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Questions about the Epstein files keep coming.

So do bits of information about President Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier and convicted sex offender who died by suicide while in prison nearly six years ago.

The White House is employing lots of strategies to try to distract and deflect in an effort to beat back the story. The president said fellow Republicans, people who voted for him, were being “duped” by Democrats, said he doesn’t want their votes and called those continuing to demand the release of the files “weaklings.”

Trump went on a social media posting spree Monday night, lashing out at familiar foes — former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, as well as his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, while pointing back to the now almost decade-old investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

He went after the media for coverage of last month’s bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, and that came after blasting the Wall Street Journal for reporting last week on a risque birthday letter to Epstein in 2003 that had Trump’s name on it. Trump then sued the paper for $20 billion, contending that “no authentic letter or drawing exists.”

It looked like the blame-the-media strategy might work with his base after that, but his response has been more muted this week after the Journal broke that Trump was briefed by his attorney general in May that his name appears multiple times in the files. A spokesperson called it a continuation of “fake news,” but Trump did not directly address the story.

The administration’s recent comments and actions — including releasing more documents on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. nearly 60 years ago and even wading into the years-old controversies around changed professional sports team names — have done little to quell the controversy.

Polling has shown that neither Trump’s base nor the public writ large is very satisfied with the amount of information released or how Trump’s administration is handling it, though Trump’s approval with Republicans remains stable.

All of it represents an ironic turn for Trump. His political career was born out of the false birther conspiracy, and he has peddled lots of others for years, stoking a distrust in expertise and the government to help fuel his runs for office.

But now, he is the government — and dealing with a story in which conclusions were already drawn by many in his base that have roots in the QAnon movement that there is a satanic cabal of high-profile people in government who are also pedophiles.

In many ways, the Epstein files are a self-created perfect storm, and now it’s blowing back.

The calls for releasing the files have impacted all three branches of government this week. Trump said that releasing the files won’t likely quell the conspiracies, but even in that acknowledgment, he deflected, trying to blame Democrats.

“[N]othing will be good enough for the troublemakers and radical left lunatics making the request,” Trump said in a social media post last weekend that began with him calling for the release of grand jury testimony from the Epstein case. “It will always be more, more, more. MAGA!”

Where do things stand and what’s the latest?

Justice Department interview of Ghislaine Maxwell: Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, a former personal attorney of President Trump’s, interviewed Maxwell in prison on Thursday. Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minors. What new information the DOJ is seeking or what it would learn — and what Maxwell could get out of it, if anything, is unclear.

Whether anyone can believe what Maxwell winds up sharing is another question. Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig told NPR’s Morning Edition that if he were Maxwell’s lawyer he’d advise her to share nothing and invoke the Fifth Amendment, which gives people the right to not self-incriminate.

“Even though she’s already been tried and convicted and sentenced, she still could at least theoretically have other exposure to additional crimes,” Honig said.

Grand jury transcripts: The government, encouraged by Trump, also sought to release grand jury transcripts from the Epstein case. A federal judge denied one of those requests. Two others are pending.

Getting out of Dodge: In Congress, House Speaker Mike Johnson had Congress get out of town early for its August recess rather than take a vote aiming to force the Trump administration to release the Epstein files.

House Oversight Committee seeks Maxwell interview, too: After a subcommittee vote in which Republicans joined Democrats to approve a subpoena to compel Maxwell to speak to the committee, committee Chairman James Comer, a Republican, issued a subpoena for an interview to occur Aug. 11.

“While the Justice Department undertakes efforts to uncover and publicly disclose additional information related to your and Mr. Epstein’s cases, it is imperative that Congress conduct oversight of the federal government’s enforcement of sex trafficking laws generally and specifically its handling of the investigation and prosecution of you and Mr. Epstein,” Comer wrote in a letter to Maxwell released by the committee. “In particular, the Committee seeks your testimony to inform the consideration of potential legislative solutions to improve federal efforts to combat sex trafficking and reform the use of non-prosecution agreements and/or plea agreements in sex-crime investigations.”

Trump knew his name was in the files in May, according to the Wall Street Journal and others: The Journal reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy briefed Trump two months ago, letting him know that his name appeared in the Epstein files.

NPR has not confirmed that reporting, and the appearance of Trump’s name alone is not an indication of wrongdoing. He and Epstein were friends for years; they were seen on video partying together; and Trump was even on flight logs for Epstein’s plane before a falling out over a property dispute.

Honig told Morning Edition that it was highly unusual for an attorney general in the modern era to tell a president the details of an investigation it is conducting, particularly when it involves the president himself.

