


About two weeks after Pam Bondi was sworn in as U.S. Attorney General, John Roberts of Fox News asked her if the Department of Justice was going to release the list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients.
“It is sitting on my desk right now for review,” Bondi answered. “That’s been a directive by President Trump.” Bondi said she was also reviewing the John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King files. “That’s all in the process of being reviewed,” she said.
That was on February 21.
On July 6, a Sunday, the FBI and the DOJ released a joint statement saying there was no “Epstein client list,” he really did commit suicide, and all the files that they could or would release had already been made public.
This did not sit well with the roaring conservative podcaster demographic, which has been drawing crowds online with ever-wilder stories. Apparently Epstein was some sort of flying television director super-spy running a CIA honey trap for pedophiles on a remote island, controlling the world’s rich, famous and powerful by secretly recording blackmail tapes through pinholes. Trump and his once-trusted team, the keyboard cops raged, had become part of the cover-up.
Trump tried cajoling, ridiculing and disowning them, but the uproar just grew louder.
Thursday night, the president posted this message online: “Based on the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein, I have asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval. This SCAM, perpetuated by the Democrats, should end, right now!”
What’s the real story here? Is there a Democratic conspiracy? Is there a non-conspiracy explanation for not releasing “everything” from the Epstein files?
One thoughtful explanation comes from former federal prosecutor William Shipley, now a defense attorney, who writes about politically charged legal issues on a Substack called Shipwreckedcrew’s Port-O-Call. “There are thousands of victims who extend far beyond the minor girls who were personally abused by [Epstein],” he wrote. “Every minor depicted in a pornographic image or video that Epstein accumulated is a victim, and every transfer or republication of an electronic file or hard copy is an new crime that re-victimizes that person. That material should never be made public, and never will be.”
In other words, the Department of Justice is not going to publish a vile collection of child pornography just because people with podcasts demand to see “everything” from the Epstein files.
But what about the victims who were personally abused by Epstein and his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, and perhaps by others?
“The vast majority have been interviewed by law enforcement, and many have told their stories either publicly or under oath in depositions as part of litigation that has gone on for nearly a decade,” Shipley wrote. “Those who have not spoken out publicly have made that choice deliberately. Material concerning them — even if it involves uncharged third parties — cannot be made public due to their privacy rights and the fact that much of that material is sealed by court order at their request.”
Sealed records prevent the government from releasing “everything.” Longtime defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, who represented Jeffrey Epstein and helped negotiate a plea deal for him in 2008, told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo on Monday, “many of the things that are being suppressed are being suppressed by two judges in Manhattan, and they’re doing it largely to protect the alleged accusers who are, in the view of the judges, victims, even though we don’t know what their actual status is.”
Dershowitz said there is no “client list,” only redacted FBI affidavits “that accuse various people of having improper sex.” He said he knows who they are, because he did the investigations. Some of the accused were formerly in public office, some are dead, none are currently holding a public office. “The redactions could be undone if you go to court,” Dershowitz said.
Now Trump has directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to go to court and ask to have Grand Jury testimony released. It probably won’t be, but at least the exercise will demonstrate that it’s the courts, not the president, “covering up” the Epstein files.
And speaking of going to court, Trump said Thursday night he will sue Rupert Murdoch and “his third rate newspaper,” the Wall Street Journal, for publishing what Trump says is a “FAKE” letter. The Journal reported that Trump sent the letter to Epstein in 2003 to be included in a commemorative book for Epstein’s 50th birthday.
The letter shown to the Journal is reportedly typewritten, refers to a “secret,” and shows a line drawing of a naked woman with the scribbled signature “Donald” in marker, placed in a suggestive location.
“These are not my words, not the way I talk,” Trump said. “Also, I don’t draw pictures.”
The letter sounds like it could have come from the same political communications shop that invented the “prostitutes peeing on a bed in Trump’s Moscow hotel room” story. That tale appeared in the Steele dossier, an unverified and now-discredited pile of anti-Trump “research” paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign.
According to Fox News, former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey are currently under federal criminal investigation, possibly related to lying to Congress, and to their use of the Steele dossier in an Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) ordered up at the very end of the Obama administration to look into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
A new CIA review of the “tradecraft” of that ICA found serious problems with it, including the fact that Brennan was unusually insistent on including the Steele dossier in the assessment, overruling analysts who said it wasn’t up to the agency’s standards.
The Intelligence Community Assessment became the basis for a politically damaging, multi-year investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia, which were non-existent. Now, Sen. Chuck Grassley and others on Capitol Hill are painstakingly digging out the truth.
By total coincidence, the roar over the Epstein files is covering it up.
Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley