On the menu today: The U.S. House of Representatives will vote today on a resolution calling for the Department of Justice to release all files relating to Jeffrey Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell. I suspect that would include any documents involving Maxwell’s recent prison transfer. Meanwhile, former Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers, who was Treasury Secretary back during the Bill Clinton years, pays a long-delayed price for his close friendship with Epstein. Read on.
The File Wars
I am glad that President Trump now thinks that “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide.” The president has come around to a position that was, as of last Thursday, further evidence of my “Trump Derangement Syndrome” in the eyes of some fans of the president. Up until this past weekend, the White House strongly opposed the release of these files.
I would note that we are talking about a resolution that would require the U.S. Department of Justice to “publicly disclose all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in its possession that relate to Epstein or Maxwell.” These are DOJ files, so they don’t need any act of Congress to be released. Nor do they need any judge’s approval. Trump could order Attorney General Pam Bondi to release the files at any time. As of this writing, he has not done so.
You will recall that the administration invited Representative Lauren Boebert (R, Colo.) to a meeting in the White House Situation Room with Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel to discuss her demand to release the files. Perhaps with the East Wing demolished, meeting space is in short supply, but it was still a little eyebrow-raising to see an (unsuccessful) effort to change the mind of a member of Congress take place in a secure soundproof room designed for crisis management.
The resolution calling for the release of the files is coming to the House floor because of a discharge petition. Usually, the speaker of the House determines which bills come to the floor, but if 218 members of the chamber sign a discharge petition, they can force the chamber to vote on it whether the speaker likes it or not.
Up until the past weeks, the petition’s signatories included all 213 House Democrats, along with Republicans Boebert, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, and Nancy Mace of South Carolina. Then Adelita Grijalva, who won her father’s House seat in Arizona’s seventh district, was sworn into office after a 50-day wait and immediately provided the 218th vote.
Note that the resolution also requires the release of all records relating to Maxwell, as well as those pertaining to Epstein. In December 2021, Maxwell was convicted in federal court on five counts — including one of sex trafficking of a minor, for her role in “a scheme to sexually exploit and abuse multiple underage girls with Jeffrey Epstein over the course of a decade.” Back in June 2022, Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison; she is eligible for release on July 17, 2037. Maxwell began serving her sentence at Federal Correctional Institution, Tallahassee, a low-security facility. (Federal prisons are designated as either minimum, low, medium, high, or administrative.)
Under federal regulations, sex offenders — whether male or female — are housed in at least “a low security level institution,” although waivers can be granted. On July 24 and 25, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche interviewed Ghislaine Maxwell, and he said, “Justice demands courage. For the first time, the Department of Justice is reaching out to Ghislaine Maxwell to ask: what do you know?” But when the transcript of their interview was released in late August, Elie Honig, CNN’s senior legal analyst, deemed Maxwell’s answers not credible:
In this transcript, Ghislaine Maxwell provides a simply bizarre worldview wherein almost nobody did anything wrong. She doesn’t even actually implicate Jeffrey Epstein. When she’s asked about the crimes that Jeffrey Epstein’s been convicted of, or excuse me, charged with, he died before he could go to trial, she basically says, I don’t have any knowledge of this. I suspect maybe he did some of it but nothing that I know about.
Ghislaine Maxwell herself maintains that she is absolutely 100 percent innocent, and she also essentially implicates nobody else in any type of criminal conduct. So, if one believes that worldview, fine, then maybe Ghislaine Maxwell is credible. I certainly do not. I find it impossible to believe her account of things.
About a week after her interview, officials moved Maxwell to Federal Prison Camp Bryan, in Bryan, Texas, a minimum security facility which houses only women; a majority of its inmates are serving time for nonviolent offenses and white-collar crimes. People magazine gave a description of the facility in a profile of convicted felon Elizabeth Holmes:
While Holmes shivers from the frigid air conditioning and picks the nuts out of a bag of trail mix, she says she has settled into the dormitory-style prison’s routine. Each morning she wakes just after 5 a.m., eats fruit for breakfast, then does a 40-minute daily workout — lifting weights, rowing and running on a track.
