As you must have heard by now, the House vote Tuesday to release the entirety of the lurid Jeffrey Epstein files was all but unanimous, which represents — you’d think — a major personal blow to Donald Trump as well as a sign of growing cracks in the MAGA coalition.
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OK, let’s agree it was, in fact, a huge win, given all the obstacles to even getting a House vote, for Democrats and the few MAGA dissidents who forced Trump’s hand.
And it was clearly a huge loss for Trump, who had to do the unthinkable — retreat in the face of defeat — while having to admit, at least implicitly, that he was entirely outmaneuvered by a few right-wing Republicans who actually once believed Trump’s campaign promise that he would release the Epstein files showing that influential Democrats were, as they charged, running a pedophile ring.
And yet, I would advise caution here.
The bill, if eventually passed by the Senate and signed by Trump, would compel the Justice Department to make publicly available “in a searchable and downloadable format” all files pertaining to Epstein, the convicted sex trafficker, within 30 days.
Meanwhile, Trump said of the House Oversight Committee, that if a bill came to his desk, he would gladly release “whatever files they are legally entitled to.” Yes, legally entitled to.
And so, it may be a little premature to begin the countdown. To believe we’re going to see the files any time soon means we have to believe that Trump’s retreat on the House vote represents an unconditional surrender and not the usual Trumpian evasion tactic.
Trump did change his mind at the last moment from saying that the bill was a “Democrat hoax” and a vote for it was a “hostile act,” to saying he supported the bill he has opposed for months.
Writing, “I DON’T CARE,” he relented in a typically graceful social media post, adding that he had “nothing to hide.”
But if he’s not hiding something, as GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene asked on CNN Sunday, “why fight this so hard?” He could, in fact, release whatever files he pleased without congressional approval.
If he’s not guilty of anything more than once having been best buds with Epstein before a fallout, why did he, in fact, oppose the release until the last minute? But if the files would show — as the recently leaked emails suggest — that there’s a lot more to the story, and that at least damning parts of it involve Trump directly, would Trump really surrender?
Does he think he could ride this story out, the way he did, say, the Access Hollywood “grab ’em by the pussy” scandal? You may remember what he did then — bringing Bill Clinton accusers to attend a presidential debate with Hillary Clinton. Trump dodged. He evaded. He changed the story. He didn’t only survive, he somehow thrived.
Or does he see this one differently? The fact is that Trump brought it all on himself, as a campaign issue in the 2016 run against Hillary Clinton, linking Bill and other Dems to Epstein and riding that pedophile-ring hoax — born in the ashes of Pizzagate and then championed by QAnon, which claimed that Trump was secretly in battle with the forces of Satan — for years.
The whole gang pitched in. Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, Don Jr., JD Vance. In late 2021 during the Biden administration, when MAGA was vowing to bring down the corrupt Dems, then-Sen. Vance tweeted, “What possible interest would the US government have in keeping Epstein’s clients secret? Oh …”
Oh, indeed. What did Trump know about the girls? I think you can guess.
As columnist Will Bunch points out in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the truth is that this scandal is actually about a cabal of the rich and famous — princes and especially their financial betters — rooting around in international money-making misfeasance and “bootie calls,” showing nothing more or less than the “banality of the elite.”
The thing is, we know Trump does care, and very much, about keeping facts hidden, even if there is no Epstein list. He cared enough to invite Lauren Boebert, of all people, to the high-security White House situation room, of all places, to meet with him, the attorney general and the FBI chief. It was a last-ditch effort, combining intimidation with flattery, to get her to withdraw her name from a discharge petition — one his longtime MAGA ally signed along with all House Democrats and three other Republicans — that would force the House to vote on the Epstein files.
He also cared enough to turn on Greene, another longtime MAGA ally, calling her a “traitor” for refusing to take her name off the discharge petition. In reply, Greene suggested that if anyone was a traitor, it would be Trump himself.
“Let me tell you what a traitor is,” Greene said at a news conference alongside Epstein survivors before Tuesday’s vote. “A traitor is an American that serves foreign countries and themselves. A patriot is an American that serves the United States of America and Americans like the women standing behind me now.”
Greene stuck to her guns. And Boebert stuck to her, uh, guns. She signed the petition. They had the vote. And the rest…
Well, what about the rest?
The fact that Trump, in the end, acceded to the inevitable, the fact that even Speaker Mike Johnson, ever in step with Trump, voted for the bill while still calling it a “Democratic stunt,” the fact that it all seemed so easy, means to me that it’s very likely we’re nowhere near the end.
Even if the Senate, as promised, takes up the bill and passes it on to Trump for his signature, there is still the matter of what, if anything, the Justice Department would hand over.
You may remember that Trump ordered AG Pam Bondi to investigate Democratic leaders or allies who were somehow possibly attached to Epstein. She, of course, did as he said. Now the fear among the Republicans who forced the vote to begin with is that she will say, at Trump’s behest, the Justice Department can’t release the files until the investigation is over, which could take approximately forever.
When one reporter — days before the vote, when Trump was still violently in opposition — asked Trump what Epstein meant when he wrote in an email that Trump knew about “the girls,” Trump replied that the focus should be on Bill Clinton and Larry Summers, the classic Trump evasion tactic. When a Bloomberg reporter tried to ask a follow-up, Trump pointed to her, saying “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.”
Well, the piggies have won, at least for now, leaving Trump with the same problem that all fake-news conspirators eventually face.
The problem for Trump releasing the files is that the story will never go away.
The problem for Trump not releasing the files is that the story will never go away.
History tells us that much. And so — against all odds — have former(?) MAGA stalwarts Lauren Boebert and MTG.
Whatever their faults — and let’s say I agree with basically none of their politics — they were actual believers in Donald Trump and whatever conspiracy theory he offered up. Now they — and maybe a lot of other MAGA types — are learning the risk in believing anything the president has to say.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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