WASHINGTON — Democratic leaders can’t stop talking about releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files — the rare issue that’s driven a wedge between Donald Trump and his MAGA base, and been a nagging nuisance for GOP leaders for weeks.
But while most Democrats think it’s win-win for the party to keep a divisive issue for Republicans at the forefront, not all agree. Some Democrats say the Epstein saga is an unwelcome distraction that’s diverting attention away from Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which they warn will cause millions of Americans to lose healthcare and food assistance.
Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Education and the Workforce Committee, went so far as to suggest Republicans deliberately drummed up the Epstein issue — just as Congress departs for its long, summer recess — to avoid dealing back home with the political fallout from Trump’s unpopular law.
“Republicans took away people’s health care, took away their nutrition benefits to cut taxes for the wealthy and ran up $3 trillion in debt. And so they’re getting people to talk about Epstein so that people won’t find it out. … Any discussion about Epstein diverts attention from what we ought to be talking about,” Scott said in a recent interview.
To the contrary, Republican leadership and Trump himself have been eager to set the Epstein issue aside. But Scott’s theory isn’t entirely off-base, according to one GOP official working on congressional campaigns. Though the Epstein saga is proving all-consuming, it is a welcome distraction — for now — for some Republicans hoping to avoid discussing the megabill’s cuts, the GOP source said.
“We need to get them to release the files so people can stop talking about it and then get back to the message,” said Scott, whose state is home to nearly 1.8 million Medicaid and children’s health program enrollees. “The entire August recess needs to be: They’re taking your health care, whether you’re on Medicaid or not. They’re adversely affecting your health care. They’re taking your nutrition benefits.”
Several other Democrats agreed.
“Clearly it’s a distraction,” Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., told NBC when asked if it was a mistake to put Epstein front and center. “I’m much more concerned about more substantial things like cuts in Medicaid and now coming up in September, not shutting the government down. I mean, there’s so much more, I think, more impactful at this point, for me.”
Asked about Democrats rushing to play up the Epstein matter, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., replied, “What I’m doing in Virginia in August is I’m going to talk about Medicaid and Medicare and SNAP.”
And Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said on Monday: “The most important thing for us to communicate to Americans is that Republicans voted for a bill that is going to close rural hospitals and senior centers. Epstein is also a legitimate concern. But I, overwhelmingly, prioritize the reconciliation bill.”
Most Democrats egg on Epstein feud
The majority of congressional Democrats are relishing the Epstein moment, however. The Republican Party has spent weeks bitterly divided over whether to release the remaining files and records related to the Justice Department’s investigation into Epstein, the financier and convicted sex offender who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Democrats say the issue highlights the GOP’s hypocrisy about transparency in the Epstein matter — Trump and many MAGA figures had called for more disclosure on Epstein during the last campaign but now Trump is failing to deliver on the files. Democrats also have hammered home that Trump socialized with Epstein, though Trump said Monday he ended his friendship with him and threw him out of his private Florida club, Mar-a-Lago, many years ago, after the financier “stole” his workers.
“Jeffrey Epstein was a friend of Donald Trump. Jeffrey Epstein was arrested during the Trump administration. Jeffrey Epstein was detained during the Trump administration. Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide during the Trump administration,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said at a news conference last week.
Speaking to reporters two days later, Jeffries was still talking about Epstein, arguing that Democrats can talk about both Epstein and the negative impacts of what he calls Trump’s “big, ugly bill.” He even suggested the two seemingly disparate issues are related, saying Republicans are protecting the “lifestyles of the rich and shameless, even if that includes pedophiles.”
“The reality is it’s all connected from the standpoint of Donald Trump, his administration and House Republicans,” Jeffries replied when asked if Democrats focusing so much attention on Epstein is taking away from their attacks on the GOP megabill. “Republicans are focused on their billionaire donors. That was the centerpiece of the one big, ugly bill and it’s what explains Republican refusal to release the Epstein files.”
‘We’re winning’
During the House’s final workweek before the five-week August recess, Democrats appeared laser-focused on the Epstein controversy. They forced vote after vote during committee meetings to try to compel the Justice Department to release the Epstein files. Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., was forced to recess the House one day early because of Democrats’ efforts on Epstein.
Meanwhile, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who’s working closely with Republican Rep. Thomas Massie on a discharge petition to force a floor vote on the matter, talked up the Epstein files in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and to a gathering of Democratic mayors in Cleveland on Friday.
“This is effective. We’re fighting,” Khanna said in an interview with NBC News before the Friday event, adding that the issue has yielded more calls and emails to his office than any other in his nine years in Congress.
“And a lot of times, you know, they were like, Democrats are not fighting enough, right? And not standing up enough. This is the first time since, I would say, November, that we’re winning. I mean, we forced the Republican speaker to shut down his own agenda a week early.”
Khanna also drew a comparison to the 2024 election, in which Republicans hammered then-Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democratic candidates on the issues of transgender people participating in sports, as well as their use of preferred pronouns. Trump and others have referred to those as “90-10” issues, meaning that an overwhelming majority of voters are in agreement with Republicans.
“It’s nice to be on the 90-10 side of an issue, as opposed to the other way around, which we were for some of the 2024 campaign,” Khanna told NBC News.
With the Epstein issue, he continued, “we are now on the side of transparency. We’re now on the side of populism. … And it’s hard to say we’re partisan, because you could just cite Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon.”
Changing the subject
Trump and his top aides have been eager to change the subject from the Epstein episode, even as some of his top administration officials do things that drive more Epstein headlines. It all started earlier this month when the DOJ and FBI published a two-page memo stating that Epstein had taken his own life in prison and that their review “revealed no incriminating ‘client list’” and no credible evidence that Epstein had blackmailed prominent individuals.
Many of Trump’s MAGA allies were incredulous at the memo’s findings, putting some of Trump’s top law enforcement officials in the hot seat. Attorney General Pam Bondi filed a motion to unseal grand jury transcripts related to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal case in Manhattan federal court on July 18.
And on Friday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrapped up two days of meetings with former Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving out a 20-year sentence after being found guilty of sex trafficking minors.
Though Trump and his supporters drove conspiracy theories about Epstein during his campaign, Republicans have also pointed out that Democrats could have released the files during the Biden administration but chose not to. Speaker Johnson accused Democrats of trying to “weaponize” the issue. “Democrats said nothing and did nothing, absolutely nothing, about bringing transparency for the entire four years of the Biden presidency,” he said last week.
But Democrats have called that claim bogus. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters he first called for the release of the Epstein files in 2019 — when Trump was president.
