On Sunday, anti-trafficking organization World Without Exploitation released PSA involving eleven victims of Jeffrey Epstein. Each of the women has a photograph of approximately the age at which she first encountered an abusive sex offender. (“I was fourteen years old” … “I was sixteen years old” … “I was sixteen” … “Seventeen” … “Fourteen years old.”) At the end of the video, viewers are encouraged to call their representatives in Congress and demand the release of the remaining Epstein files: “It’s time to bring the secrets out of the shadows.”
This call may seem to have some momentum. Last week, the House Oversight Committee released more than twenty thousand pages of documents subpoenaed from Epstein's estate, and in the coming days the House is expected to vote on a bill that would open up a treasure trove of Justice Department files related to Epstein. But even if the bill passes the House, it could die in the Senate or by a presidential veto. Donald Trumpor in the hands of Pam Bondi, US Attorney General.
Trump, after months of blocking the release of the remaining Epstein files, appeared to change his tune over the weekend, writing in Truth Social: “House Republicans must vote to release the Epstein files because we have nothing to hide and it's time to move on from this Democratic hoax perpetrated by radical leftist lunatics as a distraction from the great success of the GOP.” He added: “I don’t care!” But we know Trump cares deeply about everything that bears his name, and his name was all over last week's filing. House Democrats singled out a 2011 email in which Epstein called Trump “the dog that didn't bark,” and another from 2019 in which Epstein referred to Trump's private club, Mar-a-Lago, and said that “of course he knew about the girls”—presumably referring to girls like Epstein's most famous accuser, Virginia Giuffre, who was a teenage locker room maid in Mar-a-Lago, when she was first spotted by Epstein's main accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell. But Giuffre, who died in April, always maintained that she never witnessed Trump behave inappropriately.
And if Giuffre were to make similar accusations, it's unclear whether the president's defenders would strongly object to it. Conservative talk show host and MAGA Stalwart Megyn Kelly recently said she knew “someone very, very close to this case” who believed Epstein “was not a pedophile.” Rather, Kelly continued: “He was barely a legit guy, like he liked fifteen-year-old girls. And I know that's disgusting… I'm just giving you the facts.” A fifteen-year-old girl, if it needs to be noted, is not “barely legal”; There is no state in the United States that sets the age of consent below sixteen. Either way, Kelly continued, “there's a difference between a fifteen-year-old and a five-year-old.” Insisting on this distinction may become more pressing depending on what is contained in the Justice Department files and whether they are made public.
avalanche Emails, text messages and court documents from the House dump last week reveal various revelations, but sometimes they can also induce a strange mental fog – a wintry mix of amnesia and déjà vu. In the midst of this shock, it is difficult to determine what you knew and when you knew it. Many of Epstein's friends and associates may know this feeling.
I don't remember, for example, Epstein's legal team arguing that he couldn't be accused of coercing or seducing his many victims because the sexual assaults that occurred in his West Palm Beach home were “spontaneous.” I also don't recall his team arguing that since the two minor victims may have lied about their ages when Epstein met them, “their testimony effectively established his innocence.” It would seem that such things would be difficult to forget, but perhaps it was too difficult to believe in them at all.
I also didn't remember Trump winning a bidding war against Epstein for a Palm Beach mansion in 2004, an incident that may have sparked a falling out between the old pals; I didn't remember that local police launched a sex crimes investigation into Epstein shortly after the sale, or that just four years later Trump sold the property to a Russian oligarch for more than double what he paid for it. Dmitry Rybolovlev. I believe this is what is known as the art of the deal.
