Trump Asks Congress To Release The Epstein Files He Can Release On His Own

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has abandoned his hardball pressure and threats to block legislation requiring the release of investigative material about his former friend and child sex ring operator Jeffrey Epstein — but has not explained why he does not simply release those files, as he has the ability to do.

“They can do whatever they want. I’ll give them everything,” he told reporters in the Oval Office Monday when asked if he would sign the Epstein files bill if it passes both chambers of Congress.

He was not asked in that encounter, though, why he does not just open up all the files on his own, and he did not volunteer an explanation.

“All you have to do is tell [Attorney General] Pam Bondi to release the files,” said Glenn Kirschner, a longtime former federal prosecutor, who added that Trump flipped on the House legislation only after it became clear it is likely to pass with an enormous bipartisan majority. “That is to cover his political ass.”

“Trump’s most recent flip-flop on the Epstein files is his surrender to the fact he was about to be humiliated by an overwhelming vote in Congress and an effort to turn what was going to be a massive repudiation of his extreme efforts to hide the files into a victory,” said Ty Cobb, a former federal prosecutor and a lawyer in Trump’s White House Counsel’s Office during the first term. “He is the clear loser in that battle no matter how many uniforms he switches into to pretend to be on the winning side now that he has lost.”

Instead of ordering the files released, though, Trump on Monday just repeated his now-familiar lies that he had no real contact with Epstein, despite voluminous photos, video and documents to the contrary.

“It’s just a Russia, Russia, Russia hoax as it pertains to the Republicans,” Trump said, falsely claiming that Epstein only associated with Democrats like former President Bill Clinton and donor Reid Hoffman. “Now, I believe that many of the people that we ― some of the people that we mentioned, are being looked at very seriously for their relationship to Jeffrey Epstein. But they were with him all the time. I wasn’t, I wasn’t at all.”

Just days ago, Trump dragged a Republican House member into the most secure room of the White House traditionally reserved for national security discussions to coerce her into blocking a resolution that would release those files.

That effort failed, though, and a newly sworn-in Democratic member of Congress provided the 218th signature on a petition forcing a floor vote on the bill that House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, a Trump ally, had been blocking on his behalf.

As this 180-degree turn played out, Trump also ordered Bondi — who quickly and publicly complied — to investigate the involvement of Democrats, and only Democrats, with Epstein, providing further evidence of his transformation of the Department of Justice into his personal prosecution squad.

“Donald Trump’s abuse of the Department of Justice is like nothing we’ve ever seen before. His command last week to AG Pam Bondi to investigate Democrats mentioned in the Epstein files, even though his DOJ said earlier that there was no basis to prosecute anyone based on their investigation, shows how he has destroyed the rule of law,” said Norm Eisen, a lawyer who served in President Barack Obama’s White House.

Trump and his supporters who are now in top administration jobs promised during his campaign to release the FBI’s investigative files on Epstein. Epstein himself died in an apparent 2019 suicide in the custody of Trump’s Justice Department during his first term, just a month after his arrest on federal charges that followed a Miami Herald series of articles into the sweetheart deal he received in 2007 that allowed him to plead guilty to a single state prostitution charge.

Epstein’s associate and fellow child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell was tried by the DOJ under President Joe Biden, convicted and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. After Trump’s return to the White House, however, Maxwell was transferred to a “Club Fed” type minimum security prison camp in violation of Bureau of Prisons guidelines. This came shortly after meeting with Todd Blanche, second-in-charge at the DOJ after working as one of Trump’s criminal defense lawyers.

According to a transcript of those sessions released by the administration, Maxwell said Trump and Epstein were “not close” and she never saw Trump at Epstein’s house — an assertion contradicted by newly released emails by the House Oversight Committee obtained under subpoena from Epstein’s estate.

“Blanche’s extortion of Ghislaine Maxwell’s benign and patently false statement in exchange for her favorable treatment and possible commutation are all atrocities that will forever stain DOJ and the FBI,” Cobb said.