Republicans Have Created a Legal Nightmare for Themselves on Epstein

The Jeffrey Epstein scandal has hit a temporary lull — but rest assured it’s coming back, and it’s going to be ugly for the Trump administration. Major issues remain unresolved and will play out over the coming weeks and months, whether Donald Trump and his Congressional supporters like it or not. And they’ve mostly got themselves to blame.

House Republicans have run for the hills, but they can’t escape the fire they started. Speaker Mike Johnson courageously adjourned the House early for summer recess to avoid a vote on a measure seeking public release of the Epstein files. But days later, the House Oversight Committee, under the leadership of Representative James Comer — who’s perpetually on the brink of uncovering some massive scandal but never quite gets there — issued a series of subpoenas calling for broad release of documents by DOJ and a series of in-person testimonial depositions.

Comer got the cheap thrill of announcing his roll call of boldface subpoena recipients: Bill and Hillary Clinton, Robert Mueller, James Comey, and Eric Holder, among others. It’s every right-wing conspiracy theorist’s fantasy realized: finally a chance to grill the standard cast of characters featured and accused in countless online fever dreams.

But now Comer must actually fight the battles he picked. Few if any of Comer’s subpoena recipients appear to have actionable information relevant to Epstein, and all are likely to resist or ignore his demand for testimony. Will Comer take them to court and show that he means business? He claims he’s ready to litigate and, if necessary, to issue contempt citations.

If so, he’d better be prepared for a steep uphill climb. Comer will have to show that the subpoenas are likely to provide information relevant to some valid legislative purpose and don’t otherwise call for privileged or protected information. Yet Comer’s stated rationales for the necessity of the subpoenas are laughable. He explained in his cover letter to Hillary Clinton that, more than a decade ago, she hired Epstein’s nephew. And Comer offers no basis at all for his subpoena of James Comey — who was FBI director, but not during either Epstein investigation or prosecution (in Florida from 2006 to 2008 and then in the Southern District of New York in 2019). It’s doubtful any of the subpoena recipients will ultimately be compelled to testify under oath and against their wills. But for now, it’s a show, of sorts.

At the same time, Comer’s ill-conceived subpoenas will keep the Epstein story burning bright. Serial court showdowns between Congress and a parade of former attorneys general, FBI directors, presidents, and cabinet secretaries will only stoke public interest. Trump surely wants this scandal to fade away, but Comer has ensured it will remain at the fore.

At bottom, the House’s investigative effort is unserious. If this were truly about seeking meaningful answers, Comer could have started with a subpoena to Alexander Acosta — the disgraced former U.S. Attorney (and former Trump Cabinet secretary) who was presented a case involving at least three dozen child victims and chose to let Epstein off the hook for petty state-level charges and a 13-month sentence, much of it served out of custody. In the process, Acosta’s office misled Epstein’s victims, assuring them in writing that the matter was “ongoing,” even after the softball deal had already been executed.

This week, Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna — the same person who introduced legislation to engrave Trump’s face on Mount Rushmore — publicly raised the possibility of Acosta’s testimony. “At any time, he can be called to testify,” she noted correctly. When Congress returns, we’ll see if Comer heeds Luna’s words or pretends he never heard them.

And then there’s the House subpoena to the Justice Department, calling for the release of “the full, complete, unredacted Epstein Files.” (The House later came to its senses and agreed to necessary redactions of victim names and identifiers.)

Comer might not have thought this one through; his document subpoena places another Trump loyalist, Attorney General Pam Bondi, in a bind. The AG can choose to produce the requested documents to Congress. But she has conspicuously declined to disclose them so far, even though she could have released the vast bulk of the files on her own accord. Or Bondi can resist and challenge the subpoena in court. But that would make the AG — who claims to be all about “transparency and lifting the veil” — look flatly obstructionist.

House Republicans are not alone in setting booby traps that are sure to detonate a few weeks from now. The Justice Department itself got into the act when it sent the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, to meet face-to-face for nearly ten hours with convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. We’ve since learned that the parties made an electronic recording of the interview, so a record exists of Maxwell’s exact words. Will Blanche and the Justice Department release the full recording? Or some fraction of it? Or a written transcript? Or some type of summary? Or nothing at all?

At this point, anything short of disclosure of the complete recording will surely feed suspicions of a cover-up. And any release at all naturally will raise questions about why Blanche met with Maxwell in the first place. It’s a near-certainty she didn’t say anything to implicate Trump — there’s no way Blanche walks into that interview room if that’s even a remote possibility — but does DOJ expect the public to receive Maxwell as some reliable truth-teller, a vehicle for transparency?

And how will the child sex trafficker be rewarded? She’s already been moved from a low-security federal prison to a minimum-security camp, a substantial benefit in its own right. Will the Justice Department also ask a judge to reduce her 20-year sentence? Will Trump himself issue a pardon or commutation — a possibility he has pointedly declined to rule out? And how will any of these moves play with the American public?

Trump and his supporters created the frenzy around the Epstein files with their bold, unambiguous promises to pursue complete transparency. A handful of unsuccessful requests to unseal grand-jury testimony from a total of two witnesses and a transcript of statements given by a convicted child sex offender of dubious credibility like Maxwell won’t cut it.

Trump needs, more than anything else, for the Epstein story to just go away. But the president and his own supporters in Congress and at the Justice Department have ensured through their own bungling that that won’t happen and that fall will bring still more scandal and public distrust. Don’t be lulled by the temporary calm. It’s just the eye of the storm.