Trump Surrenders on the Epstein Files. Here’s How Washington Might Still Try to Kill the Truth.

The survivors won a battle — but the Senate and DOJ may delay, redact, or bury what comes next.

Welcome back to The Red Letter.

This is a huge win for the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, a rare moment when their voices finally cut through, but I fear the victory may be short-lived. These women have spent years banging on the doors of justice, begging powerful people to look them in the eye. Still, accountability has never arrived for them. Not once.

It took a pressure campaign to get here. Survivors showing their faces as the girls they were when Epstein attacked them in that haunting, gorgeous video produced by Lisa Bryant. I aired their voices myself in response to Megyn Kelly’s vile claim that they were the “barely legal” type, not children, an insinuation that they were teen prostitutes, a convenient fiction pushed by those who re-ingratiated themselves with Epstein despite his sex offender status and still cling to their own absolution.

And then came the political cynicism: first from the Right, insisting Epstein cavorted only with a cabal of Democrats (including, inconveniently, the former Democrat Donald Trump), and then the Left, who see the files as a way to muddy Trump’s agenda. Ironically, in all the noise Trump creates, he can’t even find the space to talk about his supposed anchor issue, Trump-enomics. Perhaps taking a lesson from Joe Biden, he didn’t brand himself to an anemic economy. Instead, Trump is slowly bleeding out from inflation and his tariff obsession, which may explain why so many GOP members were willing to defy him on Epstein.

But don’t mistake this moment for inevitability. There are obstacles ahead, and by obstacles, I mean opportunities for stonewalling.

🔒Keep reading → The real fight begins now: Senate roadblocks, DOJ stonewalling, and what Trump’s team is already doing to control the Epstein files.