US Politics
Despite Trump saying there are no more Epstein files, Lara Trump says he will release more Epstein files
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President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump has claimed that his administration will “probably” release more documents about Jeffrey Epstein, despite his repeated statements to the contrary.
In an interview with right-wing broadcaster Benny Johnson on Monday, Lara Trump — who is married to Trump’s son Eric — said the President wanted to “set things right” and would release more documents sooner rather than later.
“There’s no great plot to keep this information away that I’m aware of. I just believe that maybe it’s been slow-rolled, for reasons that hopefully we understand down the line,” the Fox News host and former Republican Party official told Johnson.
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Her answer contradicted the Trump administration’s announcement last week there is actually no “Epstein client list” and that no further disclosures are “appropriate or warranted”, as well as Trump’s own pleading with his supporters to drop the subject.
That came after many months of Trump officials and outriders trumpeting the imminent release of bombshell secret Epstein documents, including the convicted sex offender financier’s supposed “client list”.
The abrupt about-face sparked fury among Trump’s fan base, who had been primed to expect the unraveling of a vast child abuse conspiracy centered on Trump’s political opponents.
“Look, I don’t know what truly exists there, but I know this is something that’s important to the president as well,” Lara Trump said in her interview with Johnson.
“He does want transparency on all these fronts, everything we’re talking about. Because it’s frustrated him as well. He sat for four years like the rest of us did and saw lie after lie and our country just being sent down the wrong path…
“I know this is probably not his number one thing he’s focused on… but he hears all the noise, and he hears all the consternation out there, and I think he’s gonna want to set things right as well.
“So I believe that there will probably be more coming on this, and I believe anything that they are able to release — that doesn’t damage any witnesses or anyone underage, or anything like that — I believe they’ll probably try to get out sooner rather than later.”
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Trump’s own statements have set a very different tone, suggesting that the so-called “Epstein files” were merely a hoax concocted by his enemies in order to persecute him.
“We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and ‘selfish people” are trying to hurt it — all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein,” he said on his social network Truth Social on Saturday.
“For years, it’s Epstein, over and over again… let’s not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.”
At a press conference last week, he also admonished a reporter who asked him about Epstein, saying: “This guy’s been talked about for years… we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things. And are people are still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable.”
Epstein’s own abuse of minors has been extensively documented, and his “madam” Ghislaine Maxwell was criminally convicted for her role in trafficking girls for him. Allegations he also provided victims to rich and powerful “clients” have never been definitively proven.
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Thousands of pages of documents have already been made public, including Epstein’s address book. The term ‘Epstein list’ often simply means a list of all the people mentioned in these documents, which includes victims and bystanders as well as alleged associates.
But in recent years, Trump and his allies have embraced the idea that there is another “list” the government is covering up: a client list containing the names of everyone who abused girls trafficked by Epstein.
That was red meat for the ardently conspiracist MAGA movement and the professional fantasists who sustain it, many of whom see Epstein as merely the tip of an iceberg involving more fanciful theories such as QAnon.
On Sunday the official account of Sesame Street muppet Elmo even weighed in, having been temporarily taken over by an unknown hacker.
“RELEASE THE FILES @realDonaldTrump CHILD F*****,” wrote the hacker, in between calls for genocide against Jews.
