WASHINGTON — On Wednesday, as certainly one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims spoke outdoors the Capitol, pleading for presidency candor, fighter jets roared overhead, briefly drowning her out. Thomas Massie, the rogue Republican member of Congress who’d organized the information convention together with Democrat Ro Khanna, discovered the timing suspicious.
“That flyover, I consider, was scheduled after this press convention was introduced,” he advised a scrum of reporters afterward. Massie had no proof that the planes had been meant to disrupt speeches by the Epstein survivors he’d helped carry to Washington, the place they had been lobbying for a invoice mandating the discharge of the Epstein information. However his hypothesis spoke to the gulf of mistrust between him and the administration. “There can be no restrict to the weapons of mass distraction that the White Home will apply to attempt to make this go away,” he stated.
A key political query now could be whether or not President Donald Trump and his allies will succeed. Earlier this yr it appeared just like the Epstein information had been creating a real disaster for the president, with a few of his most ardent supporters infuriated by his refusal to launch the paperwork. In current weeks, nonetheless, the MAGA motion has largely fallen in line. As Matt Gertz reported in Media Issues, a lot of the right-wing media has stopped speaking in regards to the story. And most Republicans, terrified of crossing Trump, need nothing to do with it. “I’ve heard congressmen as just lately as yesterday in a closed assembly say, ‘Don’t know, don’t care,’” Massie stated.
Wednesday’s dramatic information convention was an try to make them — or at the least their constituents — care. One after one other, ladies who had been preyed on by Epstein spoke about their desperation to see the information. Haley Robson described the anguish attributable to ever-metastasizing Epstein conspiracy theories and infinite Epstein information cycles, and her hope that releasing the information may lastly put the case to mattress.
“Secrecy solely permits for conspiracy theorists to inform lies that drives up our nervousness and fears, and can proceed to result in extra ache, extra struggling and actually, extra deaths of harmless victims,” she stated, referring to ladies abused by Epstein who’ve died by suicide and drug overdoses. “It’s time you do what’s proper by us. Unseal all of the paperwork.”
After the ladies spoke, Massie addressed these watching at residence: “Please, name your congressman, inform her or him to get on this invoice and to face up for these survivors.” He and Khanna are at the moment attempting to get their colleagues to signal a discharge petition, which might permit them to avoid Home Speaker Mike Johnson and convey the Epstein disclosure invoice to the ground. To succeed, they want a majority of Home members to signal, they usually’re at the moment two votes brief. Each Democrat is onboard, however solely 4 Republicans.
The White Home has stated that any Republicans who be a part of Massie and Khanna’s effort can be engaged in a “hostile act.” That is, after all, a whole reversal from the place Trump and his allies had been through the marketing campaign. Again then, many conservatives handled the Epstein information as a skeleton key promising cataclysmic revelations about elite depravity and corruption. However the second Trump determined that releasing the information could be inconvenient, most of his lackeys in Congress misplaced all curiosity in them.
Not all Trump supporters, nonetheless, are able to ignore the difficulty. For a few of them, particularly these animated by the conviction — not completely unreasonable — that actual energy in America lies with shadowy, malevolent and unaccountable forces, the Epstein mythology is simply too central to their worldview to let go of.
Amongst Trump’s nice political accomplishments was making the Republican Celebration countercultural at a time when the institution was in deep disrepute. It’s turn into the house of probably the most disaffected, conspiracy-minded voters, an enormous tent for what Philip Roth known as the “Indigenous American berserk.” Such individuals, nonetheless, are usually significantly invested in uncovering Epstein’s secrets and techniques.
One of many Republicans who signed Massie’s petition is Marjorie Taylor Greene, a tribune of populist MAGA paranoia, and she or he defied the White Home to attend Wednesday’s information convention. “This can be a boiling level in American historical past,” she stated from the rostrum, describing the Epstein case as emblematic of an America divided between members of a heedless overclass who “by no means face any struggles or issues” and the forgotten lots routinely denied justice.
Trump’s recalcitrance on the Epstein information isn’t sufficient to shatter his coalition, but it surely has created at the least just a few fissures. Some once-friendly podcast hosts — Joe Rogan chief amongst them — have turn into disillusioned with Trump over Epstein. And political scientists on the College of Massachusetts Amherst have discovered a small however significant variety of voters shifting in the identical course.
In accordance with a ballot the college launched final month, 47% of respondents who voted for Trump in 2024 disapprove of his dealing with of the Epstein case, and of that group, 28% now disapprove of Trump’s efficiency as president. “We discover that amongst 2024 Trump voters, unfavourable views of Trump’s dealing with of the Epstein information are related to an elevated need to make a unique alternative if the 2024 election could possibly be rerun,” the Amherst researchers wrote in an evaluation in Speaking Factors Memo.
Trump clearly needs the story to vanish; requested in regards to the Wednesday information convention, he stated, “They’re attempting to get individuals to speak about one thing that’s completely irrelevant to the success that we’ve had as a nation since I’ve been president.” The message of the ladies, nonetheless, was that they’re not going anyplace.
Lisa Phillips, who was taken to Epstein’s personal island as a younger mannequin, stated Wednesday that within the absence of official disclosures, his victims are compiling their very own casual checklist of Epstein associates. “We all know the names. Many people had been abused by them,” she stated. Greene then promised to learn the checklist on the Home ground, the place she’d be protected against defamation lawsuits by the Structure’s speech or debate clause.
The potential for abuse right here, for unfounded and unanswerable accusations, appears apparent. However that’s what occurs when the justice system fails and the federal government refuses transparency. Both there can be daylight or a scandal that retains festering.
