Will the SDNY Flip Epstein to Fry Trump?

Imagine the possibility of the following conversation occurring in the near future in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY).

PROSECUTOR: “Mr. Epstein, I don’t need to tell you, the current charges against you carry a maximum sentence of 45 years and there’s probably more charges on their way. At your age, 66, I’m sure you know for you that will be a life sentence. But, if you let us, we may be able to help you.”

EPSTEIN: “Really? How so? Please, do tell me more.”

Prosecutor: “On the contrary, it will all depend on what you can tell us …”

That SDNY prosecutors have now made such a conversation possible should be of grave concern to the President. Not so much because Epstein may sing, but because he has now been put in a position where he has every incentive to compose—read, create, fabricate, or invent—whatever testimony the U.S. Attorneys may desire to save his own hide. And for the President, the SDNY is not a good place for this conversation with Epstein to be happening.

Although the attorneys in the SDNY office will deny this has ever been a motive for their arrest and indictment of Epstein this week, but given their track record of animus toward the President one has to wonder. Why else would these attorneys in New York suddenly take an interest in reviving an eleven year old case that had already been resolved by another U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida pursuant to a 2008 plea agreement?

Is it nothing more than a mere coincidence that this just happens to be the very same SDNY office that reportedly is still actively pursuing several investigations into the President’s family and businesses—investigations, by the way, that have remained ongoing ever since he was elected? In fact, just last week—the very same morning the indictment against Epstein was being unsealed in a New York courtroom—Newsweek reported:

“Last month, [June 2019], the Southern District of New York issued a sweeping subpoena to Trump's inaugural committee to hand over financial and donor records. Prosecutors are investigating everything from the committee's spending to [determine] whether any donations came from illegal foreign entities.” (emphasis added)

Clearly, in the U.S. Attorney’s SDNY Office the witch hunt against President Trump didn’t end with the filing of the Mueller Report, but quite to the contrary, remains alive and well. In fact, for all intents and purposes, their office motto ought to be: Damn the Mueller Report … Full Speed Ahead. But this should come as no surprise to those aware of the fact that this is also the very same office that not so long ago was headed up respectively by none other than both James Comey and Preet Bharara—two individuals who were both justifiably fired by President Trump in 2017, and whose virulent anti-Trump bona-fides have remained impeccable ever since.

Moreover, as to Comey, he has also been mentioned often in recent months in reference to his possible involvement in a conspiracy with other high-level government officials in the Obama Administration to effect a coup that was—or quite possibly, still is—attempting to unseat this country’s duly elected President. Which, by the way, he is all too aware might just happen to be a crime for which he may be prosecuted. So, if there would be any man motivated to rally his former SDNY compatriots to do anything they can to remove the very President whose Administration is seeking to hold him accountable for such alleged sedition, it would be Comey.

And if the preceding is not enough to raise suspicions about the SDNY’s motive for indicting Epstein on stale charges, add to it the current report from the Washington Examiner that one of the prosecutors in the SDNY office who has been assigned to work on the Epstein case is none other than assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey, the daughter of James Comey!

So far as Comey’s fellow swamp dwellers are concerned, the possibility of his daughter’s office flipping Epstein to bring down our current President can only appear to be nothing less than a dream come true. In fact, some—other than the likes of Bill Clinton—might even consider it to be a brilliant stroke of political genius.

Even if the President is never charged with a crime, if Epstein could be compelled to help prosecutors produce even just one alleged “victim” who could be used by Democrats to publicly humiliate President Trump in the same way Christine Blasey Ford recently attempted to do to Justice Kavanaugh, it would be worth political gold to his enemies. Just the bad press it could generate for the President in the course of the upcoming election season might cause him just enough political damage to blow him out of the water.

Or … could all of this occurring at the same time in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the SDNY just be a coincidence?

Maybe… but, not likely.

Clifford C. Nichols is an attorney licensed to practice in California and New Mexico, political commentator and author. Follow him on Twitter at @cnicholslaw and direct any comments or questions regarding any of his editorials to cliff@cnicholslaw.com.