Trump's Epstein problem just won't go away... as MAGA's biggest stars are set to cast deciding vote
Progressive Democrat Ro Khanna and libertarian-minded Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky teamed up last week to introduce the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which would compel Attorney General Pam Bondi to publicly release all unclassified materials relating to Jeffery Epstein.
The duo's resolution is receiving the the backing of a diverse set of members, including New York socialist Democrat darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Michigan 'Squad" member Rashida Tlaib on the left, as well as Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia on the right.
Khanna noted during a Thursday media appearance that his resolution had the backing of all 212 of his Democratic colleagues in the House. Even if only the 10 GOP co-sponsors of the resolution were to support it, it would easily pass the House.
Trump has faced a furious rebellion from his MAGA base over the botched handling of the Epstein files - and while he claims 'nobody cares' about the late financier - the furor isn't dying down.
The president last week sued the Wall Street Journal over a report that he wrote Epstein a birthday card with the message: 'May every day be another wonderful secret.'
If the vote makes it through the House in the next several weeks, then Trump's Epstein crisis will only deepen.
Senator Ron Wyden, D- Ore., is among lawmakers on the other side of the Capitol who are adamant that the president and DOJ make all the Epstein documents public. Wyden, the lead Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee is taking a particular look at the money trail Epstein surely left.
'This horrific sex-trafficking operation cost Epstein a lot of money, and he had to get that money from somewhere," Wyden told the New York Times.
The late financier was charged in 2008 for soliciting prostitution with an underaged girl and received a modest jail sentence in Florida. He was later charged with federal sex trafficking crimes in 2019. He hanged himself in prison awaiting his trial, feds say.
The DOJ and FBI recently leaked an unsigned memo concluding that Epstein died by suicide in prison that August and did not possess a 'client list' of VIP co-conspirators.
The memo said that no more people would be arrested, charged or convicted in the Epstein child sex trafficking case which angered some of members of Congress most in tune with the MAGA base.
Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the most MAGA-aligned voices on the right said during an appearance on Real America's Voice (RAV) earlier this month that she for one wasn't buying that there wasn't more to the Epstein story.
'I think the Department of Justice and the FBI has more explaining to do. This is Jeffrey Epstein; this is the most famous pedophile in modern-day history,' Taylor Greene told RAV at the time.
Progressive Democrat Ocasio-Cortez seemingly came after Trump this week when she wrote sarcastically on X, 'Wow who would have thought that electing a rapist would have complicated the release of the Epstein Files?'
Trump was found liable of sexually abusing author E. Jean Carroll in a 2023 civil trial. He was not, however, found liable of rape - a distinction the New York Democrat did not make in her post.
'AOC — look, I think she's very nice but she's very Low IQ and we really don't need low IQ,' Trump told members of the media at the White House on Tuesday, firing back at the Congresswoman's jab.
Conservative X users were quick to jump to the president's defense comparing AOC's comments to remarks made by ABC host George Stephanopoulos, which led to Trump suing for defamation and eventually winning $15 million.
South Carolina GOP Congresswoman Nancy Mace called AOC's remarks a 'smear campaign.'
'She should lawyer up. Truth still matters, even if the Left's forgotten. We're not done fighting. Not even close,' Mace added.
Yet, now Mace and Ocasio-Cortez both find themselves on the same side of the fight to force Trump's DOJ to release the files pertaining to Epstein.
Trump has also urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to release additional documents, though the push from Capitol Hill could obtain documents the AG or Trump does not want released.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
a few seconds ago
- Reuters
Mexico asks US to repatriate 14 nationals held in 'Alligator Alcatraz'
MEXICO CITY/WASHINGTON, July 22 (Reuters) - Mexico is seeking the repatriation of 14 nationals being held at the United States' detention center known as "Alligator Alcatraz", President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Tuesday. "All arrangements are being made to ensure they are repatriated immediately," Sheinbaum told a daily press conference. The facility, about 37 miles (60 km) from Miami, sits in a subtropical wetland teeming with alligators, crocodiles and pythons, fearsome imagery the White House has leveraged to show its determination to purge migrants it says were wrongly allowed to stay in the United States under former President Joe Biden. Since President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, a total of 73,533 people have been returned to Mexico, mostly by air, including 67,008 Mexican nationals, Sheinbaum said in another daily briefing this month. Mexican father Martin Gonzalez told local radio station W that his sons, Carlos and Alejandro, were now held in the detention center. "It's really bad. The facility is completely closed, not even sunlight gets in," Gonzalez said. "The lights are on 24-7, so they don't even know if it's day or night." He said they were sent there after Carlos, 26, was stopped by a state trooper while driving, adding that he was visiting the U.S. as a tourist and had a valid visa. The trooper asked for the car's registration, which was missing. When his brother, Alejandro, arrived to provide the document, he too was detained, and both were sent to the facility, their father said. "Obviously my sons are desperate to get out of this situation," he said. U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin confirmed the brothers had been detained during a traffic stop on July 7, adding Carlos had not registered his vehicle with the state and accumulated 212 toll violations. McLaughlin said Carlos was working illegally while on a tourist visa and Alejandro had overstayed his visa. Mexico's consul in Orlando, Juan Sabines, said in a video shared on Monday alongside the men's father that the two were in "legal limbo," because a lawyer appointed to their case did not have access to their file, and a judge had not been assigned.
