A Saturday Reminder: Don't Let Them Bury the Epstein Files
A torrent of news cannot bury the truth. We can't let it.
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It’s Saturday. The news cycle this week has been Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, Chinese ships in the Scarborough Shoal, oil prices, and a president flying to Beijing to ask Xi Jinping for help reopening a waterway that’s currently choking the global economy. There is a lot going on. That is exactly the point of this post.
Because while we are all — rightly — watching the Middle East, the Epstein files are quietly being buried. And we cannot let that happen.
Let me remind you where we are. In November of last year, after months of pressure led by Rep. Thomas Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna, Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The House vote was 427 to 1. The Senate passed it by unanimous consent. Donald Trump, who had spent the entire summer telling his own base to move on, finally caved and signed it on November 19, 2025. The law was not vague. It required the Attorney General, within 30 days, to make publicly available, in a searchable and downloadable format, all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the Department of Justice’s possession.
Thirty days came and went. The DOJ missed the deadline. That, by itself, was a violation of the law. They then dribbled out releases in waves through January and, on January 30, declared themselves “compliant” at roughly 3.5 million pages. Sounds like a lot. It is not the whole story. Reporting and independent estimates put the full universe of Epstein materials at more than 6 million pages, plus terabytes of seized device data, plus thousands of videos and images. A CNN poll in January found that two-thirds of Americans believe the government is deliberately withholding information. Only 6 percent are satisfied with what’s been released. Six.
This is not a partisan hunch. This is the law. Congress, almost unanimously, told the executive branch to release everything appropriate. The executive branch has not done it. And the man who signed the bill is the same man who, by every public account, fought it for months and is still fighting it behind closed doors. Why? Pick your theory. I am less interested in motive today than in the simple fact that the statute is being ignored while everyone is distracted by a war.
That brings me to Thomas Massie. I disagree with Thomas Massie on a great many things. I will say it plainly. But on this, he has been right, and he has been brave, and he is about to pay a price for it. On Tuesday, Kentucky Republicans go to the polls. Massie is facing a Trump-recruited primary challenger, a former Navy SEAL named Ed Gallrein, in what is now the most expensive House primary in American history — north of $29 million in ads. The president of the United States has personally told aides he wants Massie gone, and he wants him gone to send a message. The message is this: if you force the release of files that implicate the powerful, we will end your career. A new poll this week shows the Trump-backed challenger leading. A congressman could lose his seat for the crime of insisting the Justice Department obey a law that 427 members of the House voted for.
If that does not make you furious, I am not sure what will.
So here is the plea, on a Saturday, while the cable shows are full of carrier groups and oil futures: do not forget. Do not let this drift to the bottom of the inbox. The survivors are still here. Their pain is not on a news cycle. And the Democrats — every single one of them, in every primary, in every debate, in every fundraising email — need to commit, in writing, that when they have power they will finish this. They will release the files. All of them. They will subpoena what the DOJ is hiding. They will protect survivors and they will name names. This is not a “we’ll see” issue. This is the floor.
One more thing, and it is related, because corruption rarely travels alone.
This week, ABC News reported that Trump is preparing to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS and replace it with something far worse: a $1.7 billion taxpayer-funded “weaponization compensation” fund. The money would not come from new appropriations — it would be siphoned out of the Treasury’s Judgment Fund, which is your money. A five-person commission, all removable by the president without cause, would hand out awards in secret. The pool of eligible recipients includes the roughly 1,600 January 6 defendants. Do the math. Seventeen hundred million dollars, divided by sixteen hundred people, is more than a million dollars apiece. A million dollars, of your money, to each insurrectionist who beat cops on the Capitol steps. Quietly. Behind closed doors. With no public disclosure required.
That is not a gray area. That is not a policy disagreement. That is open, blatant, on-camera corruption — a president using the federal treasury to pay the mob that attacked Congress on his behalf.
So be loud. Loud about Epstein. Loud about Massie. Loud about the slush fund. Loud about every single one of them. Quiet is what they’re counting on.
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