I believe he’s thinking like “If I demand Bondi do an investigation of my enemies, then the files cannot be released, since there is an ongoing DOJ investigation.”
That’s the theory I’ve seen advanced on social media. Echoes of “I can’t release my tax returns, I’m under audit”.
One could see this fairly unceremoniously getting challenged in a lawsuit and bounced up to SCOTUS who will say “sure, he can do that. In fact that’s such a good idea, maybe we’ll investigate ourselves.”
Whoa-- that’s a golden oldie!
Come on. It’s 2025. There’s under a year until the 2026 elections.
Oh, wait… 
White House Says Virginia Giuffre Is the Unnamed ‘Victim’ in Epstein Emails About Trump
Is this a test of the hypothesis that a dead girl (or live boy) would bring Trump down?
It won’t. Trump may have been a factor in the depression that led her to take her life, but there would have to be a video of Trump actually murdering for this is be Donald’s downfall, and that simply does not exist.
It is a mistake to think that Trump’s resistance to release of files is because he thinks there is something in there that will bring him down. And it’s also a mistake to think he is dragging out the file release in order to draw attention away from something else, like inflation. Actually, he is also trying to give inflation more attention, with ridiculous posts claiming that prices are declining. It is attention-getting turtles all the way down.
It’s a measure of how bitter and jaded I have become that I think that it’s within the realm of possibility that Trump himself ordered a hit on both Epstein and Giuffre.
Yes, but the “order” would have been something oblique like, “Will no one rid me of,” etc. That’s all it would take to send one of his loyalists scurrying off to do Dear Leader’s biddibg.
Re last post, in Kash Patel’s 2023 book Government Gangsters there is a list of sixty enemies.
Please someone correct me if I am wrong, but AFAIK every one of the sixty is still alive, and none are incarcerated.
That’s because Trump is a regular dictator, not some fascist.
That’s ok then. But “He’s hurting the wrong people”
Phullleeeesss.
I’m not so sure. The thing is he hasn’t done this about anything else. The way he’s handled the Epstein Files has absolutely not conformed to the way he’s handled the countless other scandals (any one of which should have doomed his political career). Denial, spurious whataboutism, “flooding the zone” that’s all his MO. Not acting scared and trying to shut the whole thing now in a way that alienates his allies (even uniquely his base, albeit briefly).
I didn’t think there was anything in the files that could bring him down (or even seriously hurt him politically), but he’s acting like there is.
So what was the reason for Democrats not pushing for release under the Biden administration?
It’s hard to imagine Biden throwing support for Trump in a political atmosphere focused on taking him down.
Edited to make it a stand-alone question.
Biden didn’t campaign on releasing the Epstein files.
Doesn’t change what I said one tiny bit. If you want to present an argument that Biden and the Democratic party weren’t out to take Trump down then present your thoughts.
That would give new meaning to the term One Big Beautiful “Bill”.
Merrick Garland is a useless chickenshit who wouldn’t prosecute Trump for crimes he committed on live television. He wasn’t about to dig up Trump’s sexual misdeeds from the 1990’s and turn them into an obviously politically-motivated prosecution.
Also, we do not forgive pedophiles because the prosecution didn’t proceed at the first possible opportunity. Trump desperately wishes it worked that way but it doesn’t.
He’s obviously worried about something. During his run in 2024, when asked if he’s release the Epstein Files, Trump said he probably wouldn’t for fear of possibly hurting innocent people. Is empathy something you strongly associate with Donald J. Trump? Has he ever demonstrated genuine concern for the wellbeing of his fellow human beings? No. Trump is only interested in doing something if he’s benefiting from it somehow. Back in 2024, I don’t think he was playing four dimensional chess by setting up the Epstein Files as a possible distraction in 2025.
Yeah, it’s strange. He must know that the files are so corrupted by this point that they are basically worthless. He’s the one who instructed them to be tainted. But maybe he is just too paranoid to really trust that his own stooges wouldn’t fuck him over. Because that’s what he would do in their place.
What’s that got to do with releasing the files? Or leaking them.
Releasing the files would have violated the norms.
Democrats simply won’t have that.
I think you’re thinking of how Republicans operate, not Democrats, and certainly not Biden. It’s not normal for the president to dictate what the DOJ does, and it’s not normal for the DOJ to pursue revenge prosecutions with little merit.
It’s likely that there’s nothing criminal about Trump in the Epstein files, and it’s not normal for the DOJ or the administration to release info just to embarrass someone.
They’re saying it’s Giuffre because she stated clearly that Trump never did anything untoward with her.