MAGA's Epstein gaslighting is unsustainable
To believe anything they say requires a complete suspension of common sense.
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After months of pushing conflicting and nonsensical talking points about the release of the Epstein files, President Donald Trump is running out of time on his administration’s failing coverup of his longtime friendship with one of the world’s most notorious sex traffickers.
Trump, the White House, and congressional Republicans have spent nearly the entire first year of the president’s second term pushing an ever-expanding number of contradictory narratives about not just what’s in the files, but why Democrats and even staunch conservatives like Rep. Thomas Massie have been demanding their release.
There’s a very simple reason for this: Trump and Republicans have no idea how to cover for a president who is clearly all over the files.
The White House and congressional Republicans have argued that if the Epstein files contain highly damaging information about Trump, former president Joe Biden would have released them while he was in office. Simultaneously, Republicans are arguing that Democrats are behind the push to release the Epstein files because they will be bad for Trump.
“If they had anything, they would’ve used it before the election,” Trump told reporters on November 14, before suggesting Democrats doctored the files. “I can’t tell you what they have put in since the election.”
Meanwhile, Democrats are “trying to manufacture some sort of hoax that the president had something to do with Epstein,” House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed the same day.
The Epstein files are all a “hoax,” Trump has said — a lie made up by Democrats to make him look bad. Yet somehow, at the same time, there’s nothing in the files that could make him look bad — because if there was, Biden would have released them.
So which is it? The White House and congressional Republicans can’t say. That’s because it’s difficult to cover up Trump’s ties to Epstein when they are so widely known and obviously incriminating.
Dig a little deeper into Republican talking points about the Epstein files and it gets even more confusing. When asked on November 13 by CNN’s John Berman why Trump won’t simply release the files, Rep. Pete Sessions claimed the president is just doing the same thing as Obama and Biden before him: not releasing context-free materials about those in Epstein’s orbit en masse.
“To simply take things that are emails and accusations that people make is not a legitimate way for us to approach this,” Sessions said following the release of emails by House Democrats showing even more ties between Trump and Epstein. To hear Sessions tell it, Trump is simply following the lead of Obama and Biden, who he suggested “concluded” the files should be released in a “different way.”
"Now, they did not ever really approach it,” Sessions said of Trump’s predecessors, “and we’re trying to do that now.”
While Republicans have argued that Democrats want the files released to hurt Trump — and that if there was damaging information therein Biden would have already released them — they’ve also said the 50,000 pages of documents and emails that have already been released by congressional committees exonerate Trump.
“The evidence we’ve gathered does not implicate President Trump in any way,” Rep. James Comer claimed on October 21.
None of this has worked, forcing Republicans in Congress to pass a bill ordering the release of at least some of the Justice Department’s materials on Epstein, which Trump has signed into law.
Now, Republicans are adjusting tactics slightly, saying that even if Trump is in the files, it’s not evidence of any wrongdoing.
“I need to see evidence at trial and people being convicted,” Rep. Warren Davidson said on November 21. “I don’t really need more rage bait in terms of public documents, I want to know when are the prosecutions underway.”
These confusing and completely contradictory arguments — Biden didn’t release the files so there’s nothing bad about Trump in them, but also Democrats want them released so they can score points against Trump, and simultaneously the files will exonerate the president — are all part of an attempted coverup of what has been obvious for a long time: Trump has deep ties to Epstein and at the very least is mentioned in materials collected as part of the DOJ’s investigation.
The DOJ now has 30 days to begin releasing records related to its investigation of Epstein. Almost surely, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel will continue to run cover for Trump on the materials they’re now bound by law to release — as they have already done for months now. In fact, Bondi is already claiming that an investigation into prominent Democrats in Epstein’s orbit — an investigation Trump himself publicly demanded — prevents her from discussing anything Epstein related.
Endless contradictions
The lies and conflicting narratives about the Epstein files began almost from the moment of Trump’s second inauguration. After riling up his supporters for years about Epstein — stoking the MAGA base on the campaign trail and subsequently choosing two of the biggest Epstein conspiracists, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, to lead the FBI — Trump’s line suddenly changed once he returned to the White House.
A month into the second Trump administration, Bondi told Fox News that the list of Epstein’s clients was “sitting on my desk right now.” A week later, she announced the release of the “first phase” of the Epstein files, most of which had already been made publicly available during the Biden administration.
Bondi then invited MAGA influencers to the White House to receive these materials. They dutifully showed off their binders full of already-available documents as if they had just received damning evidence on a global cabal of sex predators — before some of them took to social media to complain that the files contained nothing new. (A second “phase” of Epstein files was never released.)
Bondi and Patel subsequently claimed a “whistleblower” at the FBI field office in New York said agents there had withheld “thousands of pages of documents” related to Epstein. In a February 28 letter to Patel, Bondi ordered the FBI director to “conduct an immediate investigation” into why the files in New York were withheld from the DOJ and to file a “comprehensive report of your findings and proposed personnel action within 14 days.” There is no indication that any such report was ever filed.
