Trump’s Pressure Campaign to Block Epstein Files Is Falling Apart

Now that the House discharge petition has enough signatures to force a vote on the Epstein files, even more Republicans are coming out of the woodwork to support the files’ release.

Just four Republicans initially penned their signatures on the discharge petition. But despite the apparent internal opposition to supporting the petition, several Republicans announced Wednesday that they will vote “yes” on the resulting bill when it comes to the floor.

That includes Representatives Eli Crane and Warren Davidson, reported CNN’s Manu Raju Wednesday afternoon.

Representative Don Bacon also expressed his support for the bill in an interview with MSNBC.

“If it goes on the floor—I get a lot of pushback, ‘Why don’t you put your name on the discharge petition?’ I’m just going to be subtle in my response: Just look at the few Republicans who are on it and who they are,” Bacon told the network.

Early GOP signatories on the petition were Representatives Lauren Boebert, Nancy Mace, Thomas Massie, and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

“If it comes to the floor, I will vote ‘yes,’” Bacon affirmed.

The House Oversight Committee released more than 20,000 documents Wednesday that it had obtained from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate. The documents included multiple mentions of Donald Trump and the pedophilic sex trafficker’s fascination with Trump’s ascent to the White House.

In a 2011 email, Epstein expressed he was grateful Trump had stayed quiet about abuse that had taken place at one of his residences. The “dog that hasn’t barked is Trump,” Epstein wrote, despite the fact that Trump had spent hours at one of Epstein’s properties with a known victim.

In a 2017 exchange with former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, Epstein said that Trump was the worst individual he knew.

“I have met some very bad people, none as bad as Trump,” Epstein wrote. “Not one decent cell in his body.”

When queried by Michael Wolff in 2019 about the extent of Trump’s knowledge of abductions of young girls, Epstein remarked: “Of course he knew about the girls he asked Ghislaine to stop.”

The White House immediately brushed off the reports, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisting that the emails prove nothing. Trump, in turn, has accused Democrats of inventing the Trump-Epstein connection, repeatedly referring to it as a “hoax.” But House Democrats have roundly rejected that illusion.

“The more Donald Trump tries to cover up the Epstein files, the more we uncover,” said Robert Garcia, the Oversight ranking member, in a statement. “These latest emails and correspondence raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the President.”

Trump was warned as early as May that his name was all over the Epstein files. But concern had swelled among GOP lawmakers since early November that Trump’s relationship with Epstein was even cozier than previously understood—apparently with good reason.

After House Oversight Democrats released a series of private emails from Jeffrey Epstein mentioning Donald Trump, Republicans released their own files, with even more incriminating info.

House Oversight Republicans released 20,000 pages of emails and documents from Epstein’s estate. One of them includes correspondence between Epstein and former Obama White House lawyer Kathy Ruemmler in 2018. Ruemmler had sent the disgraced pedophile a link to a New York Times op-ed regarding former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen pleading guilty to violating finance laws with hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. 

“you see   ,  i know how dirty donald is.    my guess is that non lawyers ny biz people have no idea,” Epstein wrote. “what it means to have your fixer  flip.”

The rest of the emails—and their past friendship—would suggest that Epstein did indeed know how “dirty” President Trump is. 

“i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump [sic]. [Redacted] spent hours at my house with him ,, [sic] he has never once been mentioned. police chief etc,” Epstein wrote in 2011 to his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, allegedly referring to one of his sex-trafficking victims. 

“I have been thinking about that …” Maxwell responded. 

In another email to author Michael Wolff, Epstein implies that Trump knew Maxwell was trafficking young women who worked at Mar-a-Lago.

“trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever.  .  of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop,” he wrote.

Ruemmler also had a very close relationship with Epstein in her own right, meeting with him multiple times after she served as Obama White House counsel. The pedophile also apparently planned for her to join him on his flights to Paris in 2015 and to his private Caribbean island in 2017, although she never visited. “I regret ever knowing Jeffrey Epstein,” Ruemmler said in 2023.

Trump has stuck to his usual script since the emails’ release, calling it “the Jeffrey Epstein hoax.” 

“Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap. The Democrats cost our Country $1.5 Trillion Dollars with their recent antics of viciously closing our Country, while at the same time putting many at risk—and they should pay a fair price,” he wrote Wednesday afternoon on Truth Social. “There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!”

