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Deeply ambivalent about starting out this morning with ongoing Iranian attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and retaliatory strikes on Iran by the United States (with attendant rises in oil prices). On the one hand, it’s important information about the world that will affect American politics and Americans’ lives. On the other hand, this is supposed to be a newsletter. Happy Monday.
Join Will Sommer and Sam Stein at 10:00 a.m. EDT today for MAGA Mondays on Substack and YouTube.
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Give Blanche’s Hearing to the Epstein Survivoirs
by William Kristol
A year ago, on July 17, 2025, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche hurried to an emergency evening meeting in the White House Situation Room with his fellow Trump administration apparatchiks. Its location might suggest it had to do with national security. It didn’t. It was about the political security of Donald Trump.
Ten days earlier, the Trump administration had tried to close the door on the Jeffrey Epstein matter. The Justice Department and the FBI had announced that the Epstein investigation was complete, that nothing further could or should be done, and no new documents would be made public. But that effort to stonewall was already falling apart. Now it had to be replaced with a more elaborate coverup.
Orchestrating that coverup was the point of the Situation Room meeting. A week later, Blanche flew to Florida to meet with Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell and ensure she continued not to talk. A week after that, Maxwell was transferred to a cushy federal prison. Since then, Blanche has since presided over the Justice Department’s non-compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, as well as the botching of the legally required redactions of names of and details concerning several Epstein survivors. In short, Blanche has been central to the Epstein coverup.
This week Blanche will be appearing before the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, making the case for his confirmation as attorney general.
There are, needless to say, many important issues to raise with Blanche, who has been shameless in turning the United States Justice Department into Trump’s personal law firm. But if Democratic senators want to stop him—or if, failing that, they at least want to weaken him and the Trump administration’s assault on the rule of law—the Epstein coverup should be their focus.
As we saw after the failed attempt to stonewall the Epstein case, and as we have seen since in the none-too-successful coverup, the Epstein case matters to the public. And the public isn’t pleased with what they’ve seen from the Trump administration.
For example, a poll last month showed that seventy-five percent of Americans—including sixty-six percent of Republicans—believe that the federal government is continuing to hide information about Epstein and his clients. And just ten percent of Americans—and just twenty-one percent of Republicans—think the Trump administration has helped deliver justice in cases connected to Epstein.
And our colleague Sarah Longwell reports that “voters still bring up the files, often unprompted, in many of the focus groups we conduct. And it’s not just partisan Democrats; we hear it from all kinds of groups—men, women, young, old, Republicans of all stripes, from three-time Trump voters to Biden-to-Trump flippers.”
Here are a couple of examples from Sarah’s focus groups:
“Obviously it’s all a coverup from Trump originally being like he didn’t want it to be released,” said Allison, a 2024 Trump voter who now disapproves of the job the president is doing. “He was very dismissive about it. A reporter was mentioning Epstein, he’s like, ‘Why are we still talking about this guy?’ It’s like, why would we stop talking about him?”
And,
A 2024 Trump voter named Wednesday offered the most damning critique: “I watched the dozens of women victims go on TV, go on interviews, and beg this administration and this president for help. . . . Trump got on TV and called what they were saying and the Epstein files a ‘Democratic hoax.’”
Democratic senators can highlight Blanche’s leadership of the coverup and make him try to defend it. As Sarah puts it, “When voters scroll through their social media feeds after the hearing, Democrats should ensure that they get clip after clip of Blanche squirming to justify his handling of the Epstein files.”
It’s also likely that when Blanche testifies on Wednesday, Epstein survivors will be present. Will Blanche, who has refused to meet with them, acknowledge them? Will he apologize for the botched redaction process over which he presided that exposed them to further pain and harassment? Will he repudiate Trump’s dismissal of them?
On Thursday, Democrats intend to use their limited ability to call witnesses to have at least one courageous Epstein survivor appear. That testimony could be the highlight of the hearing.
Recent experience suggests that it will be difficult to persuade Republican senators to break with Trump—though Epstein is the one issue on which Republicans in Congress have notably done so. But if Republicans do stick with Trump and Blanche is confirmed, this will dramatically make the case for why Republicans need to be deprived of continued control of the Senate. If Susan Collins in Maine and Dan Sullivan in Alaska and Jon Husted in Ohio and Ashley Moody in Florida and Roger Marshall in Kansas vote for Blanche, voters in their states will have a chance this November to hold them accountable, and to ensure greater accountability over the next two years for the Trump administration.