So let’s start where we left off. We were discussing Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was stunned that her idol, “the man we admire and love so much,” was not only uninterested in releasing the Epstein files – he was hell-bent on preventing them from ever seeing the light of day! Of course, those of us who despise Trump find it hard to believe Greene was truly surprised to learn this. However, she was. And she was not alone. Millions of people in the MAGAverse assumed that now that Trump was back in the White House, the Epstein files would be released to the public.
Indeed, in February 2025 Attorney General Pam Bondi announced she would soon release Epstein’s “client list” – the names of all the prominent men who used his trafficking network to rape underage girls. As she famously told Fox News, “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review.” Bondi also noted the files were being released in response to “a directive by President Trump.”
But, lo and behold, five months later the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a memo that indicated Pam Bondi had been lying. According to the memo, there was no incriminating client list. It never existed! There was no evidence Epstein had blackmailed men who had enjoyed the sexual services of his victims. In short, there was no need to investigate anyone beyond the two people who had already been charged, convicted, and sent off to prison – Jeffrey Epstein, who departed this earth in August 2019 (due to suicide?) while he was housed at a federal jail in Lower Manhattan, and Ghislaine Maxwell, his accomplice and former girlfriend. The investigation was over.
Nobody believed this bullshit! Not even the most hardcore MAGA acolytes. After all, according to just one of Epstein’s victims – Virginia Giuffre, who was employed on Donald Trump’s staff at Mar-a-Lago when he first met her – “In my years with them (Epstein and Maxwell), they lent me out to scores of wealthy, powerful people. I was habitually used and humiliated – and in some instances, choked, beaten, and bloodied. I believed that I might die a sex slave.”
So, the same month the Trump administration released that bullshit memo (July 2025), two congressmen – Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, and Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky – introduced legislation they named the “Epstein Files Transparency Act.” The bill required the Department of Justice to release all documents and records relating to Jeffrey Epstein to the House Committee on the Judiciary. The only evidence the government could withhold was common-sense stuff like the names of victims, to preserve their anonymity. And – oh yeah – Epstein’s gigantic stash of child pornography. The legislation directed that, “No record shall be withheld, delayed, or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.”
(Just to be sure, readers should know that in a normal world this bill would not be necessary. The president has authority to release this type of information, and he doesn’t need the approval of Congress to do so.)
Trump was stymied. He faced a problem created by his own reprehensible behavior. His never-ending efforts to “stoke the base” – to kindle rage by spouting off racism and xenophobia, by winking at the Q-Anon wackos – had unleashed forces beyond his control. Trump would whine to his aides and allies that he just wanted this Epstein business to “go away.” But the MAGAverse refused to let go of the issue! One of the reasons many Americans voted for Trump was because they knew he would expose the “deep state” – how it controls the government and protects criminals and pedophiles.
Towards the end of 2025, the prospect that Congress would approve the Epstein Files Transparency Act was driving Trump crazy. The White House staff had to endure presidential temper tantrums on a daily basis.
On social media, Trump would post screeds like:
“(The Epstein files are a) Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party. . . . Nobody cared about Jeffrey Epstein when he was alive and, if the Democrats had anything, they would have released it before our Landslide Election Victory. Some ‘members’ of the Republican Party are being ‘used,’ and we can’t let that happen. Let’s start talking about the Republican Party’s Record Setting Achievements, and not fall into the Epstein ‘TRAP,’ which is actually a curse on the Democrats, not us. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Can you believe it? So now the Epstein files were a “Democrat Hoax!” This is especially laughable when you consider the pathetic losers Trump hired to staff version 2.0 of his administration. Losers like Kash Patel, who he appointed Director of the F.B.I. In 2023, when Joe Biden was president, Patel said the F.B.I. was covering up the Epstein files, “because of who’s on that (client) list.” In an interview, he exclaimed, “What the hell are the House Republicans doing!? They have the majority. You can’t get the list!? . . . Put on your big boy pants, and let us know who the pedophiles are!”
Or how about Patel’s deputy at the F.B.I., Dan Bongino? On his podcast, The Dan Bongino Show, he had been saying things like, “What the hell are they hiding with Jeffrey Epstein? Why do Clinton, Obama officials, big money leftists, a former prime minister of Israel . . . want to make this Jeffrey Epstein story go away so bad?”
Delay, Delay, Delay
In order for a bill to get to the floor of the House for a vote, it must first be cleared by the House Rules Committee. This committee is led by the Speaker of the House – the top elected official of the party that controls the House. For the past three years, the Speaker has been this pipsqueak of a man from Louisiana named Mike Johnson. (He looks and sounds like the animated elf you see on American television in commercials for Keebler cookies.) Although Johnson nominally leads the Republican Party, he has always acted as though his foremost job responsibility is to be Donald Trump’s handmaiden and ass-kisser.
So Trump orders his minion, the Keebler Elf, to make sure the Epstein Files Transparency Act never comes to a vote. The only way the sponsors of a bill can overcome this kind of obstruction is by circulating what is known as a “discharge petition.” If a majority of House members sign the petition (218 or more), you can force legislation to come to a vote, no matter what the Speaker wants.
It was obvious the vote on the discharge petition was going to be very close. The Republicans hold the House majority by only a slim margin, and every single Democrat was going to sign it. What’s more, the House leadership soon learned to its horror that three Republican members would also be signing the petition (in addition to the bill’s Republican co-sponsor, Massie). As you might guess, the three members were women: Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Then, on September 23, 2025, a Democrat named Adelita Grijalva won a special congressional district election in Arizona. She announced that the first thing she intended to do after getting to Washington DC would be to sign the petition. And her signature would provide the deciding 218th vote that forced consideration of the Epstein Files Transparency Act! So what does Mike Johnson do? He shuts down the House of Representatives so the new member can’t be sworn into office! He sends members home early and cancels House operations for at least three weeks. Altogether, he keeps the House away from regular legislative work for 53 days – the longest such break in recent memory.
