By John Kass

July 16, 2025

At some of the quaint “social clubs” in Chicago and suburbs that cater to old-time wise guys—the kind of place where the old men play cards and can still smoke and the kid behind the bar will make you a good espresso or pour out some delicious homemade limoncello– you might see something amazing.

A mounted giant trophy fish on the wall, sometimes with the lure hanging from its lip.

Keep looking at it, and some old timer will put down his cards and for the amusement of the other guys and for the millionth time tell the story about how that fish ended up on that wall:

“How’d he get caught? Simple. He opened his big f-ng mouth.”

I don’t think Attorney General Pam Bondi ever heard that one, or if she did, she ignored the warning.

But like the trophy fish,  Bondi opened her mouth wide anyway and bit down hard.

And what happened?

Anguished thrashing in MAGA world over the so-called Epstein files. This drama triggered the salivary glands of the New York Times and other leftist media rags, including MSNBC and the rest desperate and eager to sell their advertising by fomenting dissent among their Republican enemies.

FBI deputy director Dan Bongino, the Trump and MAGA loyalist and podcaster, threatened to resign over the public relations mess.

And over what?

Some sleazy blackmailer and pedophile who you’d scrape off the sole of your shoe, if you stepped on him.

This is the point where I must repeat: I support our president. And if Bongino resigns, then MAGA will hate on Pam Bondi. She must know this.

Yet Trump world had already been primed to expect earth shattering info through release of the “Epstein Files,” because the smirking bi-coastal elites including the Clintons, Obamas and Bidens had spent decades of their careers mocking us, belittling us, and not only getting away with it including the primacy of their two-tiered justice, applauded for it by left-wing media culture.

Then in a FOX News interview in February Bondi vowed to release the list, telling Fox News on Feb. 21, “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review,” meaning the list of the influential that curried Epstein’s favor.

But  after much investigation, the Department of Justice and the FBI decided there was no list. And then came the pent-up anti-Bondi blowback from MAGA World.

A memo released earlier this week bearing the logos of both agencies stated that a “systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list.’” Nor did they find credible evidence that Epstein blackmailed people or any evidence that he was murdered in jail, rather than killing himself — claims that have been feeding the controversy around the Epstein case.

But she talked about a list of wealthy scum bags and child sex traffickers and sex addicts.

What happened, Pam?

Were you played like a fish in the long weeds?

Remember that Epstein is said to have been a blackmailer with ties to foreign intelligence and that many wealthy people visited him at his sex island and were videotaped. Even Bill Clinton flew on trips on the “Lolita Express” to and from the island. Most suspect the intel agency Epstein was working with involved Israel.

I shouldn’t be surprised. I know some will be upset at the suggestion that Israel would blackmail anyone, let alone any British royal family member attracted to underage girls. And I suppose others will insist, as David Axelrod so often does, that conspiracy theorists abound.

All I need is Kay from “The Godfather” whining that I’m being naïve to think the powerful play by their own rules. Or that allies never, ever spy on each other.

And the tragedy of all this is that the knaves and weasel media jesters begin pouncing to undercut the president with so much going on in the world with young people desperate for the interest rates to drop so they might rekindle the dream of owning their own home someday.

Tragedies have one thread: Overweening pride. It is the downfall of every hero in the stories. You paying attention, Mr. President?

Young MAGA voters need attention. They want to build their own lives, they want to buy homes and get married and and if they can’t build them, then Trump and JD Vance and the Republicans will lose them forever.

And through all of it the left is hoping to rip MAGA apart at the seams, the media pitting neoconservatives like Ben Shapiro and Mark Levine against other conservatives like Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson.

Kelly said sources have confirmed to her that Epstein did not kill himself but was targeted while working as an “agent” for the Israeli government, while Shapiro said unnamed whistleblowers were unreliable. Who’s being naïve, Ben? What’s next? Israel’s 1967 bombing of the U.S. Liberty–and the dead sailors–was purely an accident?

Megyn Kelly is so bright. As to whether the snake Epstein killed himself, I agree with her. He did not. If you think it was suicide, apply some good Midwestern common sense and try this experiment: Hold your breath and tell me how far you can get in committing suicide. Keep holding your breath and then call me.

