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steve bannon
'Crisis of Elite Impunity': New Emails Show Jeffrey Epstein Scandal About More Than Just Trump
"The wealthy and powerful operate with a set of rules totally unrecognizable to the rest of us."
Nov 13, 2025
Although Democrats in the US House of Representatives have used newly unearthed emails from the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as a cudgel against President Donald Trump, many observers have noted that the full trove of messages also implicates multiple members of the American ruling class as complicit in a criminal conspiracy.
In particular, the emails reveal that Epstein maintained friendly ties with several people with enormous influence in US politics even after he served a prison sentence for soliciting a minor.
Among the prominent elites who maintained contact with Epstein were Larry Summers, former president of Harvard University and director of the National Economic Council under President Barack Obama; right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel, whose financing helped launch Vice President JD Vance's political career; right-wing podcaster and former Trump administration official Steve Bannon; and Kathryn Ruemmler, former Obama White House counsel and current attorney for investment banking giant Goldman Sachs.
Writing on Bluesky, political scientist Ed Burmila argued that the true scandal surrounding Epstein isn't just about one person, but a "crisis of elite impunity" in which the rich and powerful will brush off the crimes committed by their peers, even if they involve the serial sexual abuse of underage girls.
"The crisis of elite impunity that is ruining our society cannot be more clearly or convincingly demonstrated than with the fact that all of these people wrote all this stuff into an email and hit send," he said. "Some of these people are lawyers; the rest are intimately (phrasing) familiar with courtrooms and lawyers in their professional lives. They didn't put this stuff in writing because they're naive or ignorant; they did it because they have no fear of consequences. None at all."
Burmila's argument was echoed by commentator David Kurtz, who wrote at Talking Points Memo that reading the Epstein emails left him "astonished not so much by the chumminess he enjoyed with elites even after he’d served time for soliciting prostitution with a minor but by their flagrantness, their casual disregard, and their indifference to consequence."
Kurtz argued that this level of ruling-class impunity symptomatic of the deep rot inside American political, legal, and academic institutions.
"It is the same impunity that got us Trump," he wrote. "Like Epstein, Trump built a career on a transactional chumminess, mutual self-indulgence, and an alarmingly high tolerance level for misbehavior by the layers of political, business, media, and cultural elites surrounding him."
Leah Greenberg, co-director of Indivisible, shared Kurtz's essay on her Bluesky account and declared the Epstein scandal "a story about total elite impunity, how the wealthy and powerful operate with a set of rules totally unrecognizable to the rest of us."
MSNBC host Chris Hayes also thought the Epstein emails showed American elites in an unflattering light, and he observed on Bluesky that many of Epstein's correspondents showered him with "fawning and flattery," even though he comes across as "a pompous, sub-literate lech."
"Lots of people say: that’s because he’s blackmailing them, but I don’t think he’s blackmailing Kathy Ruemmler!" Hayes wrote. "I don’t think that’s what explains it. I think the banal answer is: he’s very rich and powerful and good at networking and this is how people act around very rich and powerful people."
Although Epstein was only ever criminally convicted on one charge of soliciting a minor in 2008, he was subsequently indicted in 2019 on charges of engaging in a broad sex-trafficking conspiracy involving dozens of teenage girls. Epstein would die in prison before he could face trial for these charges, and law enforcement officials would subsequently claim that he took his own life.
Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's longtime accomplice, is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role in helping Epstein groom and abuse underage victims.
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Bannon Tells GOP: 'Seize the Institutions' of Government Now or We're 'Going to Prison' After 2028
"Steve Bannon motivating Democratic voters," said one historian in response to comments by the former Trump White House advisor.
Nov 07, 2025
Far-right podcaster and former top presidential advisor Steve Bannon told a crowd of aspiring conservative staffers on Capitol Hill this week that the job of Republicans between now and the midterm election next year is to seize complete control of government institutions and turn as many of President Donald Trump's executive orders as possible into law as a way to avoid politic defeat in the coming years and, ultimately, keep MAGA loyalists from being tried and sent to jail.
