On Wednesday, as one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims spoke outside the Capitol, pleading for government candor, fighter jets roared overhead, briefly drowning her out. Thomas Massie, the rogue Republican congressman who’d organized the news conference along with the Democrat Ro Khanna, found the timing suspicious.
“That flyover, I believe, was scheduled after this press conference was announced,” he told a scrum of reporters afterward. Massie had no evidence that the planes were meant to disrupt speeches by the Epstein survivors he’d helped bring to Washington, where they were lobbying for a bill mandating the release of the Epstein files. But his speculation spoke to the gulf of distrust between him and the administration. “There will be no limit to the weapons of mass distraction that the White House will apply to try to make this go away,” he said.
A key political question now is whether Donald Trump and his allies will succeed. Earlier this year it seemed like the Epstein files were creating a genuine crisis for the president, with some of his most ardent supporters infuriated by his refusal to release the documents. In recent weeks, however, the MAGA movement has largely fallen in line. As Matt Gertz reported in Media Matters, much of the right-wing media has stopped talking about the story. And most Republicans, fearful of crossing Trump, want nothing to do with it. “I have heard congressmen as recently as yesterday in a closed meeting say, ‘Don’t know, don’t care,’” said Massie.
Wednesday’s dramatic news conference was an attempt to make them — or at least their constituents — care. One after another, women who were preyed on by Epstein spoke about their desperation to see the files. Haley Robson described the anguish caused by ever-metastasizing Epstein conspiracy theories and endless Epstein news cycles, and her hope that releasing the files could finally put the case to bed.
“Secrecy only allows for conspiracy theorists to tell lies that drives up our anxiety and fears, and will continue to lead to more pain, more suffering and honestly, more deaths of innocent victims,” she said, referring to women abused by Epstein who’ve died by suicide and drug overdoses. “It’s time you do what’s right by us. Unseal all the documents.”
After the women spoke, Massie addressed those watching at home: “Please, call your congressman, tell him or her to get on this bill and to stand up for these survivors.” He and Khanna are currently trying to get their colleagues to sign a discharge petition, which would allow them to circumvent House Speaker Mike Johnson and bring the Epstein disclosure bill to the floor. To succeed, they need a majority of House members to sign, and they’re currently two votes short. Every Democrat is onboard, but only four Republicans.
The White House has said that any Republicans who join Massie and Khanna’s effort will be engaged in a “hostile act.” This is, of course, a complete reversal from where Trump and his allies were during the campaign. Back then, many conservatives treated the Epstein files as a skeleton key promising cataclysmic revelations about elite depravity and corruption. But the moment Trump decided that releasing the files would be inconvenient, most of his lackeys in Congress lost all interest in them.
Not all Trump supporters, however, are ready to ignore the issue. For some of them, especially those animated by the conviction — not entirely unreasonable — that real power in America lies with shadowy, malevolent and unaccountable forces, the Epstein mythology is too central to their worldview to let go of.
Among Trump’s great political accomplishments was making the Republican Party countercultural at a time when the establishment was in deep disrepute. It’s become the home of the most disaffected, conspiracy-minded voters, a big tent for what Philip Roth called the “Indigenous American berserk.” Such people, however, tend to be particularly invested in uncovering Epstein’s secrets.
One of the Republicans who signed Massie’s petition is Marjorie Taylor Greene, a tribune of populist MAGA paranoia, and she defied the White House to attend Wednesday’s news conference. “This is a boiling point in American history,” she said from the podium, describing the Epstein case as emblematic of an America divided between members of a heedless overclass who “never face any struggles or problems” and the forgotten masses routinely denied justice.
Trump’s recalcitrance on the Epstein files isn’t enough to shatter his coalition, but it has created at least a few fissures. Some once-friendly podcast hosts — Joe Rogan chief among them — have become disillusioned with Trump over Epstein. And political scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have found a small but meaningful number of voters moving in the same direction.
According to a poll the university released last month, 47 percent of respondents who voted for Trump in 2024 disapprove of his handling of the Epstein case, and of that group, 28 percent now disapprove of Trump’s performance as president. “We find that among 2024 Trump voters, negative views of Trump’s handling of the Epstein files are associated with an increased desire to make a different choice if the 2024 election could be rerun,” the Amherst researchers wrote in an analysis in Talking Points Memo.
Trump clearly wants the story to disappear; asked about the Wednesday news conference, he said, “They’re trying to get people to talk about something that’s totally irrelevant to the success that we’ve had as a nation since I’ve been president.” The message of the women, however, was that they’re not going anywhere.
Lisa Phillips, who was taken to Epstein’s private island as a young model, said on Wednesday that in the absence of official disclosures, his victims are compiling their own informal list of Epstein associates. “We know the names. Many of us were abused by them,” she said. Greene then promised to read the list on the House floor, where she’d be protected from defamation lawsuits by the Constitution’s speech or debate clause.
The potential for abuse here, for unfounded and unanswerable accusations, seems obvious. But that’s what happens when the justice system fails and the government refuses transparency. Either there will be sunlight or a scandal that keeps festering.
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Michelle Goldberg has been an Opinion columnist since 2017. She is the author of several books about politics, religion and women’s rights and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment.
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