Donald Trump’s Epstein U-turn

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:08Today, why Jeffrey Epstein is the one scandal Donald Trump just can't seem to escape.

0:22There is so much dirt on Donald Trump that has failed to trouble his most ardent supporters. The first former president to be convicted in a criminal trial. The dodgy business deals, the 34 felonies, the history of appalling behaviour towards women. You can do anything. Whatever you want. Grab them by the b***h. But there is one scandal that Trump just can't shake. Ever since returning to the White House, Trump has been dismissing calls to release a huge cache of emails and documents that have come to be known as the Epstein files. It's all been a big hoax. It's perpetrated by the Democrats. And some stupid Republicans and foolish Republicans fall into the net.

1:03Epstein, he wrote in July, is a guy who never dies. The files are a hoax. Let's not waste time and energy on him, he said, urging his supporters to instead celebrate what he called his perfect administration. Normally, Trump's MAGA base will do whatever they're told. But not this time.

1:28It's important that the entire Epstein network be fully exposed. And when I mean fully exposed, I'm talking about everyone. This is information that has needed to come out for a very long time. And the American people have demanded it. There are real victims to this criminal enterprise. And the perpetrators are being protected because they're rich and powerful and political donors to the establishment here in Washington, D.C. After selected files leaked out last week, increasing speculation about Trump's relationship with Epstein, both Republicans and Democrats called for the full files to be released.

2:09And if President Trump says there's nothing there that he's concerned about, then why doesn't he support release of the documents? But Trump said no. And then on Sunday, facing a major revolt within his party, he suddenly changed his mind. President Trump has called on House Republicans to vote for the release of government files relating to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It comes ahead of tomorrow's expected vote in the House on a bill that could force the release of all of the Justice Department's files on Epstein.

2:46release the files he wrote on truth social we have nothing to hide it was an about turn few saw coming and one which poses a big question from the guardian i'm helen pitt today in focus why has donald trump caved on the release of the epstein files

3:08Jonathan Friedland, welcome back to Today in Focus. You're the presenter of our sister podcast, Politics Weekly America. So it's a rare treat to have you here in the studio for us today. So thank you. Good to be with you. Tell me, were you surprised on Sunday night, or maybe it was Monday morning by the time you heard, that Trump had suddenly changed tack and decided to hell with it, released the Epstein files? I was because, and I, by the way, still think that he is pretty terrified by the prospect of all, crucial word, the Epstein files. I don't understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody.

3:44It's pretty boring stuff. It's sorted, but it's boring. And I don't understand why it keeps going. And so it was a complete reverse. And even until the very last minute, all the indications were in the other direction. We know he was working the phones. He was really squeezing and pressuring Republicans in the House of Representatives to vote the other way, to vote to keep these under wraps, these documents. In fact, even bringing recalcitrant or, as he would say, hostile Republican members of Congress to the White House Situation Room, where they would face the attorney general and the head of the FBI.

4:21eye. He was really putting the squeeze on them. I think what happened is he saw that the votes were just not going to go his way. And then rather than being a loser, who's been forced to do it, better to get out in front politically and say, yeah, this is they're just doing what I asked them to do. Yeah. And this came after a drip, drip, drip of information from the files over the summer, most famously, the birthday book, Epstein's birthday book, and this drawing of a naked woman that Trump absolutely denies having drawn for Epstein, which carried the message, a pal is a wonderful thing. Happy birthday.

4:56May every day be another wonderful secret. But it all really gathered steam just last week on Wednesday when the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released three email exchanges between Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, who is his one-time girlfriend turned pimp, who's currently serving a 20-year jail sentence for child sex trafficking. And as the week went on, it became clear, didn't it, that there was going to be a vote in the House of Representatives on releasing the full cash. But what did those first three emails say? Well, they're interesting, because they were obviously selectively quoting.

5:31That already enables Republicans who responded by releasing 20 ,000 emails to say, well, you've just cherry picked. These emails released by the Democrats, you know, selectively released, They're from more than a decade ago. And over the course of the emails within them, there are these different statements which really do leap out at you. One of them is from Jeffrey Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell, in which he says, you know, the dog that hasn't barked here is Donald Trump. As if how come there isn't more media attention on Donald Trump? That, of course, gets everyone else's attention now because you think, well, what did happen?

