Strategist baffled as Epstein scandal 'continues to unravel' with disturbing new turn

A Democratic political strategist was flabbergasted on Tuesday after new reporting indicated that the Jeffrey Epstein scandal has taken a disturbing turn.

On Monday, Scripps News reported that former New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas was told to "stand down" from investigating disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein's Zorro Ranch, about 40 miles south of Santa Fe. He told the outlet that he had been looking into crimes that Epstein may have committed there in 2019 until he received a call from the Southern District of New York telling him to back off as the federal government investigated the property.

Mike Nellis, a political strategist, said in a new podcast episode on Tuesday that the report was both "disgusting and disturbing."

"We have essentially one of the world's, if not the world's, greatest human traffickers, greatest abusers of little kids, greatest blackmailer who has blackmailed so many people, corrupted so many people in business, in politics, in government, in Hollywood, God knows where else he's stuck his dark, twisted influence in. And our government has never searched his New Mexico ranch," Nellis said. "A ranch that, by the way, was sold to a Republican mega donor who was also running for statewide office in Texas very recently. So the tangled web of this coverup and this scandal continues to unravel, and the more it does, the more it pisses me off."

Trump has been trying to outrun his previous promise to release all of the Epstein files in the government's possession throughout his second administration. However, his administration has been plagued by scandal after scandal that has kept the Epstein files in the forefront of many Americans' minds.

For instance, first lady Melania Trump gave an impromptu press conference in which she denied having been introduced to Trump through Epstein, even though that accusation had largely faded from public view. The Trump administration's handling of the Epstein files has also been the subject of multiple contentious hearings on Capitol Hill.

What makes Balderas's revelation so disturbing, according to Nellis, is that the order came down at a time when Donald Trump was, in theory, in control of the Department of Justice.

"Now, it's even worse because Trump has full control over the DOJ," Nellis added. "They won't release all the files. They keep lying about it. Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, soon-to-be, if the Senate confirms him, actual attorney general, is basically just Donald Trump's personal attorney. But again, at a bare minimum, the incompetence around this case is staggering. But I think we all know there's a certain amount of stupid you can tolerate before it's just outright corruption."