January 31, 2026 - 7:30pm
The prophecy has been fulfilled. Now that Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has dropped three million new documents in compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, it’s clear that the compelled release is exposing even more embarrassing secrets of the world’s most powerful people. In the latest blast radius are names like Elon Musk and Howard Lutnick. Familiar characters in L’Affaire Epstein are present too: Bill Gates, Ehud Barak, Donald Trump, and the former Prince Andrew.
Rep. Ro Khanna, a champion of the Epstein bill, described the significance this way on X: “I am absolutely sickened by the many rich, powerful & famous men whose names are being outed in these files as having gone to Epstein’s island. [Rep. Thomas Massie] & I always said this would be a moral reckoning for our nation. Looks like that reckoning begins today.”
Why today? The public has been stuck in this cycle for years, demanding disclosure, getting glimpses, then searching for more. Surely this tranche of three million documents, likely to be the last big drop, will not contain answers to all the burning questions about Jeffrey Epstein. The bill to which it’s responsive allows redactions for “narrowly tailored and temporary” information that could jeopardise active federal investigations or ongoing prosecutions and national defence. Millions of documents in the DOJ’s possession remain unreleased. It would be foolish to assume the administration hasn’t taken advantage of those carve-outs.
Even so, we’re already learning a lot. Musk seems to have lied about his refusal to visit Epstein’s infamous island, appearing instead to try to attend the island’s “wildest party”. Barack Obama’s White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler seems to have been caught in a lie about whether Epstein “compensated” her, having apparently been lavished with gifts by the financier. Epstein drafted an email to Bill Gates that implied he helped supply the Microsoft founder with women and then medication to conceal the dalliances from his wife. (Gates denies this.) Howard Lutnick fudged the timeline of his severed ties, visiting Epstein’s island as late as 2012 — after his felony conviction — rather than 2005, as the secretary previously said.
The president himself, as expected, is the subject of many files. According to a New York Times analysis, the latest drop “appeared to contain at least 4,500 documents that mentioned Mr. Trump”, including unvetted tips and news articles. All the usual suspects, literally, are in the new documents, perhaps blunting the shock factor for those who’ve been through these stages of denial many times previously.
Trump hemmed and hawed over the bill after Democrats, fuelled especially by the “birthday book”, clearly started to fixate on the scandal for partisan reasons, having long seen it as a fringe MAGA obsession. All evidence of wrongdoing on his behalf will, of course, be treated as the lede of new reports given that Trump is the sitting president. On the other hand, that may be what saves him from any devastating blows that emerge. Short of a smoking gun related to grave sex crimes, Trump has always been correct that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and retain the support of his base.
The Epstein files prove why: Trump has always benefitted from voters’ lesser-of-two-evils dilemma. Institutional trust has plummeted. The political system is perceived as categorically corrupt. Trump is seen by many as either a) a whistleblower from inside the system who knows where the bodies are buried, so to speak or b) corrupt but not as corrupt or dangerous as the establishment Democrats and Republicans who oppose him.
This is why he’s in less trouble than Democrats and the chattering class want to believe. Again, short of a new smoking gun that exposes direct involvement in some serious sex crime, revelations about Trump and his allies will emerge amid a flood of revelations about his enemies: the Clintons, Gates, Ruemmler. And unlike most, he’s never pretended to be a Boy Scout.
We will be better informed as these files are sorted. But through this scandal and others, the public is no longer under the illusion that global elites are good-faith operators. The trust has already been broken. These documents will emphasise this but nobody will emerge with the moral high ground.
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