Commentary from Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter
On Wednesday, December 24, the Department of Justice posted on social media that it might take “a few more weeks” to release the Epstein files after announcing that the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had just “uncovered over a million more documents potentially related to the Jeffrey Epstein case.” In fact, as Allison Gill of Mueller, She Wrote noted, prosecutors from the Southern District of New York were ordered to transfer all their files to Justice Department headquarters in January 2025.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) responded: “A Christmas Eve news dump of ‘a million more files’ only proves what we already know: Trump is engaged in a massive coverup. The question Americans deserve answered is simple: WHAT are they hiding—and WHY? Justice delayed is justice denied. Release the files. Follow the law.”
The Justice Department has not released many of the documents as required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, but those few that have come out reveal proof that Trump has been lying about his involvement with the convicted sex abuser Epstein.
As Sarah Fitzpatrick reported Wednesday in The Atlantic, Trump started his 2024 campaign with the announcement that he “was never on Epstein’s Plane, or at his ‘stupid’ Island.” He blamed any reports of such visits on Democrats who were, he said, smearing him to hurt him politically. (continued on Page 2 or here)