epstein files that can be legally released. But beyond that, he’ll be constantly trying to prove a negative, until Democrats and their allies in the media decide to move on to something else.

One subject that barely came up, about 50 minutes into the news conference, was the dead sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Spoiler alert: No news was made on that front. 

If you follow things, you’re probably seeing a lot of stories suggesting some sort of undefined scandal involving Trump and Epstein, who were friends in the 1990s and remained so until 2004, two years before Epstein was first charged with a crime. You’re seeing it not because reporters have discovered new information to change the substance of what is already known, but because Democrats and their allies in the media hope that repetition of the story will bring down Trump’s approval rating and perhaps shake loose some currently unknown, damaging revelation they hope exists.

At least so far, it’s not working, and a new poll shows how far Democrats are falling short. In a Wall Street Journal survey taken July 16-20, respondents consistently expressed more confidence in the Republican Party than the Democratic Party to handle key issues, and they expressed more positive feelings toward Trump and Republicans than toward Democrats. 

First, the favorable/unfavorable ratings. The poll found that 45% of those surveyed had a very or somewhat favorable impression of Trump, versus 52% who had a very or somewhat unfavorable impression. For the Republican Party, the numbers were 43% favorable versus 54% unfavorable, and for the Democratic Party, the numbers were 33% favorable and 63% unfavorable.

The big news in that? The Democrats’ 33-63 rating — the worst for the party since 1990. Indeed, the headline of the article was “Democrats Get Lowest Rating From Voters in 35 Years, WSJ Poll Finds.”

The poll suggests that Democrats’ current strategy, focused mostly on Trump-bashing, hasn’t paid off in higher ratings. The reason: While many voters might not like Trump and Republicans, or be ambivalent about them, they have less confidence in Democrats. 

“On the whole, voters disapprove of the president’s handling of the economy, inflation, tariffs, and foreign policy,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “And yet in each case, the new Journal poll found, voters nonetheless say they trust Republicans rather than Democrats to handle those same issues in Congress.”

Start with Trump’s ratings on handling issues. For the economy, the Wall Street Journal found him at 44-53 — that is, with 44% approval and 53% disapproval. On the specific issue of inflation, he was 44-55. On tariffs 40-57. On foreign policy, 47-51.

Then, look at the Republican vs. Democrat version of those questions. When asked which party is best able to handle the economy, 39% said Republicans, while 27% said Democrats. On inflation specifically, 38% said Republicans and 28% said Democrats. On tariffs, 37% said Republicans and 30% said Democrats. On foreign policy, 39% said Republicans and 31% said Democrats. 

The numbers suggest Democrats, who are happy targeting Trump from dawn ’til dusk, are not convincing voters they can do a better job than the president and his party. 

That’s where Epstein comes in. Much as they did from 2017 to 2019, when they accused Trump of colluding with Russia, many Democrats appear ready to make the case against Trump based on the Epstein matter a centerpiece of their opposition to the president.

Will that rile the voters? And more specifically, will it make voters angry in the absence of any powerful revelations about Epstein — and continued accomplishments by Trump? Democrats appear to hope so. During this summer break, the Wall Street Journal reports, Democrats “are hoping for a repeat of this spring’s recess, when angry voters flooded into town-hall meetings, heckling Republican lawmakers and challenging them to do more to push back against Trump.”

Maybe so. But success changes things. And Trump has had a number of significant successes in his first six months in office, enough to satisfy many independent or on-the-fence voters that he is doing good things for the country. Of course, hardcore Democrats and their allies in the Resistance are apoplectic about Trump because they are always apoplectic about Trump. What the new poll suggests is that for Democrats, anger is just not enough.