The regime's new Epstein coverup will backfire
They're buying time but not fooling anyone.
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Last Friday, the Trump administration flagrantly violated the law by failing to release the full and unredacted Epstein files as mandated by an almost unanimous vote of both houses of Congress. But Attorney General Pam Bondi and company are sorely mistaken if they think giving Congress a middle finger is going to make the scandal go away.
The administration’s blatant defiance of statute is yet another ugly exercise in lawlessness by a fascist regime which attacks the Constitution on multiple fronts virtually every day. It makes a mockery of the pain of victims and survivors who Jeffrey Epstein assaulted and tortured when they were children. It’s not a surprise that Trump is disregarding the law, but that doesn’t make his decision to do so any less cruel or any less disgusting.
The Trump years have shown us again and again that our system of government often fails miserably to hold powerful people accountable. It would be premature to argue that this will be different — and in fact it seems very unlikely that Trump will be impeached or removed for his association with a sexual abuser, just as it’s unlikely he’ll face consequences for his own history of sexual impropriety and violence.
But that does not mean that Trump and his enablers in his party will face no consequences for this egregious, clumsy, and contemptuous coverup.
We already know that Trump’s stonewalling on Epstein has created major rifts in the MAGA coalition and has generated horrifically bad press for Trump even on the right. Those fissures are only going to metastasize as Trump tries to pretend he has fulfilled the law when he obviously has not. No one can know the future. But none of the plausible paths forward looks good for Trump or the Republican Party.
Barely pretending
The Epstein Files Transparency Act — passed, again, almost unanimously by both houses of Congress — is a short, uncomplicated measure.
It gives the attorney general 30 days to “make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format” all unclassified materials relating to federal investigations of Jeffrey Epstein in the government’s possession. The statute also says, “No record shall be withheld, delayed, or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.” Personal information related to victims can be redacted, as can CSAM. Any material withheld must be reported to Congress along with the justification for doing it.
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The due date for the release of material was last Friday. Some documents were released, and there was at least one important revelation; they included a record of a complaint from the 1990s filed by Maria Farmer with the FBI accusing Epstein of trafficking in CSAM. The FBI never took action, and Farmer had been accused of lying about having made the complaint. Now it’s clear that if the FBI under Bill Clinton had acted, they could have prevented Epstein from assaulting numerous children.
This evidence is important, and there’s likely much more where that came from in the files. But it is not available, because, as was immediately obvious, the Justice Department violated the law. The government admitted it didn’t release all the material by the due date. Deputy attorney general and Trump stooge Todd Blanche said that more documents would be released “over the next couple of weeks.” He then went on Meet the Press and tied himself in knots in an unpersuasive effort to justify the administration’s lawbreaking.
The material the DOJ released last Friday is farcically censored. Fox News Digital reported that the Justice Department used the same standards to withhold the names of victims and “politically exposed individuals and government officials.” This, despite Blanche’s vigorous assurances, seems like a straightforward violation of the law, since only victim information was to be redacted.
But you don’t need to rely on journalists to recognize the extent of the censorship. One already infamous document linked to grand jury testimony consists of 100 pages, all of which are blanked out. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, a member of the royal family accused of sexually assaulting children in collaboration with Epstein, is conspicuously absent from the released materials.
There are virtually no images of or mentions of Trump himself. This is wildly implausible given the fact that Trump and Epstein were close friends for over a decade, during which they “bonded over the pursuit of women” according to the New York Times. (The White House has confirmed that Trump is in the files.)
One of the few photographs of Trump included in the release was quickly removed from the database. Asked why that happened on Meet the Press, Blanche initially suggested at least one of the women photographed with Trump is an Epstein victim — which if true raises even more questions — but then quickly tried to walk that claim back.
In contrast with the protection of Trump, the release includes numerous pictures of former Democratic president and Trump enemy Bill Clinton, whose friendship with Epstein was well known, even though he’s denied knowing about Epstein’s abuse of children. Trump clearly hoped that the images of a partisan foe would satisfy his base.
Even the right isn’t happy
The reaction on the right to the obvious coverup was mixed. Fox’s web coverage of the release barely mentions Trump, much less his relationship with Epstein. The comments section is filled with people insisting there’s nothing more to see in the files.
