Epstein files: Donald Trump struggles to contain furore over disgraced financier as Democrats see opportunity

President Donald Trump was struggling Wednesday to contain the fallout from his administration’s decision not to release the Epstein files, as Republicans in the House went home for August instead of grappling with the issue and a Florida court declined to release grand jury testimony from the case.

The furore may be further fanned by a new report in the Wall Street Journal that describes how Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy informed the President in May that his name appeared “multiple times” in the files, along with those of “many people” who socialised with Epstein.

The officials said the files included “unverified hearsay” about these people and would not be released because they contained child pornography and victims’ information.

Last week, Mr Trump said that Ms Bondi told him his name wasn’t in the files. Being named in what is likely voluminous files is not evidence of wrongdoing.

“I don’t necessarily think that’s a surprise. He’s never denied knowing Epstein,” said Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Oklahoma), who had not yet read the Journal article.

Asked if the meeting reported by the Journal took place, White House spokesperson Steven Cheung said: “The fact is that the President kicked him (Epstein) out of his club for being a creep. This is nothing more than a continuation of the fake news stories concocted by the Democrats and the liberal media.”

But as the controversy over Epstein shows no signs of abating, Republicans are still figuring out how to position themselves on a topic that places them squarely between Mr Trump and their most vocal constituents.

Ten GOP lawmakers have signed a bipartisan petition to circumvent House leadership and send a measure to the floor to release the files; that won’t happen until September, however. A House Oversight subcommittee panel unanimously agreed Tuesday to subpoena Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted sex offender who is in prison. Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky), the committee’s chairman, formally issued the subpoena Wednesday for her testimony next month in Florida.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), who is leading the petition effort with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California), said everyone should be prepared to see names they may recognise in the files, if they’re released. Mr Massie said he expected the backlash to “grow over the August recess.”

“I mean, I think that’s a thing about the files that everybody needs to understand is there are probably lots of names in there who haven’t done anything criminal,” Mr Massie told reporters.

“There’s a reluctance to release these files because of the embarrassment of just having your name in the news in these files.”

He added: “And I always presumed that there were at least some of Trump’s friends, you know, named in this.”

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Florida) cast doubt on the Journal’s report, suggesting the Biden Administration would have released Epstein documents to incriminate Mr Trump if the President was named in them.

“So if he was on that list, you mean to tell me that DOJ wouldn’t have put it out? Nobody buys that,” he said.

The White House has spent the last two weeks trying, with limited success, to get people - including many of Mr Trump’s most fervent supporters - to stop talking about the Epstein case.

Mr Trump has moved through a series of responses, urging supporters to focus on other issues and suggesting that continued interest in the Epstein case benefited Democrats.

“Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bull----,’ hook, line, and sinker,” Mr Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social last week.

But Republican anger seems only to have grown since Ms Bondi announced that the case was effectively closed in a memo released less than two weeks ago, confirming that Epstein died by suicide and there was no “client list” naming powerful people who may have abused teenage girls.

On Wednesday, a Florida judge denied the Justice Department’s request to unseal grand jury testimony from the investigation there into Epstein’s activities between 2005 and 2007, citing secrecy rules. Justice is separately pursuing the release of testimony from New York, where Epstein was charged with sex trafficking in 2019 and where Maxwell was convicted in 2021.

The legal machinations did nothing to quell the political furore, however.

Democrats sought to take advantage of the issue as they head home to meet with their constituents for five weeks. They plan to argue that Mr Trump’s support for his administration’s decision not to release the files earlier this month - and GOP lawmakers’ leaving Washington without addressing the issue - means Republicans are protecting the rich and powerful at voters’ expense.

“The reality is that it’s all connected from the standpoint of Donald Trump. His administration and House Republicans have delivered nothing more than a government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, and for the billionaires,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) said Wednesday.

“It’s reasonable to conclude that Republicans are continuing to protect the lifestyles of the rich and shameless, even if that includes paedophiles.”

Several Democrats plan to continue forcing the matter on Capitol Hill. Democrats who sit on the House Appropriations Committee - which is responsible for crafting legislation to fund the government - are planning to introduce amendments related to Epstein if Republicans decide to keep the panel in town Thursday, according to two Democrats familiar with the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing conversations.

