The Trump administration and the President himself have been, to borrow from Shakesphere, hoisted by their own petard.
President Trump opened the door on the Epstein case. Now he’s trying to shut it, and in doing so, got his hand stuck in the door. But frankly, the solution to this situation is simple.
The administration concocted a plan to discredit and cast doubts on various political figures via innuendo and threats of revealing the Epstein files.
Trump toyed with the gravity of the situation, and the plan has come back to haunt him.
It's thrown the administration and Republicans into disarray. Bongino is going after Bondi. Mike Johnson is, and rightfully so, calling for the immediate release of the files. People are questioning why, if there's nothing to see, Ghislaine Maxwell is locked up, and she's signaling that she wants to testify.
I say let her. Televise it. Allow her to spill everything and have teams of lawyers corroborate those claims. Let's finally get to the bottom of it.
Trump handled this in a way that forced him and his team into a corner. It just wasn't the right strategy. Such intense and awful cases like this require time and space to sort things out. But in making a spectacle of it, he got the mass attention he sought, and now people are demanding he make good on his promises.
It doesn't take an intellectual powerhouse to come to this conclusion, but if I were advising Trump, I'd say release it. Don't redact a thing. You created this mess. You played political games with an investigation that deals with child pornography and child sexual exploitation. You chose to drive this into the national consciousness. You opened the door, and now you’re trying to shut it?
Pam Bondi, too. We haven't forgotten that media day, that binder you held up to the camera as thick as the Old Testament. Now we are calling your bluff. We want to see it. Republicans want to see the right thing done; we don't just want to be told you plan to do the right thing eventually.
The President said yesterday that he doesn't understand why anybody is interested in Epstein. He called it "pretty boring stuff."
I don't find it boring; I consider it a matter of great importance and one that carries a heavy moral weight. What I do find to be 'pretty boring' is when people create scenarios and pretend to have a wealth of knowledge when, really, nothing much is there. When you use incredibly serious allegations to create intrigue to tantalize with no intent to follow through.
Did you really think this was just going to go away? Do you think we weren’t going to care?
Thankfully, there's an easy way to put all of this to rest: Release the files.
It might not be as tied up with a bow as we'd hope, but at least it shows there's work being done. In fact, I'm sure if the information were released, it would be messy to sort through. We've been hearing about 'the list' for months, if not years, now. And while I can't prove there isn't a definitive list, as someone who was in law enforcement officer for many years, I've been involved in numerous investigations into brothels and sex rings. And I can assure you, almost every time there’s talk of some hidden 'list.'
In almost every case, there's no neat little book of clients. Not once in the course of law enforcement have I ever come across a formal list. Sure, you'll find names as you sift through evidence, emails, phone logs, texts, web data, etc. But hardly ever will you find the black book.
In this case, I have little doubt that we have plenty of names, identities, and perhaps even footage of these people. And in such cases, the names must be released, and they ought to be charged.
The longer Trump decides to withhold this information, the worse it'll get. And the sooner he stops playing these games with the public, the better off he and the administration will be.
At the end of the day, the files, in whatever capacity, are there. Do the right thing by Americans. Release them.