To believe anything Trump's MAGA defenders say requires a complete suspension
of common sense.
Justin Glawe
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| Home of the Brave paid for this billboard in Times Square earlier this month. (Adam Gray/Getty) |
After months of pushing conflicting and nonsensical talking
points about the release of the Epstein files, 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
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Trump's hand-made birthday greeting
for Jeffrey Epstein |
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.
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.
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.
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