Was Epstein an Israeli intelligence agent?
The simplest explanation for Donald Trump’s apparent shift yesterday on the “Epstein Files” is that he was originally trying to pressure Republicans to stop dwelling on the subject altogether, because he (correctly) views it as a huge political distraction that’s going to continuously dog him. A constant drip-drip-drip of scattershot emails, “Birthday Book” messages, or other records tying him in any way to Epstein will obviously be used as gleeful political fodder by his adversaries. Democrats have not been shy about confirming this. Even if the records have no bearing whatsoever on Trump being implicated in any child sex-trafficking crimes, it doesn’t matter politically, because the faintest allusion in some record to Trump’s well-established past relationship with Epstein will be used to insinuate that Trump must be hiding some sordid criminal exposure, or trying to cover something up. So he had wanted to browbeat Republicans to stop fixating on what he denounces as a politically-manufactured “hoax.”
That clearly was never going to work, as the “train has already left the station” long ago with respect to the Epstein issue — which now functions as a kind of all-encompassing metaphysical mega-narrative, onto which people can project whatever anxieties or grievances they want. The more Trump called the whole thing a “hoax,” the more suspicion he was always going to generate, whether that suspicion was factually well-founded or not. And the more Democrats were going to conclude they had stumbled upon a high-salience wedge issue with which to hamper Trump, “divide MAGA,” etc.
So now Trump has blared on Truth Social that House Republicans should vote after all for the “Epstein Files” legislation, which obtained the requisite signatures last week via Discharge Petition, after the government re-opened and the Representative-elect from Arizona was finally sworn in. Among the reasons cited by Trump for this latest directive is that “nobody cared about Jeffrey Epstein when he was alive,” and anyway, he and other Republicans “have nothing to hide” — but prominent Democrats like Bill Clinton, Reid Hoffman, and Larry Summers very well might. While the messaging is garbled and erratic, as per usual from Trump, the political calculation underlying it is pretty straightforward. Republicans who voted against the legislation, now bound for a floor vote whether Trump likes it or not, would inevitably be accused of voting to protect “pedophiles” if they followed Trump’s previous dictum. Even if that’s a huge distortion of the facts and evidence, it wouldn’t matter politically, and no Congressman wants to have to spend their time explaining why a high-profile vote they cast was not in fact about protecting pedophiles. So Trump gave them an “out” to preempt the political attacks they would’ve inevitably faced.
One might therefore ask: why did Trump oppose the legislation in the first place? To the point of calling in Lauren Boebert to the White House Situation Room for a conference with Kash Patel and Pam Bondi, and unleashing a bitter feud with “Marjorie Traitor Greene”? Again, the answer is deceptively simple: Because for as long as Epstein stays a politically relevant issue, Trump is going to perceive it as detrimental to his interests. Democrats, the media, and a subset of renegade Republicans are going to latch onto whatever random record comes out that may make any tangential mention of Trump, of which there must be many, and use it to impugn him by hazy implication as a child-sex trafficker. And… Trump doesn’t want that. For obvious reasons. He also doesn’t want a live issue that might amplify fissures among his hardest-core supporters. Steve Bannon almost certainly has hours of footage of Jeffrey Epstein on camera, opining about his relationship with Trump. Do you think Trump wants to deal with that? Of course not. And he can “not want to deal with that,” irrespective of whether “that” implicates him in any pedophilic wrongdoing.
An irony of this whole fracas is that all the latest Epstein records, including those that are seen to reflect negatively on Trump (the “dog that hasn’t barked” email last week, the Bawdy Birthday Book entry) have been produced by the GOP-controlled House Oversight Committee, and have nothing to do with the much-ballyhooed Discharge Petition spearheaded by Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna. In fact, these are not records that the Massie/Khanna legislation even contemplates the existence of, or provides any mechanism for releasing.
Comments yesterday by Massie on ABC This Week are instructive. When asked what he thinks are in the remaining “Epstein Files,” Massie said he doesn’t “have to guess,” because he already knows what’s in them. How could he know such a thing? Because he’s “talked to the survivors through their lawyer.” Meaning, he has talked to Bradley Edwards. The plaintiff’s attorney who has made an entire career out of running what has essentially become a lucratively profitable extortion racket. That’s the only person Massie feels he needs to talk to, evidently, in order to form a complete understanding of the “Epstein Files” and related issues. This would be like talking to the press secretary for a political candidate, and then concluding what they told you is the only information you need about the election the candidate is standing in. Obviously the press secretary has a self-serving agenda, so you’re supposed to cross-check their claims with other sources, do your own independent research and investigation, etc., and then form a judgment based on your best evaluation of all the available facts. But that’s not what Massie, Khanna, and Marge Greene have been doing.
