Republicans clearly hoped this week that by hauling both Clintons in front of the House Oversight Committee for questioning about Jeffrey Epstein, they could, at minimum, embarrass Democrats. But this gang only ended up embarrassing themselves. The former secretary of state handily turned what Republicans presumed would be a humiliating moment into her own political win — and showcased Republicans’ woefully unserious handling of the Epstein scandal in the process.
Any reasonable person might have wondered what the heck the House Oversight Committee, the panel that is supposed to be Congress’ watchdog over the executive branch, was doing wasting its time with Hillary Clinton. At least Bill Clinton knew Epstein in the early 2000s and flew on his plane numerous times. But as the former first lady said when she spoke to the press after her deposition, “I don’t know how many times I had to say I did not know Jeffrey Epstein, I never went to his island, I never went to his homes, I never went to his offices.”
And that wasn’t all. “It then got at the end quite unusual,” she said, “because I started being asked about UFOs, and a series of questions about Pizzagate.” For some reason, they didn’t press her on whether NASA faked the moon landing.
This is the nature of the Republican response to the unending Epstein scandal: from Congress, the kind of buffoonery represented by the Clinton deposition; and from the administration, an insistence that Trump is unconnected to or “exonerated” from a scandal whose central figure long counted the president as a friend.
This is the nature of the Republican response to the unending Epstein scandal: from Congress, the kind of buffoonery represented by the Clinton deposition; and from the administration, an insistence that Trump is unconnected to or “exonerated” from a scandal whose central figure long counted the president as a friend.
The latest news on the latter front came when NPR reported this week that despite the law Trump (reluctantly) signed mandating that all Epstein files be released to the public, the FBI withheld some interviews with an Epstein victim who also alleged that Trump abused her when she was a minor.
But worry not: The Department of Justice is going to investigate itself to see what happened. Perhaps if anything untoward comes up, Attorney General Pam Bondi will shout “The Dow is over 50,000 right now!” and the matter will be closed.
To be clear: This is just one set of missing documents. But among the millions of pages of Epstein files that have been released were massive amounts of heavily redacted documents with names and other information blacked out. In some cases that was done to protect the identity of victims, but not all. Last July — months before Congress forced the Justice Department to release the files — Sen. Dick Durbin wrote to Bondi that he had learned that as many as 1,000 FBI personnel were tasked with combing through a portion of the Epstein files and they “were instructed to ‘flag’ any records in which President Trump was mentioned.” The White House referred questions to the FBI; the FBI declined to comment. Not long after, Bloomberg News reported that Trump’s name was redacted from the files on privacy grounds.
In fairness, even if the Bondi Justice Department were led by a bunch of skilled operators and not bumbling partisan hacks, they’d have a tough time mounting a comprehensive cover-up of Trump’s ties to Epstein, simply because those ties are so public and extensive. The two men were friends for years. Trump said in a 2002 interview that Epstein “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” There are many photos of them together and other evidence of their contacts, such as the repulsive birthday card released by the Epstein estate. Trump denies that he wrote the card, which depicts a female figure and wishes Epstein a “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” with a signature that looks like Trump’s.
And of course there are the thousands of times Trump appears in the Epstein files — along with many Trump aides, friends and associates who had connections to the convicted sex offender, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack and key MAGA figure Steve Bannon. In the face of all that, who thought that asking Hillary Clinton about UFOs and Pizzagate would solve the Republicans’ Epstein problem? In the face of all that, who thought that asking Hillary Clinton about UFOs and Pizzagate would solve the Republicans’ Epstein problem? The Epstein scandal persists not merely because Republicans haven’t been able to divert attention onto some of their old political enemies. This is more than a political scandal. The abuse of all those girls and young women is horrifying, full stop. But it’s the elite impunity it reveals that gives the scandal such broad dimension. All those powerful men from seemingly every corner of elite society — politics, business, academia and media — moving through the world without any sense that they could be held accountable for associating with a convicted sex offender? That’s what has people, even some within the MAGA movement, so angry. No matter how many times Trump says he was “totally exonerated,” that doesn’t make it true. And even if the president isn’t guilty of specific crimes related to Epstein, he is the embodiment of the elite impunity that the Epstein scandal has revealed. Trump has spent a lifetime breaking the rules in both his personal and professional lives. And his money and celebrity have protected him; as he famously said of grabbing women in the Billy Bush “Access Hollywood” video, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” That’s the rot in the American elite that this scandal has revealed. And it will take much more than some distractions and redactions to make the public look away.
Paul Waldman is a journalist and author focused on politics and culture. 
