The Trump administration estimates it has about one week to go — and as many as 700,000 more pages to review — before it finishes releasing all the Jeffrey Epstein files.
- Meanwhile, they'll lose the PR war, day after day.
Why it matters: No other controversy has sandbagged President Trump and his administration like the Epstein files, the subject of a rare revolt by congressional Republicans and endless guilt-by-association news stories and social media commentary.
- Trump and the Justice Department also have compounded their problems with clumsy messaging and puzzling redactions made while pledging transparency.
- The White House has begun managing the DOJ's account on X, an effort to finish out the year and the Epstein file disclosure requirements set by Congress.
- The account is also taking on a sharper tone that has more of a rapid-response campaign edge and less of the stodgy just-the-facts tone associated with the department.
Driving the news: Tuesday's release of about 30,000 new investigative records highlighted the administration's predicament in mass-disclosing information. Numerous documents mentioned Trump and Epstein, but some of the headline-grabbing records are of questionable veracity.
- A 2020 FBI tip from a caller relaying a conversation with a limo driver who claimed he drove Trump 25 years before and overheard him talking about "abusing some girl" to a "Jeffrey." The caller also ranted about an Oklahoma City Bombing conspiracy theory.
- An alleged 2019 jailhouse letter from Epstein to convicted sex offender Larry Nassar implicating "our president" in liking "nubile" girls.
- But the letter was post-dated after Epstein's death and was processed by a Virginia mail room that didn't handle letters from Epstein's New York jail.
Hours after the release, DOJ said on X that the FBI believed the letter is fake, triggering a flood of online criticism from skeptics accusing the department of intentionally posting disinformation.
- DOJ warned Tuesday morning on X that some of the records might be politically motivated and "untrue and sensationalist," but it was releasing the records "out of a commitment to transparency."
- That last comment was slapped with a community note because so many critics pointed out DOJ missed the Dec. 19 deadline to release all the records under the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed by Congress and signed by Trump 30 days before.
The intrigue: Late Monday night, DOJ experienced another problem when someone found a backdoor way into its website's "staging area" for documents before they're ready to go live, an official said.
- That resulted in the records being released early, before the administration was ready, leading the department to remove the documents briefly from online, leading to accusations of a coverup.
- In another instance, a sharp-eyed reporter noticed that a 2008 email had redactions that weren't justifiable. But officials say the email wasn't redacted by the administration. They say the email was redacted by a lawyer in a 2010 civil case and was then included later in the Epstein files.
Behind the scenes: There's a palpable sense of exasperation and annoyance in the administration about all of the headlines pertaining to Trump and Epstein and the inability to explain everything and just get the disclosure done.
- "It's a combination of extreme frustration at everything: at what Congress did, at our response to it, and a concern that it won't go away," an official said.
- "There's also a little bit of indignation at the media — that this wasn't even a story for years and years. And now, not only is it a story, but the top of many news pages on a given day."
The big picture: After a decade of news coverage, scores of lawsuits, criminal investigations, investigative reports in the mainstream media and tens of thousands of documents released by DOJ and Epstein's estate, there is still no credible evidence showing Trump had sex with a minor or participated in sex trafficking with Epstein.
- Trump was accused by a woman in one 2016 Epstein case of sexually abusing her when she was a 13 years old. But the case was dropped.
- In 2024, a former model accused Trump of groping her decades before, when she was dating Epstein as an adult.
- The limo driver's claim that surfaced Tuesday is the newest Epstein-related accusation to be made public.
Reality check: Other Epstein-related cases and accusations could exist in the thousands of Epstein files that have yet to be made public — or in civil cases that were never made public.
- Trump, who was found liable of sex abuse and defamation in an unrelated case, has denied all accusations against him.
- Trump had been an Epstein friend, but they had a falling out decades ago, before the financier was busted for sexually abusing minors.
- Trump incorrectly said last year he had never flown on Epstein's plane. The new records show he did eight times (more than previously thought), but there's no evidence he committed or witnessed any crime.
Zoom in: Two major documents — a draft 60-count federal indictment of Epstein that was inexplicably quashed and an 82-page prosecution memo from 2007 — are expected to be released after broad bipartisan pressure.
- These types of records are never released by DOJ, but the Epstein law essentially requires it.
- "Your promise to prosecute rich & powerful men who were at Epstein's rape island would be more credible if you stop breaking @RepThomasMassie & my law. Release the draft 60 count indictment, 82 page prosecution memo and the FBI files," Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) wrote Sunday on X in a post criticizing Attorney General Pam Bondi.
What's next: So far, about 750,000 records have been reviewed and disclosed by a team of about 200, and about 700,000 more records remain to be examined, another official said.
- Many of those records are duplicates, so 700,000 more individual records will not be disclosed, another official said, but thousands more should be released.
- "This will end soon," another official said. "The conspiracy theories won't."
Go deeper: Here's how the DOJ releases the Epstein files and how others are making them easier to read