“Not at all,” it’s not normal for an attorney general to do so, Honig said. “And the question that this begs to me is, why? Why would the attorney general go and tip off the president — ‘Hey, you’re named in these criminal, closed criminal investigative files,’ whatever ‘named’ may mean. That is highly abnormal, and if we look back at the history of attorneys general, through both parties, that would be seen as a breach of the attorney general’s independence.”

For Trump’s part, a White House spokesperson said in a statement that Trump kicked Epstein “out of his club for being a creep,” dismissed the story as a continuation of “fake news” and pivoted to talking about Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election.

What does the Russia investigation have to do with this?

It’s hard to believe, but the government’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was almost a decade ago now.

And yet, it’s something Trump continues to point to when asked about Epstein.

On Wednesday, Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, from the White House Briefing Room podium, alleged a “yearslong coup and treasonous conspiracy” enacted by the Obama administration against Trump.

But there wasn’t much new. In fact, the assessments she referenced largely affirm what’s been known about Russian interference for years — while weaving a newly packaged web with that information.

The charged allegations led Obama’s office to issue a rare response to the Trump administration.

“Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response,” the statement read. “But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.”

It also noted that bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee findings, a committee then-chaired by Marco Rubio, now Trump’s secretary of state, “affirmed” the intelligence community’s findings.

From “phony stuff” to “whatever’s credible” to “unverified hearsay,” a pattern emerges

The Wall Street Journal reported that Bondi and her deputy, who told the president his name was in the files multiple times, said they felt the files contained “unverified hearsay.”

That might help explain how Trump has talked about this for more than a year.

“Yeah, whatever’s credible, she can release,” Trump said in the Oval Office on July 16, responding to a reporter’s question about whether he wants Bondi to release the full files.

“If the — if a document is credible, if a document is there that is credible, she can release. I think it’s — I think it’s good,” he said.

Note him saying whatever is “credible.” He’s used the word “credible” on this story multiple times in the last 10 days.

Here’s a sampling:

“Well, I think in the case of Epstein, they’ve already looked at it and they are looking at it, and I think all they have to do is put out anything credible,” Trump said in an interview on the same day on Real America’s Voice, a conservative media outlet. “But you know, that was run by the Biden administration for four years. I can imagine what they put into files.”

The day before, Trump talked to reporters twice, once before departing the White House and once after returning on Air Force One. Again, multiple times, emphasized the credibility of what’s in the files and deflected to try and shift the focus to Democrats and former FBI Director James Comey.

Before takeoff:

“[T]he credibility is very important,” Trump said. “And you want credible evidence for something like that. And I think the attorney general’s handled it very well.”

He was also asked if Bondi briefed him about his name being in the files — and this was days before the Wall Street Journal report.

“No, no,” he said before adjusting his language. “She’s given us just a very quick briefing, and in terms of the credibility of the different things that they’ve seen. And I would say that, you know, these files were made up by Comey. They were made up by Obama. They were made up by the Biden inform–, you know, uh, we, 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, but she’s handled it very well and it’s gonna be up to her. Whatever she thinks is credible, she should release.”

After returning, he again addressed it:

“Why they would be so interested in — he’s dead for a long time,” Trump said of Epstein. “He was never a big factor in terms of life. I don’t understand what the interest or what the fascination is. I really don’t. And the credible information’s been given. Don’t forget, we went through years of the Mueller witch hunt and all of the different things.”

He continued: “I think well, really, only pretty bad people, including fake news, want to keep something like that going.

But credible information, let ’em give it. Anything that’s credible. I would say let them have it.”

That tracks with what Trump said during the presidential campaign last year, despite the impression that many in his base were left with — that he would release the files.

Asked on Fox News in June 2024 if he would release them, he said, “Yeah. Yeah, I would. I guess I would. I think that less so [than MLK or JFK files], because you don’t know — you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, ’cause there’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world.”

Of course, releasing “credible” information is an important reason, for example, why grand jury testimonies remain sealed with few exceptions — to protect witnesses and the integrity of investigations.

Despite all the controversies Trump has faced in his political career, this is one he hasn’t been able to talk his way out of. That’s particularly true because this is a story influential people in his base have pushed — and some of them are now in his administration directly responsible for handling this.

What the White House has tried to do hasn’t satisfied many, including in his base — and could make for headaches for swing-district Republicans

A CNN survey conducted July 10-13 found half of respondents were dissatisfied with how much information has been released, including 4 in 10 Republicans.

