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The justice department’s release of a trove of several thousand documents concerning Jeffrey Epstein contained no explosive new revelations about Donald Trump’s past association with the late sex offender.
The most striking images were arguably of Bill Clinton, including one of the Democratic former president in a hot tub and another of him in a swimming pool with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s one-time girlfriend now serving a prison term for child sex offences.
At a campaign-style rally focused on the economy in North Carolina on Friday night, Trump spoke for more than an hour but did not even mention the Epstein documents.
But Trump may still struggle to move on from a scandal that has ensnared his second term as president, divided parts of his own Republican party, and exposed him to fierce Democratic attacks.
Critics who wanted maximum transparency out of the Epstein file disclosure balked at the heavy redactions in the documents. They were outraged that the justice department failed to release the full cache, as was required by a law passed by Congress and enacted by Trump under pressure last month.
“Unfortunately, today’s document release grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law that [Donald Trump] signed just 30 days ago,” Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican who has emerged as one of the president’s harshest internal detractors, wrote on X.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican congresswoman from Georgia who has also defied Trump over Epstein, complained that Trump’s slogan of “drain the swamp” meant the government needed to expose “the rich powerful elites who are corrupt and commit crimes, NOT redact their names and protect them”.
The political maelstrom over Epstein has surrounded the president for months, since the justice department and FBI said in July that they had reviewed all the documents and “no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted”.
A swift bipartisan backlash ensued, including from key figures within Trump’s “Maga” base who had clamoured for the full release of the files. It forced the president and his administration to backtrack on their resistance to releasing the documents.
The political damage to Trump has come as he is trying to refocus his attention on inflation and affordability, which are voters’ biggest concerns. The issues have been dragging down his polling numbers, a worrying sign for Republicans ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
“For whatever reason [Trump] continues to allow this to consume parts of his political self and his administration,” says George Pollack, senior US analyst at Signum Global Advisors.
“While this will not be the reason the Republicans ‘lose’ the midterms, the way the administration has handled it has only served to increase some voters’ political disenfranchisement and feelings of betrayal by a politician [with] whom they invested so much of their political identity.”
Following the partial release of the documents, Democrats continued to attack the White House, sensing that Trump is still vulnerable to attacks on Epstein.
“Ignoring the law now isn’t confusion or delay. It’s a deliberate attempt to bury the truth and protect the paedophiles who exploited and abused young girls,” said Martin Heinrich, a Democratic senator from New Mexico, in a statement.
Democrats on the House oversight and judiciary committees warned that “all legal options” were on the table to challenge the way the justice department had released the documents.
Trump’s allies will be hoping that the Epstein scandal will start to fade, betting that most Americans will see sufficient candour in the partial release of the files on Friday, and link Democrats like Clinton with the disgraced late financier rather than Trump.
“This Epstein File drop is absolutely damning for Bill Clinton. He’s littered all throughout it,” said Benny Johnson, a conservative commentator, on X.
A spokesperson for Clinton accused the White House of “shielding themselves from whatever comes next”.
Trump administration officials insisted that any redactions were only meant to protect the victims of Epstein’s sex trafficking, rather than any politician.
“We are looking at every single piece of paper that we are going to produce, making sure that every victim, their name, their identity, their story, to the extent it needs to be protected, is completely protected,” Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney-general, told Fox News ahead of the release on Friday.
But based on the backlash to Friday’s release, such explanations are failing to break through, leaving Trump battling to restore his credibility on the Epstein case.
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