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In March, the FBI tasked its agents in New York with searching through an estimated 100,000 documents for references to Trump — and redacting any mention of the president. In May, Bondi reportedly informed Trump that he was in the massive trove of materials at the Justice Department. This was the point at which Trump switched gears from loudly proclaiming for years that he would release the files to attempting to dismiss them entirely.
“Are you still talking about Jeffery Epstein?” Trump asked a reporter incredulously on July 9. “Are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable.”
“I don’t understand why the Jeffery Epstein case would be of interest to anybody,” Trump said the next week. “It’s pretty boring stuff.”
Bogus transparency claims
As Trump himself tried to dismiss the Epstein files at every opportunity, his underlings at the Justice Department launched a new plan to tamp down on the growing clamor for the files: “Interview” Ghislaine Maxwell in prison and ask courts to unseal transcripts of grand jury testimony from her trial.
Deputy AG Todd Blanche conducted the interview with Maxwell, who told Blanche that she never saw the president engage in any criminal or inappropriate conduct.
“I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting. I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way,” Maxwell said, according to transcripts of her conversation with Blanche that were released by the Justice Department. “The president was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.”
Apparently as a reward for exonerating the president, Maxwell was sent to a low-security prison in Texas where she has enjoyed perks not afforded to other inmates. At the same time, the DOJ made a slapdash attempt to feign transparency by asking courts to unseal grand jury testimony from Maxwell’s trial.
Three federal judges denied the motions. Among them was US District Court Judge Paul Engelmayer, who excoriated the DOJ for its half-hearted effort at providing the public with new information about Epstein.
The DOJ’s “entire premise — that the Maxwell grand jury materials would bring to light meaningful new information about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes, or the Government’s investigation into them — is demonstrably false,” Engelmeyer wrote in a 31-page decision denying the government’s motion to unseal the transcripts of grand jury testimony. “The materials do not identify any person other than Epstein and Maxwell as having had sexual contact with a minor. They do not discuss or identify any client of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s. They do not reveal any heretofore unknown means or methods of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s.”
Engelmeyer’s denial of the motion to unseal provided a convenient — albeit temporary — talking point for the Trump administration: We tried to release more information but a judge stopped us.
[Redacted]
After House Democrats released the trove of emails showing even more ties between Trump and Epstein than were previously known — and as it became clear that Congress would force the president and the DOJ to release the files — the Trump administration launched its latest attempt to make all of this go away.
First, Trump demanded that the DOJ investigate prominent Democrats tied to Epstein. Bondi ceded to the demand, tasking the Southern District of New York (SDNY) with launching Trump’s politically-motivated investigations based on findings the Justice Department has already said don’t warrant further investigation.
As expected, Bondi is saying that this new, ongoing investigation prevents the Justice Department from discussing Epstein matters. On November 19, Bondi was asked whether the SDNY investigation would expand beyond the prominent Democrats who Trump demanded be investigated for their ties to Epstein. She demurred.
“We’re not going to say anything else about that because it is a pending investigation,” Bondi said.
With Bondi so quick to use the “ongoing investigation” defense to avoid having to answer questions about the DOJ’s investigation into Epstein and others, it’s entirely possible that the agency could try to use the same defense to make significant redactions in releasing the files as ordered by the law passed by Congress.
Reviewing the meandering path of arguments that have been screen tested on the American people over the last 10 months reveals the desperation with which Republicans have attempted to make all this go away. First, Biden and Democrats didn’t care about the Epstein files because they implicated people like Bill Clinton. Then, those files didn’t contain anything damaging on Trump or else Biden would have released them. Now, Democrats want the files released because they do contain damaging information about Trump, but maybe that’s only the case because they tampered with them.
In July, the DOJ said no further investigations were warranted. Now, investigations into prominent Democrats based on the files are necessary. For years, Trump said the files should be released — until he found out he was in them. Then, the files became nothing but hearsay that could hurt innocent people. Now, they can’t be fully released under the ongoing investigations Trump himself demanded.
The story has become bewildering and insane. To believe anything about Epstein coming from Trump or Republicans requires a complete suspension of common sense, which is why it’s good to remember that the simplest explanation is often the correct one: Trump and Republicans are lying. Lie after desperate, confusing, and impossible lie, all aimed at an impossible goal: erasing history and the many deep and troubling ties between Epstein and Trump.
That’s it for this week
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We, the people, want the Epstein files released regardless of who is in them. Deviance and perversion do not recognize political party. To make child sexual abuse a political weapon says one thing. The one whose name is all over it is guilty as sin and he will do and say anything to stay out of prison. The whole hoax thing is a weak attempt to say that Epstein kept false records….something the asshat knows all about. Impeach the lying p.o.s. Then send him to The Hague for the Caribbean attacks. Sorry, my patience is wearing thin. Have a nice weekend.
I will never forget those smiling idiots waving the Epstein binders around as though they were Christmas presents. Now they are no longer smiling, since there was nothing there they could cash in on.