Unforced Epstein Errors
Trump’s desperate attempts to distract and deceive regarding the Epstein files have increased the chance they will be made public
We’re into week four and still knee-deep in the Epstein matter. The questions are apparently not going away, and the situation is growing more politically perilous for Trump.
That’s in part because he keeps making unforced errors.
These errors fall into two basic categories: mistakes in shaping the public narrative and mistakes in his legal strategy. The latter, I should add, has often been in service of that public narrative rather than an independent, well-considered legal roadmap, which is a recipe for disaster.
Most are familiar with Trump’s shifting public narrative, which has only served to draw more suspicion and attention to the Epstein matter rather than get it out of the headlines and national consciousness. It’s useful to review some of Trump’s more fateful moves and statements, which have compounded the problem for the White House, so I’ll do a quick summary of those first.
Less understood are Trump’s behind-the-scenes legal machinations, which have included 1) having his former personal attorney and current Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, visit and question Epstein’s convicted accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell in prison, and 2) moving to unseal the grand jury transcripts from the Maxwell trial and release them to the public with the victims’ names redacted. These legal moves, paradoxically, have now also deepened the problem for Trump by actually increasing the chances that the Epstein files will be made public.
I’ll explain why that is, too.
A shifting public narrative
When Axios first reported on July 6 that the DOJ had concluded in a memo that there was no “client list,” that there was no need for further investigation, and that no one else would be charged, the MAGA base melted down. For a good percentage of these voters, particularly those who subscribe to QAnon conspiracies, Trump was supposed to be “the storm” whose victory would bring down a network of “satanic, Democrat pedophiles.” This was almost certainly going to happen, these voters believed, now that he had put two of the most vocal Epstein conspiracy theorists, Kash Patel and Don Bongino, into the No. 1 and 2 positions in the FBI.
Checkmate, liberals!
Instead, these Epstein truthers appeared to become part of the very “Deep State” they had promised to go after and were helping Attorney General Pam Bondi cover up the matter and letting all those pedophiles go free with zero accountability. The online far-right exploded in fury, catching Trump off guard.
In hindsight, he should have just kept quiet. Instead, Trump put out his first public statement, in which he shamed the very people who had signed up for the Epstein ride that they had sold tickets for over many exhausting years. The most important part of that statement was also a big blaring sign saying, “Don’t look here, nothing to see!”
“For years, it’s Epstein, over and over again. Why are we giving publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Admin….”
For many of the MAGA faithful, this was a record scratch moment. The Epstein files were written by…Democrats? As far back as Obama and Hillary?
But wasn’t Epstein arrested and convicted during Trump’s first administration? Didn’t he die in prison in 2019? And if they had all these supposedly faked files, and they had taken so much effort to fabricate them going back to the Obama years, why didn’t they ever use them in the 2016, 2020, and 2024 elections?
This was starting to smell like a cover-up by Trump, even to his own base. And it didn’t help when he attacked his followers once more on July 16, calling the Epstein files a “hoax” that they were “weaklings” to have believed.
Then the Wall Street Journal dropped two bombs, both of which blew up right in Trump’s face.
First, it published a story about Trump writing a very creepy letter to Epstein on his 50th birthday, which was then inserted into a leather-bound book with many others.
Trump foolishly insisted the letter was fake and further claimed he didn’t talk like that (e.g., using the word “enigma”) or ever draw pictures like that. And he was quickly confronted with the times he used that word and drew lots of pictures with a heavy marker. A lawyer for the victims declared on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show on MSNBC that the book not only exists, it is currently in the possession of the Epstein estate in Florida.
Trump continued to deny the letter’s authenticity. “I don’t even know what they’re talking about,” Trump told reporters four days ago. “Now, somebody could have written a letter and used my name, but that’s happened a lot.”
Second, the Wall Street Journal reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump that his name appeared in the Epstein files during a briefing in May.
Here again, Trump’s story kept shifting. First, he claimed that in that briefing, Bondi never told him his name was in the files. Then later, he claimed that the briefing itself never happened.
Lately, he has again claimed that Democrats may have planted evidence in the Epstein files, leading many to wonder what is in those files that he is so afraid will come out.
Trump’s parallel efforts to shift national attention failed too, even when his Director of National Intelligence accused former President Obama, without basis, of fabricating evidence of Russian collusion in the 2016 election. That story is only a story on Fox, while the rest of the country, undeterred, wants to know more about Trump and Epstein.
