Mark Warner thinks, at the end of the day, the Trump administration is going to have to, eventually, release the Epstein files.
“The hypocrisy of Donald Trump knows no bounds,” said Warner, D-Va., in a conference call with reporters on Thursday, referencing the ongoing controversy over Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced billionaire financier who died in a Manhattan federal detention center in 2019.
ICYMI
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Trump has fanned the flames around the Epstein story since, pledging in his time out of the White House to release the thousands of pages of documents from the two federal investigations into Epstein, who served 13 months of an 18-month sentence after being convicted of soliciting prostitution in 2008, and was arrested in 2019 on charges related to an underage sex-trafficking ring, a month before his mysterious death.
Trump and Epstein were friends for 15 years before Trump broke off their relationship, with Trump claiming early this week that the breakup was initiated by him, after he said Epstein “stole” a 16-year-old spa employee from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.
The teen, Virginia Giuffre, was abused by Epstein and also trafficked by him for a period of two years to friends and acquaintances, including Prince Andrew, before she was able to escape.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, earlier this year, pledged to release the Epstein files, and a much-discussed Epstein client list, but earlier this month, she signed off on a memo saying there is, in fact, no client list, and that it was “the determination of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.”
It has since emerged that Bondi, ahead of the release of that memo, had FBI employees working around the clock to flag mentions of Trump’s name in the Epstein files, and that she later briefed the president to tell him that his name was in the files, which the president denies.
Trump was asked about Giuffre at a press event at the White House on Thursday, and instead of offering condolences for her abuse or being trafficked, he used the opportunity to attack the reporter who asked the question.
“I figured it would be ABC fake news that would ask that question. One of the worst,” Trump fumed, before adding, “I didn’t like it, that he was doing that.”
Classy guy.
“Remember, one of the ways he got elected was claiming that he would release these files, he would go after the rich and powerful,” said Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “And we all remember the attorney general, Bondi, saying, you know, she had them on her desk, and there was going to be juiciness, and suddenly, they reversed course. Now, is that because the attorney general told Trump that his name is mentioned in these files? We don’t know, but that’s been reported in the press.
“End of the day, one way or the other, I think Trump is going to be forced to release these Epstein files, and let’s let the truth come out,” Warner said.
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Chris Graham
