Today may as well be called Epstein Day.
The first thing I saw when I checked social media today were damning new emails from Jeffrey Epstein's estate, released by House Democrats, that suggest Trump "knew about the girls" that Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, were trafficking and sexually abusing, because Trump "asked Ghislaine to stop." My colleague Inae Oh wrote all about it.
Those emails were part of a trove of more than 20,000 released by the House Oversight Committee today. And more could be coming, as I wrote in a piece that was just published:
That’s because, at 4 p.m. ET on Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson will finally swear in Rep. Adelita Grijalva, the Arizona Democrat who has promised to provide the final congressional signature on a discharge petition to force a vote on a bipartisan bill to release government files from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. That would include flight logs, names of people and entities with ties to Epstein, sealed settlements, and internal Department of Justice (DOJ) communications related to the case.
Trump, for his part, seems to be melting down, and going to great lengths to try to tank the discharge petition's chances of success, as I explain. And just a few minutes ago, he dropped a Truth Social rant in which he called the latest release of the Epstein documents a "deflection" by Democrats from the pain incurred by the shutdown. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters the latest emails represent "nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again."
The pace at which new details are emerging, coupled with the momentum that will come from both Grijalva's swearing in and the government reopening, make the latest updates feel like, as one of my colleagues put it, "this whole thing is about to explode."
Give my story a full read for everything to know about what comes next.
—Julianne McShane