6:09Then there's this other note from Epstein in which he says Donald Trump knew what was going on here, knew about the girls, I think is how he puts it. Again, Republicans have a response there, which is, you know, I think he then goes on to say that he had told Ghislaine to stop. Trump told Ghislaine to stop. That Trump had told Ghislaine to stop. Exactly. Now that again, if you're a Trump defender, you can say, firstly, well, this is only Epstein claiming that Trump knew more than he's been letting on. Would you really trust the word of a predator and pedophile? and second it's they could again say it's exculpatory for Donald Trump because it says he knew and in some way tried to stop it that goes to another narrative which the right have been trying to push for some time which is Donald Trump as hero in the Epstein story yes he knew him but as soon as he knew what was going on he was the sort of avenging angel for these abused women and girls.

7:18Obviously, Donald Trump denies any wrongdoing related to any of this. There has to be an explanation for why he has fought so hard. Some, I notice, have been saying in the last 12 or 24 hours, look, no one, the whole thing is so grubby and so sordid. It's embarrassing to, for any document to come out that shows they were friends. And that's all that the president has been trying to stop. I mean, he better hope now that that is the worst there is. But it doesn't fully explain why he'd go to such lengths to keep all this stuff out because we've known they were friends and that's incontrovertible because there's photographs of them together.

7:55Yeah, there's video of them together having a laugh, Trump whispering something into Epstein's ear, Epstein finding it funny. And so the Democrats released these three emails about the relationship between Trump and Epstein, which I mean, there was no smoking gun in those emails. And then, as you've already said, the Republicans respond by dumping essentially a massive cache of documents from the Epstein files, more than 20 ,000 documents. And I don't know how many of them you've read, but I find it quite astonishing reading through them. Just how many friendships in high places Epstein retained even after being convicted or at least charged with child sex offences.

8:36Yeah, it's extraordinary. And because there are emails in there from 2019, which is the year that Jeffrey Epstein took his own life in jail. And people were corresponding him then and and appearing to correspond with him supportively. So there are many, many people embarrassed by this. Who chiefly do you think cheeks are red or worse? I think Larry Summers, the former Treasury Secretary, former president of Harvard, it's mortifying, it should be, for him that he was so close to Jeffrey Epstein. Even the content, I mean, you have to have sort of anti-nausea tablets before you immerse yourself too deeply in this.

9:15But there's an exchange between Summers and Epstein where Summers is talking about almost as if asking for advice on, I hesitate to use the word romantic approach that Summers wants to make. He was basically asking for dating advice from a guy who at this point, it was 2019, had already been convicted and served prison time for procuring a child for prostitution. What it confirms, this, is what the people who have been most animated by the Epstein saga from the beginning have been saying, which is it will reveal that there really is a common thread that runs through these establishment people of great power that they were close to and complicit in Epstein's world.

10:04and that this does go very, very high up. It goes to an interesting aspect of Epstein, which is that he, yes, cultivated politicians, yes, cultivated people with serious money. He had some very strange interest in academics, scientists, quite nerdy professor types who are also part of this. There's emails in the cache also from Steve Bannon, Trump's advisor. He doesn't come out brilliantly from that. What did you make of the Bannon emails? Yeah, I mean, that's the extent to which this is bipartisan. This is, you know, it's... Because Larry Summers is a Democrat, right? Larry Summers is a Democrat, served in Democratic administrations.

10:44With Steve Bannon, in their correspondence, it's so strange because Bannon is talking with Epstein about this upcoming tour of Europe that Bannon is planning. Worth remembering, at the time, 2018, Bannon had been the chief strategist for the White House. He was very ambitious to build a sort of nationalist, populist movement internationally. And there's Epstein acting as a kind of political conciliary, advising him, saying who he could meet, introductions he could make. It just shows you Epstein stayed relevant to these people, even if it wasn't just trips to his private island and the nefarious things that happened there.

11:23He was just somebody who had currency with these people. And nothing about the fact that at this point he was a convicted sexual offender, an abuser, warded these people away. And this was just months before he would be jailed and kill himself in jail. People like Bannon, powerful people, were happy to be in touch with him.

11:56Just to get back to the timeline of the past week, 20 ,000 emails was not enough to satisfy many people, not just in the Democratic Party, but also among Republicans. And there were a few prominent Republicans, weren't there, who were insisting that the whole dossier is published once and for all. Who stood out for you on the Republican side arguing for this? Well, leading the charge was this rebel congressman from Kentucky, Thomas Massey, who has just made that sort of break from Trump. And once you've done it, then you become a sort of serial rebel. Then there is this really interesting group of other Republicans who were some of the most MAGA Republicans of the lot.