"I'll tell you right, as God as my witness, if we lose the midterms and we lose 2028, some in this room are going to prison," Bannon told the crowd Wednesday at an awards event hosted by the Conservative Partnership Academy. This group offers training and certifications to aspiring right-wing ideologues working in politics and government.
Bannon, who has already served time in prison for refusing to submit to a congressional subpoena related to his role as a top aide to Trump during his first term, included himself among those who might be targeted if Republicans lost power.
In his remarks, Bannon said Tuesday's election results in New York City, Virginia, New Jersey, and elsewhere—where Democrats swept the GOP—should be seen as a warning to Trump's MAGA base, but called for an intensification of the agenda, not a retreat.
Steve Bannon: If we lose the midterms and we lose 2028, some in this room are going to prison, myself included.
pic.twitter.com/O1iyPipz0n
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) November 6, 2025
"They're not gonna stop," Bannon said of Democrats and progressives aligned against Trump's authoritarian push and Republican economic policies that have focused on lavishing ever-larger tax cuts for corporations and the rich while gutting government programs, including cuts to Medicaid, food assistance for the poor, devastating environmental policies, and dismantling of healthcare subsidies leading to a surge in monthly premiums for millions of families.
Trump's opponents, warned Bannon, are "getting more and more and more radical, and we have to counter that."
His advice to Republicans in power and the right-wing movement that supports them is to counter "with more intense action" and more "urgency" before it's too late. "We're burning daylight," Bannon said. "We have to codify what Trump has done by executive order."
In what seemed like a reference to Trump's recent talk of going "nuclear" on the filibuster in the US Senate and other efforts, Bannon said, "We have to get beyond these structural barriers" in Washington, DC, that he believes are hindering the president from consolidating his power even further.
Speaking about discussions behind the scenes, Bannon said he has been in touch with Republicans in the Senate who he says are asking him to go through for them what he means and that in the coming days people may be surprised by who "in the conservative movement" are coming around to his thinking, mentioning "institutionalists" like Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, as those he's been speaking with.
"These are what I would call heavy-hitters on the limited-government constitutionalists, in our movement," Bannon said of other unnamed individuals, "and they're about to come out in the next couple of days and make this argument because I said, 'Look, we have to understand that if we don't this to the maximum—the maximalist strategy—now, with a sense of urgency, and in doing this, seize the institutions... if we don't do this now, we're going to lose this chance forever, because you're never going to have another Trump."
In an interview with Politico following Tuesday's elections, Bannon said the win by democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani to become New York City's next mayor "should be a wakeup call" to Trump's right-wing nationalist movement. "These are very serious people," Bannon said of Mamdani and others who support his affordability agenda that focuses on the needs of working people, "and they need to be addressed seriously."
As such, Bannon called for the Justice Department, the State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security to target Mamdani specifically by going after his US citizenship and calling for him to be deported. Mamdani is a naturalized US citizen who came to the United States with his parents when he was seven years old.
As the video clip of Bannon's remarks about jail time if the Republicans lose in the upcoming elections made the rounds online Thursday, reactions were predictable along partisan lines.
"Steve Bannon motivating Democratic voters," said Aviel Roshwald, a Georgetown University professor of history with a focus on nationalist movements.
Bannon's call for "seizing the institutions" has been a mainstay on his popular War Room podcast for months, but critics warn that his open embrace of the demand should not make it any less shocking or worrisome.
"He’s preparing his audience to see violence and institutional takeover as 'necessary.' And he’s counting on Democrats and independents being too divided or too polite to call it what it is," warned Christopher Webb, a left-leaning political writer on his Substack page last month.
Bannon and his allies, continued Webb, "do not give a damn about the law, the Constitution, or democracy. They only care about control. And if we keep treating their words as 'just talk,' it will be too late when it stops being talk."
He concluded: "This isn’t going to end well."
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Bannon Says Trump Will Run for an Illegal 3rd Term Because ‘He’s a Vehicle of Divine Providence’
Journalist Mehdi Hasan said Trump and his allies "plan to overturn the Constitution and democracy. They’re not hiding it. They’re bragging about it.”