Seven weeks after she won a special election in Arizona’s 7th congressional district, Adelita Grijalva was sworn in to the House of Representatives Wednesday, giving legislators the final vote needed to release all of the government’s files on Jeffrey Epstein.

House Speaker Mike Johnson set a record for how long he stalled on swearing in Grijalva, using the government shutdown as an excuse. Grijalva won a special election in September to fill the seat of Representative Raúl Grijalva, her father, who passed away in March after 22 years in Congress. She has vowed to be the deciding 218th vote on a petition that would automatically trigger a House floor vote on legislation demanding that the Justice Department release the Epstein files.

After being sworn in, Grijalva received a standing ovation from her colleagues and gave a speech on the House floor, saying she would “sign the discharge petition right now to release the Epstein files” to applause.

“Justice cannot wait another day,” Grijalva said.

Earlier this month, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries accused Johnson and the Trump administration of running a “pedophile protection program” by refusing to swear in Grijalva, a term he repeated Tuesday night as he said the GOP is “intentionally hiding the Jeffrey Epstein files.”

“But those days are over, because as soon as Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva becomes Congresswoman Grijalva, her first act ... is going to be to sign that discharge petition,” Jeffries said. “It’s going to force a vote on the House floor, and the American people are going to get the transparency that they deserve.”

This story has been updated.

In a newly released email, a person invited to a private meeting with Jeffrey Epstein joked that Donald Trump might be hanging around the convicted sex offender’s Paris apartment in 2017—years after the president claimed to have cut ties, and after he was already in the White House for the first time. 

Buried in a batch of thousands of documents released by the GOP-led House Committee on Oversight and Reform Wednesday, one email chain from December 2017 showed someone, whose name was redacted, coordinating a time and place to have a “more private” meeting with Epstein. 

In other documents released by the committee, the names of survivors of Epstein’s alleged abuse have been redacted, indicating that the email’s author may have been a victim of the convicted sex criminal. 

When the redacted individual arrived at Epstein’s apartment in Paris on December 8, they remarked that they hoped they weren’t overlapping with a visit from Trump.

“i m at the door but I will wait for my time.. i don’t want to come early to find Trump in your house,” the person wrote, adding two smiley-face emojis.  

Earlier in the email chain, Epstein had invited the person to come to his home. “You are welcome at my house always . And more private.”

The author, whoever they were, wasn’t actually in any danger of running into the president that day. On December 8, Trump was attending a rally in Pensacola, Florida, and the next day he was in Mississippi. While it’s possible that the author was referring to a different “Trump,” such as Eric or Donald Jr., the strange remark appears to refer to Epstein’s well-documented friendship with his neighbor in Palm Beach, or possibly some interaction all three of them had.

There are only two people who know exactly what this comment meant, and one of them is dead. The other, now rendered anonymous, was presumably interviewed by the FBI—and their testimony could be made public should Congress vote to release the government’s files on Epstein in full. 

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released their own batch of emails Wednesday, including one where Epstein claimed Trump “knew about the girls.” If this email is anything to go by, it appears that the girls may have known about him too. 

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the release of hundreds of immigrants detained in Chicago, amid the Trump administration’s reckless “Operation Midway Blitz.”

U.S District Judge Jeffrey Cummings said the government may have violated a consent decree against “warrantless arrests” because most of those who were arrested didn’t have a criminal record or deportation order. Cummings ordered those who do not pose a significant risk or have mandatory detention orders to be granted bond by November 21.

Cummings is giving the Department of Justice one week to produce a list of all immigrants that fall in that category out of the 615 arrested by federal agents. If the detainees don’t have a deportation order or criminal record, Cummings said he would release them on a $1,500 bond. He has also prohibited the government from trying to convince them to sign voluntary removal documents in the meantime.

Most were processed in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Bridgeview, a Chicago suburb, but others have been sent to detention centers across the country. A DOJ attorney, William Weiland, said that at least 12 of the detainees were a security risk, and asked the government to stay any releases to vet all of them. Cummings said that the government could have that time, ordering that government attorneys and the detainees’ counsel turn in a status report on November 21.

