Young girls were just the bait, extortion the payoff

In the comments of a pundit roundup for Daily Kos there is a discussion of the arrest of Andrew Mountbattan-Windsor (disgraced brother of King Charles of Britain). Commenter rugbymom wrote:

The charges against Andrew, from what I understand, don't have to do with having sex with underage girls -- but rather with giving Epstein access to highly classified information when Andrew served as a Trade Envoy for the UK government. The UK authorities and media have been far more attentive to what to me is the scariest (but also promising) aspect of the files: the possibility that the young girls were just the bait, and the money-laundering, political influence, insider information, espionage for Putin and others? was the real payoff. Oh, plus the blackmail and extortion opportunities. To me “Did Trump rape underage girls?” is the least important question. More pressing (and frankly more likely to result in charges?) is who else in the Administration, in Congress, possibly on the Court, was and remains part of a highly compromised circle that included foreign oligarchs, blackmail and extortion, etc. etc. And the UK authorities are looking hard at that, while our social media and even members of Congress are all focussed on “Did he Do It?” (even though he’s likely immune from being prosecuted while he's in office, is probably already incompetent to stand trial, and certainly will be by Jan. 2029).

Jen Fifield of ProPublica and Zach Despart of ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, in an article posted on Kos, wrote that the Department of Homeland Security released a tool called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE. It originally checked immigrants’ eligibility for public benefits but has been expanded under the nasty guy. It now collects confidential data from across the federal government and is promoted to give states a way to look for noncitizens in their voter rolls. The claim is that “millions” of noncitizens are voting. The first finding is that the people flagged as ineligible are actually quite eligible. The error rate is high and verifying their true status causes county election officials extra work. There is no guidance from DHS on procedures to deal with matches. One reason for the false positives is SAVE doesn’t know about immigrants who become citizens. The other finding is that across seven states with a combined 35 million registered voters, the system “identified roughly 4,200 people — about 0.01% of registered voters — as noncitizens.” That’s definitely not “millions.” Which means this is a great deal of effort expended to fix a non-problem, and that means the real goal is something else, such as casting doubt in the security of elections to give a reason to stop actual citizens from voting. Carrie Johnson and Tamara Keith of NPR discuss a particular case of the nasty guy abusing executive power.

The president wants the government he leads to pay him billions of dollars. Trump has filed multiple claims arguing he's been hurt by Justice Department investigations and the leak of his tax returns years ago. Now it's up to his own political appointees to determine whether to settle with their boss — and for how much taxpayer money. "There is a glaring conflict of interest with Trump being on both sides of the claim," said Edward Whelan, a former lawyer at the Justice Department and a political conservative who once clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia. "It is outrageous that he and those answering to him would be deciding how the government responds to these extravagant claims."

Even the nasty guy has said he “will negotiate with myself.” One of the cases for which he is seeking damages comes from when federal agents seized classified documents from his Mar-a-Lago estate. Even in the worst cases the Justice Department rarely pays out more than $10 million. So the nasty guy is asking for at least 100, maybe 1000, times the rare highest payouts. The nasty guy thinks accepting all this taxpayer money is just fine because he’ll give the money to charity. And I’ll believe that only if the charities publish acceptance letters.

But at a time when Americans say their top concern is the cost of living and making ends meet, the idea of the president receiving a massive windfall from the government he leads may not sit well with voters — even if it is donated to charity.

The nasty guy’s Board of Peace met for the first time. The primary topic was Gaza. Leila Fadel of NPR didn’t talk about what happened at the meeting (it was likely secret). However, she did talk to Aaron David Miller, who served more than 20 years at the State Department, advising on Arab-Israel peace negotiations. He’s now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. One good thing about the Board of Peace is that it is trying to internationalize this problem. Gaza cannot be resolved by Israel and the Palestinians. There are three main issues. Who will govern Gaza? The Palestinian movement is a mess. Who will provide security in Gaza? There’s little hope there. Who will pay for humanitarian assistance, current shelter, and reconstruction? Maybe the Board of Peace can help with that last one. Internationalize means being able to bring in the huge required resources. But if Israel and Hamas can’t align their visions of the future no outside pressure or assistance will help. The Board of Peace does have a huge problem in that there is no Palestinian representation. One reason why that is a problem is that Israel has stated their policy is annexation. Miller said:

In the end, you need leaders who are masters of their politics in Israel and Palestine and leaders who are willing to overlook those politics to a degree to try to address not only their own constituencies' needs but the needs of others. And we do not have those kinds of leaders in the region. And frankly, we don't have them in Washington either.

As for a stabilization force, as long as Hamas and Israel are still shooting at each other, in spite of a cease-fire, no party is going to put boots on the ground.