Reuters/Ipsos asked the question differently in mid-July, connecting it specifically to Trump. In doing so, about half still said they disapproved of Trump’s handling of the Epstein matter — 35% of Republicans were reserving judgment, saying they didn’t know.

What’s more, almost 6 in 10 respondents in the Ipsos polling said they believed the government is probably or definitely hiding information about his death, and 69% said they think it’s hiding information about the alleged clients of the accused sex trafficker.

In both cases that included solid majorities of Republicans.

A CBS/YouGov poll published Sunday found that 9 in 10 think the government should release all of its information on Epstein, and Republicans are split on the Trump administration’s handling of matters related to the case, though self-identified MAGA Republicans are more likely to say they are satisfied.

Republicans appear to be giving Trump a long leash — 89% of them approve of the job he’s doing overall as president, despite his approval slipping to just 42% overall in the survey.

That could be because the Epstein case isn’t the most important issue respondents considered in evaluating the job he’s doing. Top of the list for saying an issue mattered “a lot” in their evaluation was immigration and deportation policies (61%), followed closely by inflation and prices and the tax-and-spending bill that recently passed Congress (both at 56%). About 36% said so of the Epstein case.

Republican members of Congress, though, continue to get questions about it. For example, Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, a Republican from a swing district in Pennsylvania, addressed the administration’s approach at a tele-town hall Wednesday night.

“They have not released as much as I would like to see to date,” he said, per audio from public radio reporter Carmen Russell-Sluchansky of WHYY, who was on the call. “But hopefully they’re going to be doing that, and if not, then Congress should potentially step in and compel them to do that because again, the American people deserve to have full transparency.”

It’s a reminder that Trump’s not the only one who has to navigate this — and these are exactly the types of members of Congress who will be in races that will likely determine control of the House next year.

The Federal Communications Commission gave its approval to a pending merger between Paramount Global and the movie studio Skydance on Thursday, clearing the way for the multibillion-dollar deal to close.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement that he was moved to approve the deal thanks to Skydance’s “commitments to … a diversity of viewpoints from across the political and ideological spectrum.”

“Americans no longer trust the legacy national news media to report fully, accurately and fairly,” Carr said. “It is time for a change. That is why I welcome Skydance’s commitment to make significant changes at the once-storied CBS broadcast network.”

The commission’s approval and Carr’s comments about CBS come mere weeks after Paramount settled a lawsuit with President Donald Trump for $16 million. The president had sued the corporation over a pre-election interview of Kamala Harris on “60 Minutes.” Though CBS News stood by its reporting and eventually released transcripts and all recorded video from the interview, the parent company opted to settle while the merger with Skydance was still awaiting approval from the Trump admin’s FCC. CBS host Stephen Colbert called the move a “big, fat bribe” days before the network announced the cancellation of his long-running late-night show. The network said that the decision was made for purely financial reasons.

While Carr celebrated a supposed diversity of views on the soon-to-be Skydance-owned network, he also painted the merger as part of “the FCC’s efforts to eliminate…forms of DEI.”

“Skydance will … adopt measures that can root out the bias that has undermined trust in the national news media. These commitments, if implemented, would enable CBS to operate in the public interest and focus on fair, unbiased, and fact-based coverage. Doing so would begin the process of earning back Americans’ trust,” he said.

Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democrat, called the entire saga “alarming” and a “violation of the First Amendment.”

“After months of cowardly capitulation to this Administration, Paramount finally got what it wanted. Unfortunately, it is the American public who will ultimately pay the price for its actions,” she said. “In an unprecedented move, this once-independent FCC used its vast power to pressure Paramount to broker a private legal settlement and further erode press freedom… Even more alarming, it is now imposing never-before-seen controls over newsroom decisions and editorial judgment, in direct violation of the First Amendment and the law.”

Disaster was averted at a Kentucky hospital when an ostensibly deceased organ donor began “thrashing” around in the operating theater, a preservationist tells NPR.

“He was moving around,” Natasha Miller recalled of the patient, whom NPR identified as Anthony Thomas “TJ” Hoover II. “He was crying visibly.”

In a statement to NPR, a spokesperson for the Network for Hope—an organization formed this year by a merger between KODA and the LifeCenter Organ Donor Network—said that “no one at KODA has ever been pressured to collect organs from any living patient” and that “KODA does not recover organs from living patients.”

Baptist Health Richmond told NPR: “The safety of our patients is always our highest priority. We work closely with our patients and their families to ensure our patients’ wishes for organ donation are followed.” The Daily Beast has contacted both entities for comment.