Still, Cummings’s decision is another rebuke to the Trump administration’s immigration efforts in the Chicago metro area, which have included conducting violent raids in the city’s neighborhoods, as well as using weapons such as tear gas against protesters.

If many of the immigrants detained by federal agents are eventually released, it will show that the Trump administration’s tactics were not just excessive but illegal. If that is the case, will any officials, whether they are low-level law enforcement or members of the administration, face any consequences?

Donald Trump is beginning to squirm under pressure as Congress pushes to release the Epstein files.

Trump ranted on Truth Social Wednesday about the bipartisan bid to make the case files public, claiming that the entire effort was a “hoax” to deflect from the government shutdown.

“Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap,” Trump posted. “The Democrats cost our Country $1.5 Trillion Dollars with their recent antics of viciously closing our Country, while at the same time putting many at risk—and they should pay a fair price.

“There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!” he continued.

In a separate post, Trump reiterated that he believed Democrats were “using the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax to try and deflect from their massive failures, in particular, their most recent one—THE SHUTDOWN!”

Congress is potentially hours away from voting on a discharge petition that would force a vote regarding the files’ release.

For months, just four Republicans had penned their signatures on the discharge petition. But in early November, concern swelled among GOP lawmakers that Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was even cozier than previously understood: A few conservative representatives with ties to the FBI and the Justice Department spilled last week that the true details of the Epstein files are “worse” for Trump than previously reported.

Apparently trying to unravel conservative support for the files’ release, Trump phoned his MAGA acolytes Tuesday in an unsuccessful attempt to get them to remove their signatures from the petition.

Files released by House Democrats early Wednesday shed even more light on the Trump-Epstein connection, illustrating that as late as 2011 Epstein was grateful Trump had stayed quiet about abuse that had taken place at one of the financier’s residences. The “dog that hasn’t barked is Trump,” Epstein wrote to his longtime girlfriend and criminal associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, at the time.

When queried by Michael Wolff in 2019 about the extent of Trump’s knowledge of abductions of young girls, Epstein remarked: “Of course he knew about the girls he asked Ghislaine to stop.”

The Trump administration is using the government shutdown as an excuse to avoid releasing the official jobs and inflation data for the second month in a row.

“The Democrats may have permanently damaged the federal statistical system with October [consumer price index] and jobs reports likely never being released. And all of that economic data released will be permanently impaired, leaving our policymakers at the Fed flying blind at a critical period,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced at a Wednesday press conference.

While the White House has previously hinted that the inflation report won’t be released due to the shutdown, there is less explanation for why the jobs report can’t be released.

The reality is that the economy is bad and Trump can’t hide the data—or blame it on Joe Biden—forever.

Private-sector data from payroll company ADP showed that the U.S. lost 32,000 jobs in September. In October, an estimated 11,000 jobs were lost per week. “The labor market struggled to produce jobs consistently during the second half of the month,” said ADP chief economist Nela Richardson.

Trump is planting the seeds to question any future jobs reports that do eventually come out because they will likely be abysmal. He already fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer in August when the agency reported that the economy created 258,000 fewer jobs in May and June than initially thought. Now, he’s insisting that a government shutdown (which most people blame him for) will permanently delete two months of jobs data because the numbers won’t be anywhere near where he wants them.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt blamed Democrats and “an unhinged judge” Wednesday while making excuses for President Donald Trump’s concerted efforts to get out of paying SNAP benefits.

During a press briefing, one reporter asked Leavitt to make sense of her claim that the Democrats were to blame for SNAP recipients missing their benefits in November. The Trump administration has taken multiple steps to block a judge’s order that would require the government to disburse the full funding.

“So recipients missed their SNAP benefits because the Democrats shut the government down, and they forced the administration to tap into a contingency fund that did not even fund the full entirety of this program,” Leavitt said. “So then you had an unhinged judge who was trying to dictate from the bench what the executive branch has to pay for and where that money has to come from. That is judicial overreach at its finest, and so that’s why the administration pushed back on that.

“We can’t have the judicial branch telling the executive branch that we need to rob the children nutrition fund, which is what this judge was trying to do, to pay for SNAP benefits. That’s completely inappropriate and it’s unconstitutional,” Leavitt said. “And we’ve been proven right with that argument.”

