The Epstein files could finally sink Donald Trump

There is a sickening sense of recognition that accompanies the release by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee of a new cache of emails from Jeffrey Epstein and his associates indicating that Donald Trump had full knowledge of the pedophile sex trafficker’s activities — and that he had indeed “spent hours” at Epstein’s house with one of Epstein’s victims, as one of the 2011 emails put it. This is, after all, the same Donald Trump who was close friends with Epstein for more than a decade before the still-unexplained falling out between the two in the mid-1920s. This is the same Trump who lurked frighteningly in the dressing room of the Miss Teen USA pageant he sponsored, and who has touted even more frighteningly the erotic appeal of his own young daughter in media interviews. And this is the same Trump who bragged in the infamous Access Hollywood videotapes claiming his fame gave him the right to approach women and “grab them by the pussy” – and who would have laughed when Gary Busey was accused of the same behavior on the set of his reality TV show The apprentice. This is the same Trump who was found liable for sexual assault in E. Jean Carroll’s $40 million civil lawsuit alleging he assaulted her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in the 1990s, and who was found responsible for engineering campaign bribes to his former mistress Stormy Daniels.

Yet Trump’s escapades with Epstein stand out, both because of the sheer depravity that characterized Epstein and his trafficking ring and because the specter of rampant sexual predation on children has been a centerpiece of the MAGA-fueled conspiracy theory, thanks in large part to the prominence of QAnon activists in the Trump coalition. The prospect of Congress releasing damning documents about Epstein has been a major concern for Republicans since the start of Trump’s second term, thanks in large part to the president’s 2024 campaign promise to approve the opening of the Epstein files.

Having weathered the steady torrent of revelations about his own predatory sexual past, Trump no doubt calculated that he could once again distract his supporters from any damaging disclosures contained in the records, dismissing them as just another “hoax” engineered by Democrats and seeking to undermine his grip on power. But the narrative around the push to release the files did not pander to Trump’s usual strategy of denial and conspiracy.

As pressure mounted to get the files released, Trump asked his supporters to move on; Meanwhile, Epstein’s former lover and convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, appeared to selectively leak damaging information about the Trump-Epstein alliance, including the president’s winking contribution to the sex trafficker’s 50th anniversary book, made up of testimonies from powerful friends and fellow predators. Even some Republican members of the House have pressed their demands for disclosure of the records — and that prospect has prompted MAGA Chairman Mike Johnson to keep the House closed for the past month and a half because reopening it would involve the swearing in of Arizona’s new Democratic Rep. Adelita Grijalva, who represents the 218th tie-breaking vote in a resolution to release the records. (The House is now expected to reopen today to vote on the Senate bill to reopen the government, and Johnson will ultimately have to authorize Grijalva to be sworn in.)

Emails released by members of the Democratic Oversight Committee underscore the desperate political logic behind Johnson’s obstruction efforts. When Epstein first faced a federal investigation, he wrote to Maxwell in 2011: “I want you to realize that the dog that didn’t bark is Trump.” [REDACTED VICTIM’S NAME] I spent hours at home with him, he was never mentioned. Maxwell’s terse response says it all: “I’ve thought about it. »

After Trump announced his campaign in 2015, journalist Michael Wolff, who had compiled hundreds of hours of interviews with Epstein, wrote to him warning that CNN was planning to interview Trump about his ties to Epstein; Epstein asked Wolff how he would go about drafting a statement on Epstein’s behalf following such an exchange. Wolff’s response once again suggests that the sex trafficker had a wealth of damning information:

I think you should let him hang himself. If he says he didn’t get on the plane [Epstein’s private aircraft ferrying underage girls to his island, dubbed the Lolita Express] or at home, this then gives you valuable political and public relations currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive profit for you, or, if it really looks like he might win, you can bail him out, thereby generating debt. Of course, it’s possible that when asked, he’ll say that Jeffrey Epstein is a great guy, that he got a brutal deal, and that he’s a victim of political correctness, which must be banned in a Trump regime.

There is no indication that CNN asked Trump about Epstein at the time — and yet, six years after Epstein apparently committed suicide in a New York prison cell, whatever currency he might have had toward Trump now appears to be an inescapable toxic liability for a president who has weathered countless past sex scandals. Just before these latest emails surfaced, Ghislaine Maxwell reportedly asked Trump to commute her 20-year prison sentence; Epstein’s former trafficking partner also received special treatment behind bars, according to a whistleblower cited by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee. Maxwell’s previous leaks appear to be aimed at a commutation deal, and it must have seemed to him that such a comfortable arrangement should not be very complicated, given that Trump has pardoned many of the ringleaders of the election-denying agitprop campaign that led to the failed January 6 coup. Epstein has arguably become this administration’s greatest threat. In the court of public opinion, Epstein’s epitaph might be that he hanged himself and Donald Trump.