Epstein’s Long Shadow Over Trump

On Wednesday, Vanity Fair published my reporting on how Jeffrey Epstein—long dead and officially disgraced—continues to exert gravitational pull over Donald Trump’s White House, exposing a presidency.

Welcome back to The Red Letter.

On Wednesday, Vanity Fair published my reporting on Jeffrey Epstein and the strange reality that a disgraced financier who died in 2019 still looms over Donald Trump’s presidency like an unfinished crime scene.

Let’s be clear: Trump is used to scandals that burn hot and burn out. Epstein is different. He doesn’t burn. He lingers.

And Trump’s irritation isn’t defensive—it’s about loss of control. Epstein isn’t dangerous just because of what he did. He’s dangerous because he’s a narrative problem that can’t be managed.

Inside the White House, they treat Epstein like radioactive waste—something no one wants to touch. I reported over the summer that there’s an omertà around even saying his name. Trump’s Department of Justice is frozen in inertia, and this Congress risks being remembered as a do-nothing Congress after spending weeks in recess to avoid facing a vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Yesterday, Attorney General Pam Bondi turned her back on survivors and said she didn’t want to “get into the gutter” when asked why she hasn’t met with them. It perfectly encapsulated how survivors are treated as inconvenient witnesses, how transparency is seen as political sabotage, how the Justice Department continues to weaponize delay.

So far, 3.5 million pages have been released. Millions more remain withheld, for reasons that are still unclear. Trump’s fingerprints are everywhere. Now his inner circle is being pulled in too with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s visit to Epstein’s island in 2012 and Dr. Oz’s Valentine’s Day party invite to Epstein in 2016, long after Epstein served time for soliciting a minor.

Like Trump, Epstein understood celebrity. He understood leverage. He understood humiliation. And like Trump, he understood dominance. But dominance requires closure.

Right now, Epstein is denying him that.

Trump built a career on controlling the frame. Epstein survives because the frame refuses to hold.

For Trump, Epstein is supposed to be dead and gone. He insists on it. His allies demand it. And yet every attempt to move on only tightens the association.

Epstein doesn’t need to speak. He doesn’t need to leak. He doesn’t need to threaten.

The files do that for him.

A man who once bragged about knowing everyone now finds himself defined by the one relationship he can’t escape.