Epstein Returns at the Worst Time for Trump
Since his return to office, President Donald Trump has missed few chances to flex the power he wields over the nation’s most formidable institutions and its wealthiest people. So when the White House announced that Trump would host the latest in a series of dinners with top business executives, this time including JPMorgan Chase head Jamie Dimon and the chief executive of Nasdaq, reporters in the White House press pool prepared to watch Trump show off.
Nope. Last night’s dinner was closed to the press. No reporter was even given a glance. And later, when the White House held a signing ceremony for the president to officially end the longest federal-government shutdown in history, the reporters present were quickly whisked out of the Oval Office. Today, too, he didn’t talk to the press after signing an executive order alongside the first lady in the East Room. The president, to be clear, had not suddenly become camera-shy. But he had indicated to aides that he didn’t want to face reporters’ questions, because every inquiry was going to be about the one subject that Trump, for all his power, simply can’t make go away.
Jeffrey Epstein is dead. But the disgraced financier and sex offender continues to shadow Trump. The storyline’s reemergence yesterday—with the release of thousands of Epstein’s emails, some of which highlight his relationship with Trump—delivered another blow to a president already at the weakest moment of his second term. Trump’s party got wiped out in last week’s elections as voters assigned it the greater portion of blame for the shutdown. The Supreme Court seems set to unravel his signature tariffs. His poll numbers have dipped as Americans conclude that he cares too much about gilded ballrooms and is not focused nearly enough on bringing down high prices. And dread has crept into the West Wing now that Trump faces a rare rebuke from fellow Republicans, including some who have been among his most loyal MAGA foot soldiers.
Trump and a number of top Department of Justice officials this week tried to persuade a pair of normally close allies, Representatives Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace, to withdraw their names from a discharge petition that would force a vote on releasing a trove of Epstein material. Their efforts failed, and it will go to the House floor next week. The president in the past two days has made a round of calls to longtime allies to rage against the Epstein matter, blaming Democrats and the media, one of the people who received a call told me. (A White House official later confirmed that the president was “speaking to trusted friends”; both people spoke with me under the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.) In those calls, Trump mused about pressuring GOP senators to block the release of additional files when the matter could go to the upper chamber later this month.
[Read: Wait, are the Epstein files real now?]
The White House’s push to keep more Epstein materials from being released came after Democrats on the House Oversight Committee leaked emails yesterday morning that suggested close ties between the sex offender and Trump. House Republicans, hoping to distract from the initial emails, released an additional 23,000 messages. (Some of those emails, including one in which Epstein offered to give the Russian government information on Trump, only raised more uncomfortable questions for the president.) All of this came after Speaker Mike Johnson sent the House home for nearly eight weeks, in part so that he could delay swearing in the Democratic representative-elect whose vote provided the needed margin to authorize the release of the Epstein files. And although Trump has avoided reporters, his anger broke into the open on social media yesterday.
“The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein hoax again” to distract from the shutdown, Trump posted. “Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap.”
All this, of course, raises the question: What exactly is Trump trying to prevent from being released? For months, White House aides have snapped at reporters who even mentioned the word Epstein. But in private moments, members of the president’s inner circle acknowledge that they don’t know the true extent of Trump’s relationship with Epstein. The men were close, to be sure, and clearly enjoyed chasing women decades ago in the party circles of Manhattan and Palm Beach. That’s been known for years, and although that history is embarrassing, Trump has never been charged with any wrongdoing. Is he trying to protect himself? Or someone close to him? He doesn’t talk about it, allies say, except to fume that it’s still a story. But Trump’s over-the-top response prompted the ally he called to urge Trump to change tactics because he’s “not acting like someone who has nothing to hide.”
Trump was always an unlikely champion for those on the right who believed in the Epstein conspiracy theories. The men were undeniably friends. There are plenty of photos of them together, including at Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago Club. Trump flew on Epstein’s private jets seven times in the mid-1990s, according to flight logs that emerged at an Epstein-related trial. And in a 2002 New York magazine profile of Epstein, Trump said he’d known Epstein for 15 years and praised him as a “terrific guy.” The financier pleaded guilty in Florida state court in 2008 and was convicted of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute. He received a generous—and controversial—plea deal and served a short prison sentence before being released. He was arrested again in August 2019 and was accused of sex-trafficking minors. Epstein died a month later in jail, while awaiting trial. His death was ruled a suicide, but many on the far right suspected that he had been killed to keep him from revealing what he knew about the rich and the powerful. The so-called Epstein files—an accounting of who else in his orbit might have been involved—became something of an obsession in the MAGA movement. Though Trump never quite championed that cause, he led many to believe that, were he to return to power, he’d expose the truth and deliver justice.
That’s not at all what has happened. Even after Attorney General Pam Bondi declared early this year that she had the Epstein files on her desk, only scattered documents were released to right-wing influencers. Trump then made clear that he wanted to move on, blasting those still obsessed with Epstein, who, in the president’s words, has been “dead for a long time. I don’t understand what the interest or what the fascination is.” He sued his on-again, off-again friend Rupert Murdoch for $10 billion after The Wall Street Journal reported in July that Trump had sent Epstein a lewd birthday card in 2003.
[Read: You really need to see Epstein’s birthday book for yourself]
But some in Trump’s base felt betrayed, like he was trying to invalidate a core political belief of theirs. And some Republicans refused to abandon the issue. Four of them—Mace, Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Thomas Massie—defied Trump to vote with Democrats this week on the Epstein discharge position. Boebert and Greene did not respond to requests for comment, while a spokesperson for Massie said the representative was unavailable. A spokesperson for Mace responded by pointing to a social-media post in which the candidate for governor in South Carolina urged a focus on the women and underage girls whom Epstein trafficked. If the measure passes both houses of Congress, Trump would likely veto it—and face even more scrutiny.
Indeed, Trump’s own efforts to manage the story have only fed it. His account of why he and Epstein had a falling-out two decades ago has shifted multiple times. His aides have advised him to stop saying that he has the right to pardon Epstein’s former partner Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking and related offenses. (Maxwell was transferred to a cushier prison in Texas over the summer after an unusual one-on-one meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer.) White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt raised eyebrows yesterday when she said that Trump was not considering a pardon for Maxwell “at this moment in time.” The White House did not respond to my request for comment.
Few people in the White House believe that the Epstein matter will swing many votes next year. But it has the makings of an unrelenting distraction, a scandal that could bog down Trump’s presidency. Further Republican rebellions could loosen Trump’s grip on the GOP just as he is trying to preserve his party’s Capitol Hill majorities. Should he lose one or both of the houses of Congress next year, he’d face congressional investigations and be firmly relegated to lame-duck status.
[Read: Donald Trump is a lamer duck than ever]
Trump is set to depart Washington tomorrow for another weekend at Mar-a-Lago, according to the White House. At the lush Palm Beach club, where he once palled around with Epstein, the president will surely talk to allies, eager to change the subject from the one consuming his administration.
A travel press pool will also make the trip to Florida on Air Force One. At least for now, Trump is not scheduled to take questions.
