What to expect from the Jeffrey Epstein files? – The Latest

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0:30Chomsky on their Epstein bingo card. This is a muddy and confusing story. As the deadline for the release of the Epstein files gets closer, here's what you need to know before the full files come out. From the Guardians today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hough. I'm joined by Jonathan Friedland, who is a Guardian columnist and host of our sister podcast, Politics Weekly America. Thanks for being with us, Johnny. Johnny, it's a long-awaited moment, isn't it? The deadline for the full Epstein files to be released is midnight US time tonight. We're expecting to be given tranches of unclassified, some redacted documents.

1:10But from your reading, what can we expect to receive later? I think we can expect to receive lots and lots of documents and pages of paper. But whether they are revealing or not, I'm a bit more wary. partly for the reason you touched on, which is redacted. Redactions are the key here. We're told that there is this scramble of officials in the Department of Justice going through, striking out those lines, which could be tremendously revealing, but which are covered by various exemptions. And so I think the expectations should be managed accordingly. But it is a big moment, isn't it? Because Trump spent the 2024 election campaign promising that he would release these files in full.

1:55But he and senior Republicans have spent the last few months very much trying to manoeuvre themselves out of this. Just remind us why the Trump administration is obligated now to release these documents. Well, it's because after a very long battle, I mean, this has gone on in some ways 300 days. It goes back to February when the promises were first made, they would come, these documents. Then they began to drag their feet. Trump himself started saying, no one needs to see this. There's nothing to see here. It's a Democrat hoax, he said. And for a long while, his congressional allies, Republicans in Congress, backed that and said that they weren't going to release them.

2:34It came to a head with a vote last month when finally the dam broke and Republicans said, we are going to join with Democrats in demanding all of them get released. And there was an extraordinary release from the House Oversight committee, Democrats in the House Oversight Committee at that time, the first in a kind of drip drip of documents that mentioned Trump, perhaps in a way that he could slightly get away with. It was nothing we didn't already know, but it increases political pressure and the mounting questions for Trump about his relationship and ties with Epstein, didn't they? It does. I mean, indeed, every time there are either photographs just putting him next to Jeffrey Epstein, or there are documents in which Epstein refers to Trump as if they are pals.

3:23Even just going back to that note in the birthday book, you know, the drawing, the sort of graphic drawing of a woman's body, apparently by Donald Trump, it just makes him an intimate of this person who is a hate figure nationally, globally, but particularly among the Donald Trump's own Republican MAGA base. That alone, even if it isn't evidence of criminal activity, just the proximity, just the intimacy between the two men is bad news for Donald Trump and has been throughout. And Parley explains why it has been like pulling teeth to get him to agree to these documents being released. Yeah, and we'll come on to the response within the Republican Party and how they're being braced to deal with this once the documents do land.

4:08But we did have a big tranche of 68 photos released by the same Democrats in the Oversight Committee last night. 68 new photos that are, I think it's fair to say, disturbing, but they don't give us much context. But in them, there is a series of very well-known, influential, powerful people, aren't there? Bill Gates, Noam Chomsky, Steve Bannon. So not just questions for Trump, but questions for other very powerful people in the United States and overseas as well. Yeah, I don't think anybody had Noam Chomsky on their Epstein bingo card. I mean, so far, the impression has been that these are people from the sort, and this is certainly what the people who are most fixed on this issue like to say, that these are people from the plutocratic global financial elite.

4:57but Noam Chomsky you know a hero to far left and progressive activists around the world I think it just shows that they you know this is a muddy and confusing story that Epstein was really dazzled by not just financial firepower but intellectual firepower liked to surround himself with scholars and how many men were happy to be in the orbit of Jeffrey Epstein and And, you know, as I say, Chomsky is an unexpected name to be there. It will be awkward for him, given the universe he inhabits. But it's been awkward for everyone who's been linked to this man. And just to be clear that being named in files or photographed with Epstein is not in itself any evidence of wrongdoing.

5:42And those who are named or photographed strongly deny that. We should also say that Donald Trump denies that he was the author of that crude drawing that you mentioned earlier. But as you outlined earlier, this has been a real sort of hot button issue for Trump's MAGA base, hasn't it? It's been one of the few areas where he's received real pushback from people who are ordinarily deeply loyal to him and unquestioning of him. He's had criticism from people like his close former ally, Marjorie Taylor Greene, all of which is to say the response of the Republican Party moving through this is going to be challenging, isn't it?

6:19And I understand that Republicans are being coached on the lines to respond. What do we know about that strategy? I mean, it is turmoil for Republicans. And Marjorie Taylor Greene is one of the people warning that this could really hurt them in midterm elections in 2026, even the presidential election of 2028. It's because, you know, Donald Trump famously said, I could shoot people on Fifth Avenue and my voters, my supporters wouldn't mind. And I think he was right about that. The exception is allegations of child abuse. They belong in a different category. Now, I'm not making a moral point about which is worse than murder.

6:55I'm making a point about the MAGA base are animated, and you go back to the QAnon conspiracy theory, by the idea that there is a secretive elite engaged in abuse of minors. And so anything which takes their hero, who they thought was going to be the slayer of the deep state cabals, into that world, it leaves their heads spinning. They don't know what to make of it. It is, I think, as you said, the first issue where the MAGA base are in a different place from Donald Trump in the first really substantive sustained issue. They've had grumbles about foreign policy, but this goes to the heart of what makes the MAGA.

7:35And so it's huge discomfort. And therefore, Republicans who are normally very happy to brazen out controversy and just say, this is just liberal whining. On this one, they're going to have to be very sensitive and tread very carefully to somehow distance themselves from it while admitting that the whole thing is terribly serious and grave, which is what MAGA people believe and want to hear. And also being told to hit out the mainstream media and to reiterate this line that this is all a Democrat hoax. But we'll see if that washes. And I mean, you mentioned how much redaction we are expecting. Certainly that's something that Democrats are very worried about.

8:14But that link to QAnon, this sense of information that is being concealed, if these documents are released in heavily redacted form, that is likely to raise more questions than answers, isn't it, even amongst Trump's base? Yeah, I would say especially among Trump's base. This is the nature of these processes. It happened with the Kennedy assassination in 1963. It happened after 9-11. In a way, there is no amount of information that will satisfy those who believe that there is a bigger, deeper, darker story being held back from them. In this case, the fact that some documents will be held back, they'll be deemed classified, and that within the ones that are released, there'll be lines struck out, that will absolutely be fuel to the conspiracy theorist's fire because they will say somebody is hiding something.

9:04Now, in this case, there are some, as it were, legally legitimate exemptions. You know, nothing can be released that interferes with ongoing prosecutions. Their images of child abuse will not be published. There are those grounds for exemption, but that will not placate those who will continue to demand knowing the full story. And they'll continue saying that, I would say, you know, forever, because nothing can satisfy that urge once it's there. And we've seen that with those other examples. Well so if the Trump administration were hoping this would be wrapped up and done it sounds like that's far from being true.

9:41Johnny thank you and thank you for being our last guest of The Latest before we take a Christmas break. Wishing you and our listeners a very happy Christmas. Thank you.

9:52That's it for today. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest the new evening edition of Today in Focus. We'll be taking a Christmas break and we'll be back with you in early January. Today in Focus, we'll be back with you on Monday morning as usual, but we are wishing you a very happy Christmas and we'll see you in the new year. This episode was presented by me, Lucy Hoff, and the producer was Bryony Moore. This is The Guardian.