Others, though, expressed considerable unease. Republican strategist Brian Darling told Reuters that the redactions and slow walk of the release “added more fuel to the fire of controversy” and creates “political risk for all Republicans in swing seats going into the midterms” — a sentiment echoed on ABC’s This Week by Republican Sen. Rand Paul.
When AG Bondi tweeted Friday that “President Trump is leading the most transparent administration in American history” thanks to the Epstein release, right-wing podcaster Kyle Seraphin replied by saying, “One gets the feeling that this is tongue-in-cheek at this point.”
Unsurprisingly, GOP Rep. Thomas Massie remains the most forceful critic of the administration. Massie co-sponsored the Epstein Files Transparency Act and has become a major thorn in the side of both Trump and House leadership. Following the Friday night redacted document dump, Massie posted that the release “grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law.” He and fellow sponsor Rep. Ro Khanna said that they were considering drafting articles of impeachment of Bondi and/or charging her and other DOJ officials with contempt of Congress.
Removing Bondi or charging DOJ officials would be very welcome. But even if Khanna and Massie are unable to get support for those measures, it seems clear from the widespread coverage of the release that the Epstein files will continue to create serious problems for Trump.
We can be fairly sure it will cause problems in the future because it has done significant damage already. GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, began her career as a far right influencer in part by pushing QAnon conspiracy theories claiming that most or all Dems were involved in systemic child abuse. Those fake QAnon theories were connected to the real crimes of Epstein, and Greene has pushed to have the files released, putting her at odds with Trump and leading to a political rupture.
Greene was among the early signees of the discharge petition which forced House leadership and Trump to grudgingly support (or in Trump’s case pretend to support) the Epstein files release. The resulting animosity between her and Trump has led her to resign as of early next year. Greene harshly criticized the file redactions as “NOT MAGA” and insisted, “People are raging and walking away.”
Similarly, FBI Deputy Director Don Bongino announced his resignation shortly before the Epstein files release. Bongino is a podcaster who spent a great deal of time pushing Epstein conspiracy theories, and he’s been increasingly at odds with the Trump administration as it’s become even more clear that Epstein was closely associated with Trump.
Bongino didn’t say that he was resigning over Epstein, but the timing is hard to ignore.
Trump’s now months-long coverup has eroded support from other former backers and “punctured his image with bro voters” in the words of journalist Eric Michael Garcia. Podcaster Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump, has denounced his handling of the Epstein files repeatedly. So has comedian and podcaster Theo Von. When asked if he’d like to participate in an event at the White House, MMA fighter Sean Strickland sneered, “Just to go hang out with the fucking Epstein list? I’m good, dude.”
Why it matters
Of course, none of this is anywhere near adequate as a response to Trump’s coverup efforts, to say nothing of his history of sexual impropriety. The entire discussion of Epstein, especially on the right, is predicated on pretending that we’ll only know if Trump was involved in wrongdoing if the files say he is.
Yet Trump has been accused of sexual harassment and abuse by at least 25 women. He has boasted on tape of sexually assaulting women. He has been found liable in court for a sexual assault of journalist E. Jean Carroll. Mainstream media barely mentions any of that when discussing Trump’s relationship with Epstein, but the fact is that whatever the Epstein files do or don’t disclose, Trump has a long, disgusting history of sexual impropriety which should absolutely disqualify him for office.
Trump’s removal is probably not coming anytime soon since Republicans still control both houses of Congress. But the more the Epstein files are in the spotlight, the more it dawns on even reactionaries like Rogan and Massie and MTG that Trump is and always has been unfit for office. The fraying of right-wing support has contributed to Trump’s dire approval ratings, the string of GOP defeats in elections this year, Republican resignations, and House leadership losing control of the floor.
The unredacted release of the information in the files, not least as it relates to Donald Trump, is important for survivors and for the public. Trump believes that stonewalling will protect him from political damage. But he’s a fool.
Trump has sustained substantial political damage, and he will sustain more. That’s not justice. It will, though, weaken a regime of fascists and abusers. And while that’s not enough, it matters.
Correction: An earlier version of this article discussed a photo from the Epstein archive that appeared to be a publicly available Getty image. The photo in question is similar to the Getty image, but not the same. A discussion of the confusion is here. We regret the error.
That’s it for today
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Let's not forget about Katie Johnson lawsuit that says Trump rapid her at Epstein house when she was 14
Forgive me for a correction... *rifts rather than riffs in the MAGA coalition