Now I would like to stress one point as an aside here, because I think many Brazilians don’t realize how incredibly fucked up and dumbed down the United States has become. Normally, this type of delaying tactic would work. Indeed, this is essentially how Trump was able to stay out of prison and get back in the White House – despite having been convicted in 2024 for 34 felony counts of business fraud. The tactic works because the American people have collectively become more and more like their president: profoundly stupid, incapable of concentration, and with no short-term memory.
In fact, it can be argued that the primary motivation behind many of Trump’s recent crimes – his deadly military operation to kidnap the leader of Venezuela, his idiotic and illegal war, code-name Operation Epic Fuck-Up – has been to buy time and divert media attention so that the American public would finally forget about the Epstein files.
Yes, that’s right. The main reason the U.S. massacred 120 children who were sitting at their school desks in Minab, Iran on February 28 may well have been “to make this Epstein bullshit go away.”
However, because of some perverse quirk involving religion, sex, and the American way, the sexual abuse of more than 1,000 girls and women is apparently one Trump-related crime spree the MAGAverse is unwilling to let slide. By the second week of November, it became evident Johnson could not continue keeping the House in recess indefinitely just to cover Trump’s fat ass. He announced the legislative body would reconvene on Wednesday, November 12, 2025 – a day when he would have no choice but to finally swear in the new representative from Arizona. In response to this news, the Trump White House frantically mounted a pathetic, futile effort to get the three Republican congresswomen to withdraw their names from the petition.
We’ve already discussed Marjorie Taylor Greene, but what about the other two members and their experience defying Trump? On November 12, Congresswoman Boebert was summoned to a private meeting at the White House with top leaders from the U.S. Justice Department and the F.B.I. The meeting took place in the Situation Room. Attendees included the Attorney General (Bondi), the Director of the FBI (Patel), and Todd Blanche, who was then Deputy Attorney General. (Blanche is Trump’s former personal defense attorney for all crimes involving sex, business, and the U.S. Constitution. He is now Attorney General – in April 2026, Trump fired Bondi and switched her out for Todd.)
(A note for our Brazilian readers: Located in the basement of the West Wing, the Situation Room is normally the place where presidents and staff meet to deal with urgent crises involving national security and matters of war and military conflict. It was established by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 after the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. He wanted a place in the White House where he could receive timely and reliable intelligence, with a secure communication system. You might recognize a photo of this room from the Obama era that has become particularly well-known and iconic. It shows the president with his national security team as they monitor the 2011 raid to kill Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan. President Obama has a haunted, dazed expression that is hard to forget.)
Apparently neither the seniority of these administration lackeys, nor the august setting of the Situation Room, was sufficient to sway Congresswoman Boebert to take her name off the petition. Pam Bondi later spoke about the meeting (after she had been fired) while testifying before Congress (but not under oath). She said she tried to convince Boebert that refusing to release the files was in the best interest of Epstein’s victims – nevermind that almost every victim was demanding the files be made public. (In her testimony Bondi said, “I recall the discussion with her was the concern about passing the bill would jeopardize the identity of victims.”)
Getting Congresswoman Mace to revisit her decision was always going to be even less likely. Mace is a survivor of rape and molestation, and she has spoken publicly about the trauma she endured. She avoided having to meet with Trump or his flunkies by sending the president a personal note in which she reiterated, “I will NEVER abandon other survivors.”
Everyone had assumed that if Congress ever managed to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act, Trump would simply veto it. (Overriding such a veto would require both chambers of Congress to reapprove the bill with at least a two-thirds supermajority vote.) However, after being unable to kill the discharge petition because of three representatives who are usually his most ardent acolytes, Trump decided to capitulate. Massie was predicting that 100 or more House Republicans would vote for the Act, despite Trump’s opposition. Trump would feel humiliated if it appeared he did not have the Republican Party submissively under his control. Given this issue, it was also quite possible that even a presidential veto would fail.
On Sunday evening, November 16, Trump posted on Truth Social, “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax.” On Tuesday, November 18, 2025, the House adopted the Epstein Files Transparency Act by a vote of 427-1. Every Democrat was joined by 216 Republicans, with one Republican providing the lone dissenting vote. On Wednesday, the Senate adopted the bill by unanimous consent. Later that evening, Trump signed it into law. (Surprise! The administration did not hold a public signing ceremony.) The president thereby agreed to release the same Epstein files he could have made public himself nine months earlier.
So there you have it. Virtually every Republican was too afraid of Trump and his followers to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files. Their later “yes” votes cannot erase this stain. The special election of a Democrat changed the equation so that every Republican (save one) could pretend they sincerely cared about the ordeal of Epstein’s victims, and their struggle to find justice. Even the Keebler Elf voted for the Epstein Files Transparency Act!
More than any other episode, this debacle illustrates how the Republican Party – despite holding the majority in both chambers of Congress, despite being the partisan power that guides The Supreme Court – is now just a pathetic, craven shell of a party. A political party that stands for nothing. Nothing beyond catering to the obscene wealth and power of its oligarchs; preserving the jobs and status of its incumbent lawmakers; and pandering to the glory and idiocy of Trump and the millions of fearful, aggrieved Americans for whom he is The Holy Manchild.
(To be continued . . . )