How are these Epstein files so damaging to Trump?

President Donald Trump’s long relationship with deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein roared back into the public eye this week, as Republicans and Democrats jockeyed to capitalize on the tranches of Epstein-related documents released on Wednesday by the House Oversight Committee. While the White House has swatted down the renewed scrutiny on the Trump-Epstein relationship as the Democrats try to deflect from their own intraparty frustrations, growing public furor over Epstein’s high society enablers and Trump’s connection shows no signs of being so easily dismissed. With Democrats and a growing number of Republicans hungry to pursue the case even further, why has this batch of Epstein-related content become so potently dangerous for the Trump administration?

What did the commentators say?

The Epstein saga has a “dastardly quality” wherein the “more anyone drawn into the morass tries to dig themselves out, the deeper they dig themselves in,” said CNN. It’s a feature proven “yet again” by the Trump administration, as questions about Trump's place in the Epstein case are “becoming impossible for the president to suppress.” The renewed focus on Epstein “couldn’t have come at a worse time for the president” and has prompted a “fresh wave of chaos” that has “knocked the administration on its heels,” said Politico. The Epstein case has been like a “bad case of herpes” that “lies dormant for weeks but doesn’t go away for a long time,” said Jonathan Alter at Washington Monthly.

While nothing in the documents offers “specific proof of anything,” their power to generate “endless new rounds of questions” stems in part from the fact that Trump’s “own party has chosen to release them,” said The New Yorker. The administration’s “attempts at damage control” have meanwhile only “fueled the story” for the public. In one notable example, the administration unsuccessfully pressured Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) to drop her support for releasing more documents during a surprise meeting in the White House Situation Room — a place typically used to “discuss urgent national-security matters,” not political sex scandals. “Yikes. Smoke, meet fire.”

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The danger is not merely Trump’s alone. By framing the Epstein files as largely under the purview of the GOP-led House Oversight Committee, rather than requiring a full House vote, conservative hopes of “easing political pressure” on themselves and the White House “appear to have had the opposite effect,” said The New York Times. The committee has, “almost in spite of itself,” facilitated a release of material that has “intensified the drumbeat of demands for more transparency” while keeping attention on the Trump-Epstein relationship.

Some conservatives have taken notice. Releasing the full extent of the government’s Epstein material is the “easiest thing in the world,” Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), one of the president’s staunchest MAGA allies in Congress, said to Politico. Spending time and effort to block the materials’ release “just doesn’t make sense to me.” The issue is simply not going to let up for Trump “until it’s addressed and answered to the American people’s satisfaction,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) on CNN.

What next?

Despite the White House effort to scuttle any push for further document releases, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Wednesday announced that he will bring a bipartisan bill to do just that “on the floor for a full vote next week.” It’s a “totally pointless exercise,” he said, and “completely moot now. We might as well just do it.” The expedited push for a vote is a “reflection of the growing sense of agitation” among some in the GOP who are “sick of the months of growing pressure” to release the documents, lest they “risk being accused of protecting pedophiles,” said CNN.

The bill, which would force the Justice Department to release its full Epstein cache, “appears likely to pick up additional Republican votes — potentially dozens or more,” said PBS News. It will then face a “tougher test” in the GOP-controlled Senate, where it will need at least 60 votes to pass. Next week’s House vote is “going to be historic,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), one of the co-sponsors of the Epstein bill, to NPR. If the bill passes the Senate, “within the next six months, the files are released.”