Listen To This Story

We have no idea how much Donald Trump knew about the sex crimes his pal Jeffrey Epstein committed during the period when the two of them were hanging out, i.e., when the now-president said of the now-disgraced financier that he was “a lot of fun to be with” and liked his women “on the younger side.” We have also not seen any evidence proving that Trump participated in criminal behavior or whether that was the “secret” he wrote about in a lewd birthday card to his friend that also stated, “Enigmas never age.”

What we do know, however, is that the president and his administration are wasting no opportunity to appear as though they are hiding something.

Trump’s behavior, in particular, has been truly bizarre, which is why it is hardly surprising that nearly half of Americans believe that he “engaged in crimes” with Epstein, and fewer than one in five think it is unlikely he knew about what his friend was doing.

And it’s not only the president who is acting suspiciously but also DOJ. There have been false promises of disclosure; reports of scores of FBI personnel sifting through the documents to flag Trump’s name; and something that certainly looks like a sweetheart deal for Epstein’s partner-in-crime Ghislaine Maxwell, who, according to a whistleblower, is now playing with puppies in a minimum-security prison not usually open to sex offenders.

The American people certainly find all of that suspicious. Nearly half of them think that DOJ is hiding information from Epstein’s “client list” because it would implicate the president. Or, to be more accurate, more than half thought that DOJ was protecting Trump even before the administration failed to fully comply with a law that demanded the disclosure of most Epstein documents, for example, by withholding hundreds of thousands of files for now.

It probably didn’t help that some of the documents and photos that were made public and mentioned or showed the president then disappeared again, or that one file previously referenced the president and now has his name blacked out. That last example alone seems to be a clear violation of the disclosure law, which states that “No record shall be withheld, delayed, or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.”

On Sunday, former Trump attorney and current Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche went on Meet the Press to justify the administration’s behavior… and did very little to disabuse Americans of the notion that there isn’t something extremely shady going on. For example, right after being shown a clip in which the president calls the Epstein matter a “big hoax” and says that nobody should take an interest in it because it is “boring,” Blanche claimed that Trump was merely referring to assertions that DOJ was protecting him, and had no problem with making the files public.

The president’s actions and statements tell a different story, however.

In a pre-election interview with Fox News, Trump indicated that he would be hesitant to declassify the Epstein documents because there is “phony stuff in there.” Knowing that this answer would upset the MAGA base, the right-wing propaganda outlet then edited that interview prior to airing it to make it sound as though Trump favored disclosure.

Blanche also defended the decision to move Maxwell to a cushier prison after he met with her.

“At the time that I met Ms. Maxwell, there was a tremendous amount of scrutiny and publicity towards her, and the institution she was in, she was suffering numerous and numerous threats against her life,” he said. “So the [Bureau of Prisons] is not only responsible for putting people in jail and making sure they stay in jail, but also for their safety. And so she was moved. She is in federal prison. She was in federal prison before. And she’s in federal prison now.”

Blanche did not explain why Maxwell wasn’t moved to a facility without puppies, for example, one with tighter security to better protect her.

It seems unlikely that any of this will convince Americans that DOJ is being transparent and forthright, and it certainly won’t silence the administration’s critics in Congress.

“Unfortunately, [Attorney General Pam Bondi] is breaking the law,” said Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), one of the driving forces behind the disclosure effort. “Epstein survivors aren’t satisfied with the DOJ’s incomplete and redacted Epstein files disclosures, and neither am I. Congress should assert its ability to hold Bondi in ‘inherent contempt’ to get justice for the survivors.”

What is truly baffling is that everybody in the administration must know how this looks and that a partial disclosure now will just keep this story in the news longer.

Of course, if the alternative is worse, then Trump’s behavior and DOJ’s actions make a lot more sense.