Politics
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August 8, 2025
There’s no approach for Republicans to tamp down the Epstein-Maxwell scandal if the president retains telling on himself.
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Vice President JD Vance was anticipated to carry a beautiful summer time dinner Wednesday evening at his Naval Observatory residence with colleagues like White Home chief of workers Susie Wiles, Legal professional Common Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Deputy Legal professional Common Todd Blanche. A number of media shops reported that the group was planning to debate the Trump administration’s failing technique to get the Jeffrey Epstein–Ghislaine Maxwell sex-trafficking scandal, and Trump’s lengthy friendship with the pair, out of the information. In an Oval Workplace assembly about renewing US manufacturing on Wednesday afternoon, Vance denied the reporting, Trump known as your entire challenge “bullshit,’ and ultimately, the Naval Observatory soiree didn’t happen.
Mid-afternoon Thursday, NBC reported that the assembly occurred on the White Home as an alternative.
Regardless of the administration’s technique is for pushing apart the Epstein-Maxwell scandal, it isn’t working. The reason being Trump himself. He simply retains giving reporters extra to work with and the MAGA base extra to fret about. Final week, he stated he parted methods with Epstein as a result of the late intercourse trafficker “stole” staff from Mar-a-Lago. When reporters requested if that included the late Virginia Giuffre—a excessive schooler whom Maxwell recruited from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago spa and who was reportedly intercourse trafficked by the pair for years—he reasonably shockingly instructed the reality. “I feel she labored on the spa,” he instructed reporters. “He stole her.”
A couple of days later, requested why Blanche met with Maxwell for 9 hours over two days, Trump answered, additionally honestly: to guarantee that additional disclosures don’t harm individuals who may “be damage by one thing that might be very, very unlucky, very unfair to lots of people.”
Present Difficulty
That may effectively embody Trump himself, though we all know Bondi already directed underlings (roughly 1,000, in line with information stories) to redact all mentions of Trump within the case information. Bondi briefed Trump about his title showing within the information final Might. Conveniently, a White Home sources instructed ABC Information that Maxwell knowledgeable Blanche of their tête-à-tête final week “that Trump had by no means achieved something in her presence that might have brought about concern.” ABC Information didn’t attribute the “scoop” to “White Home sources”; I did, as a result of who else would leak (or have entry to) such Trump-serving information?
Days after speaking to Blanche, Maxwell bought a switch to one of many cushiest, least restrictive federal prisons within the nation—a so-called “nation membership” jail camp—in Byron, Texas, close to kin. “I didn’t learn about it in any respect. No, I examine it identical to you probably did,” Trump instructed reporters Tuesday, including, “It’s not a really unusual factor.”
Actually, it’s a really unusual factor, prohibited by the Bureau of Prisons. Intercourse offenders like Maxwell have to be confined in a minimum of minimum-security prisons, and Maxwell’s switch required a guidelines waiver. A former Bureau of Prisons official instructed The Washington Publish the switch was “enormously preferential therapy.” Who requested it, and who granted it? The White Home isn’t leaking that info.
The one good to return out of Trump’s botching the Epstein-Maxwell story is that the pair’s victims are talking out, and with rising quantity. The household of Virginia Giuffre, spoke out in opposition to each Maxwell’s jail switch and the reported Vance-hosted assembly to plot technique across the scandal.
“Lacking from this group is, after all, any survivor of the vicious crimes of convicted perjurer and intercourse trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein,” her siblings wrote in a press release. “Their voices have to be heard, above all.” The household supplied to return to the assembly to offer that perspective, a suggestion that doesn’t appear to have been accepted.
Annie Farmer, an Epstein worker who, together with her sister Maria, made among the earliest prison complaints about intercourse abuse, has blasted the administration for refusing to launch extra of the Epstein-Maxwell information, saying the previous couple of months of wrangling have been “an emotional curler coaster” for victims, who by some stories quantity greater than 1,000.
There’s no purpose to suppose the administration got here up with a successful technique to comprise the scandal at its White Home assembly Wednesday evening. Trump can’t cease speaking, and he gained’t rule out pardoning Maxwell. Such a brazen transfer would possibly drive even Republicans to face up and demand the reality.
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Joan Walsh
Joan Walsh, a nationwide affairs correspondent for The Nation, is a coproducer of The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Present and the creator of What’s the Matter With White Folks? Discovering Our Method within the Subsequent America. Her new e book (with Nick Hanauer and Donald Cohen) is Company Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Defend Revenue, Energy and Wealth In America.
