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“President Trump threw in the towel on dissuading House Republicans from backing a measure to release files related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, saying Sunday night that GOP lawmakers should instead embrace the vote… It amounted to a sharp reversal for Trump, who had sought for months to deter Republicans from supporting the measure…
“If the measure passes the House, it would then go to the Senate, where its fate is unclear. If it passed the Senate, Trump would then need to decide whether to sign it into law. Ahead of Trump’s statement Sunday night, GOP lawmakers including Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Tim Burchett of Tennessee had indicated they would back the measure.” Wall Street Journal
“House Democrats [last] Wednesday released emails that they said raised new questions about President Donald Trump's ties to Jeffrey Epstein and how much he knew about Epstein's abuse of underage girls… Later in the day, Republicans released a cache of 20,000 Epstein-related documents.” Reuters
“[The documents] offer a new glimpse into what Epstein’s relationships with business executives, reporters, academics and political players looked like over a decade… Epstein emailed current and former political figures on all sides, sending news clips and discussing strategy or gossip often in short, choppy emails laden with spelling and grammatical errors.” AP News
The left is suspicious about Trump’s reluctance to release the remaining documents.
“Trump is a civilly adjudicated sexual abuser who has boasted of grabbing women’s genitals and falsified business records to pay hush money to a porn star with whom he was accused of having sex while his wife was home with a newborn. But the Epstein emails don’t implicate him in the criminal sexual abuse of minors… While Epstein wrote that Trump ‘knew about the girls,’ he also wrote that Trump ‘never got a massage.’ Why, then, is Trump so desperate to change the subject?”
Robin Abcarian, Los Angeles Times
“While the messages don’t show criminal conduct by Trump, they landed at a moment when Americans are already furious with his handling of Epstein’s files, the shutdown, and the basic question of whether their government works for the powerful or for everyone else. Together, they form a pincer around a president who keeps promising transparency and law and order, then flinching the second those promises threaten him personally…
“Polling in early October found that about three-quarters of Americans want all Epstein-related files released, with only 9 percent saying no documents should be made public. A Reuters/Ipsos survey in July went even further: 69 percent of respondents said they believe Trump’s administration is hiding details about Epstein’s clients; just 6 percent said it isn’t… The myth Trump sold to his base — that he was the one man willing to expose the secrets of the powerful — is collapsing in real time.”
Alain Stephens, The Intercept
“While Trump defenders insist that the new e-mails don’t ‘prove’ Trump wrongdoing— besides multiple examples of Epstein claiming he was ‘dirty’ and ‘knew about the girls’— they definitively prove the corrupt, chummy, sex-and-money chasing culture of elite American men. To see journalists and financiers and academics at best gossiping with Epstein and at worst providing him care and counsel is to see how the #MeToo movement never went far enough.”
Joan Walsh, The Nation
“There is an obvious voyeuristic thrill to reading them, but these documents have a deeper relevance. They are a skeleton key for understanding the dynamics of Donald Trump’s America, one in which the wealthy and powerful appear not as master operators but as bumbling sycophants, eager to cozy up to influence no matter how villainous or depraved…
“As more revelations are made public, it may feel like the conspiracy theorists have won. But they’ve been wrong as well. Cabal is too flattering a word for this crowd of cosplaying, hunt-and-peck email addicts. Conspiracy theories are a flawed tool meant to help make sense of a nonsensical world. The truth is darker: You don’t need an elaborate master plan to dodge accountability when everyone’s all too willing to simply look the other way.”
Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic
The right argues that the released documents do not show wrongdoing by Trump.
The right argues that the released documents do not show wrongdoing by Trump.
“Of course Trump is in the Epstein files… Epstein was out of his mind with resentment toward a former friend who not only succeeded in business but became president of the United States, even as Epstein raced toward ruin… ‘The emails suggest that Trump remained a fixation for Epstein,’ CNN wrote, ‘as he’s frequently mentioned numerous times over a span of nearly a decade — including long after their friendship ended.’…
“One problem with reading the Epstein emails today is that Epstein was, in the words of one recent assessment in the Atlantic, a ‘notorious liar.’… So when Epstein says that victim Virginia Giuffre ‘spent hours at my house with [Trump],’ there’s no compelling reason to believe him. Giuffre, now dead, wrote a book that said no such thing about Trump and also testified under oath that Trump ‘didn’t partake in any sex with us … [and] never flirted with me.’ Giuffre said she never saw Trump and Epstein together.”
Byron York, Washington Examiner
“In another email, to the journalist Michael Wolff, Epstein said that Trump ‘knew about the girls,’ a phrase that has gotten much play in the media, but the disgraced financier added, ‘as he asked ghislaine to stop,’ a reference to Ghislaine Maxwell. This is cryptic, but a very plausible interpretation is that it’s confirmation of Trump’s story that Epstein was recruiting girls from Mar-a-Lago, and the future presidential candidate told him to stop…
“In a strange email to himself, then forwarded to Michael Wolff, Epstein says that girls, in exchange for payments, came to his house to give him massages that included a sex act. He says, again, that Trump spent time at his house, but that he never got a massage… To be sure, Trump isn’t taking any of this well, lashing out on Truth Social… For his critics, this constitutes Trump ‘acting guilty.’ It’s more like Trump acting like Trump. When has he not gone into overdrive to try to suppress or redefine an unwelcome narrative?”
The Editors, National Review
“The complication for the transparency crowd is that the Biden Justice Department had all of these documents for four years and could have released them. They also could have used them to prosecute others besides Ms. Maxwell (now in prison) and Epstein if they thought they could get a conviction. Biden officials certainly weren’t shy about attacking or even indicting Mr. Trump…
“As is so often the case, Mr. Trump has been his own worst enemy here… He looks like he has something to hide even if he doesn’t. What Ms. Bondi should have done long ago is call a press conference, explain why she doesn’t want to release more files than she already has, and take the media heat. There are good reasons of privacy and unfair guilt by association not to dump hundreds of thousands of pages of raw FBI investigatory files into the public arena.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
The College Student Who Did a Wheelie—for 93 Miles.
Wall Street Journal
