What is going on with Trump and the Epstein files?

Donald Trump has ordered the US Justice Department to unseal additional documents about sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The president's about-turn comes "after days of sustained pressure from some of his most loyal supporters" for further disclosures in the case, said the BBC, and hours after he threatened to sue over a newspaper report claiming he once sent Epstein a "bawdy" birthday letter.

What did the 'Trump letter' say?

According to the The Wall Street Journal, the letter to Epstein, sent in 2003, featured several lines of text "framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker". Trump's signature is a "squiggly 'Donald' below her waist, mimicking pubic hair" and the message concludes, "Happy birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret".

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Trump has vowed to sue the "ass off" the Journal and its owner, Rupert Murdoch. He posted on his Truth Social network that the letter was "Fake" and a "Scam", and phoned the paper to tell reporters that "I never wrote a picture in my life". But this episode is another reminder that the scandal still swirling around his late friend has become increasingly uncomfortable for the president.

What was the Trump-Epstein relationship?

Trump was friendly with Epstein for over a decade and was pictured at parties with Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell several times in the 1990s and early 2000. Trump's private club, Mar-a-Lago, featured in Maxwell's later trial and conviction for sex trafficking.

In 2019, Trump said he and Epstein had had a "falling out" and they hadn't spoken for 15 years. But flight logs released during Maxwell's trial showed that Trump flew on Epstein's private plane several times between 1993 and 1997.

Epstein died in a New York prison cell in April 2019 while he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges – more than a decade after his prior conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, for which he was registered as a sex offender.

Trump has claimed he had "no idea" that Epstein had molested women. In 2002, however, he'd told New York magazine that Epstein was a "terrific guy" and a "lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."

Why weren't the Epstein files released?

For several years, Trump fanned the flames of the Maga conspiracy theory that the Joe Biden administration had suppressed details about Epstein and his supposed "client list" of "elites" who were molesting children. Many of Trump's most ardent supporters assumed that, when Trump became president again, this list would be made public.

But, earlier this month, the US Justice Department said there was no evidence that Epstein had a "client list", and the department has no plans to release any new documents on the matter. Far from drawing a line under the story, the announcement meant calls to "release the Epstein files have only grown louder", said Vox.

Elon Musk had already caused a stir by claiming that Trump himself was named in Epstein files, and that "crack in the president's support system" became "a chasm" after his administration "suddenly reversed course on its longstanding promises" to reveal more on Epstein, said the The New York Times.

It's all left Trump "swimming against the tide", said "News Agents USA" presenter Jon Sopel in Indy Voices. "For the first time, the base is not buying what Trump is selling" and now "someone who died six years ago is posing the greatest challenge to the president's authority since he returned to the White House".

What is Trump saying now?

Earlier this week, Trump turned against his own supporters, calling them gullible "weaklings" for questioning his administration's handling of the Epstein investigation, and calling the whole furore "boring" and "bullshit".

Then he said FBI should investigate "the Jeffrey Epstein hoax" as a criminal conspiracy against him. In an interview with Real America's Voice, he argued that the files from the federal investigation into Epstein shouldn't be released in full because they might include false information about him planted there by Democratic rivals. "I can imagine what they put into files," he said.

And now Trump's performed another U-turn, ordering Justice Department officials to unseal "all pertinent" grand jury testimony in the Epstein case. But it remains "unclear" exactly what testimony Trump is referring to, and whether or not the courts will approve "public release" of them, said the BBC.