Why Killing The Jeffrey Epstein Scandal Isn’t Working For Trump

US President Donald Trump gestures while answering questions from reporters as he tours the roof of the West Wing of the White House on August 05, 2025 in Washington, DC. The Trump administration is scrambling to make the self-inflicted fiasco that is the Epstein files go away. This week, the latest twist arrived when Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche admitted to judges that the government has no plans to seek the public release of anything from the grand jury related to Epstein and his associate, convicted sex trafficker Ghislane Maxwell, but the transcripts.Even as the administration is attempting to make a public show of transparency, Bondi and Blanche have admitted that they have no desire to see grand jury exhibits released. Exhibits could include pictures, video, text messages, emails or other communications, interview notes, memos and more — all of which would be eligible for redaction if they contained sensitive or explicit material. And all of which would be far, far more informative than simple transcripts.The problem started in July, when Bondi denied the existence of Jeffrey Epstein’s so-called “client list” and announced nothing else would come from the Justice Department’s bid to declassify or release files tied to the late sex offender. The sudden about-face raised ire from many of Trump’s followers: Bondi had previously claimed that not only did she have files on her desk and ready to be released, but Trump himself had previously promised to release info on Epstein, who died in prison in 2019 while facing charges of trafficking, abusing and exploiting hundreds of underage girls and young women. The breaking of that much-hyped promise triggered a cascade of headaches for the administration; it left Trump stumbling through questions about his relationship and fallout with Epstein and it set him at odds with his base, who for years have clung to his every word or conspiracy theory about Epstein’s life and death. Trump attempted to quell the storm, instructing Bondi to seek the release of grand jury transcripts.The manoeuvre is, to put it plainly, a fake-out: Grand jury transcripts contain nothing new; everything in them was made public when Maxwell was on trial in 2022, or had already been reported publicly. What’s more, Bondi and Blanche know it. They told federal judges exactly that. Plus, keeping releases limited to the transcripts leaves the Justice Department in a position to cherry-pick what it believes should or shouldn’t go public with a judge’s blessing.Meanwhile, the Justice Department rushed to interview Maxwell. In a highly unorthodox move, the two-day interview was conducted by Blanche — Trump’s former attorney — who was operating way below his pay grade. Usually, witness interviews are conducted by the prosecutors who handled the case, never a high-ranking or senior Justice Department official. But the Department of Justice has said it is mulling the possibility of publicly releasing transcripts from the interview.Maxwell’s credibility has been in question in the past. She was accused of perjury by federal prosecutors in 2020, when prosecutors said she lied during a 2016 deposition in a civil case involving Epstein’s alleged sexual abuse of victims. Those charges were dropped after she was convicted on sex trafficking charges in 2021. What’s more, she is currently seeking a pardon from Trump in exchange for testimony about Epstein, leaving wide open the question of what she may be incentivised to reveal or overlook.Put together, a clearer picture of the administration’s strategy on the Epstein scandal sharpens into focus: Release enough information that it looks like you’re committing to transparency without actually giving up anything new or meaningful.The White House did not immediately return a request for comment. The Justice Department declined comment.Where the Trump administration takes its narrative next is hard to say. And that could be because even they don’t know: Vice President JD Vance was reportedly set to meet with Bondi, Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles on Wednesday to discuss the administration’s strategy around the Epstein fallout. However, as news of the meeting leaked, Vance swiftlydenied it was happening at all and called the reporting “pure fiction.”It is not clear that the administration is necessarily trying to hide something, or indeed, that there is anything to hide. It has been revealed that Bondi informed Trump that his name is in the so-called Epstein files, but Trump and Epstein had a well-documented friendship that lasted several decades. Being mentioned isn’t a sign of wrongdoing. For a cover-up to be successful, the idea is to drop breadcrumbs leading away from the meaningful evidence, facts or witnesses; to bury everything otherwise and in the meantime, flood the zone with enough decoys, confusing signals or distractions that it becomes impossible or incredibly difficult to discern fact from fiction. Between theatrical gestures taken by the Justice Department over the Epstein files, Bondi’s switcheroo and the president raising more questions daily about the real nature of his relationship with Epstein, the Trump administration is clearly making an attempt to control a fragile narrative. “I would be surprised if this fools anybody other than the most firmly entrenched in his cult, the ones who, if he said, ‘I need to deport all my MAGA supporters to