Sham displays of transparency lead to legal missteps
Suing the Wall Street Journal
Trump’s first legal move was to sue the Wall Street Journal for $10 billion in a defamation claim filed in federal court in Florida. The paper, including its owner Rupert Murdoch, was likely expecting this and stood behind its reporting.
The problem Trump faces in his defamation suit is that truth is a defense to the claim. That means Trump can be deposed, under oath, on the question of whether he wrote the letter at issue. Not only does he expose himself to perjury charges if he lies about it, as he’d likely now have to, but the facts about the case are now going to keep resurfacing in the media. Was there really a letter from Trump in that book? Is there a copy that can be subpoenaed from the Epstein estate, as the lawyer for the victims has suggested?
If Trump was hoping for the story to die down, his legal strategy has fairly much ensured that it will stay top of the news while the case he filed continues.
Getting to Ghislaine
There’s a dangerous loose end that Trump feels he needs to tie off, and her name is Ghislaine Maxwell. She’s currently serving a 20-year federal prison sentence, but she is a living witness to most things Epstein, including being the one who put together the leather book allegedly with Trump’s letter in it.
Acting on his mob boss instincts, Trump was eager to get to Maxwell first and ensure her story would align with his. He has the power, after all, at the stroke of a pen or even an autopen, to commute her sentence or pardon her completely. He can even time any pardon so that she says and does what Trump wants now, while he issues it on the last day of his term, so he faces no political blowback from it.
The prospect of a pardon for a monster like Maxwell is horrifying, but that’s also why it’s actually a terrible public relations move. The visits and lengthy interviews by Blanche—which violate every norm in the U.S. Attorney’s office because he was once Trump’s personal attorney and seems to be acting to protect him now—have also served to keep the Epstein matter at the top of the headlines. And no one who is paying any attention—and that is now most of America—will fully believe Maxwell can somehow remember so much about the 100 or so clients and acquaintances she spoke to Blanche about but has nothing or only exonerating things to say about Trump.
It was widely reported that the government had offered Maxwell limited immunity during her discussions with Blanche, meaning she could not be prosecuted directly for anything she conveyed to Blanche. This further tainted her already damaged credibility, and frankly left a stench over the entire process. After all, the Justice Department, which had prosecuted Maxwell during Trump’s first term, once considered and publicly labeled her an unreliable and even perjurious witness. But here, in Trump’s second term, they went to the same convicted felon to extract lies that directly serve the president.
Blanche’s visit and interview with Maxwell, whose lawyer is now pressing for a pardon, likely added urgency to get to the truth more quickly. This may have provided Democrats the votes they needed from three GOP House members of the Federal Law Enforcement Subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee. That panel voted 8 to 2 to issue a congressional subpoena for the Epstein files on the final day of House business before the chamber recessed until September.
Unsealing the most sensitive material for the public interest
The Trump White House had yet another legal trick up its sleeve. It filed a motion before the judge in the Maxwell criminal case to unseal the transcripts of the grand jury proceedings that led to her indictment. Such transcripts are considered some of the most sensitive law enforcement materials, and usually only a showing of historical public interest can overcome a presumption that they should remain out of the public eye. Nevertheless, the Justice Department argued vociferously in its motion that its burden had been met:
“Public officials, lawmakers, pundits, and ordinary citizens remain deeply interested and concerned about the Epstein matter. Indeed, other jurists have released grand jury transcripts after concluding that Epstein's case qualifies as a matter of public concern.”
Jeffrey Epstein was, after all, “the most infamous pedophile in American history,” the Justice Department asserted. The “facts surrounding Epstein’s case ‘tell a tale of national disgrace’,” according to an Eleventh Circuit opinion the Department cited discussing Epstein’s Florida plea agreement. The government concluded,
Notably, the privacy interests at stake on the other side of the balance are substantially diminished due to Epstein's death. Of course, as noted above, the Department of Justice will work with the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York to redact all victim-identifying information prior to any release.
The Trump White House well understood that no judge would release grand jury transcripts on a still-open case. Maxwell is still appealing her conviction, and that is now before the Supreme Court. As the New York Times reported, the judge had no real leeway to grant the government’s request:
Judge Robin L. Rosenberg wrote that the court’s “hands are tied,” pointing to what she said was the government’s own concession in its filing that the laws on criminal procedure generally forbid courts from unsealing grand jury testimony except in narrow circumstances.
