After weeks of inactivity, a topic on the House agenda, a vote to end the government shutdown, has been overshadowed by a new round of the “Epstein affair” and alleged unspoken ties between the former pedophile financier, who committed suicide in prison, and Donald Trump.
It’s no coincidence that Democrats on the Oversight Committee decided to make public some of Epstein’s emails embarrassing the president, on the day of Arizona Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva’s scheduled inauguration. The freshman Democratic congressman, elected Sept. 23 in a by-election for the seat left vacant by his father, Raul Grijalva, who died in March, has so far been unable to serve in Congress due to obstruction from Republican Party chairman Mike Johnson. Grijalva’s signature is the signature still numerically missing from a bipartisan petition that would force a vote in the chamber to require the Justice Department to release still-classified documents about Epstein.
It was the same – including the infamous “client list” – that Justice Minister Pam Bondi had promised to make public, but then backtracked in recent months and even denied the existence of the “list”. Faced with the onslaught of democracy and Grijalva’s imminent swearing-in, which could no longer be contained by reference to parliamentary rules, Republicans took countermeasures: by publishing, in turn, 23 thousand pages of documents on the Epstein affair that had been obtained in August by the Oversight Commission itself.
This material comes from the archives of the financier’s heirs which have been kept secret. This initiative appears to be an attempt to protect itself from accusations of “hiding” the truth from the public that could potentially embarrass the White House. At the current stage of debate in parliament and the media, it is impossible to know whether the initiative is approved by Trump and his entourage. Most Republicans in the House, including some right-wing Maga exponents, have so far been largely embarrassed by the administration’s handling of the Epstein affair. Last night, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt denied that the current president was “contemplating some kind of pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell,” Epstein’s former girlfriend and accomplice.
On the one hand, there is pressure from voters who in recent years have been promised that Trump’s return to power would shed light on alleged collusion between Epstein and the Democratic Party.
democratic and liberal elites; on the other hand, the need for many Republicans to secure a political future even in the post-Trump period, as the last election cycle has shown early signs of such a crisis.
