Why Trump Can't Put Out the Epstein Fire He Helped Ignite

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. President Donald Trump’s White House is frantically trying to put out the blaze sparked by its own promises to expose whatever the federal government is hiding about disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. A Wall Street Journal bombshell has only flared up the rage, increasing the likelihood that this fire will keep burning all summer. On Thursday evening, hours after the Journal had revealed a strange new dimension to Trump’s long friendship with Epstein, Trump ordered the Justice Department to release “all pertinent” grand jury testimony in the case. It was an attempt at convincing the public that the White House had nothing to hide, but it’s not clear that Trump can actually accomplish that stated goal, given federal grand jury testimony is, by law, confidential, and those documents are only a fraction of what is in the government’s Epstein files. Trump also renewed his feeble attempts to pin the whole conspiracy-soaked affair on Democrats, former Attorney General Merrick Garland, and former FBI Director James Comey. “If there was a ‘smoking gun’ on Epstein, why didn’t the Dems, who controlled the ‘files’ for four years, and had Garland and Comey in charge, use it? BECAUSE THEY HAD NOTHING!!!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social on Friday.  The whole episode seems to be spiraling. For years, a not insignificant portion of Americans have nursed suspicions that Epstein was at the core of a cabal of child sex traffickers that enveloped monied and politically powerful elites. Trump’s MAGAverse in particular was convinced the insiders on a long-rumored client list are almost exclusively Democrats, and reasoned that justice against pedophiles was sufficient to excuse any and all character flaws incumbent in the incumbent. So when Trump’s Justice Department and FBI last week announced no further disclosures about Epstein would be coming, the rage in the base was as immediate as it was uncontrollable. Trump’s core constituencies demanded answers. MAGA leaders and Hill Republicans had fed the paranoia for years only to have the President try to pivot to a nothing-to-see-here posture. Democrats were ready to exploit the intra-party tensions. Hill Republicans toyed with a resolution forcing the White House’s hand.  It was one of the rare moments when Trump was left legitimately on his rear foot.  The Journal’s bombshell report centered on a previously unknown nugget: Ahead of Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003, Trump allegedly wrote a bawdy letter as part of a collection organized by convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.  “Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret,” Trump is said to have written as part of a caption to a sketch of a naked woman. The letter also included Trump noting that he and Epstein “have certain things in common.” Trump said the purported letter was “fake.” He threatened a lawsuit against the Journal and its owner, Rubert Murdoch. On the Hill, reaction was just as pointed, with legislation circulating to cancel offices’ subscriptions to the news organization in protest for their publication of the embarrassing detail. Before that story forced Washington to spend Thursday evening huddled over their smartphones, the White House thought it might yet be able to find an offramp from the Epstein mess. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday said the White House had no authority over the release of sealed documents and instead pushed blame at the Justice Department, the courts, and anyone who wasn’t behind the security perimeter. She also ruled out a special prosecutor, a favorite foil to pin politically unpopular probes on. It did not work. By the time the Journal added another story on this tower of scandal and innuendo, it was clearly teetering. After the Journal addition, it was absolutely wobbly. A package of spending cuts, facing a Friday deadline, was on shaky ground as amendments demanding disclosures seemed to be limitless. It, of course, got muscled across the finish line but it left a lot of lawmakers wincing that they’re going to have to do this all over again in a few weeks. Until then, there’s no reason to think this Epstein epic is going to fade. Trump’s base is convinced that there is nefarious material implicating mostly, if not solely, Democrats just around the corner, even if there are piles of instances that show Trump palling around with Epstein. MAGA hired guns know that no morsel they can offer will quell this chase; the grand jury testimony is but a piece of what DOJ collected about Epstein and his alleged crimes. Once the spigot is opened, there’s no shutting it off. This is already a self-sustaining cycle of suspicion. Trump and his allies built this trouble. While Trump didn’t lean into the tinfoiledness the way his supporters did, he did not shut it down, either. Now, he owns this splatter. It’s exactly the type of self-own that might be Democrats’ best chance of getting anything passing for power back in next year’s elections. And Trump seems incapable of snuffing out this blaze. Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter.