I am agnostic on the question of special counsels and probably agnostic-plus-skeptical on the question of having one specifically in relation to Epstein. Among other things, investigating Trump and his regime for its fumbling, dishonesty, and possible corruption on this matter is rather like investigating the lack of suitable anti-slip rubber stair treads on the Titanic. So count me partly in agreement with Steven Calabresi. At the very least, doubting that there should be an Epstein special counsel is not an unreasonable position. But it seems to me that argument should rest on its own bottom, and that other arguments in support of that view are either weak or of questionable relevance.
1) I fail to understand what relevance the “great things” Donald Trump is doing have to do with whether or not there should be a special counsel.* Put differently, I fail to understand why it matters whether the things have been “great” or not. It does not necessarily take any more time for a president to do stupid, harmful things than it does for him to do good things. This should be evident from one of the major “policy” initiatives Calabresi leaves off his list: the regime’s on-again, off-again, mostly-on-again efforts to raise consumer and manufacturer prices across the economy while doing side deals with connected industries and lobbyists, in service of his eccentric belief that “trade is bad” and his four-decade love affair with tariffs. (Calabresi really should have factored in the massive offset when praising Trump for tax cuts, incidentally.)
It is probably true, as a generalization, that it takes more time to do things carefully and thoroughly than sloppily and incompetently. In this, the current Trump regime is obviously poised to realize some significant time savings, although one has to factor in the need to do it all over again the right way. But this is orthogonal to the question whether the things one is doing carefully or sloppily are “great” or awful. Time is an unrecapturable resource in either case. So if the concern is that a special counsel would take up the president’s time, it shouldn’t matter particularly whether one thinks the president has done great things, terrible things, or a lopsided mixture of both. It might make a difference if one thought that, even if Trump and his lackeys had acted illegally and corruptly, he should get a bye on those matters because one approves of other things he has done, as one might excuse the sins of a monarch or dictator. But Calabresi does not and would not suggest that. (It does, however, seem pretty darn close to the position of the House leadership.)
2) Calabresi argues that since Epstein, like Franco, is still dead, spending time on the Epstein files is a) a “pointless distraction” that is b) really the fault of the newspapers and Democrats, who are out for Trump’s blood. This he likens to the Clinton affair, which Calabresi bluntly calls a “right-wing” effort to “get Bill and Hillary Clinton.” The Morrisonian point about the ways in which such investigations morph and expand seems right to me and I have no particular quarrel with it. But it seems to me that the description of the whole thing as a “pointless distraction,” and a pointless distraction coming from his adversaries at that, runs into the rough ground of Trumpian reality.
Is it “pointless?” I’m not unsympathetic to this label. But how accurate is it? One thing I think we can dispense with pretty quickly is the notion that it’s pointless simply because Epstein is dead. Much of the interest in the matter is not about what happened six or sixteen years ago, but about what has happened within the DOJ, FBI, and EOP since January. That does not seem pointless. Indeed, depending on precisely what did happen in that time period, it might be impeachable. I do not mean to suggest it was, and as a general rule–and very much despite the regime’s own best efforts–I do not pay enough attention to Epsteinmania to have a strong view on this. But folks do tend to worry about such things where people with “long sordid sagas” are involved, not without reason–and as sagas go, Trump’s is longer and more sordid than the collected oeuvre of Harold Robbins.
Is it a “distraction?” There are at least two problems here. The first is that it implies that spending a lot of time talking, thinking about, and pouring resources into Jeffrey Epstein pulls the Trump regime away from its important business. But spending a lot of time talking, thinking about, and pouring resources into Jeffrey Epstein is what the Trump regime considers important business. Satiating the urges of the key conspiracy-theorist demographic of the Trump base was a prominent pledge of the Trump campaign. Its official social media account, providing its own gloss on an interview by its candidate, said he “will DECLASSIFY the 9/11 Files, JFK Files, and Epstein Files.” We know it was an important pledge because, as the man himself has explained, capital letters are for emphasis, so all-caps must mean extra emphasis. Plus: the tweet had a red siren emoji!