12:39So Lauren Boebert, who is deeply MAGA. and then the most sort of well-known of all of them is Marjorie Taylor Greene, the congresswoman from Georgia. You know, the word Trump runs through her like a stick of rock. She was the ultimate MAGA congresswoman, now has become a rebel. She's earned his ire. And I don't believe that rich, powerful people should be protected if they have done anything wrong. And so I'm standing with the women And I will continue to do my small part to get the files released. Why is it these people who were leading for the release? I think it's because they're so MAGA. It's because they're so close to the MAGA base.

13:21A point I made writing at the weekend was this is an absolutely cardinal issue for the MAGA base. One of the reasons they were drawn to Donald Trump in the first place was this notion perpetuated most luridly by the QAnon conspiracy. Yeah, which Taylor Greene was absolutely signed up to. Signed up to. It was this idea that there is a deep state cabal of sexual abusers who are protected by the system. And it will take Donald Trump, this sort of caped crusader warrior for truth. This is how they saw it. To finally take on the paedophile secret conspiracy. For that part of the base, the really hardcore MAGA base, this issue is almost bigger than Donald Trump.

14:05And so I think a Lauren Boebert or a Marjorie Taylor Greene were hearing them. I think what is enraging people right now is it's insulting our intelligence. Like, obviously, the intelligence community is trying to cover it up. Obviously, the Trump administration is trying to cover up. Something changed because they ran on this idea of exposing it all. And when Donald Trump was dragging his feet about releasing the files, I think those people were saying, look, if it's a choice between loyalty to Donald Trump or full disclosure of the Epstein file, so we can at last bring justice to those poor women and girls, we'll be saying the base, then they would choose full disclosure.

14:43And I think the Lauren Boeberts and Marjorie Taylor Greens of this world heard that and thought they cannot afford to be on the wrong side of that bit of the MAGA base on this issue. And so they broke from Trump, which is an extraordinary thing, because it's a kind of live by the sword, die by the sword thing. It was the MAGA base that put him there. And the one issue that they might turn on Trump, and I think it's the only one. You know, he once famously said, I could shoot people on Fifth Avenue, they'll still vote for me. I think that's true. I think he could. The one thing he couldn't get away with, from their point of view, is being in cahoots with this deep state paedophile conspiracy as they see it.

15:23And do you think Trump was shocked when the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene came out and said, she said, releasing the Epstein files is the easiest thing in the world. Just release it all. Let the American people sort through every bit of it and, you know, support the victims. It's just like common sense. Yeah, I think he would have been shocked when it first happened. I mean, with Marjorie Taylor Greene, this drift away from Trump has now been happening for a while. But some of the others, I think, will have shocked him. He will know these people are weather vanes. They were only changing because the wind was now blowing in a different direction and the um they were reacting to this this shift in the base so i think you the fact that he was fighting it right until late on sunday answers your question about how surprised i think even as as late as thursday friday saturday when he was still pressuring them he hadn't read the maga room properly because he hadn't realized that when it came to this they were not going to just fall in line and salute as they normally do and he He rolled out his usual playbook, didn't he?

16:23He called Marjorie Taylor Greene a traitor. I think she said at the weekend she'd started to receive credible death threats, also like a weird campaign of people ordering pizza to her house and her family members' houses. And she was sort of, she went on the news to say, this is endangering my life. Yeah. I mean, she is getting a taste of MAGA medicine here. The most hurtful thing he said, which is absolutely untrue, is he called me a traitor. And that is that is so extremely wrong. And those are the types of words used that can radicalize people against me and put my life in danger. I mean, this thing of the pizza delivery is very chilling.

17:03And it happened very early in the Trump second administration to judges, judges who had given rulings on all these multiple cases where he has been reversed in the courts. judges would suddenly find a pizza being delivered. It's a thing in organized crime. It's a sort of mafia thing, which is when a pizza arrives that you didn't order, it's a way of saying we know where you live, which is very chilling for a federal judge and now Marjorie Taylor Greene. Her life could be a danger because of the rhetoric? Her life is in danger? Who's that? Marjorie Taylor Greene, she says. Marjorie Trader Greene.

17:40I don't think her life is in danger. I don't think, frankly, I don't think anybody cares about her. She is now in their sights. And what will be interesting is where does MAGA World land? You know, it's obviously going to split. Some will side with her. But how many side with Donald Trump when the issue is transparency over Epstein? That's a fault line in MAGA World.

18:05Coming up, has Trump's about turn solved his Epstein problem?

