Donald Trump is firmly ensconced in the White House, Jeffrey Epstein is dead and the MAGA base seem to think every allegation is a ‘deep state’ plot.
But for once, the story is slipping out of Trump’s hands.
The drip, drip, drip of emails from beyond the grave is death by a thousand papercuts.
In messages released by House Democrats this week, Epstein tells Ghislaine Maxwell that ‘the dog that hasn’t barked is Trump’ and notes that a victim ‘spent hours at my house with him’. He adds, almost off-hand, that ‘of course [Trump] knew about the girls’.
For years, Trump’s line was that Epstein was just a guest he threw out of Mar-a-Lago for ‘being a creep’. Awkward photos, nothing more.
But these uncovered emails make that version of events look laughable.
If Epstein himself believed Trump knew about underage girls in his orbit, it is harder than ever to pretend Trump was just some guy who once bumped into someone who has since been referred to as one of the world’s most ‘infamous paedophiles’.
Yet The White House response reeks of nerves.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt accuses Democrats of ‘selectively leaking emails’ to ‘create a fake narrative to smear President Trump’ – while at the same time confirming that the unnamed ‘victim’ in those messages is Virginia Giuffre, who first met Epstein while working at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.
Officials stress that Giuffre never accused Trump of abuse and she even described him as friendly in her memoir.
Many in DC seem to think that when truth stands in your way, you change directions. It is an odd defence: ‘nothing to see here’, and yet also ‘here is a guided tour of what you are not supposed to see.’
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Trump, unsurprisingly, is also calling the whole thing a hoax, designed to distract from the 43-day government shutdown he engineered and then tried to blame on Democrats.
He insists he ‘wasn’t a fan’, knew nothing about any ‘girls’, and that voters are sick of hearing about it.
But this time, it is not just about what Trump says. It is about what Congress does and whether the public is prepared to move on. Early indications suggest, they are not.
A rarely used petition method has now reached the magic 218 signatures needed to force a vote on releasing more of the Epstein files.
These ‘discharge’ petitions almost never get this far. Yet here we are.
Even with Trump allies running the House, every Democrat has signed, along with four Republicans who have clearly decided that keeping the files buried is more dangerous than opening them.
Speaker Mike Johnson therefore has had no choice but to accept reality. He says he will allow a full vote on a bipartisan bill to compel the release ‘when we get back next week’. That means every Republican will have to go on the record about whether they want the truth out or not.
For a president who has boasted iron-grip control of his party, that is risky.
None of this means the story ends with handcuffs, of course. Survivors know better than anyone that the system rarely delivers that kind of justice. But it does feel like something has shifted.
We can see it in Britain. Epstein’s shadow has already cost Andrew everything but his freedom after King Charles finally took the unprecedented step of stripping his brother of the title ‘prince’, the style ‘His Royal Highness’ and the dukedom of York.
The ex-prince – now Andrew Mountbatten Windsor – is also being evicted from Royal Lodge and moved to a smaller house on a royal estate.
Trump, by contrast, has not been tainted despite the fact his name has floated around the scandal for years. A few old photos went viral. Lawyers crafted careful denials. Then he became president again.
What do you think about the released emails implicating Trump in Epstein’s activities?
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They are concerning and need further investigation.
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They seem politically motivated and should be taken cautiously.
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This is part of a larger political agenda against Trump.
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I need more information to form an opinion.
In that time, so many adults with power looked away while the lives of so many women and girls were destroyed. They are the ones who should get to feel some measure of satisfaction if the truth, at last, at least starts to catch up.
That is the real story here. Not one more ‘Trump scandal’, but a system that is finally being pushed – by survivors, by a bipartisan rebellion in Congress, by Epstein’s own words – somewhere it, and all the people around it, really does not want to go.
The White House can shout ‘hoax’ until it is hoarse but the more they stretch the truth, the thinner the story looks.
It cannot un-send those emails. It cannot un-sign that discharge petition.
Believe it or not, Donald Trump’s problems really are about to get worse.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk.
Share your views in the comments below.