Likewise, calling for more information about Epstein was something repeatedly urged by leading Guy Woodhouse admirer and current Vice President J.D. Vance–who also hectored the press about the shame they should feel if they did not press harder on this topic. I defer to few when it comes to expertise on the subject of shameful conduct, but on this subject I think most can agree that Vance knows his stuff. And reassigning hundreds of FBI agents and other FBI and DOJ staff to work 12-hour shifts reviewing Epstein materials is one of the few verifiable things (other than media appearances) that Attorney General Pam Bondi has done since her earlier frenzy of neat-looking-binder preparation. (Recall the point about how sloppiness and incompetence can end up being a time suck.) This activity, we were assured by the president’s mouthpiece, was not some eccentricity or rogue move on Bondi’s part; it was a matter of “[e]veryone [ ] working together as one unified team at the direction of President Trump.”
In short, and however Calabresi or I might define and rank sound policy priorities, pouring time and effort into the Epstein matter is not a distraction from the regime’s policies. It is regime policy.
The second problem has to do with what constitutes a “distraction.” I was born 11 years later than Prof. Calabresi, but both of us are, I suspect, hampered on this question by old-fogey notions of what constitutes useful and serious government by sane individuals. In particular, I suspect we are both hampered by the general view that a) presidents, with or without unitary executive theory, should not try to run the whole country personally, b) especially on matters that should be addressed by Congress or state and local governments, c) really especially on matters that aren’t really presidential business at all, which is just busybody Caesarism, and d) all of the above should be undertaken with at least the amount of dignity that one would expect of, say, an adolescent.
Consider, though, the list of activities, not counting golf, that Trump has engaged in just since Calabresi wrote about this on Friday:
- Filed a personal lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, which at best would be a literal distraction and entirely voluntary, and at worst was less a private lawsuit and more of an action memo alerting FCC chairman Brendan Carr to start up the settlement-“encouragement” engines.
- Offered his comprehensive views of Harvard University along with a, let’s call it prescient, (“…which I say even before hearing her Ruling”) evaluation of a federal district court judge.
- Persisted in his efforts to serve as acting NFL Commissioner and, once again, MLB Commissioner–a point worth making not only because it speaks to Trump’s relationship with “distractions,” but because it is such a clear example of the extent to which he thinks of his presidency in purely personalist authoritarian terms. Donald Trump’s personal thoughts and desires, he seems to think, define the scope of Article II power.
- Went on a meme-reposting spree, including one that depicts a collection of his “enemies,” all in prison uniforms. That one actually deserves the overused epithet “fascistic,” and demonstrates yet again that it is a dishonest fallacy to suggest that Trump is interested in ending “lawfare,” as opposed to giving it its very own office and using the executive branch to wage a continuing war of personal retribution.
- Shared his thoughts on state-level criminal justice.
- Posted, because I guess of course he did, “a video compilation of 25 wacky and incredible stunts, such as a fake video of a woman catching a cobra midstrike with her bare hand.”
- Then, of course, there was this. Again: To say that “fascistic” is a wildly overused word, which it is, is not to say it’s never the right one. Sometimes the boot just fits.
It is, I think, too simplistic to say that these were all just secondary distractions, brought on by the primary Epstein “distraction.” Yes, surely he spent a lot of time this weekend trying to “tap into MAGA grievances,” a time-hallowed propaganda device. And he does tend to lash out more wildly, viciously, and obsessively when he feels personally insulted or even just disliked. But spending astounding amounts of time doomscrolling online, mouthing off, and trying to exert control over the country in general, regardless of niceties like meaningful legal authority, do not constitute unusual behavior for Trump. They are just what he does, all the time. This is just what life looks like if you lack both boundaries and an attention span and have focused on hiring “loyal” enablers instead of sober advisors.
It is nice, and maybe even a little sweet, for either Calabresi or me to imagine what the regime would look like if it were otherwise. (Indeed, for better and worse, we have some indication of that, given the substantial extent to which the acting president much of the time is not Donald Trump but Russell Vought.) But the dumb, often wrong, trivial, vulgar, cruel, immoral, corrupt, and above all erratic stuff that Trump does, especially when he’s riding a favorite hobby-horse, isn’t exceptional; it’s the rule. It seems off, somehow, to charge that just one more thing, like a special counsel, might serve as a distraction from what history will already record as the Attention-Deficit-Disordered Presidency.