18:22Has Trump neutralised the issue now, do you think, by saying, fine, I've got nothing to hide, release the documents? Not completely. I think all he's done is he's bought himself some time. Because for now, the official version will be, look, he's saying release everything. And he'll want his supporters to think that. And I guess the clock was ticking, wasn't it? Because there was going to be this vote. Yes, there was a vote scheduled this week. The Republican speaker in the House, Mike Johnson, had conceded that there were he could no longer hold this tide back, that there were enough Republican rebels to reach the magic number of 218.

18:58He's been holding back this tide as much as he can. And you can imagine the call when he phoned Donald Trump said, Mr. President, I can keep it back no longer. You're either going to lose or you have to change sides. No, the reason why I think it buys him time is for now he gets the headlines he wants, which is full disclosure. Trump has changed sides. He's going to do it. Devil will be in the detail. Let's see. Is the motion that passes or the one that he signs, will it allow some exemptions? The minute you see the exemptions will be allowed, you know he can cherry pick out anything that names him or damages him.

19:33And then there's also another battle to come in the Senate. does he think okay I've lost the House but I have the Senate I will quietly tell them I know I encourage the House to vote for this but that was just tactical for appearances sake I now want you to block this in the Senate maybe that becomes a battle but the main thing I would watch is the the exemptions the the the redactions the documents that he does not disclose how much leeway does he give himself there and you might think gosh there's already more than 20 ,000 documents out there. What is missing? I mean, is it the Epstein client list that Trump's Attorney General, Pam Bondi, claimed was on her desk in February, ready to release at a moment's notice?

20:13Is it witness statements? What else is left out there? Well, I mean, you know, you hear all kinds of rumours, which because we know how litigious the president is, I'm certainly not going to voice uh here um is it just low-level embarrassment that um it will be there'll be further and further proof on a par with that birthday note you know with the drawing that confirms that these weren't just he didn't just remotely know him one of donald trump's favorite techniques is i hardly know the guy he says about people he knew very well just proves he was right in there, number of visits, degree of contact.

20:53As you mentioned, there's the video that shows them together. Is there more of that? One document showed Jeffrey Epstein recalling that Donald Trump had joined him when there was some gathering of, I think, a pool party. Lots of young women there. Donald Trump was staring so fixedly on the women there that he walked into a glass door and damaged his nose. Cartoonish, isn't it? Yeah. Cartoonish, but, you know, something which shows him as a sort of lech, but hanging out with this utterly disgraced figure. The closer that he is tied by more and more documents, the harder it becomes for him to claim the kind of distance that many in his base have told themselves must have existed between these two men.

21:43And you've said, watch out for the exemptions. And it sort of seems to me that whatever is released, there's going to be an air of suspicion around, like, is this really it? What has Trump managed to suppress? Because as you say, up until now, this has been the one issue, all of the things that Trump has done. This has been the one issue that he's failed to squash, like his Achilles heel. Do you think there is any way in which he can put the Epstein problem to bed once and for all. Well, I think people will have persuaded him that full disclosure will do it, but I don't think he'll ever allow full, full disclosure.

22:15And so as long as there is the belief among those people who really were most exercised by this issue, that there might be more out there, it's not put to rest. And I think about, you know, how many years we are after the Kennedy assassination, you know, well over 60. and it doesn't matter how much you release. Once people have got themselves into a conspiracy mindset, they think either there's more that they're not telling us or they think there's things in these documents that they will put a different gloss on. So I think these things will go on and I can see why they do because Donald Trump, this man who was outside this alleged deep state sordid ring of child abusers and the evidence so far suggests he was close to the man at the centre of it.

23:09Jonathan Freeland, thank you very much. Thank you.

23:15We should, of course, repeat that Donald Trump denies any wrongdoing. That was Jonny Freeland and you can listen to him on Politics Weekly America every Friday. Before we go, two quick things. One, if you enjoyed our episode yesterday on how the Labour Party is copying Denmark's hardline take on immigration, then you might appreciate this week's edition of Politics Weekly Westminster with Pippa Creera and Kieran Stacey, who are looking at exactly what the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has in mind. And the second thing, from behalf of all of us on the show, I just wanted to send huge congratulations to Malik Tantesh, The Guardian's fearless former Gaza correspondent.

23:53She recorded a heartbreaking episode with us recently about fleeing from her home in Gaza City. Anyway, she won a major prize last week, being named Young Journalist of the Year at this year's Media Freedom Awards. Well done, Malik. And that is all for today. This episode was produced by Ruth Abrahams, Alex Atak and Charlie West and was presented by me, Helen Pidd. Sound design was by Rudy Zagadlow and the executive producer was Sammy Kent. We'll be back tomorrow.