With the recent developments involving Ghislaine Maxwell, the Jeffrey Epstein scandal (involving the trafficking of teenage girls for powerful individuals) is definitely back in the spotlight, and analysts are wondering the extent to which this could undermine Donald Trump’s presidency, given his ties to Epstein.

With reports on Trump’s involvement with the Elite Model teen abuse scandal of the nineties, and the Virginia Giuffre case (who worked at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and then for Epstein), it is fair to say that the American leader is under attack in terms of media coverage. Accusations of pedophilia and cover-ups swirl, but framing all of this as mere “personal indiscretions” or personal wrongdoings, grave as they are, on Trump’s part would be a mistake. It is a US systemic societal and state issue.

Releasing the Epstein files was ironically enough initially promised by Trump’s own task force. One may recall that the Epstein case “backfired” on Trump largely thanks to Elon Musk, who also had his own ties to the billionaire. As I suggested back in February, it’s not far-fetched to see Trump’s task force for releasing classified files, including those on Epstein, as a strategy to weaponize information for leverage. The risk, I argued, was self-incrimination, given Trump’s own ties to Epstein — and to other organized crime figures. The “break-up” with Musk seems to have sparked precisely such backfire.

Consider the fact that the aforementioned Ghislaine Maxwell (Epstein’s girlfriend and “madam”) was granted limited immunity for two days of interviews with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and now she claims to be ready to testify before the US Congress, if given clemency. Her attorney has confirmed she answered questions about approximately 100 individuals. The timing is quite interesting to say the least — and the implication is clear: Maxwell’s list of names may very well be weaponized to shift the narrative, thereby shielding powerful figures including Trump from further scrutiny. But one needs to look still beyond that.

The former US Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta is on the record saying that Epstein “belonged to intelligence”, and thus was “above his pay grade” and should be left “alone”, despite all the serious accusations.

It is a well-known fact that the billionaire’s properties were rigged with cameras, making blackmail the most obvious scenario. Sexually exploiting teenage minors is nasty enough but the exploitation of actual prepubescent children would bring far greater “value” in terms of kompromat and weaponizable damage, which leaves one wondering what else could be in the Epstein files (the same ones American officials now claim to have nothing).

American abuse of minors, espionage, blackmail: none of this would be a new phenomenon. The United States’ political machinery has long thrived on kompromat, a tactic refined during the Cold War when intelligence agencies exploited sexual vices to manipulate leaders and recruit operatives. The CIA’s so-called “brothels,” laced with LSD for blackmail, are a well-documented example taken from the infamous MKULTRA program.

This program also involved the torture and sexual abuse of children, among other human rights violations including clandestine scientific experiments with even newborns. In the Cold War years, the US government went so far as to feed radioactive oatmeal to disabled American school children (thus used as guinea pigs) as part of Atomic Energy Commission experiments. The point is that the US national security apparatus has a history of treating children as abusable and dischargeable objects for various purposes.

One may recall also that former US President Barack Obama was going to release information and even photos pertaining to torture conducted by the US regime at the Abu Ghraib and Bagram prison. Obama too changed his mind, as one does and the matter was closed. At the time, General Antonio Taguba confirmed (see page 17) the existence of unreleased images and videos showing sexual torture, including the rape of a boy by a US contractor. No wonder such material has never been released, but one still may wonder: why would authorities film or photograph such state crimes, thereby producing what is by definition child pornography?

It’s long been known that the American intelligence apparatus has engaged in illicit operations for its black budget, including organized crime sectors such as drug trafficking, to the point of  creating the crack addiction problem in the US. Historian Alfred W. McCoy’s “The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia” and former diplomat Peter Dale Scott’s works — such as “Cocaine Politics” — offer thorough documentation of part of this history.

Well, it just so happens that child pornography is a multi-billionaire industry and is part of the crime landscape. There is no reason to assume that the American “deep state” would have any qualms in taking part in such things. We are talking, after all, about a complex that for the last half century has been promoting “regime-changes”, torture, assassinations, trafficking, death squads, terrorism, and neo-fascism in different parts of the world.

Consider this: in the 1980s, an investigation into the Finders — a cult-like group based in Washington, D.C. — raised alarms over child trafficking and pornography, and a CIA-linked cover-up (the group had CIA ties via front companies such as Future Enterprises). In 1987, police in Tallahassee, Florida, found six filthy, hungry children aged 3 to 10 in a van with Finders members, along with videotapes, a computer, and urine-soaked bedding. Some children showed signs of sexual abuse.

Authorities later uncovered passports to sensitive places like North Korea and North Vietnam, large sums of money, and photos of chained children. Notably, Isabelle Pettie, wife of the group’s leader Marion Pettie, was a confirmed CIA employee, and their son worked for Air America, a CIA front tied to drug trafficking. A 1987 D.C. Police Intelligence report marked “Confidential” stated

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