Oct 24, 2025
In a frightening interview, one of President Donald Trump’s top allies said there is a “plan” for the president to remain in power after 2028, despite constitutional limits.
Speaking to a pair of interviewers at The Economist, Steve Bannon—Trump’s former chief strategist and one of the most influential voices in the MAGA movement—described a third Trump term as a divinely ordained fait accompli that people must simply accept.
“Well, he’s gonna get a third term, so Trump ’28,” Bannon said. “Trump is gonna be president in 2028, and people ought to just get accommodated with that.”
Asked about the 22nd Amendment of the US Constitution, which plainly forbids a president from serving more than two terms in office, Bannon proclaimed that “there are many different alternatives” to get around it.
“At the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is,” he said. “But there’s a plan. And President Trump will be president in ’28.”
Bannon continued: “We have to finish what we started... I know this will drive you guys crazy, but [Trump] is a vehicle of divine providence. He’s an instrument. He’s very imperfect. He’s not churchy. But he is an instrument of divine will.”
“We need him for at least one more term,” Bannon reiterated, “and he’ll get that in ’28.”
In recent days, Trump has increasingly signaled his intent to run for a third term, selling “Trump 2028” merchandise on his website and displaying it in the Oval Office during negotiations with Democrats over the government shutdown.
His recent demolition of the White House’s East Wing to build a luxury ballroom has also raised alarms that Trump increasingly views himself as its permanent resident rather than a temporary steward.
Bannon was adamant that Trump would not only serve a third term, but that his staying in office would be “by the will of the American people.”
This assumption is out of line with what polls would seem to predict: Trump’s support recently hit a new low in his second term, with just 37% of voters approving of his job performance in the latest Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, compared to 61% who disapprove.
Bannon’s comments came days after the New York Times reported that Trump’s handpicked election officials have called for him to declare a “national emergency” ahead of the 2026 midterm election, which they say would allow him to assert more control over election laws and impose new rules on state and local elections without approval from Congress.
Max Flugrath of the voting rights group Fair Fight Action, who warned earlier this week of Trump’s plans to “hijack” the next elections, said that by pushing for a third term for the president, “Bannon is basically saying, ‘Let’s light the Constitution on fire.’”
Author and activist Jim Stewartson noted that Bannon “uses the same alchemy as [House Speaker] Mike Johnson and [Defense Secretary] Pete Hegseth to rationalize destroying the Constitution: ‘spiritual war.’”
Johnson has argued that the US government “must be biblically sanctioned” and that the Founders’ idea of the separation of church and state was “a misnomer.” Hegseth, meanwhile, has endorsed a video of a far-right pastor discussing the need to repeal the 19th Amendment, which enshrined the right of women to vote.
Some pointed out that Bannon often manages to create a stir in the media by saying provocative things and claiming to have privileged knowledge about the machinations of Trump’s inner circle. It’s not the first time Bannon has raised the possibility of a third Trump term.
“A question that I’ve never seen fully resolved is to what degree Bannon is just trying to get attention as a media figure and to what degree he’s actually clued in to what’s going on in the White House,” said HeatMap News correspondent Matthew Zeitlin.
However, Bannon was in the know about Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 election well before it happened. Days before the vote, he was recorded telling right-wing allies that “What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory... He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner. He’s just gonna say he’s a winner.”
Others said that Bannon’s prognosis about a third Trump term is gravely serious, especially given Trump’s other actions during his second term.
“I would love to be wrong, but they keep saying this in public,” said writer John DiLillo. “He’s selling Trump 2028 merch. He’s massively remodeling the White House as if it were his personal residence. I don’t really see why the idea shouldn’t be taken seriously just because it’s ‘unconstitutional.’”
Mehdi Hasan, founder of the media outlet Zeteo, meanwhile, said: “They’re literally shouting it out loud! Their plan to overturn the Constitution and democracy. They’re not hiding it. They’re bragging about it. And the media are just ignoring it, or worse, normalizing it; the biggest story perhaps in modern American history.”
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