This certainly isn’t the first time Leavitt has railed against a federal judge who ruled against Trump. And in reality, the Trump administration has gone out of its way to avoid funding SNAP benefits.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration started pushing the unprecedented claim that it couldn’t legally use the Department of Agriculture’s contingency funds to pay for SNAP benefits during a shutdown. The agency has claimed the fund only contains around $4.65 billion, or about half of what is required for November benefits, and the government has maintained that taking from it would siphon funds from other child nutrition programs. Meanwhile, Trump has managed to move money around to fund the military’s $5.3 billion payroll.

When federal judges ordered Trump to use the funds to pay at least some of the benefits, the president said it would be his “honor” to do so but later claimed that no one would see a penny until the government shutdown ended. His open expression of his “intent to defy” the judge’s order prompted District Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. to demand that Trump pay SNAP benefits in full.

Earlier this week, the Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court to step in to block McConnell’s order. On Tuesday, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson signed an order extending her temporary stay on McConnell’s request, as the Senate has approved a measure that would resume appropriations and reopen the government.

Donald Trump is pleading with Republicans not to release the Epstein files.

The president called at least two of his congressional allies on Tuesday in an effort to get them to remove their names from a discharge petition that will force a vote on releasing details of the investigation into the pedophilic sex trafficker and his associates.

That included a “very early wakeup call” to Representative Lauren Boebert, and phone tag with Representative Nancy Mace, The New York Times’s Annie Karni reported Wednesday.

Trump has since met with Boebert, a White House official confirmed to CNN, though the meeting did not successfully sway her. Instead, the Colorado lawmaker “remains committed to keeping her name on the discharge petition,” according to Karni.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt failed Wednesday to address why Trump had probed MAGA acolytes on the vote, claiming instead that the president was displaying an incredible case of “transparency” by “briefing members of Congress whenever they please.”

“That’s a defining factor of transparency, having discussions with members of Congress about various issues,” Leavitt said.

For months, Boebert and Mace were two of just four Republicans that had penned their signatures on the discharge petition. They were joined by Representatives Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

But earlier this month, concern swelled among Republican lawmakers that Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was even cozier than previously understood: A few conservative representatives with ties to the FBI and the Justice Department spilled last week that the true details of the Epstein files are “worse” for Trump than previously reported.

Files released by House Democrats early Wednesday shed even more light on the Trump-Epstein connection, illustrating as late as 2011 that Epstein was grateful Trump had stayed quiet about abuse that had taken place at one of his residences. The “dog that hasn’t barked is Trump,” Epstein wrote to his longtime girlfriend and criminal associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, at the time.

When queried by Michael Wolff in 2019 about the extent of Trump’s knowledge of abductions of young girls, Epstein remarked: “Of course he knew about the girls he asked Ghislaine to stop.”

Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, who won the special election in Arizona 50 days ago, has also vowed to sign the bipartisan petition, making her the last signature that the House needs to force a vote on the issue. Grijalva is scheduled to be sworn in on Wednesday, teeing up a vote on the Epstein files in the coming days.

In a desperate and misguided effort to exonerate Donald Trump, the White House is claiming that the trafficking victim mentioned in the Jeffrey Epstein emails released by House Democrats Wednesday is Virginia Giuffre.

One of the released emails, from Epstein to his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, stated that Trump spent “many hours at my house” with one of the victims, whose name was redacted in the Democrats’ release.

In response, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee posted on X that the redacted name was Virginia Giuffre, which was retweeted by the president’s “Rapid Response 47” account.

It’s telling that the Trump administration is confirming that the emails are accurate rather than issuing a blanket denial—and identifying a deceased Epstein victim, as well. Giuffre denied seeing Trump commit any wrongdoing prior to her death, so the president and his advisers probably think this lets him off the hook.

However, in another one of the emails, from Epstein to author Michael Wolff, he says point-blank that Trump “knew about the girls.” And what plausible, noncriminal explanation is there for Trump spending hours with Giuffre at Epstein’s house? Trump hasn’t personally said anything yet, but Maxwell has already been caught in a lie based on what she reportedly told Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche during their July interview.

Maxwell told Blanche that she didn’t “recall ever seeing [Trump] in [Epstein’s] house” at the time, which these emails have now proven false. With Democrats promising the release of more documents soon, will more lies be exposed, and how will Trump and the GOP try to spin them?