Trump asks his attorney general to release small part of Epstein court documents to ease MAGA backlash

Thursday marked another day of turmoil in the ongoing crisis engulfing Donald Trump over the Epstein case, ending with the U.S. president threatening to sue The Wall Street Journal and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, over the publication of a congratulatory letter allegedly sent by Trump to the pedophile millionaire on his 50th birthday — a letter the Republican insists is fake.

Within minutes, Trump also called on his attorney general, Pam Bondi, to release certain court documents related to the case. The president hopes this move will calm the storm unleashed by the Justice Department’s recent decision to close the Epstein case — a case the Trump administration had promised for months would yield revealing information, only to now claim that such information is irrelevant. This reversal has fueled conspiracy theories surrounding the life and death of the pedophile millionaire.

It seems unlikely that the documents Trump has authorized for release will satisfy the demands of the MAGA movement, which is outraged by the administration’s U-turn on a scandal that has captured the imagination of certain Republican voters for years.

Trump has asked Bondi to, in view of “the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein,” release “any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval,” according to a message the president posted on his social network, Truth Social. The attorney general responded to that request on X, saying: “President Trump–we are ready to move the court tomorrow to unseal the grand jury transcript.” Perhaps it’s a minor detail, but Bondi’s eager submission to the president’s orders is another nail in the coffin of the ideal of separation of powers under the current administration.

When he was a presidential candidate, Trump campaigned on the promise to release all material related to Epstein. Later, Bondi spent months assuring the MAGA movement that she would reveal all on the case. Then, a couple of Sundays ago, her Justice Department published a document that dismantled all the conspiracy theories surrounding the pedophile millionaire. The report concluded that there is no so-called “Epstein list” of wealthy and famous individuals involved in Epstein’s child trafficking ring, and that he died by suicide (i.e., no one killed him) in the cell where he was awaiting trial in 2019.

It’s not clear whether this material will be enough to appease the MAGA movement. The documents that Bondi and Trump are preparing to release come from the early stages of the case’s investigation.

The U.S. legal system allows for the use of grand juries in certain situations. A grand jury is made up of a variable number of citizens, and the prosecutor presents them with the evidence and arguments they believe are strong enough to justify a conviction. The grand jury then decides whether the case should proceed. These proceedings are confidential by law.

Skeptics of the Epstein case are after much more than that: the flight logs of his private jet, compromising materials from the case file — such as videos, photographs, and audio recordings — or the infamous black book allegedly containing a list of clients that would prove the existence of a global elite involved in child trafficking. Six years later, however, there is still no solid evidence that such a network exists.

A surprise from Ghislaine Maxwell

The final straw for Trump — who has spent days, both gently and aggressively, trying to convince his supporters to move on from the issue — came with the publication by the conservative newspaper The Wall Street Journal (owned by Rupert Murdoch, one of the key figures in boosting and sustaining Trump’s political rise) of a 2003 letter that Trump claims is fake. The letter is a birthday greeting to Epstein for his 50th birthday.

Since it was a milestone birthday, Ghislaine Maxwell wanted to surprise Epstein and asked his friends to write affectionate messages for him. Maxwell was a business associate and friend of Epstein, with whom she had a “close relationship” in the 1990s, according to the case file that ultimately led to her being sentenced to 20 years in prison. She is currently serving that sentence for procuring underage girls for Epstein to abuse. Trump, who at the time was a real estate mogul in New York, was reportedly one of the friends who contributed to the surprise gift, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The letter, according to the Wall Street Journal article, “contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker.” “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” the letter reads.

A year after that birthday, Trump and Epstein fell out following a dispute over a property in Palm Beach that both wanted. In 2019, the year Epstein died, Trump stated they hadn’t spoken in 15 years. Back in 2005, Epstein was accused by a minor of paying her for sex. In 2008, he pleaded guilty and avoided a harsh prison sentence. A decade later, a Miami Herald investigation revealed that around 80 minors had been abused by Epstein between 2001 and 2006.

Even in the Journal’s own reporting, Trump is quoted saying the letter is fake. “I don’t draw pictures of women,” he said. That same argument was repeated by both the president and his spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, after the Journal‘s report was published. That night, Trump posted on Truth Social that the Journal and Rupert Murdoch “were personally warned” that the letter is “FAKE and, if they print it, they will be sued.”

In his post — oddly written in the third person despite coming from his personal account — Trump, or whoever authored the message, recalls that he has “already beaten George Stephanopoulos/ABC, 60 Minutes/CBS, and others,” and that he “looks forward to suing and holding accountable the once-great Wall Street Journal.” The TV networks ABC and CBS have settled lawsuits with Trump, reportedly agreeing to pay him millions.

The post ends with a strategy the president rolled out Wednesday — shifting the blame for the “Epstein hoax” onto the Democrats. In this case, “[James] Comey, [former FBI director], Brennan, crooked Hillary [Clinton], and other radical left lunatics,” because, if the letter were true, they would have published it “years ago.”

“It certainly would not have sat in a file waiting for ‘TRUMP’ to have won three Elections.” Regardless of whether the letter is real, as the Journal claims, or fake, as the U.S. president insists, one thing is certain: the post ends with a lie. Trump did not win three elections. Despite what he has been claiming for years, Joe Biden legitimately defeated him in 2020.

The judge who decides which grand jury materials can be released will almost certainly censor parts of the testimony. Protecting the victims is crucial when deciding whether to disclose information about the case, although sensitivity towards them has not been a priority over the six years this scandal has unfolded — especially not for the MAGA conspiracy theorists who are now demanding explanations about the Trump administration’s change of stance.

These are the same people demanding to know what happened to the three minutes missing from the 11-hour video — recorded with a fixed shot on Epstein’s cell door — that the Department of Justice released last week to prove that no one entered the cell, meaning that Epstein killed himself.

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