Times
14 minutes ago
- Times
Trump toasts victory as Coca-Cola confirms cane sugar version
President Trump is savouring the sweet taste of victory after Coca-Cola announced it would start selling a cane-sugar version in the US. Trump had announced, in an unexpected intervention last week, that Coca-Cola would switch from high-fructose corn syrup to cane sugar. 'It's just better!' he wrote on his Truth Social platform. Initially the Atlanta-based drinks company appeared reluctant to confirm his announcement. However, unveiling its quarterly results on Tuesday it promised to start selling Coke made with American cane sugar in the autumn. The company said the sugar version would complement Coca-Cola's 'strong core portfolio' and was part of its 'ongoing innovation agenda'. Cane sugar is used in countries outside the US, including Mexico, but the company moved to cheaper corn syrup in the US in the 1980s. Mexican Coke has a cult status in the US, where it is sold in glass bottles and regarded by connoisseurs — including Rishi Sunak, the British former prime minister — as superior in taste to the corn syrup version. American farmers across several states in the Midwest cultivate about $74 billion of corn a year, compared with about $1.35 billion a year of cane sugar, grown mostly in Florida, Louisiana and Texas. Trump himself drinks Diet Coke, which uses the sweetener aspartame, and upon returning to the White House this year he reinstalled a button in the Oval Office to summon cans of his favourite drink. His interest in the full-fat version appears to derive from his friendship with José Fanjul, a Cuban-born cane sugar magnate and Republican donor. Trump held a meeting earlier this year with James Quincey, the chief executive of Coca-Cola. According to 2024, a new book on Trump's re-election by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf, during the meeting Trump called up Fanjul and put him on speakerphone, allowing the billionaire to interrogate Quincey over the company's use of corn syrup rather than cane sugar. Trump with James Quincey, who offered him a commemorative bottle for his re-election Doctors say cane sugar and corn syrup are equally damaging to people's health. Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, who has attempted to reduce the number of additives and preservatives in American food, has previously described sugar as a 'poison'. But after Trump's intervention, Kennedy said a decision by Steak 'n Shake, a fast-food chain, to switch to cane sugar Coke was evidence that his Make America Healthy Again (Maha) movement was 'winning'.
The Guardian
21 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Trump news at a glance: US House breaks early for summer recess as Republicans feel the heat over Epstein
Mounting pressure over President Donald Trump's alleged ties to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has reportedly rattled and divided Republican congress members so deeply that the House speaker called an early recess on Tuesday. Democrats had pushed for a vote to release files related to Epstein as Trump fends off questions over his relationship with the financier, who died by suicide in his jail cell in 2019. Now the House will break up on Wednesday instead of Thursday in what Democrats say is a way to dodge the vote. Here's the what's happened today: Republicans downplayed the decision to cut short the workweek, while arguing that the White House has already moved to resolve questions about the case. Last week, Trump asked the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to release grand jury testimony, although that is expected to be only a fraction of the case's documents. The House speaker, Mike Johnson, dismissed the calls for a vote as 'political games' and also argued that Congress must be careful in calling for the release of documents related to the case, for fear of retraumatizing his victims. Read the full story Congress will subpoena Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned sex trafficker who was a close associate of Epstein, to testify amid a political firestorm over the Trump administration's decision not to release its remaining Epstein files. Read the full story Trump has claimed the future owner of the US TV network CBS will provide him with $20m worth of advertising and programming – days after the network cancelled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The US president recently reached a $16m settlement with Paramount, the parent of CBS News, over what he claimed was misleading editing of a pre-election interview with the Democratic candidate for president, Kamala Harris. Read the full story The US will quit the United Nations' culture and education agency Unesco, the US state department has said, as Donald Trump continues to pull out of international institutions. The move is a blow to the Paris-based global organization, founded after the second world war to promote peace through international cooperation in education, science and culture. Read the full story Barack Obama has broken his silence on calls from Trump for him to be prosecuted by unequivocally rejecting his successor's accusations that he tried to engineer a 'coup' after Trump's 2016 election victory by 'manufacturing' evidence of Russian interference. His office called the accusations 'nonsense', 'misinformation', 'outrageous' and 'a weak attempt at distraction'. Read the full story Trump has announced a trade deal with Japan, potentially resolving weeks of fraught negotiations between the two allies which had caused political uproar and economic uncertainty in Tokyo. While he gave few details of the deal, he described it as 'massive' in a social media post, adding that 'Japan will invest, at my direction, $550 Billion Dollars into the United States.' Read the full story Coca-Cola has announced it will launch a product made with US cane sugar this year, days after Trump claimed the company had agreed to replace high-fructose corn syrup. But the company said that the drink would be an additional product rather than a replacement for the drink containing corn syrup. Read the full story General Motors announced that Donald Trump's tariffs knocked $1.1bn off its operating income in its last quarter. The New York Times defended the Wall Street Journal after the Trump administration decided to bar the outlet from the White House press pool. Stephen Colbert declared to Donald Trump that 'the gloves are off' in his first broadcast since his Late Show was cancelled amid a political firestorm. Catching up? Here's what happened on 21 July 2025.
