The “full” files on Jeffrey Epstein may not be released if Donald Trump uses the tools at his disposal, the president’s biographer says.
Michael Wolff, on the Daily Beast’s Inside Trump’s Head podcast, said a loophole in the Epstein Files Transparency Act gives Trump’s Justice Department one easy way to kick the can down the road once again.
The law permits Attorney General Pam Bondi, 60, to redact information that could jeopardize an ongoing investigation. Bondi on Wednesday claimed that “new information” had come to light—without specifying what—and announced that U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton would be leading the investigation.
Wolff, when asked by co-host Joanna Coles whether the public would see the DOJ’s and FBI’s files on the dead sex offender and former Trump pal, didn’t have high hopes.
“I think that the answer is no—at least, we will not see the full Epstein files,” the author said, with 29 days to go until the administration must produce the files. “We will not know what we haven’t seen in the Epstein files… Whatever the point of this legislation, it effectively leaves control of the Epstein files and what will be released from the Epstein files in the hands of the White House.”
The law also allows Bondi, a former personal attorney to Trump during his first impeachment, to redact information that could conceivably identify victims.
Wolff, noting that Trump has tried to take credit for the legislation only after it became clear he had lost congressional support, said the president “has done everything, everything possible, including—being fair, putting himself in the firing line on this—not to release the Epstein files.“
“But I think he’s gotten, if not 100 percent of what he wants, you know, he’s gotten pretty close to it,” he continued. “He’s in control of the Epstein files. Congress has given him the tools with which to parse, edit, and curate the Epstein files. So, what do we have at the end of the day? We have actually probably just more distractions in the process of getting to the bottom of the Epstein story.”
Wolff explained, “They don’t have to turn over files of which are relevant to an ongoing investigation. Everything can be an ongoing investigation. Nor do they have to turn over files that are classified. And, basically, they can classify anything. So hell, what are we left with?”
Wolff, who has said Epstein showed him pictures of Trump, 79, with topless young women of unknown ages on his lap, said there doesn’t have to be a reason for those photos to be deemed classified.
“We don’t have to know that,” he said. “Basically you can classify anything. Whether that would hold up in a court is kind of irrelevant. Could you argue that that’s part of an ongoing investigation? Well, there’s an ongoing investigation of all of Epstein’s crimes. Is that related to that? And do you have to justify that? That’s also not clear. Or by the time you justify that, everything has moved on anyway.”
Wolff concluded that “we have only marginally moved off the place where we were before there was this legislation.”
“Trump is in charge and it almost is worse because what he will do now, of course, is release aspects of these files that incriminate other people,” he said.
Trump kept his own ties to Epstein out of his Truth Social post Wednesday night announcing he had signed the legislation, but made sure to name-drop Democratic figures like former President Bill Clinton, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
“Perhaps the truth about these Democrats, and their associations with Jeffrey Epstein, will soon be revealed,” Trump wrote.
When reached for comment, the White House disputed Wolff’s credibility.
“Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s— and has been proven to be a fraud,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told the Daily Beast in a statement. “He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
Find and subscribe to Inside Trump’s Head with Michael Wolff and Joanna Coles on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes of incomparable insight into the psyche of the world’s most talked-about man drop every Tuesday and Thursday evening on YouTube and Wednesday and Friday mornings on other podcast platforms.
The post How Trump Can Bury Epstein Files Shame: Wolff appeared first on The Daily Beast.