Is it someone else’s distraction? Finally, would my view change if the whole notion of having the regime spin its wheels on Epsteiniana was a distraction in the way that Calabresi characterizes it–as being driven by the hostile press and, like the Clinton imbroglio as he sees it, by Trump’s enemies? That is, leaving aside whether one ought to have a special counsel, either ever or in this case, is it less justified in this instance for the reasons he offers? I don’t see why, for two reasons.
First, again, it is somewhat orthogonal. The reasons to worry about special counsels apply even in cases where the conduct alleged is unquestionably wrong and serious. And if those reasons were not generally cause for concern–if, say, we were confident that special counsels wouldn’t seek to expand their remit–that would be true in frivolous cases, which would be swiftly dispensed with, as well as serious ones. And the fact that Trump’s opponents, among others, would love to spend more time on this doesn’t tell us anything about whether the issues are, in fact, serious or not. One imagines that the impeachment investigation that Calabresi argued was needed in the Biden case would have been conducted by a number of political opponents, and would have provided grist for the mill for plenty of right-wing media outlets and individual grifters. My point is not one of “whataboutism,” which is almost always tiresome. Rather, the point is that the fact that a charge is being pushed by an opponent doesn’t tell us there’s no merit to it.
I should have said “also being pushed by an opponent,” which leads to the second and more important point: The premise is wrong. Apart from his own grossness and criminality, Epstein continues to draw enormous attention years later not because Trump’s enemies won’t shut up about it, but because of his friends. Trump’s own base supporters (so to speak), fully abetted by Trump and–especially–by the people Trump chose to staff the executive branch, spent five years making Epstein a cause celebre. Beyond that, many of Trump’s most prominent supporters and servants also made Epstein a meal ticket. The current director of the FBI, who rode charges about Epstein cover-ups to fame and fortune, and who described Truth Social’s efforts to cater to conspiracy- mongering QAnon types as both deliberate and just plain good business, is no Democratic Party mole. Pam Bondi wasn’t staging Binderfest 2025 for TikTok influencers at the behest of the DNC or the Times, but because she thought it would be good for Trump, good for the press, good for the fans, and good for her. Trump himself talked less about Epstein than his boosters and sycophants did. (For obvious reasons, one imagines, even if one doesn’t imagine the worst.) But he was more than happy to boost the signal, reap the political benefits, and cash the checks. J.D. Vance was (or pretended to be) angry when the press did not pay more attention to Epstein.
This was, in short, not some outside job. To the contrary: Encouraging the belief that Epstein was the subject of a massive conspiracy that would only be cured by disclosing every scrap of paper was the policy, political lifeline, and steady income of the Trump enterprise for four years. Nor is it fair to say that all of this was just incidental to some larger and nobler goal. It was the goal. For Trump, fan service is the dog, not the tail.
Again, I can well imagine reasons to question the special counsel mechanism altogether. In this case, however, I would suggest that those reasons will just have to stand on their own.
* I imagine it is possible that Calabresi and I might differ on the particulars of what constitutes a good or great thing. That’s fine with me and, despite some strong disagreement about the how of some of these things, I’m happy to take his description as it is for present purposes–especially since, as I suggest, it’s ultimately not relevant. I also note that Prof. Calabresi has criticized at least two major regime initiatives: tariffs and threatening to suppress constitutionally protected speech. That provides another reason not to cavil about what is or isn’t “great.” Someone’s willingness to publicly address and criticize actions by the regime that he disagrees with shouldn’t be discouraged by piling on when that person names things he thinks are worthy of praise. It’s not that this willingness ought to be surprising on his or anyone else’s part. Still, we should–at any time, but certainly especially now–nurture such tendencies just as one would water a flower in a moral/ethical desert. I might add that neither is anything in this post meant to suggest that Calabresi’s praise for the things he likes is the same as general support for Trump. (Likewise, my abundantly justified criticisms of Trump should not be taken as suggesting that it is somehow metaphysically impossible for his regime to do things I think are good. Whether it can manage to do good things the right way is another matter.) Indeed, the evidence suggests that Calabresi wishes he had been presented with more palatable options in November.
Posted by Paul Horwitz on July 21, 2025 at 07:01 PM