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The US president has signed legislation to release all Epstein case files, but it’s unclear if this win for the abused will reveal any more about the paedophile’s powerful allies. By Michael Winkler.
Trump’s MAGA rift over the Epstein files
The United States president has signed into law the Epstein Files Transparency Act, ordering the Justice Department to release case files relating to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
This is a dramatic turnaround for an administration that has variously claimed the Epstein files are a hoax, that they exist but would not be released, and that they are the malicious concoction of former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden and former FBI director James Comey.
Polling shows three quarters of all Americans want the Epstein files released in full. This has been a clarion call for Trump’s core constituency, the MAGA base, since before the last election. Continued obfuscation and delays have harmed Republican approval ratings. The damage has been exacerbated by Trump calling those in favour of release “pretty bad people” and “weaklings” who believe “fake news”.
The implications of a disgruntled MAGA base in the lead-up to next year’s midterm elections influenced Republican thinking. This is the first time this term that Trump has caved in to the will of his party, rather than the other way around.
The House of Representatives approved the proposed legislation on Tuesday with a 427-1 vote. The only lawmaker opposing was Louisiana Republican Clay Higgins, who expressed concern for “innocent people being hurt” by the release.
Trump announced the signing of the bill on Truth Social, concluding his lengthy post: “This latest Hoax will backfire on the Democrats just as all of the rest have! Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Prior to the congressional vote, a committee released more than 20,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate, including emails in which he allegedly implied Trump “knew about the girls”. The White House responded by ordering Attorney General Pam Bondi to open an investigation into the Democrats named in the files.
Trump said, “I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. I threw him out of my club many years ago because I thought he was a sick pervert. But I guess I turned out to be right.”
Key Democrats admitted that the battle is not won. “You never know with him,” said the minority leader of the Senate, Chuck Schumer. “We know there’s a corrupt Justice Department,” he added, singling out Bondi and FBI director Kash Patel as susceptible to pressure from the president.
“It’s almost impossible to imagine …Trump releasing information that impugns himself in any significant way,” Democrat Senator Jeff Merkley said. “I think he’ll find excuses not to release key elements.
“This particular event may be seen as the moment when the president’s absolute control, producing a rubber-stamp congress, starts to fall apart.”
The Justice Department has 30 days to make the files public. It may use the inquiry into Democrats as a rationale for closing down handover plans, arguing that files pertinent to an open investigation cannot be released.
Jessica Levinson, law professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, says there may be heavy redactions. “We could still see paper, but a lot of paper might have black on it,” she says. “So what people are really interested in, the so-called client lists, may not see the light of day.”
As for why Trump has moved to release the documents, she says the situation is “moving really quickly. The political pressure became potentially untenable. The calculus was that it is better to be in favour of transparency. I think we have to be really careful about … what ends up being in the final bill, what does the Department of Justice actually release, what is redacted and, the big question, is there anything new that the American public learns?
“There is a good chance that this doesn’t change the narrative. Remember, a lot of people investigated this case for a long time,” Levinson says. “I don’t expect there to be new federal charges to be brought against people.”
With only a minority of Republican voters satisfied with Trump’s handling of the issue, his loyalists have tried to calm the base. Fox News’s Sean Hannity toed the party line, saying “I don’t know what those files contain, but I do know this: President Trump did nothing wrong.”
Conservative commentator Megyn Kelly made the risible distinction that Epstein preferred young teenagers. “We have yet to see anybody come forward and say, ‘I was under 10, I was under 14 when I first came within his purview,’ ” she said.
“You can say that’s a distinction without a difference. I think there is a difference. There’s a difference between a 15-year-old and a five-year-old, you know?”
Meanwhile, Trump labelled Marjorie Taylor Greene, formerly one of his staunchest allies, Marjorie “Traitor” Greene after she signed the discharge petition to compel a House vote. The impact of this rift on MAGA rusted-ons remains to be seen.
Inevitably, this political imbroglio and fascination with the identity of Epstein’s acolytes pulls focus from the victims of his wrongdoing. Several survivors gathered on Capitol Hill to reframe the narrative, holding up photos of themselves taken at the age when Epstein commenced his trafficking and abuse: girls of 14, 16, 17.
One survivor, Annie Farmer, said, “This is not an issue of a few corrupt Democrats or a few corrupt Republicans. This is a case of institutional betrayal.”
Sky Roberts, brother of prominent victim Virginia Giuffre, said: “My sister is not a political tool for you to use. These survivors are not political tools for you to use. These are real stories, real trauma.”
Giuffre’s memoir, Nobody’s Girl, was released six months after her death by suicide. “In my years with them, they lent me out to scores of wealthy, powerful people,” she wrote. “I was habitually used and humiliated – and in some instances, choked, beaten, and bloodied. I believed that I might die a sex slave.”
Giuffre wrote that Epstein personally abused her with instruments of torture, and an unnamed politician choked her repeatedly until she lost consciousness.
Giuffre reported that on one of the occasions she was required to have sex with the disgraced Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, it became “an orgy”, with the addition of Epstein and eight girls. “The other girls all appeared to be under the age of 18 and didn’t really speak English. Epstein laughed about how they couldn’t really communicate, saying they are the easiest girls to get along with.”
Nobody’s Girl is a corrective to those who forget that the heart of this disgrace is the suffering of girls and young women. “While the sheer number of victims Epstein preyed upon may put him in a class by himself, he was no outlier,” Giuffre wrote. “The way he viewed women and girls – as playthings to be used and discarded – is not uncommon among certain powerful men who believe they are above the law. And many of those men are still going about their daily lives, enjoying the benefits of their power.
“Don’t be fooled by those in Epstein’s circle who say they didn’t know what he was doing. Epstein not only didn’t hide what was happening, he took a certain glee in making people watch. And people did watch…and they didn’t care.”
Observing the unfolding story from Australia is Emeritus Professor Kerry McCallum of the University of Canberra, who led the team that developed Media Guides for Reporting on Child Sexual Abuse.
“Whilst on one hand the Epstein case is bringing to light the crime of child sexual abuse, on the other hand most of the coverage is about powerful men and not the victims,” McCallum says. “It’s in the frame of scandal.”
She draws a comparison between the focus on Epstein and the US president, and the reporting on George Pell in relation to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
“The figure of Pell disproportionately dominated the coverage. We observed that his high profile grabbed the attention, and in doing so diminished the actual victim and survivor stories,” McCallum says.
“Journalists have an obligation to bring these stories into the open, but there are often unintended consequences. Victims are often rendered nameless, faceless and voiceless in news reports.
“All victims are impacted every time a news story about child sexual abuse is made public.”
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This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on November 22, 2025 as "Giuffre’s legacy".
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