Trump may live to regret his victory lap over latest Epstein files

 The White House could be forgiven for breathing a sigh of relief. Not a single one of the major US newspapers led their Sunday editions with the latest release of more than three million documents by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) relating to Jeffrey Epstein.

Only the Los Angeles Times bucked the trend, but that was because the documents revealed explicit emails exchanged between Casey Wasserman, the chairman of the LA Olympics 2028 Organising Committee, and Epstein’s girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. (“I am terribly sorry,” Wasserman said in a statement, noting his exchanges with Maxwell occurred “long before her horrific crimes came to light”.)

On Saturday evening, Donald Trump even took a victory lap of sorts aboard Air Force One, telling reporters: “I was told by some very important people that not only does it absolve me, it’s the opposite of what people were hoping.”

The US President exuded so much confidence about his position, he even threatened to file lawsuits against both the Epstein Estate – the source of many of the documents – as well as New York-based writer Michael Wolff.

“It looked like this guy Wolff was conspiring with Epstein to do harm to me… to hurt me politically or otherwise,” Trump said, adding that he will “certainly” take legal action against the writer and “may” file a lawsuit against the convicted paedophile’s estate as well.

Since the release of the latest batch of Epstein files on Friday, US media coverage has focused on the documents’ revelations about Epstein’s friendships with Elon Musk, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Barack Obama’s former White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler, among other prominent Americans.

Meanwhile, the UK media has focused on yet more revelations around Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Peter Mandelson.

However, the President’s bravado may still prove to be short-lived. Trump’s name appears thousands of times in the released files, and some mentions of him raise fresh questions that Democrats in the House of Representatives are eager to pursue.

Of particular interest is an FBI summary of more than a dozen tips received about Epstein and Trump from members of the public, including accusations of sexual abuse by both men. Trump has continued to deny any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.

The Democratic Party’s website noted that “emails in the release suggest that investigators followed up on some of the tips”.

It’s clear that Democrats intend to push on this as best they can, and to keep Trump’s past links to Epstein alive, especially as the US gears up for crucial mid-term elections in November, which could result in Trump’s grip on power weakening, with Democrats retaking one or both of the House and Senate.

Democrats in Congress also flayed the DoJ for what they called a partial release of documents that the government is legally required to put in the public domain, arguing that as many as three million additional pages are still being held back.

“The DOJ claims to have identified over six million potentially responsive pages, but after releasing only about half of them – including over 200,000 pages that the DOJ redacted or withheld – says strangely that it has fully complied with the Act,” Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said.

Rosemary Boeglin, the Democratic National Committee’s communications director, said that “Trump and his Department of Justice have attempted a massive cover-up… it is horrifying to imagine what they are hiding”.

But Todd Blanche, Trump’s deputy attorney general, insisted on Friday that any documents still beyond the public’s reach were being withheld due to the need to protect the privacy of victims and maintain the integrity of ongoing investigations.

“We comply with the Act, and there is no ‘protect President Trump’. We didn’t protect or not protect anybody,” Blanche said at a press conference.

He added: “I think there’s a hunger or thirst for information that I do not think will be satisfied by the review of these documents. And there’s nothing I can do about that.”

Despite his comments aboard Air Force One, Trump probably knows he will have a hard time convincing voters that he’s not trying to cover up his past associations with Epstein, with even his hardcore Maga base believing there is more to see in the files. Trump may never escape suspicion even if the Epstein files don’t legally incriminate him.

Even so, the President’s backers spent the weekend trying to deflect attention in the direction of Democrats.

The White House repeatedly lambasted the Biden administration for failing to take action to place the Epstein documents in the public domain, despite Trump’s well-documented resistance to releasing them last year, until he was forced to back their release.

(Ro Khanna, the Democratic congressman who co-authored the law requiring the files’ release, conceded his own party had erred. “We should have. We were wrong,” he acknowledged.)

For now, Trump can breathe a sigh of relief and watch friends, associates and enemies squirm on a hook that he has largely evaded. But the “absolution” he professes to enjoy could quickly be undone as questions mount for his administration over past investigations and the documents that have not yet been released.