She wrote that the Justice Department’s requests fell outside those narrow contexts, which can include sharing testimony with other department lawyers or as evidence in another related lawsuit.
The White House believed it was in a win-win position with its motion, and they probably thought they were being quite clever. If, on the one hand, the motion was somehow granted, that would only wind up revealing material relevant to the indictment of Maxwell as an accomplice of Epstein. The transcripts would have nothing to do with Trump, and the Justice Department understood that. But the White House could then point to the transcripts and say, “See? Nothing about Trump in them!”
If, on the other hand, the motion was denied, as was likely, the White House could make the judge out to be the culprit and claim it had done everything possible to produce maximum transparency.
Curses! FOIAed again
The White House wasn’t thinking far enough ahead. In taking such an insistent position over the strong public interest in unsealing the grand jury transcripts, the government opened itself up to third-party requests for transparency.
Norm Eisen of Democracy Defenders, which is battling the Trump regime in over 100 cases to slow or halt its march to autocratic rule, saw this opportunity and pounced. His group has served two sets of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on the federal government this month, including on the Justice Department, to produce the Epstein files as well as to produce any evidence of efforts to cover up what’s in them.
Eisen’s group has been successful with its FOIA requests, and now it has a win-win situation. If, on the one hand, the government complies with the requests and releases the Epstein files, we might finally get to see what Trump really doesn’t want us to see. The process will also be a chance for disgruntled agents and officials in federal law enforcement to help ensure the very kind of transparency Trump pretends to want.
If, on the other hand, the federal government refuses to produce documents responsive to the FOIA requests, that will only confirm to even more of Trump’s base that the call is coming from the corrupt pedophile inside the White House.
As Eisen relayed to Brian Tyler Cohen on his program, there is a broad presumption under FOIA that files should be released, especially when it will serve the public interest on a matter of intense media attention. The main exception to this rule covers law enforcement materials. This could well be the reason no one could have succeeded with a FOIA request on the Biden administration, given the ongoing nature of the underlying Maxwell case.
But the Justice Department, in its eagerness to create a sham around transparency, left itself vulnerable under just such an exception. If you recall from the earlier discussion, the Justice Department specifically argued that the most sensitive law enforcement-related materials—the grand jury transcripts themselves—should be released because of the overwhelming public interest in them.
If that’s the case, that same argument will appear front and center before any judge considering an emergency application to compel the government to comply with the FOIA requests. Such an application is a likely step given that the government will probably seek to stonewall any requests. You can pretty much cut and paste the arguments the government made before Judge Rosenberg in favor of releasing the grand jury transcripts as grounds for why the government cannot now hide behind “law enforcement sensitivity” in response to the FOIA requests.
In other words, you can’t be for full transparency because it’s in the public interest in one breath, while in the next, you argue that there is no public interest great enough to pierce the presumption against the production of law enforcement materials.
More unhinged with each day
The FOIA requests, together with the House congressional subpoena for documents and a growing bipartisan chorus for the release of all Epstein files, add both significant pressure and a ticking timer of compliance. This is likely why Trump’s rhetoric around the “Epstein hoax” has only gotten more fervent and unhinged.
While in Scotland, Trump responded to a reporter who had asked, "You had said you had not been briefed that your name was in the Epstein files; doesn't the AG have to tell you?"
Trump responded, “Well, I haven’t been overly interested in it. It’s a hoax that's been built up by those, way beyond proportion. Those files were run by the worst scum on earth. They were run by Comey, they were run by Garland, they were run by Biden. Those files were run for four years by those people.”
Underscoring the absurdity and illogic of his claim, Trump continued, “The whole thing is a hoax. They ran the files. I was running against somebody that ran the files. If they had something they would have released.”
The fact is, the Biden White House would never have interfered with the Justice Department to demand to know what was in the Epstein files, let alone direct it to plant evidence against Trump. This is just a bad and desperate explanation by Trump. The way things are going, soon many people within the Justice Department and FBI may need to choose whether to obey their legal obligations and produce the files under FOIA or obey Trump and Bondi and risk going down with their ship.
GOD I HOPE SO!!! I’m tired and angry that the orange antichrist gets away with every godd@mn thing.
Let us never forget his very curious wording regarding “never [having] the privilege of going to Epstein’s island.” Ew times infinity.