There’s a Reason This Time Feels Different With Epstein and Trump. It’s Right There in the Letters.

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It is, admittedly, difficult to follow the Jeffrey Epstein story. The saga has been churning along for so long now—with so many twists and turns—that I don’t really blame anyone for not knowing what to make of this most recent wave of intrigue. Thankfully, I’ve been paying close enough attention to highlight what you should care about as Donald Trump barrels toward a confrontation with whatever his associations were with the elusive sex trafficker. Buckle up! It’s going to get weird.

OK, so why is a bunch of Epstein stuff coming out right now?

Epstein has been an obsession of the far right and far left for years. But that obsession didn’t fully catch on among liberal Democrats until Trump took office for a second time. That’s when the rarest of phenomena occurred: The MAGA base got mad at Trump over his failure to release the legendary Epstein files, a group of documents (that may or may not exist) that would blow the whole scandal wide open. But as Trump sat on the documents, the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee kicked into high gear—with the full backing of the liberal base. This has created a strange situation in which much of the country has suddenly remembered that the president once had close ties with the disgraced financier—despite the fact that those associations have never been a secret.

Regardless, the rest of the House is set to vote on releasing the contents of the Justice Department’s investigation into Epstein, which are colloquially known as those aforementioned Epstein files. Ahead of that discharge, though, the Oversight Committee has been releasing select cuts of its trove in a deliberately partisan way. On Wednesday, Democrats put out a couple of emails exchanged by Epstein that seemed to imply that Trump had extended contact with one of the women the financier sex trafficked. Republicans countered by releasing 20,000 more emails, which detailed Epstein’s wider social network.

And what in those files are germane to Trump?

The splashiest email was sent by Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell—you may have heard of her—in 2011. In it, Epstein notes that Trump spent “hours at my house” with one of Epstein’s unnamed victims. He calls the president the “dog that hasn’t barked.” Generally speaking, this is not the way you want the world’s most famous pedophile characterizing you.

Elsewhere in those files, there is correspondence between Epstein and former New York Times journalist Landon Thomas Jr. from 2015, in which the now-deceased sex trafficker asked Thomas if he wants, and I quote, “photso of donald and girls in bikinis in my kitchen?” Epstein also accuses Trump of suffering a Looney Tunes–style pratfall due to his own horniness: “Have them ask my houseman about donald almost walking through the door leaving his nose print on the glass as young women were swimming in the pool and he was so focused he walked straight into the door.”

There’s a bit more juice further down the timeline, including a number of emails with roving journalist Michael Wolff that are mostly banal. (In January 2018, Epstein told Wolff that Trump’s finances were all a sham. That’s maybe the only thing the financier and I agree on.) Epstein also texted an undisclosed person that he alone is the one “able to take” the president “down.” All in all, these files do provoke some important questions about the extent of Trump and Epstein’s relationship, which is why there is so much attention on the forthcoming vote to release the full batch.

Is there anything else in this batch of files I should know about?

There’s a ton! But the headliner is Larry Summers, Bill Clinton’s secretary of the Treasury, who is not having a good week. Summers pops up over and over again in these emails, suggesting the two had a close relationship. I was especially struck by an extremely perturbing exchange between the two, about what appears to be Summers’ embattled pursuit of a woman. It concludes with the former secretary saying, “I dint want to be in a gift giving competition while being the friend without benefits.” (I might add that none of the men in these files seems to know how to use a keyboard. There are typos everywhere.)

So how has the Trump administration responded to all of this?

Publicly, by making a milquetoast Truth Social post about how the Democrats’ bringing up the Epstein issue is merely a distraction from the fallout of the government shutdown. (I might also add that the revival of this scandal did come at the perfect time, as it papered over the party’s world-historic caving.) Privately, though, it is looking a little more dicey. In order to unseal the Epstein documents, Congress was waiting for one last signature to put the matter to a vote. That signature was just delivered by Rep. Adelita Grijalva, who for weeks was blocked from being sworn in by House Speaker Mike Johnson. (And, no, it doesn’t seem like a coincidence that the clinching vote to unseal the files was kept out of Congress for weeks by one of Trump’s top allies in Congress.) So, in the hours before the government resumed operations, reports started to trickle out that the White House was in contact with the few Republicans who had added their names to the petition. One of them is the terminally online Rep. Lauren Boebert. This led to a meeting between Trump, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Attorney General Pam Bondi. It was called, ostensibly, to get Boebert to reconsider her position. Dave Weigel put it best when he referred to the matter as “the least suspicious pressure campaign of all time.”

And how did that go?

Boebert did not expunge her name from the petition, and instead posted one of the funniest tweets of all time. It read: “I want to thank White House officials for meeting with me today. Together, we remain committed to ensuring transparency for the American people.”

Wow, I’m actually kind of surprised. A rebuke to Trump?

I mean, here’s the thing. The Epstein affair does reveal the first glimpses of the inevitable lame-duck phase of Trump’s political career. Barring a total collapse of our institutions (an unlikely but not impossible scenario), he is never going to appear on a ballot ever again. And in that context, Boebert—within a GOP that has constructed so much of its electoral project through the language of conspiracy—has so much more to gain from backing the release of the Epstein files than from fecklessly covering the president’s ass. The MAGA movement wants to survive the man who serves as its standard-bearer, and that man is in his second term and months away from his 80th birthday. Boebert has her eyes set on a career that lasts till 2030, or 2048, or 2060. It seems like an easy choice.

What do you think comes next?

Well, Johnson said that the House will vote on the release of the Epstein files next week. That’s almost certain to pass, but then the matter will be passed along to the Senate. If it clears that bar, then, hilariously, Trump has the option to veto, a move that would be perhaps the most embarrassing moment of his presidency. Remember, at the beginning of his term, when he made a big show of releasing what he claimed were the so-called Epstein files to a suite of conservative influencers—who were all disappointed to learn that the content inside had already been released? Man, did the honeymoon end quickly.

Along the way, I’d expect more leaks and dispatches from the House Oversight Committee, as the enigma of Epstein spreads its tendrils. We will likely learn more details about the supremely rich and powerful men who had connections to this world-renowned sex trafficker, and I’m not sure where that leaves any of us.