President Donald Trump continues to deliver on campaign promises and to surmount obstacles thrown before him by radical Democrats and activist judges. His accomplishments in recent weeks, however, while impactful, have been overshadowed by his Justice Department’s conclusion that child sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein did not have a client list that could implicate deep-pocketed elites.
Amid mounting criticism over the lack of substantial insights from the DOJ, Turning Point USA founder and President Charlie Kirk — whom Trump reportedly called on Saturday to express support for Attorney General Pam Bondi — noted on his show Monday, “I’m going to trust my friends in the government to do what needs to be done, solve it; ball’s in their hands.”
‘Anything that’s credible, I would say, let them have it.’
Kirk subsequently outlined “10 immediate credible action items” Bondi could take that might satisfy Americans’ hunger for answers and help the president move on to other matters with the reinvigorated support of his base.
Backlash, persistent curiosity
The backlash over the DOJ’s conclusion was particularly severe in part because of Trump’s campaign promise that he would “be inclined” to release Epstein’s list of clients, saying, “I’d have no problem with it.”
It certainly did not help that after telling cable news on Feb. 21 that the Epstein client list was “sitting on [her] desk right now,” Bondi handed out to Trump-supporting podcasters binders titled “Epstein Files: Phase 1,” loaded with publicly available information and documents devoid of significant revelations. She then failed to deliver the promised second phase of possibly substantial documents.
It also didn’t help that the FBI’s Epstein prison video is reportedly missing nearly three minutes of footage from one of two stitched-together clips.
Trump appears keen for the scandal “over a guy who never dies” to blow over.
“Why are we giving publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration, who conned the World with the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, 51 ‘Intelligence’ Agents, ‘THE LAPTOP FROM HELL,’ and more?” Trump noted in a Truth Social post on Saturday. “They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called ‘friends’ are playing right into their hands.”
RELATED: The White House will need to do plenty more to get past Epstein
Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Recent polling indicates that public interest in the alleged Epstein list isn’t going anywhere.
A Rasmussen Reports poll revealed on Tuesday that only 21% of likely U.S. voters believe the FBI and the DOJ are telling the truth about Epstein; 56% don’t think they’re telling the truth; and 23% aren’t sure. Sixty-eight percent of Democrats, 66% of Republicans, and 69% of unaffiliated voters reject the idea that the Epstein case is closed “and instead believe that there are dozens of powerful and wealthy offenders who need to face justice,” reported Rasmussen.
10 action items
“I don’t understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews on Tuesday.
“I think really only pretty bad people, including fake news, want to keep something like that going. But credible information? Let them give it. Anything that’s credible, I would say, let them have it.”
Responding to Trump’s remarks, Charlie Kirk identified 10 immediate action items that could result in the production of “credible” information for the American public. Here are the 10 items in his list, summarized.
- Release the DOJ’s 2020 Office of Professional Responsibility report that evaluated Epstein’s 2008 plea deal.
- Unseal all of Ghislaine Maxwell’s grand jury testimony.
- Press Alexander Acosta about what he knew about Epstein working for foreign intelligence. Acosta was the secretary of labor during Trump’s first term and oversaw Epstein’s 2008 plea agreement.
- Release underlying facts concerning Epstein’s indictment in 2019, except child sexual abuse material.
- Release a full report concerning the “butchered” Bush-era federal investigation into Epstein.
- “Green-light Maxwell to speak freely and learn what she knows.”
- Establish how exactly Epstein made his money and source relevant “bank records and financial statements.”
- Overrule privacy rules and release the names of prisoners on the floor of the Metropolitan Correctional Center on the night Epstein died.
- “Get the missing minutes of the prison footage.”
- Hold a press conference as soon as possible to remedy any remaining confusion.
Action items one and three are related, as they both center largely on the insights of Acosta, who, while serving as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, approved the plea deal that enabled Epstein to plead guilty to a single charge of solicitation in exchange for a non-prosecution agreement — what the Miami Herald called the “deal of a lifetime.”
‘He’d cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had “been told” to back off.’
The deal that Acosta arranged reportedly scuttled the federal probe into a possible international sex-trafficking operation and prevented both the victims and the judge from knowing how many girls Epstein may have sexually abused between 2001 and 2005.
RELATED: Why MAGA wants the Epstein list — and won’t settle for less
Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
Bradley Edwards, a former state prosecutor who represented some of Epstein’s victims, told the Miami Herald, “How in the world do you, the U.S. attorney, engage in a negotiation with a criminal defendant, basically allowing that criminal defendant to write up the agreement?”
Mike Benz, the founder of the Foundation for Freedom Online, recently told Kirk, “In the process of that [DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility] investigation, they interviewed everyone at Justice who was involved in that 2008 plea deal and sought to put the story to bed by collecting transcribed interviews, audio, and basically reams of files.”
Benz indicated that the OPR report referred to an interview with Acosta in which he apparently discussed Epstein’s intelligence ties.
The Daily Beast reported in 2019 that when being interviewed for the job of labor secretary in the first Trump administration, Acosta was allegedly asked whether the Epstein case was going to cause a problem for his confirmation hearings.
RELATED: The Epstein files may be Trump’s biggest liability yet
Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell (Photo by Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
According to the Daily Beast, “Acosta had explained, breezily, apparently, that back in the day he’d had just one meeting on the Epstein case. He’d cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had ‘been told’ to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade.”
Acosta allegedly told his interviewers, “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.”
‘No one from the government has ever asked her to share what she knows.’
While evidence of an intelligence link might not get the American public any closer to a client list, it could help explain why such a list may have been developed over time and was then suppressed.
As for action item six, Maxwell — whose father the Telegraph indicated was a newspaper baron who had “known links with MI6, the KGB, and the Israeli intelligence service Mossad” — might be able to shed some light on the operations she ran with her former lover and boss.
Maxwell was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in prison for her role in a scheme to sexually exploit and abuse minor girls as young as 14 with Epstein, going all the way back to the early 1990s.
A source close to Maxwell recently told the Daily Mail that the convicted groomer “would be more than happy to sit before Congress and tell her story.”
“No one from the government has ever asked her to share what she knows,” said the unnamed source. “She remains the only person to be jailed in connection to Epstein, and she would welcome the chance to tell the American public the truth.”
When asked about Maxwell possibly testifying, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters, “I’m for transparency. We’re intellectually consistent in this,” reported CBS News.
The steps outlined by Kirk might help Bondi satisfy the American people’s desire for truth about the “guy who never dies” and possibly also his clients.
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