With Trump Republicans forcing a former president to testify, the current president and his family will face years of similar scrutiny.
The Epstein follies continue to be an astonishing self-inflicted wound for the Trump administration.
President Trump had the right instincts in trying to make this go away. But he’s too personally undisciplined and, as a manager, incapable of running a tight ship. So the hacks in his camp — in Congress and those who transitioned from the campaign to top federal law enforcement jobs — got the base so spun up that, for the first time, MAGA wouldn’t take the “shut up and move on” directive from its Grand Poobah.
Trump had to know that there was never going to be upside for him in this. He had a close relationship with Epstein for over a decade. If you’re a fan, that’s tough to square with the president’s relentless blathering about his unique genius regarding what makes people tick. (If you’re not a fan, you notice that nearly everyone he initially extolls as incomparable somehow turns out to be incomparably incompetent and shameful when the relationship inevitably implodes.)
The president let the Epstein uproar get out of control even though there was no rational reason to believe there had been a cover-up. I’ll repeat two things I’ve said a number of times. First, while pedophilia (and even the passive but knowing proximity to it) is egregious, in the main it is a state criminal matter; federal law’s reach is limited to the business of sex trafficking, which is different from personal sexual contact with minors, and much harder to prove. Hence, we should not be surprised that only Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, as to whom there was evidence of trafficking, were charged. Second, the Biden DOJ was desperate to make a criminal case on Trump and the federal prosecutors running the Epstein prosecution in Manhattan (under the Biden-appointed U.S. attorney) were no Trump fans. And sex cases against celebrities are career-makers for prosecutors. Ergo, it was and is lunacy to think there might be a prosecutable case against Trump, or other prominent people, that got buried by “the deep state.”
During the last presidential campaign and shortly afterwards, the likes of Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, and Dan Bongino got Trump fans whipped up that they’d uncover the pedophilia ring of the century if they ever got the chance. Do you really think they wanted to admit that, when they got that access to the government investigative files, it turned out there were no additional cases to be made — no client list, no blackmail videos, no A-lister trafficking ring? Of course not . . . but they had no choice. They’re the ones who raised expectations, heedless of how much it would damage their boss politically, and they’re the ones who had to admit there was no more there there.
The information that’s been shoveled out to feed the insatiable beast is an indelible stain for anyone found to have been in Epstein’s orbit. As we’re seeing, it’s a career-ender for many. But it’s not federally prosecutable.
Under normal Justice Department rules, information gathered about uncharged people is never disclosed. Doing so undermines the Constitution and the government’s ability to persuade people to provide information that may be highly embarrassing, regardless of whether it is criminal. Consequently, the Epstein evidence published these last weeks should never have seen the light of day. Much of it is dubiously sourced, insufficiently vetted, and ambiguous about the nature of the cited people’s relationships with Epstein.
When we get some distance, this feeding frenzy is going to be remembered as a dark chapter for due process. In the here and now, though, it’s just a political self-own.
The big story this week is that the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee is conducting closed-door depositions of Bill and Hillary Clinton — today, it’s the former president, yesterday it was the former secretary of state. Yes, it’s embarrassing for the Clintons, especially the ineffable Bill, to be embroiled in this mess. But their appearance is not going to advance by one iota anyone’s understanding of the Epstein scandal.
They’ve been dragged in because, when Trump did his flip-turn from Epstein suppression to supposed Epstein transparency (because Congress was going to enact its monstrous Epstein disclosure legislation in any event), Trump inveighed that Republicans needed to divert the spotlight from him and to the Clintons and other prominent Democrats with Epstein ties.
It’s not enough to say that was never going to work. It’s just common sense that you can’t turn up the heat on Epstein-tied Democrats without intensifying the Epstein heat in general. If it’s still a story, it’s a story as to anyone it touches.
So even as the Clintons are deposed, the big stories today are (1) that the Trump Justice Department tried to remove from disclosure a photograph of Trump Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick traipsing around the beach with Epstein on the infamous island, which illustrates that Lutnick’s prior statements distancing himself from Epstein were, shall we say, less than convincing; and (2) the Trump DOJ has also suppressed and otherwise removed Epstein files involving a woman who made sexual abuse allegations against Trump and who discussed Trump in conjunction with providing information about Epstein.
Suffice it to say that the Clintons are old news. The Trump administration is the now. It was the Trump base that stoked the Epstein scandal until Democrats finally realized it is the political gift that keeps on giving. You want to embarrass the Clintons — and the former Prince Andrew, Bill Gates, Larry Summers, Peter Mandelson, Kathryn Ruemmler, George Mitchell, Bob Kerrey, Thomas Pritzker, et al.? Go right ahead . . . but you can’t do it without spotlighting Trump, Lutnick, and the Justice Department. Without forcing administration officials into the position of constantly being asked uncomfortable questions about the whole mess.
And then there’s precedent.
Sure, it may have seemed like a delicious idea at the time, but does Oversight chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) really think it was a good idea to compel former President Clinton’s testimony? Along with Mrs. Clinton? Is that really how Trump thought Republicans should try to shift attention toward Epstein-tied Democrats? I don’t know what President Trump and his family were planning to do once his term is up in 2029, but they should build in a lot of time for testimony and other congressional subpoena compliance. When Democrats eventually take control of congressional committees, there will be no sympathy when Trump and Republicans whine about how vindictive, unnecessary, and norm-breaking it is to harass a former president and his family. In fact, if Democrats win the midterms and take over the House in January 2027, they are not going to wait until 2029.
The president can issue mass pardons but he has no power, present or prospective, to quash congressional subpoenas. And while Comer spent years and issued hundreds of pages of reports on the Biden family influence peddling scheme, his committee — you’ll no doubt be stunned to hear — hasn’t held a single hearing on the Trump-Witkoff family crypto venture, the intersection of the Trump family business interests and foreign regimes, the Trump pardons, President Trump’s acceptance of the $400 million “palace in the sky” from Qatar, etc.
Seems like there may be a few depositions in the offing.