Appropriators may continue to meet while the House is in recess in hopes of hitting a government funding deadline of September 30.

House Democrats’ campaign arm echoed Mr Jeffries, while sounding ready to pounce on the Epstein fallout while lawmakers are home.

“The so-called Republican moderates prioritised their billionaire donors by enacting the largest cut to Medicaid in American history to pay for tax breaks for the wealthy,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Justin Chermol said.

“Now they’re protecting Donald Trump and billionaire elites by refusing to provide transparency into the Epstein files.”

House sent home early to half Epstein issue

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) sent the House home a day early because business had ground to a halt over the Epstein issue.

He was responding to Republicans on the House Rules Committee who were uncomfortable taking repeated votes on language introduced by Democrats to release the files. His solution was to allow the panel to approve a nonbinding resolution asking for the files released within 30 days; that resolution doesn’t have the force of law, however, and may never come up for a vote.

Speaker Johnson insisted Wednesday there was “no daylight” between Republicans and Mr Trump on the issue and said a vote in the House would be premature because the President had directed Ms Bondi to seek permission from the courts to release grand jury material. (This was before the Florida judge’s decision.)

“There’s no point in passing a resolution to urge the administration to do something they are already doing, and so that’s why we’re going to let that process play out,” he said.

“This is not out of fear in any way. What we’re trying to do is maximise the transparency. And we want every single person who’s involved in any way in the Epstein evils to be called to swift justice.”

The Speaker also argued that Republicans had a “legal” and “moral” responsibility to protect the names of Epstein’s victims from surfacing in the media, and excoriated Democrats for playing politics on the issue.

“The way Democrats have tried to weaponize this issue is absolutely shameless, and I just want to say this: Democrats said nothing and did nothing, absolutely nothing about bringing transparency for the entire four years of the Biden presidency,” Speaker Johnson said.

Nonetheless, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) mocked Speaker Johnson on the Senate floor Wednesday morning, saying House Republicans would be haunted by Epstein’s ghost as lawmakers head back home.

“By shutting Congress down early, Speaker Johnson has assured that August has become the Epstein recess, because this issue is going to grow and grow and grow,” Mr Schumer said.

Mr Jeffries, alongside Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Massachusetts) and Democratic caucus chairman Pete Aguilar (D-California), argued that there’s a connection between Epstein and other Republican policy priorities, including Mr Trump’s tax and immigration bill.

Ms Clark said that whether it’s Epstein, rising inflation or a law with massive tax breaks that is expected to strip millions of their Medicaid benefits, “everything that House Republicans have done” since Mr Trump became President “is in defence of the elites.”

“The Epstein case has helped their own base see what’s going on: that this is a con job and that they were never the centre of the work that they are going to do here,” she added.

Democrats out on the campaign trail are listening

Alissa Ellman, a Democrat challenging Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney, is holding coffees in her Upstate New York district and holding town halls to discuss what she says has been a top concern of voters: Epstein.

And in a Wisconsin swing district, Democrat Rebecca Cooke has been hammering GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden as complicit in failing to prosecute “elite and powerful paedophiles.”

“This isn’t about a list, it’s about criminal prosecution to the full extent of the law,” Ms Cooke said.

“Every patriot in this country knows what real justice looks like, and Republicans in Congress will pay a price for protecting these criminals and rewarding these same people with massive tax breaks.”

The aggressive Democratic rhetoric is a departure from Democrats’ typical refusal to engage in pushing back on or even entertaining conspiracy theories from the MAGA base. Several House Democrats began daring Mr Trump to release the Epstein files on social media this month, a tactic that was discussed with leadership when the House returned from a recent short break.

Rep. Jimmy Gomez (California) was one of the first Democratic lawmakers to demand the administration release the Epstein files because he noticed the matter trending online in right-wing circles. Other liberal lawmakers began pushing the issue, and the leadership listened as Democrats sought more forceful ways to respond to Mr Trump.

“He said he was going to drain the swamp, and then he became the swamp,” Mr Gomez said of Mr Trump.

“He said he was going to make the cost of living more affordable, he did the opposite. Instead of like cutting taxes for working people, he raised them while giving massive tax breaks to billionaires on largest corporation. This is part of that story.”

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Theodoric Meyer contributed to this report.

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