Another former KODA employee, Nyckoletta Martin, told NPR that Hoover, who’d been believed brain dead, reanimated during a procedure to assess his heart health. “He was thrashing around on the table” at that point, too, Martin said, alleging that his physicians merely “sedated” him. Martin would eventually become the whistle-blower, submitting a letter to Congress for a hearing on organ donation organizations.

A coalition of 1,100 professionals and patients involved in transplant procedures nationwide countered in their own letter that “misinformation” has been “eroding public trust in organ donation” and discouraging people from signing up as donors. But nonetheless, several government agencies—the Kentucky attorney general and the U.S. Health Services and Resources Administration—are reportedly investigating.

While the KODA rep told NPR that the “case has not been accurately represented,” Martin described the incident as “everybody’s worst nightmare.”

Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) has canceled chamber votes scheduled for Thursday, shortening the length of the House’s work this week in order to prevent a potential vote pressuring the Trump administration to release more files on Jeffrey Epstein.

Johnson had previously promised that he wouldn’t cut the House’s work short this week, but abruptly changed his mind after demands for the Epstein files intensified, including within his own Republican conference.

For years, right-wing figures within the MAGA-sphere have suggested that Epstein, the disgraced financier who died in his jail cell in 2019, kept a list of co-conspirators in his child sex trafficking ring. President Donald Trump, who was once friends with Epstein, implied on the 2024 campaign trail that he would release more files, including the “Epstein list,” claiming without evidence that the Biden administration had purposely concealed files from the public.

After Attorney General Pam Bondi released a short, two-page report denying the existence of an “Epstein list” (months after previously claiming she had the list on her desk), Trump’s MAGA base splintered, with many openly criticizing the administration for failing to live up to its promises to release more of the files. Trump lashed out at those supporters, calling them “weaklings” and stating that he didn’t “want their support anymore.”

Amid continued pressure, however, Trump later acquiesced and called for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to request a New York court to release transcripts of grand jury witness testimony in Epstein’s case and the case involving his girlfriend and child sex trafficking cohort, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Johnson, a staunch ally of Trump’s, is blocking efforts by House lawmakers to pass a resolution calling on the administration to release more files by preventing the House Rules Committee from taking any more consideration for votes, in general, for the rest of the week. That means that the last day of business for the House, ahead of its monthlong August recess, will be on Wednesday, and that the earliest the House could compel a vote on the Epstein files would be in September.

During a press conference on Tuesday, the speaker complained about such efforts, which are being pushed by Democrats along with some Republican lawmakers who have peddled Epstein conspiracy theories over the years.

“The president has said clearly, and he has now ordered his DOJ to do what it is we’ve all needed DOJ to do for years now, and that is to get everything released. So they’re in the process of that,” Johnson stated, adding that Congress pushing the subject would have “no purpose” and would amount to “political games” and “gotcha politics.”

Despite his assertions, Johnson is wrong — requesting grand jury testimonies would not “get everything released” relating to the DOJ’s files on Epstein.

“The president is trying to present himself as if he’s doing something here and it really is nothing,” said Sarah Krissoff, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan, speaking to The Associated Press over the weekend.

“People want the entire file from however long. That’s just not what this is,” said Joshua Naftalis, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor, adding that the transcripts are “not going to be everything the FBI and investigators have figured out about Maxwell and Epstein.”

The vast majority of Americans are frustrated with the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files, new polling from CBS News shows, with 75 percent saying they’re dissatisfied with the White House’s inaction. Among MAGA supporters, 4 in 10 said they were dissatisfied with Trump’s handling of the files.

In late summer of a typical year, both parties in Congress are drafting bipartisan appropriations legislation that won’t get filibustered in the Senate and will keep the federal government open when the next fiscal year starts on October 1.  

This year is not typical.  

Congressional Republicans, at President Donald Trump’s behest, have unapologetically broken faith in the appropriations process by undermining a bipartisan agreement struck just four months ago. That deal kept the government open through the current fiscal year. Since Democrats can no longer trust Republicans to keep their word, they should abandon negotiations over Fiscal Year 2026 spending and let the Republican majority figure out how to keep the government open.  

Let’s review what just happened. 

During Fiscal Year 2025, Congress passed three bills to fund the federal government, the last signed by Trump in March. These bills set specific spending amounts for government programs. 

Last week, Republicans exploited a quirk in the law that allows the Senate to vote on a presidential request for “recissions”—cuts to previously agreed-upon spending amounts—without the possibility of a filibuster. Without any Democratic votes in favor, Republicans clawed back $8 billion in foreign aid and $1 billion in support for public broadcasting. An agreement on funding levels, approved of by a bipartisan Senate supermajority, was rolled back by a narrow partisan simple majority. 