By 8 a.m. she’s at the education building, earning 31 cents an hour as a reentry clerk, helping women slated for release to write résumés and prepare to apply for tax credits and other government benefits.
“So many of these women don’t have anyone, and once they’re in there, they’re forgotten,” she says. Between roll calls five times a day, Holmes also works as a law clerk, helping women to secure compassionate release and their court cases, as well as teaching French classes. . . .
For lunch and dinner, Holmes sticks to a largely vegan diet, although she has added salmon and tuna after becoming anemic in her first year in prison. In her spare time she immerses herself in books — the ancient Chinese divination manual I Ching, the Harry Potter series, Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being and Zen teacher Cheri Huber’s The Fear Book: Facing Fear Once and for All are titles she has recently read. She is allocated 300 minutes on the phone every month, often waiting an hour in line for the twice-daily calls she usually makes to her family.
If you’re going to serve time in federal prison, the minimum-security facilities seem a lot nicer than the higher-security ones. More than a few people have wondered why Maxwell was rewarded with a transfer to a less restrictive prison despite appearing to have given no useful information to the Department of Justice.
I can understand why a whole lot of people would like the issue of Epstein and Maxwell to go away. But if President Trump didn’t want people to expect the federal government to release all information related to Epstein when he was president, he should not have said he would “declassify the Epstein files” or “do the Epstein” in campaign trail interviews in 2024. Don’t get mad at the people who remember Trump saying it, get mad at Trump for making that promise.
In yesterday’s column in that other Washington publication, I suggested Trump is starting to look like a lame duck. Some people argued that was overstated. But on the Epstein documents, Trump took a stance that even longtime loyalists like Boebert and MTG couldn’t support, and he was eventually forced to concede. Even apart from Epstein, MAGA Republicans are now openly criticizing Trump’s recent comments on H1-B visas and his argument that American universities need Chinese students.
We don’t know how the 2026 midterms will go, but we know the Democrats have a decent chance of winning the closely divided House. If the Democrats win the House in 2026, it is a foregone conclusion that they will impeach President Trump in 2027. There will not be enough votes in the Senate to convict — and why would Democrats want to make JD Vance the acting president? — but 2027 will be consumed with either impeachment politics, the early maneuvering of the 2028 presidential race, or both.
The clock is ticking on how much time Trump has left with a relatively clear path to enact his agenda. If Trump isn’t lame, he’s starting to develop a metaphorical limp.
More Than Five Years After His Death, the Epstein Fallout Continues
Was it morally acceptable to keep being Epstein’s friend and confidant after he pleaded guilty to state charges of solicitation of prostitution and solicitation of prostitution with a minor on June 30, 2008?
Apparently not, and apparently the statute of limitations on that egregious decision has not run out:
Former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers will step back from all public commitments in an effort “to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me,” he wrote in a statement Monday evening.
“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused. I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein,” Summers wrote to The Crimson.
In the hundreds of messages exchanged by Summers and Epstein — part of a cache of 23,000 documents released by the House Oversight Committee last week — Summers placed an extraordinary degree of trust in Epstein, confiding to him about his pursuit of a romantic relationship with an economist.
Gentlemen, I know that wooing the heart of the woman who entrances you is a supreme challenge, but under no circumstances should you choose your friend who is a notorious sex trafficker to be your Cyrano.
Americans can forgive a lot in their leaders. Americans can relate to minor unpaid tax debts, money problems, and marital problems. (It’s comical to think the New York Times tried to make an issue out of the speeding tickets of Marco Rubio and his wife.)
But they can’t relate to being friends with one of the most notorious sex traffickers in history, particularly after he pleaded guilty to solicitation of prostitution with a minor. At that point, it isn’t rumors, whispered stories, or women around his swimming pool that looked surprisingly young. The first police investigation of Epstein, involving a 14-year-old girl, started in early 2005.
ADDENDUM: In case you missed it yesterday, almost 20 percent of Senate Democrats are thinking of running for president in 2028.