The Epstein Files: Nothing to Hide, Everything to Bury
In the grand, burlesque theatre of American politics, there are few roles Donald Trump has relished more than that of the Great Declassifier. He was the man who would unlock the secrets, expose the Deep State, and lay bare the conspiracies that lesser mortals could only whisper about. The JFK files, the 9/11 documents, and, most tantalisingly of all, the Epstein files - all would be thrown open for the great, unwashed public to gawp at. ‘Yeah, yeah, I would,’ he grunted with the bored confidence of a man ordering a well-done steak when asked if he would finally unleash the demons lurking in the government’s darkest filing cabinets (Hutzler, 2025). It was a promise whispered on the campaign trail, a red-meat morsel for a base ravenous for conspiracies, a pledge to drain the swamp by showing everyone just how foul the water truly was.
How curious, then, that the swamp’s most self-proclaimed enemy has become its most ferocious gatekeeper. The bill to force the Department of Justice to release its complete, unredacted files on the life and crimes of Jeffrey Epstein - a bill with bipartisan support, no less - is now facing its final, most formidable obstacles: the Senate, and the very man who promised transparency. As The Guardian reports, ‘Senate leaders have shown no indication they will bring it up for a vote, and Trump - who had long promised the release of the files on the campaign trail - has decried the effort as a “Democrat hoax”’ (Campbell, 2025). The Great Declassifier, it seems, has developed a sudden and severe allergy to sunlight.
This brings us to a question so simple, so painfully obvious, that it feels almost childish to ask it. If you are innocent, if the whispers and accusations are nothing more than a partisan smear, a ‘hoax’ cooked up by your enemies, why would you not only refuse to release the evidence that would prove it, but actively whip your party into a frenzy to bury it? Why go to such extraordinary lengths to keep the one thing that could exonerate you locked away in a lead-lined box, sunk to the bottom of the Mariana Trench? It is a contradiction so glaring it would be comical, were the subject matter not so utterly vile. The frantic scrabbling to keep these files hidden suggests a panic that no amount of blustering about ‘Democrat scams’ can conceal. It reeks of fear; it stinks of guilt.
The journey from populist hero of transparency to paranoid guardian of secrets has been a masterclass in Trumpian duplicity. On the campaign trail, he was all magnanimous bravado. He told Lex Fridman he’d ‘be inclined to do the Epstein’ and would have ‘no problem with it’ (Hutzler, 2025). His own campaign’s ‘War Room’ proudly blasted out clips of him promising to declassify everything. It was a performance, and a convincing one at that. He was positioning himself as the avenging angel against a corrupt establishment that protects its own. Yet, the moment the floodlights of accountability began to swing in his direction, the performance changed.
Subscribe to Notes From Plague Island and join our growing community of readers and thinkers.
‘Hoax! Hoax!’
The pivot to crying ‘hoax’ is as predictable as it is pathetic. It is the cornered animal’s response, a tactical spewing of ink to cloud the waters and confuse the predators. Suddenly, the man who knew Epstein, who flew on his plane, who called him a ‘terrific guy’ before claiming he had a falling out with him, is the victim of a grand conspiracy. He is not merely blocking the release; he is actively trying to intimidate those within his own party who have dared to break ranks. Representatives Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace, who signed the petition to force the vote, found themselves on the receiving end of the President’s unique brand of persuasion: summons to the White House Situation Room, early morning phone calls, a full-court press to bring them back in line (Campbell, 2025). This is not the behaviour of a man confident in his innocence. It is the frantic arm-twisting of a mob boss trying to silence a witness.
Best Case v. Worst Case Scenarios
Let us, for a moment, entertain the most charitable interpretation of this sordid affair. Let us assume the ‘at best’ scenario. At best, Trump’s frantic obstruction is because he knew far more about Epstein’s proclivities than he ever let on. The newly released emails, which his team predictably dismissed as ‘cherry-picked’, paint a grim picture. One email from Epstein himself claims that ‘of course [Trump] knew about the girls.’ Another describes Trump as a ‘dog that hasn’t barked’ and alleges he ‘spent hours’ with one of Epstein’s victims at the predator’s house (Campbell, 2025). At best, then, he was a willing voyeur, a silent confidant to unspeakable evil, a man who partied in the shadow of a paedophile’s web and chose to see nothing. In any sane world, this alone would be a legacy-ending scandal, a moral stain so deep it could never be scrubbed clean. It would confirm him as a man utterly devoid of a moral compass, a hollowed-out vessel of ego and appetite.
But what of the worst-case scenario? What lies beyond the ‘best-case’ of simply being a silent accomplice to industrial-scale child abuse? Here, one’s imagination, already stained by the grim realities of the Epstein case, runs wild into even darker territory. What could possibly be in those files that is so damning, so utterly catastrophic, that a man who has weathered accusations of everything from financial fraud to inciting an insurrection would rather let the world speculate than risk its release? What could be worse than what we already know? The silence from the White House, punctuated only by the shrill cries of ‘hoax!’, is more damning than any specific allegation could ever be. It is an admission that the truth is simply too terrible to confront.
The history of this cover-up is a farce of incompetence. As Congressman James Clyburn has pointed out, this is a story of shifting narratives and blatant contradictions. In February 2025, Trump’s own Attorney General, Pam Bondi, declared on Fox News that the Epstein ‘client list’ was on her desk and being reviewed under a ‘direct order from President Trump.’ A few months later, the same Department of Justice claimed that ‘no client list existed’ at all (Clyburn, 2025). The files are there, then they are not. Trump orders their review, then he claims they are a hoax. It is a Keystone Cops routine of obstruction, a clumsy, panicked dance to stay one step ahead of the truth.
And so, the great populist champion, the man who was meant to tear down the corrupt edifice of the elite, has become its final gatekeeper. He stands guard over the secrets of a dead paedophile, not to protect the state, but to protect himself. The refusal to release the Epstein files is the ultimate act of a man consumed by his own mythology, a man who believes he can bend reality to his will.
But some truths are too stubborn to be bent.
They can be hidden, they can be denied, but they cannot be erased. The more he fights to keep the darkness hidden, the more he illuminates the terrifying possibility of what lies within it. The Epstein ‘hoax’ is not the Democrats’ creation; it is Donald Trump’s last, desperate lie.
Or support us with a one-off tip → Buy Me a Coffee
References
Campbell, L. (2025) ‘Trump turns up heat on Republicans to block release of Epstein files’, The Guardian, 14 November. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/14/republican-pressure-trump-epstein-files [Accessed: 14 November 2025].
Clyburn, J. (2025) ‘Trump Promised Epstein’s Client List. Now His DOJ Says It Doesn’t Exist.’, Congressman James E. Clyburn, 1 August. Available at: https://clyburn.house.gov/trump-promised-epsteins-client-list-now-his-doj-says-it-doesnt-exist/ [Accessed: 14 November 2025].
Hutzler, A. (2025) ‘What Trump has said about Jeffrey Epstein over the years, including on 2024 campaign trail’, ABC News, 16 July. Available at: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-jeffrey-epstein-years-including-2024-campaign-trail/story?id=123778541 [Accessed: 14 November 2025].