Trump and Epstein - Even Death Didn't Do Them Part

As more photos were released by House Democrats just a day before the 19^th December deadline, the enigma that is Jeffrey Epstein still sends shockwaves around the world.

With the stripping of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s princehood to the October release of Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir ‘Nobody’s Girl’, there has been even further pressure aimed at political leaders to expose the full extent of the Epstein files. Last month, Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law, but what has he been doing about it since? The release of the photos featuring Steve Bannon, former President Clinton, and even Donald Trump alongside Epstein doesn’t automatically mean these men are guilty, but the strong sense of reluctance doesn’t betray an awful lot of innocence either.

It’s hard to discern whether, behind the president’s refusal to release them, is a lack of political will or the fear that something incriminating could be found in these documents. Trump has changed his tune multiple times now, but still the Epstein issue remains salient, and his critics don’t seem to be relenting anytime soon. Together, the President and his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, tried to drop the ‘There’s nothing to see here’ line after they used the files as a significant source of political fuel in the presidential race, breathing life into the Epstein saga once again. Jeffrey Epstein seems to, in sum, have quickly become a very serious threat to Trump’s position as President. The multiple indications that he would release these files - and his not seeming to care who it would upset - was taken seriously and at face value by his supporters. The fact that he then tried to dismiss it by arguing that there was nothing interesting to see made him look just like the murky deep state that he wages his ‘war’ on. 

Next year will mark 7 years since Epstein was found mysteriously dead in his prison cell in New York. It wouldn’t just be the Trump administration shocked by the case’s increased traction – the reach of this story only seems to grow at each attempt of political obfuscation that attempts to water it down. The ‘Democrat Hoax’ that Trump had decided to coin the ordeal came to a head when the House voted 427-1 to release the files, proving that this issue is not one of partisan politics but of morality and acknowledgment. Revealing an interesting fragmentation in the ostensibly solid MAGA base, could the political missteps here cause pain further down the line?

Trump 2.0 has had a very different flavour than his first term. He’s been bolder, chucking up inflammatory plaques, ripping a wing off The White House, offending world leaders, and smiling like a cheshire cat with indicted war criminals. Is there now an eye on what will be coming next? Although he hasn’t been forthcoming in endorsing his Vice President, JD Vance, everyone knows he legally cannot become President again, meaning MAGA will need a new bastion. For the 10 years that Donald Trump has been in American politics, even beginning to picture MAGA without him is unimaginable. 

Nevertheless, time, particularly in politics, waits for no man. Marjorie Taylor Greene was a pillar of support for the President; however, after 5 years, she will be leaving Congress. She slowly began to criticise Trump, starting with his decision to launch air strikes on Iran and his support for Israel in the Gaza War, but her vocal criticisms properly combusted over Jeffrey Epstein. 

He doesn’t seem to be missing one of his most devout allies, ridiculing her as a ‘ranting lunatic’ and ‘Marjorie Traitor Green’. Again, this reveals the collateral damage that Trump will likely endure from losing precious cogs in his political machine in his attempt to avert a crisis over these files.

There has been a conscious effort to try and distance himself from Epstein and Maxwell, who were deemed to be his good friends back in the 2000s and 1990s. However, there has been an even clunkier effort to burn those who dare to connect Trump to the paedophile’s malevolence. In the summer, Trump launched a ten billion dollar lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over their reporting on the ‘birthday book’. His lawyers were quoted as arguing that this was a  ‘deliberate smear campaign designed to damage President Trump's reputation’. 

Whether Trump wishes to admit it or not, this story manages to push back at any attempt to try and keep it under wraps. How long will Jeffrey Epstein, a paedophile, a fraudulent liar, a dead man, still be able to influence the political conversation and act as a site of fragmentation to the most passionate factions in Trump’s camp?

Image: Flickr/Tony Webster.

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