President Donald Trump angered his own supporters recently when his U.S. Department of Justice said it wouldn’t be releasing any more information about the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. But after days of outrage, including from the Deputy Director of the FBI, Dan Bongino, Trump is now signaling that Attorney General Pam Bondi might release something. Still, don’t expect to see anything that would make Trump look bad.
Trump spoke to reporters outside the White House on Tuesday and was asked about recent comments by his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, who said that there should be “more transparency” around the so-called Epstein files. Trump said Bondi had “handled that very well” but claimed “credibility is important,” suggesting that much of what’s in the files isn’t credible.
Trump, who was a friend of Epstein’s for years, was asked by reporters whether he had been briefed on the files by his AG and whether his own name appeared anywhere. Trump insisted it had been a “very quick briefing,” and went on to give a simple “no” about whether his name was in the files.
“No, no, she’s given us just a very quick briefing. And in terms of the credibility of the different things that they’ve seen,” Trump said.
The president then went into a conspiracy theory that he seems to have concocted in recent days, which purports that his political adversaries had invented the files. “And I would say that, you know, these files were made up by Comey,” Trump said, referring to the former FBI director James Comey, who the president fired in 2017.
“They were made up by Obama,” Trump continued, “they were made up by the Biden… you know. And we went through years of that with the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. With all of the different things that we had to go through, we’ve gone through years of it.” Trump first made that claim in a Truth Social post on July 12.
But then Trump said that perhaps Bondi could release files that she thinks are “credible,” without elaborating on what that means in Trump’s eyes. “But she’s handled it very well. And it’s going to be up to her,” Trump said of Bondi. “Whatever she thinks is credible, she should release.”
The Trump regime had previously promised to release all of the files, even holding a media event at the White House back in February where right-wing influencers received binders marked “Epstein Files: Phase 1,” implying there would be more to come. As it turned out, nothing in those binders was new information.
There is some truth to the fact that the FBI and DOJ, more broadly, are reluctant to release files that may implicate innocent parties who spoke with law enforcement. The Privacy Act of 1974 was passed to provide those kinds of protections. The reason the FBI releases files on celebrities only after they’ve died is due to that federal law, and even then, the names of living people are often still redacted. Dead people don’t have privacy rights under U.S. law.
But many Americans still want answers about the Epstein case, perhaps because Trump’s attitude that there’s nothing to reveal is so suspicious, given the attitude of his other top officials. Bongino and Patel spent years insisting the Epstein files should be released, suggesting the late sex offender didn’t really kill himself, but then pulling a 180 as soon as they got into power.
Bongino has reportedly clashed with Bondi over the issue, even not showing up for work last Friday after an explosive argument, according to multiple reports. And it’s not clear what his future looks like at the agency. Credible news outlets say he’s back at work, but he hasn’t tweeted since July 9.
Bondi herself seemed eager to release whatever files were available until relatively recently. She verbally stumbled when asked about the files during a cabinet meeting last week, and Trump cut in to berate reporters and ask why people were still asking about Epstein at all. Bondi also attempted to explain why a full minute was missing from the nearly 11 hours of “raw” video released from outside Epstein’s jail cell. As Wired reported, the video wasn’t really raw, but was edited with software like Adobe Premiere Pro.
For their part, right-wing influencers seem to be making an effort to tell everyone to drop the Epstein story. Charlie Kirk said he doesn’t want to talk about Epstein anymore when there are more important stories like NATO, and Dinesh D’Souza, who received a pardon from Trump, told his listeners that people should “move on.” Tim Pool has even claimed that Democrats still calling for the release of the Epstein files just want to see “child porn.”
It seems pretty clear that the vast majority of Americans, to say nothing of the most diehard conspiracy theorists, are not ready to just move on. Just 3% of Americans say they’re satisfied with the amount of information the government has released about the Epstein case, according to CNN. Fifty percent say they’re dissatisfied, with 29% saying it doesn’t matter to them either way, and the rest saying they haven’t heard enough to have an opinion.
Whatever Trump and Bondi decide to do, this story isn’t going away anytime soon.
