CNN
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In 2021, JD Vance accused the government of hiding a Jeffrey Epstein “client list” that the Trump-Vance administration now says doesn’t exist.
“If you’re a journalist and you’re not asking questions about this case,” Vance said, “you should be ashamed of yourself.”
Today, there are arguably more questions than ever – thanks in large part to the bizarre handling of it by the same administration Vance now serves in. Despite hyping the “Epstein files,” the Trump Justice Department now says Epstein indeed died by suicide, and there was no “client list.”
That doesn’t mean there was some broad conspiracy involved. But the administration has done a great job seeding suspicion – particularly among its own base – that it’s now part of the purported cover-up.
So let’s ask some of the kinds of questions that Vance argued were so important four years ago.
Trump’s strategy for dealing with the backlash basically amounts to: Move along, everyone.
“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein!?” Trump said last week.
The president added in a social media post Sunday: “Let’s … not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.”
FBI Director Kash Patel echoed that line over the weekend, posting on X: “The conspiracy theories just aren’t true, never have been.”
But it would certainly seem to be news to many people around Trump that nobody cares about this and the conspiracy theories are baseless. Trump’s team is stocked with people, including Patel, who previously cast the Epstein saga as a massive scandal-in-waiting that just needed some leaders willing to rip the lid off of it.
Back in February, for example, Attorney General Pam Bondi, hyped soon-to-be-released documents and suggested she had the so-called client list on her desk when asked about it in an interview. (She has since suggested she was referring to other documents.)
“What possible interest would the U.S. government have in keeping Epstein’s clients secret? Oh…” Vance posted suggestively back in 2021.
“Put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are,” Patel said in 2023.
“Listen, that Jeffrey Epstein story is a big deal,” now-Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino said the same year. “Please do not let that story go. Keep your eye on this.”
“Who’s on those tapes?” Bongino added in February shortly before joining the administration. “Who’s in those black books? Why have they been hiding it?”
So to recap: The people most directly in charge of this matter – and now insisting there’s no there there – are also the people who assured there was plenty to discover and suggested that things were being covered up.
So the question becomes: Are they admitting they were just wrong then?
(They don’t seem to want to say that. But perhaps tellingly, Bongino told Fox News last month: “I’m not paid for my opinions anymore. I work for the taxpayer now. I’m paid on evidence.”)
And why is something they argued was of the utmost importance now not worth our time? This is a supposed scandal involving powerful people involved in sex-trafficking of minors, after all. How do they square Trump’s comments now with their own past comments? And shouldn’t they at least do more to put it to bed?
To be clear, this is not the same as asking whether the files show any wrongdoing by Trump.
But it is worth asking if he’s in there – particularly given his administration’s failure to live up to its promises of disclosure.
Trump associated with Epstein, after all, before the two had a falling out. Epstein claimed they had been close. Trump once called Epstein a “terrific guy” and quipped about Epstein’s affinity for younger women. Trump also weirdly wished Ghislaine Maxwell well on more than one occasion while she faced Epstein-related sex-trafficking charges.
“I’m not looking for anything bad for her,” Trump said at the time. “I’m not looking bad for anybody.”
Elon Musk, as part of his dramatic falling out with the president, claimed last month that Trump was indeed in the files.
“Time to drop the really big bomb: (Donald Trump) is in the Epstein files,” Musk wrote on X. “That is the real reason they have not been made public.”
Musk never detailed how he would have gained access to unreleased files, later deleting the post and expressing regret for how far he had gone in some of his anti-Trump posts. Many dismissed it as Musk lashing out, but this was a former top Trump adviser who had lots of access while heading the Department of Government Efficiency. Did he just make it up? Musk hasn’t said that specifically.
It’s also a question that’s apparently real enough that Trump’s own lawyer assured he checked on it.
Last week, David Schoen, who has represented both Trump and Epstein, said he asked Epstein shortly before his death whether he had information to hurt Trump, and Epstein said he did not.
“I specifically asked that!” Schoen posted on X.
Trump has also been less keen than others around him to release the documents. During a Fox News interview last year, he quickly agreed he would declassify documents on 9/11 and John F. Kennedy’s assassination, but he paused before saying he would do the same with the Epstein documents.
He explained that “you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there.”
Asked later by podcast host Lex Fridman why he hesitated, Trump repeatedly said he had not personally gone to Epstein’s island.
“I don’t think – I’m not involved,” Trump said. “I never went to his island, fortunately, but a lot of people did.”
The big news last week was that the administration said Epstein did kill himself and that there was no client list. But it wasn’t the only reason the true-believers were disappointed.
The administration also effectively closed the matter and said it wouldn’t release anything else, despite having promised plenty more disclosures.
The administration made a show of releasing an initial batch of documents back in February. But the photo op with conservative influencers bombed when it turned out the documents were largely old news.
So the administration promised more was on the way.
“We will get everything,” Bondi told Fox News in early March. “We will have it in our possession. We will redact it, of course, to protect grand jury information and confidential witnesses, but American people have a right to know.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt added in May: “I know the Attorney General has committed to releasing those files. … When she has made a promise in the past, she has kept it and I’m certain that she will, in this case, as well.”
But the administration hasn’t released anything of real significance since then.
Last week’s Justice Department memo said that much of this information was “subject to court-ordered sealing” and that “only a fraction of this material would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial.” It expressed a desire to “not expose any additional third-parties to allegations of illegal wrongdoing.”
“Through this review, we found no basis to revisit the disclosure of those materials,” the memo said.
That’s very different than what was promised. But why the change in tune? Why didn’t they say before that their promises of disclosure were subject to so many caveats?
When Bondi sought to explain herself last week, this was one question that she for some reason let linger: whether Epstein had ties to intelligence.
“To him being an agent, I have no knowledge about that,” the attorney general told reporters, before adding: “We can get back to you on that.”
Why is this something they have to circle back on? Wouldn’t this either be something that’s in the documents or not?
This theory doesn’t come out of nowhere. Such questions have been asked for a long time. Then-Trump Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, who had entered into a controversial non-prosecution agreement with Epstein while serving as a US attorney, talked around the question when it was posed to him in 2019. (Acosta resigned as labor secretary shortly after Epstein’s federal indictment was unsealed.)
Bongino said back in 2023 that he was reliably told Epstein was an intelligence asset for a Middle Eastern country.
And on Monday, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett saw fit to deny Epstein was an Israeli asset.
“The accusation that Jeffrey Epstein somehow worked for Israel or the Mossad running a blackmail ring is categorically and totally false,” Bennett said.
Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has pressed the case that Epstein might have benefitted from being an asset.
It’s seemingly a question Bondi should have more of an answer for. But the lack of satisfactory answers seems to be a trend right now.
