Dan Osborn to Seek Pete Ricketts's Nebraska Senate Seat, Stressing Class Issues
Mr. Osborn said in an interview that he would aim to draw a sharp contrast between his working-class background and the profile of Senator Pete Ricketts, the Republican incumbent, who is an heir to billions his father made in the financial services industry.
'It's the C.E.O. from Omaha versus the guy from the shop floor from Omaha, so that's going be the fundamental difference,' Mr. Osborn said.
Mr. Osborn, 50, faces a steep climb against Mr. Ricketts. Republicans have won every House and Senate seat in Nebraska since 2014, when Brad Ashford, a Democrat who had previously been a Republican, won a single term in the House.
Mr. Ricketts, 60, who has spent tens of millions of dollars on Nebraska campaigns for himself and other Republicans, is not likely to be surprised by Mr. Osborn, as was Senator Deb Fischer last year, when Mr. Osborn, running a populist campaign, outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris in the state by 13 percentage points. Ms. Fisher defeated Mr. Osborn by 6.6 percentage points.
In a campaign announcement video, Mr. Osborn disparages Mr. Ricketts as someone who inherited billions from his father, calls him Wall Street Pete and accuses him of turning his back on Nebraska's working people. 'Bye, Pete,' Mr. Osborn says.
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You could certainly be forgiven for thinking Trump wants Maxwell to believe she might get a pardon – or other help in her ongoing appeals – even if that's not realistic. The conventional wisdom among some on the left has been that Trump has indeed cued up a Maxwell pardon, ever since his administration made interviewing her its first big move to allay concerns about its handling of the Epstein files. The idea would be that Maxwell will say the things the Trump administration wants – such as clearing the president and/or implicating others – and he rewards her with a pardon. Trump certainly hasn't shied away from controversial pardons before. He has gone to historic lengths to pardon allies. He has granted clemency to virtually all January 6, 2021, defendants – including hundreds who were convicted of assaulting police. But even against that backdrop, pardoning a convicted sex trafficker is on another level. Let's say Trump does it. The idea would apparently be that Maxwell provides Trump and his team enough information that they can change the subject by focusing the conversation on other people she might implicate. (It's worth noting that Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.) But what happens then? Maxwell clearly has a credibility issues and reason to say what helps her in this moment. And that's not just me saying it; it's Trump's own Justice Department, circa 2020, which called her a brazen liar. A pardon would only reinforce the idea that this was some kind of corrupt bargain. About the only way to combat that would be if she gave information that actually panned out. But justice takes a long time to be served. The Justice Department needs time to build cases, and those cases might or might not succeed. Are you really going to pardon her before any of that happens? What happens if the end result is that the only Epstein associate to actually be convicted walks free? It also seems likely that a pardon would only add new fuel to a subject that Trump badly wants to move on from. If other people were implicated, that would create all kinds of threads to be pulled moving forward. That would also inject new life into theories about a possible cover-up. The question would become whether these people were subjects in the various investigations, and whether those leads were followed up. It would also lead to questions about whether other people could be brought to justice, which would make withholding the Epstein files even more difficult for the Trump administration. And that's a very big risk here. Polls show huge numbers of Americans already believe there is some form of a cover-up at play. A Reuters-Ipsos poll this month showed Americans agreed 60-12% that the federal government was 'hiding information' about Epstein's death, and 69-6% that it was hiding information about his clients. 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It's difficult to see how a Maxwell pardon wouldn't instantly be news for days and weeks, because of how people feel about her crimes and the entire Epstein saga, and because of questions about whether this was some kind of corrupt trade. It would also force GOP lawmakers into some very uncomfortable interviews. (A president indeed has the power to pardon whomever he wants to. That doesn't mean every pardon is morally just.) For all of the MAGA movement's seeming willingness to go along with whatever Trump says, it's hard to see how even much of the base would be okay with all that. The question of whether Trump pardons Maxwell might not even be the right one. A better one might be whether Trump's Justice Department could do something else to help her – such as in her ongoing appeals. Maxwell's legal team has based its appeal around the idea that the 2008 non-prosecution agreement Epstein secured in Florida should have covered Maxwell. 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But at least for now, it's apparently significant enough for Republicans to treat it as a real possibility. And that, in and of itself, is shocking.