make America great again,’ they would all say, ‘That’s genius, what plane do we get on?’” Glenn Kirschner, a legal analyst and former federal prosecutor with over 25 years of experience handling criminal cases, told HuffPost on Wednesday. In the last month, polling has shown support for Trump drop over his handling of the Epstein materials. Two weeks ago, after Bondi announced there was no “client list,” polling showed that Republicans were mostly still on Trump’s side: 57% of those surveyed by AtlasIntel said they didn’t think Trump’s relationship to Epstein should be investigated any further. But that still left a healthy chunk of Republicans wanting more: the survey also showed that only 58% of Republicans believed Trump has been fully or somewhat transparent. When the fallout began, Americans, more broadly speaking, didn’t like Trump’s handling of the Epstein matter — 63%, according to a Quinnipiac poll, disapproved.A University of Massachusetts Amherst poll taken in the days after Blanche met with Ghislane Maxwell to interview her showed things have only gotten worse for Trump: 70% of Americans think he botched how the Epstein files should be handled and 63% of Americans think his administration is hiding information about Epstein.Blanche’s interview with Maxwell was not just highly unethical, but also a sloppy strategy, Kirschner said. “She’s also somebody who never accepted responsibility for her crimes. And people are going to credit her claim that Donald Trump is as pure as the driven snow?” Kirschner said. “I don’t think the average person will fall for that.”Maxwell, who was sentenced to 20 years for her role in Epstein’s abuse, has every incentive to protect herself or anyone else that could help her, Kirschner said. “If Trump ends up pardoning her — think of the abject horror of pardoning someone who not only arranged for Jeffrey Epstein to rape young girls, but she was hands-on — and we mean that in a literal sense — she was hands-on with these victims — will be hard to accept,” Kirschner said. Kirschner also pointed out that Blanche’s previous role as Trump’s personal attorney carries a massive conflict of interest that puts the administration’s credibility at risk.“Once you form an attorney-client relationship with someone and you come to possess their most closely guarded secrets, you must keep that confidence for the rest of your life even long after the attorney-client relationship ends,” Kirschner said. “The fact that Blanche is sent to interview someone who is obviously in a position to provide incriminating information about Trump… Blanche is conflicted out.” The rules of ethics, he notes, would typically require Blanche to recuse himself from this investigation.The only people in a position to assess and corroborate whether Maxwell was saying anything credible or truthful during that meeting were Maurene Comey and other prosecutors who worked the case, he said, and this is because they know the evidence inside out.But Bondi fired Comey a week before Blanche met with Maxwell. And now Maxwell, after the closed-door meeting telling Blanche she never saw Trump commit any wrongdoing, has been transferred, with no explanation from the Justice Department, from a low-security prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp for non-violent offenders in Texas, where there are things like yoga and a “puppy program” for inmates.In Kirschner’s experience, when working on cases in which criminals might be able to give up credible information about other “big fish” still on the loose or breaking the law — Kirschner said the first thing that has to be established is trust. And that begins with the person admitting to their crimes. “They have to accept responsibility and confess to their crimes,” he said. “If you’re unwilling to do that, nobody is going to believe you if you start pointing the finger at others. That’s the reason Maxwell can never ever be believed.”. As for the grand jury transcripts, Kirschner said no matter what the courts do, the administration will try to spin it to Trump’s benefit. “If the judge denies the motion to unseal, Trump can say, ‘We wanted to be forthcoming but the court said ‘no,’” Kirschner said. “But if the judge orders them unsealed and the transcripts say nothing about Trump, then he can say, ‘See, they don’t implicate me.’”But again, those grand jury transcripts aren’t and haven’t been expected to say much. It’s everything else the Justice Department is withholding that may flesh out the story of Jeffrey Epstein and his network of elite, powerful friends. The longtime prosecutor doesn’t think there’s a way Trump ever really extricates himself from the Epstein story. He suspects the doubt his administration has already sowed, with its half-measures to gain records and its unethical meetings with people incentivized to lie, means this saga for Trump will be a lot like the JFK assassination conspiracy theories that have persisted for decades.“The allegation will always be that they could have released it all and they didn’t and that people in the Trump administration were willing to cover up at any expense,” Kirschner said. “This could live forever. No matter what Trump says or does to distract from it.” Related...Trump Fires Back At Reporters Over 'Bulls**t' Epstein QuestionCountries Brace For Impact As Trump's Tariffs Officially Go Into EffectPutin Has Pulled The Wool Over Trump's Eyes Before. Will He Do It Again?

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