Consider the feared Chicago Outfit hitman, Gerald Scarpelli, a weight lifter and feared enforcer once only whispered about at those social clubs I mentioned above, like the south side club founded by Outfit boss Angelo “the Hook” LaPietra with the big bass on the wall, or the one in the Western suburbs that was hangout of  Outfit boss John “No Nose” Difronzo, with giant pike and walleye up there.

Scarpelli was a killer. His crew was the Wild Bunch and they weren’t actors, Yet it is said he committed suicide while in federal custody, very much like Epstein. I don’t believe it.

You believe in coincidences too, like Ben Shapiro?

I never met either one, Epstein or Shapiro, but it is fair to think of the blackmailer Epstein having had soft hands. He loved luxury and fancy parties where he’d spin his webs.

Scarpelli wasn’t some weak Fredo. He wasbrutal. He killed people he was told to kill. Some deserved killing. He robbed Brink’s trucks and squeezed whimpering deadbeat gamblers. He loved his work, which was all about visiting violent force upon others weaker than he.

For example, When the bosses worried that hit man Billy Dauber and Dauber’s mouthy wife, Charlotte, would talk to the FBI, Scarpelli and his cowboy crew called “The Wild Bunch” tailed Dauber’s car after it left his lawyer’s office.

It was the middle of the day when they blasted Dauber off the road outside Chicago. They pulled up alongside in a van in broad daylight. They cut them to pieces with automatic weapons, shotguns, and rifles.

Epstein was a wealthy man with powerful friends. His disgusting hobby was all about inflicting himself upon young girls and stealing their innocence.

Scarpelli was a thug who killed for money. Epstein purred like a vampire and dedicated himself to a life of stealing young souls.

Immediately after Epstein was pronounced dead, the conspiracy theories began. Even President Donald Trump, acting as conspiracy theorist-in-chief, hinted in a retweet that the Clintons might have had something to do with it. Like Clinton, Trump knew Epstein, and once had said nice things about him, but years ago Trump had Epstein barred from his Florida club, Mar-a -Lago, reportedly for approaching young women.

One thing prosecutors and cops learn is that people sometimes want to convict themselves.

Human beings just love conspiracy theories.

After Epstein’s death, I received an email from a retired Chicago homicide detective. In his day, he investigated many of the city’s heater cases, too many murders to count. The Chicago FBI didn’t trust the Chicago Police Department, because Chicago’s chief of detectives, William Hanhardt, was the mob’s main man.

But the detective who emailed me were trusted by the FBI, so much so that he’d been a member of the federal Organized Crime Task Force. When Scarpelli was arrested, he had a bag of guns, including a British machine gun and magazines loaded with 9 mm hollow points. He planned to shoot his way out of any arrest and leave cops and FBI agents dead on the ground.

Once caught, he began talking. Word got out, as it always does. Scarpelli was found dead on the shower floor in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago, asphyxiated by plastic bags he’d collected from waste baskets. And the detective was brought in to investigate told me about it.

“When I was in the FBI Task Force a really bad guy, Outfit hit man, high profile prisoner Jerry Scarpelli killed himself in the MCC…Scarpelli had been the target of a major OC (organized crime) case. Major effort to get this guy. He was captured in a sting operation. Dangerous dude. FBI SWAT team. FBI snipers, the works. SOB was carrying a machine gun. He never got to use it.”

A mob underling was cooperating. Had information that would put Scarpelli away for life. FBI and Justice hoped Scarpelli would take down some really big names to save himself.

He was no rat. He was not going to spend his life in prison.

I didn’t have a newspaper column then, but when I began writing this column, I’d write occasionally about Scarpelli. He’d already started to flip, and he was in that in-between world, between the Outfit and the feds. The Outfit was worried.

Try holding your breath and see what happens. The life inside of you would compel you to rip the bag off your head. But I’ve since learned inmates bent on killing themselves–or spies–can find a way. Perhaps by twisting a bed sheet anchored to the bed or the door around their neck, then rolling on the floor. As it tightens, they lose consciousness and die.

Generation upon generation of corrupt and cynical leaders have taught us that those who believe in coincidence are fools. And so, we build alternate realities from the dust and mud of discredited institutions. We all have our conspiracy theories.

We use them like armor to shield us from a cynical, faithless world.

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About the author: John Kass spent decades as a political writer and news columnist in Chicago working at a major metropolitan newspaper. He is co-host of The Chicago Way podcast. And he just loves his “No Chumbolone” hat, because johnkassnews.com is a “No Chumbolone” Zone where you can always get a cup of common sense.

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