\n<\/p>\n
Nearly two years ago,<\/span> Donald Trump kicked off the presidential-campaign season with a declaration: \u201cI was never on Epstein\u2019s Plane, or at his \u2018stupid\u2019 Island,\u201d he posted on Truth Social in January 2024. Reports to the contrary, he insisted, were the fault of AI\u2014and of his political rivals: \u201cThis is what the Democrats do to their Republican Opponent, who is leading them, by a lot, in the Polls.\u201d<\/p>\n But this week, the documents released by Trump\u2019s own Justice Department\u2014including flight logs and emails\u2014told a different story. Federal prosecutors determined in January 2020 that Trump had been a passenger on the notorious private jet owned by Jeffrey Epstein\u2014who would later be charged with sex trafficking\u2014far more often than they had realized.<\/p>\n Many of the flights on what came to be known as the Lolita Express took place \u201cduring the period we would expect to charge in a Maxwell case,\u201d a federal prosecutor in New York told colleagues. Epstein\u2019s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell was subsequently convicted and is now serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role in the sex-trafficking operation, including using the plane for \u201ctransporting a minor to participate in illegal sex acts.\u201d<\/p>\n There are many other mentions of Trump. The president\u2019s name appears more than 100 times in files released yesterday as part of the DOJ\u2019s compliance with legislation requiring it to disclose everything it has on the Epstein case. Trump fought Congress\u2019s demand for transparency for months before abruptly pivoting and endorsing the bill once he realized he had lost. Although many references to Trump are clearly from news reports or from seemingly unverified tips to the FBI, one conclusion from the files is that Trump\u2019s relationship with Epstein, a former friend, was of interest to federal law enforcement for years.<\/p>\n A White House official told me that Trump was never contacted by law enforcement regarding his interactions with Epstein during the time period for which Epstein and Maxwell were charged. The president has denied wrongdoing, though his characterizations of his relationship with Epstein\u2014including about his presence on the plane\u2014have shifted over time. Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, declined to answer questions about the discrepancy between the president\u2019s prior statements and the material released by the DOJ but said in a statement, \u201cThe truth remains: Donald Trump did nothing wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump has also insisted that he knew nothing of Epstein\u2019s criminal activity\u2014though his critics have questioned how that could be true given their close relationship and history of chasing women together. Members of Congress from both parties have said they will continue to probe the issue in the upcoming year. Representatives I spoke with told me their takeaway from reading the files is that top officials in the Trump administration have not been honest about what was in them, and that they intend to press Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel for more information.<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough the files are overly redacted, they\u2019ve already demonstrated that the narrative painted by Patel in hearings, Bondi in press statements, and Trump himself on social media wasn\u2019t accurate,\u201d Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican who co-authored the Epstein legislation, told me. \u201cA complete disclosure consistent with the law will show there are more men implicated in the files in possession of the government.\u201d<\/p>\n Representatives and staff <\/span>on the House Oversight Committee told me they were drafting subpoenas in response to the documents released yesterday, seeking more information related to law enforcement\u2019s identification of 10 alleged \u201cco-conspirators\u201d shortly after Epstein\u2019s arrest in July 2019. The case that prosecutors were building related to those unnamed co-conspirators appears to have been substantial. One document released yesterday is a November 2020 overview presented to the deputy attorney general from an acting U.S. attorney titled \u201cAnticipated Charges and Investigative Steps.\u201d But what, if any, next steps were taken remains a mystery: The rest of the page is redacted.<\/p>\n Oversight Committee members are also drafting a contempt resolution to penalize Bondi for not ensuring that the DOJ fully complied with the law. The resolution, spearheaded by Massie and Democrat Ro Khanna, will give Bondi 30 days to fully release all of the remaining Epstein materials, then fine her $10,000 each day that she doesn\u2019t release them after that. They told me they expected to introduce the resolution when Congress returns in January. They are also moving ahead on articles of impeachment for Bondi, and said they were optimistic that they could get them passed in the House.<\/p>\n Khanna told me that there was an emerging \u201ccoalition of the right and left to fight for justice.\u201d That alliance, he added, \u201chas proven to be the kryptonite that marks the beginning of the end of the Trump era.\u201d<\/p>\n The files released yesterday\u2014and Trump\u2019s prominence in them\u2014appear to have changed the calculation for senior Democratic Party leaders as they prepare for the midterm elections. Party leadership had previously sought to convince junior members not to focus on Epstein. But this week Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he will push for the Senate to hold the DOJ accountable for not fully complying with the legislation, citing a missed 30-day deadline for all files to be released and excessive redactions in those that have been.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Department of Justice needs to shed more light on who was on the list, how they were involved, and why they chose not to prosecute. Protecting possible co-conspirators is not the transparency the American people and Congress are demanding,\u201d Schumer said in a statement.<\/p>\n The Justice Department has acknowledged there are still many more files to be released\u2014and the known backlog grew longer today when the DOJ announced that the FBI and New York prosecutors had uncovered \u201cover a million more documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case\u201d and that the process of reviewing them could take \u201ca few more weeks.\u201d Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche had earlier said on Meet the Press<\/em> that the delay was due to the need for additional redactions in order \u201cto protect victims.\u201d Behind the scenes, his office has requested additional \u201cemergency\u201d help from U.S. attorneys\u2019 offices to continue reviewing and redacting Epstein-related material over the Christmas and New Year holidays, CNN reported.<\/p>\n The DOJ did not respond to my questions, but on X, the department\u2019s public-affairs office has sought to downplay mentions of Trump in the files, saying that yesterday\u2019s documents \u201ccontain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election. To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked if the president still has confidence in his attorney general\u2019s handling of the release of the Epstein files, Jackson said, \u201cThe president\u2019s entire Cabinet, including AG Bondi, has done a great job implementing the president\u2019s agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n Survivors of Epstein\u2019s abuses reacted with both excitement and anger as they reviewed the new files, lighting up group chats. Some were working retail jobs on one of the busiest days of the year; others were caring for children home from school. Lisa Phillips told me that there were still too many unanswered questions, but that the months of work she and other Epstein survivors had put into lobbying Congress were finally delivering results. \u201cThis is the first news that has made me feel like we are making headway,\u201d she told me.<\/p>\n Sigrid McCawley, an attorney who represents several of Epstein\u2019s victims, said it would take time to know the true impact of the \u201cavalanche\u201d of new documents released yesterday. But she told me that one thing is clear: \u201cThese brave survivors were absolutely correct that the government was withholding critical information from the public.\u201d<\/p>\n Marie-Rose Sheinerman contributed reporting. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nearly two years ago, Donald Trump kicked off the presidential-campaign season with a declaration: \u201cI was never on Epstein\u2019s Plane, or at his \u2018stupid\u2019 Island,\u201d he posted on Truth Social in January 2024. Reports to the contrary, he insisted, were the fault of AI\u2014and of his political rivals: \u201cThis is what the Democrats do to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[211,3703,3093,284,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-38996","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-didnt","9":"tag-epstein","10":"tag-files","11":"tag-release","12":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}