If you are charitable, you might say: Nine billion dollars is a rounding error on nearly $7 trillion of federal spending. The lion’s share of the agreement held. And this only happened once. There’s no need to overreact, end negotiations, and stumble into a government shutdown.  

However, Trump’s budget director Russ Vought said afterwards that the recissions package was not intended to be a one-off, but the beginning of a new appropriations process. “Who ran and won on an agenda of a bipartisan appropriations process? Literally, no one,” Vought told reporters at the July 17 Christian Science Monitor Breakfast, “No Democrat, no Republican. There is no voter in the country [who] went to the polls and said, ‘I’m voting for a bipartisan appropriations process.’ The appropriations process has to be less bipartisan.” He also said another recissions package is “likely to come soon.” 

So there will be a next time, and the next recissions may be even bigger. Any bipartisan agreement is worthless. Trump and the Republican majority will determine the final budget. Why should Democrats provide a wisp of bipartisan cover?  

Beyond passing recissions through legal, if dishonorable, methods, the White House has also spent the last six months sandbagging Congress’s power of the purse by decimating federal agencies with mass layoffs of government workers. 

The Democratic response to Vought should be: You want a partisan appropriations process? You got it.  

The ranking member of the House Budget Committee, Brendan Boyle, in an article for The Bulwark, encouraged “my fellow Democrats to be wary this September before lending their votes for deals that President Trump is inevitably going to disregard through illegal impoundments, or that Republicans are just going to rip up anyway. Doing so will chip away at public trust, undermine our ability to govern effectively, and weaken the checks and balances meant to protect democracy.” 

I would take it a step farther. 

Democrats should immediately announce that all talks about Fiscal Year 2026 appropriations are over. Democrats, even in the congressional minority, are willing to share the responsibility of governing for the common good. But they cannot exercise joint responsibility if Republicans not only won’t keep bipartisan agreements but are openly dismissive of them. 

Where would that leave the appropriations process?  

Under the current rules, in limbo. Trump just signed what he calls the One Big Beautiful Bill, which cleared Congress through the budget reconciliation process, which forbids a Senate filibuster. But as the current rules stand, the type of spending determined through the annual appropriations process is not eligible for budget reconciliation. To pass the Senate, 60 votes will be needed, which means securing at least seven Democratic votes.  

Does that guarantee a government shutdown for which Democrats will get blamed?  

No. Republicans would have two options. 

One, Republicans could change the rules. After all, these are not folks who are especially enamored with norms and precedents. For example, in the budget reconciliation process, Republicans wriggled out of rules meant to limit deficit spending by asserting that expiring tax cuts—initially made temporary to survive budget reconciliation rules—could be extended as “current policy” without adding to the deficit. Republicans then prevented Democrats from having the Senate parliamentarian review the maneuver.  

Skirting the parliamentarian was a hair short of overruling the parliamentarian by majority vote. Senate rule changes are supposed to require a two-thirds vote. Still, everyone knows that rule changes can be, and have been, steamrolled by overruling the parliamentarian by simple majority. (This is the so-called “nuclear option” maneuver.) But nothing is stopping Republicans from crossing that line too, except the recognizing Democrats could do the same the next time they have a Senate majority. If you want a partisan appropriations process, that’s how to get it.  

Two, Republicans could capitulate. The Fiscal Year 2026 appropriation bills could include provisions that protect spending from the threat of recission. Separate legislation could be enacted that broadly subjects future rescission requests to filibusters.  

The former, of course, is more likely than the latter. But both are ways the Republican majority is empowered to avoid a government shutdown. They are the party in control. They have already indicated they do not believe the minority party should share governing responsibilities. So it’s entirely on Republicans to keep the government open; they own the consequences of failing to do so. It’s not the Democrats’ job to keep the government open and have no say in how the federal government functions. 

Why wait to make that clear? Democrats shouldn’t want to have a government shutdown. Publicly ending negotiations now gives Republicans the maximum time to determine their next steps. Trump is already pressuring the Senate Majority Leader to cancel the August recess to get more of his nominees confirmed, including highly controversial ones such as Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove to a federal appeals court despite being accused by a whistleblower of encouraging defiance of judicial orders. If Republicans are going to cut short their break, they might as well work on keeping the government open. 

Sometimes the minority party is caught between what’s politically smart and what’s necessary for the public interest. This is not one of those times. Walk away. 

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