Senate unanimously votes to release the Epstein files
The bill now goes to Trump, who's already acting like a cornered sewered rat.
It’s been one week since Rep. Lauren Boebert rejected Trump in the Situation Room when he begged her to pull her name off the Epstein petition, and the wheels have now fully come off. The House passed a bill today forcing the Department of Justice to release the Epstein files, openly sticking it to Trump, and the Senate then passed the bill unanimously and faster than I’ve ever seen the Senate do anything.
Trump appears to have lost control of his party, to the point where he’s had to start pretending in the last few days that he’s actually fine with House Republicans voting to release the Epstein files because he was going to lose nearly the entire caucus either way. “I DON’T CARE!,” he wrote in caps about it, like someone who definitely doesn’t care.
Of course, this was not a change of heart on Trump’s part; he could have released the files at any point on his own if he wanted to, but has instead instead engaged in a strangely obvious cover-up that’s lost even the furthest-right edgelords in his party. This was an admission of weakness and a change of strategy: Trump had the Department of Justice open a new investigation into Democrats who may have been involved with Epstein, giving the DOJ cover to say that even if Congress passes a bill demanding they release the files, they can’t now because there’s an ongoing investigation. Anything to be able to cherry-pick what eventually dribbles out of the Justice Department and make sure it has zero Republican names on it.
But Trump has already lost the public on the Epstein issue—most Americans believe he was at least aware of his best friend’s rampant sexual abuse of teens, and 38% think he participated—and his presidency is sliding into lame duck territory after the blue wave election earlier this month, which may be why he’s spent the past few days lashing out in increasingly desperate ways. Last night on Air Force One, Bloomberg White House reporter Catherine Lucey started to ask him a follow-up question about why he’d opposed releasing the Epstein files if there was nothing incriminating about him in there. Trump pointed a finger in her face and snarled, “Quiet! Quiet, piggy.”
A White House official defended the comment today in a statement to MSNOW: “This reporter behaved in an inappropriate and unprofessional way towards her colleagues on the plane. If you’re going to give it, you have to be able to take.”
No one seems to be able to produce any evidence, anecdotally or otherwise, of this reporter being “inappropriate” on the plane. But I do think that the president should probably not shout “QUIET, PIGGY” at a woman who’s asking him about the Epstein files while trying to make the case that he’s actually a good guy who did not abuse any girls mentioned therein. Or really for any reason.
As I mentioned, the House did pass the bill today forcing the release of the Epstein files with the names of the victims redacted. The vote was nearly unanimous, with only one nay vote from Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), the asshole from Louisiana who calls SNAP recipients crackheads. Speaker Mike Johnson seemed pretty upset and alarmed by the vote, insisting that when the bill move to the Senate, the Republicans up there please do something about the part where lots of men’s names will be exposed.
I will admit that I fully expected the Senate to take up a more careful, toothless version of what the House passed, if they agreed to vote on it at all. Instead, they passed the thing immediately and unanimously today, with zero changes, like a hot potato. Senate Republicans did not want an individually recorded voice vote, which is cowardly but does make sense. And now the bill moves to Trump’s desk, where he has indicated that he will sign it.
No one should be naive enough to expect that this means the DoJ will now dump a trove of documents that incriminate Trump. Anything we see will be cherry-picked, filtered, scrubbed, redacted—and anyway, my fascination with today’s vote has very little to do with the actual Epstein files being released. We’ve seen enough; we know who Trump is. He’s already been held civilly liable for sexual abuse and accused by roughly two dozen women of sexual assault and harassment. We saw the birthday card he drew for Epstein with the prepubescent girl. He does crimes and corruption out in the open. There’s nothing the DOJ will release at this point that will suddenly give Republicans the votes to impeach and remove him if that hasn’t already happened.
That said, I am glad for Epstein’s survivors, many of whom tearfully begged Congress in a press conference outside the Capitol today to do this, that this one move finally happened toward transparency and in their favor. Assuming Trump signs the bill, I’m glad we can put this looming “Epstein files” vote behind us. And I am cautiously optimistic to see Trump start to lose his grip on House and Senate Republicans. (And Trump-appointed judges, one of whom just knocked down his big Texas redistricting plan.) He took a blow today, and there’s definitely some blood in the water.