Bradley Edwards just last month filed yet another series of eye-popping lawsuits, along with David Boies, against Bank of America and the Bank of New York — no doubt seeking many additional millions in compensatory damages, on top of the approximately $490 million his legal consortium have already pried from a combination of the Epstein Estate, JP Morgan, and Deutsche Bank. That total does not even include the confidential settlements, individualized lawsuits, and other sources of compensatory remuneration Edwards & Co. have gainfully targeted over the years. Making them very rich indeed. According to the Bank of America lawsuit — which claims Epstein convinced his adult victims that he was the “messiah,” and that’s how the Jane Doe plaintiff somehow allowed him to “traffic” and rape her continuously for 15 years — “it was not until recently when Congress focused its investigation on Epstein’s financial institutions that the Bank’s conduct was revealed.” Hence providing the impetus for this new lawsuit by Edwards and Boies. Let’s remember that Boies convinced Judge Jed Rakoff to allow the Boies/Edwards crew to take 30% of the JP Morgan settlement money for their personal “legal fees.” This thing is an enormous cash cow, and it just keeps going! To pretend there isn’t a giant financial incentive for extracting further “Epstein Files” is laughable. But of course, Massie & Co. evince no awareness of this — instead presenting their communications with these profit-seeking lawyers as the only information they fundamentally need about the entire Epstein matter.
Now, this is not to say that just because some lawyers stand to make a “buck,” any files still in the government’s possession should be kept concealed. I’ve always been very clear that I am personally in favor of releasing any and all files still in the possession of any government entity, or for that matter, any private entity. (I have gotten a bunch of new ones myself, with many more records requests pending.) But my position in support of maximum disclosure is not shared by Bradley Edwards and his litigation cohort. Don’t take my word for it. Just read what Edwards himself says:
In an August 5, 2025 letter to federal judge Richard Berman, Bradley Edwards expressed passionate opposition to full transparency in relation to “Epstein Files.”
“Transparency cannot come at the expense of the very people whom the justice system is sworn to protect,” Edwards wrote, “particularly amid contemporaneous events that magnify risk and trauma.” Thus, he implored the Court to continue concealing any “material that could expose or help identify victims in any way.” Judge Berman said he found Edwards’ letter “very compelling,” and denied the DOJ’s motion to unseal Grand Jury materials. Such materials would comprise a very small portion of any outstanding “Epstein Files” regardless, but the same anti-transparency logic can, and has, been implored upon federal agencies (like DOJ and FBI) which do retain a large quantity of unreleased “Epstein Files.” So if Edwards gets his way — as he did with the “exceptions” inserted into the Khanna/Massie legislation — there will never be a comprehensive disclosure of “Epstein Files.” Womp womp.
And it was Edwards who advised Massie and Khanna on crafting the language of their “Epstein Files” legislation. Which, let’s remember, does not provide for the full disclosure of “Epstein Files.” In fact, it expressly does the opposite. It carves out massive exceptions that allow the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to continue concealing a huge cross-section of records in perpetuity, if she can claim the records somehow impinge on the “privacy” of purported victims (including Virginia Roberts Giuffre) — or if they somehow run afoul of US “national defense or foreign policy,” whatever the heck that means.
At the first Epstein Press Conference at the Capitol in September, I asked Massie why this strange “national defense” exception was included in his legislation. “You have to put that in there if you’re going to get them to sign it,” he said, meaning the Discharge Petition which eventually did receive the requisite 218 signatures last week. “It’s not something I would sit and say, let’s put that in there. It’s something that, when you run the bill past other colleagues and say, ‘Can you sign this? In fact, can you get every Democrat to sign it?’ It’s one of the things that was felt was necessary to put in there.”
OK. But if the provision was really deemed necessary for him to “put in there,” then at least he and his colleagues shouldn’t be running around acting like their legislation is somehow going to fully liberate all the outstanding “Epstein Files.” Because that’s not what it does. In fact, it provides a ready-made excuse for the government to continue concealing a huge range of files in perpetuity, including any files which may bear on whatever connections Epstein may or may not have had with intelligence agencies — the thing people on the internet seem to be the most intensely invested in.
Which leads me to what many commenters have been demanding I address: a recent series of articles by “Drop Site News” purporting to expose Jeffrey Epstein’s connections with Israeli intelligence. I’m putting that below for subscribers only: