If you thought the overwhelming vote to release the Jeffrey Epstein files meant the full truth was finally on its way, Team Trump has a different plan. According to new reporting from Zeteo’s Asawin Suebsaeng, the president and his inner circle are quietly gearing up a “dirty tricks” operation designed to keep the most damaging disclosures buried, even as Trump publicly pretends he has “nothing to hide.”
Suebsaeng reports that inside the West Wing and the Department of Justice, senior Trump appointees have been openly discussing how to use the machinery of government to blunt the impact of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the new law that forces the release of unclassified Justice Department records on Epstein. One Trump official bluntly told him that using ongoing investigations as a shield is “of course” on the table, another added with a smug flourish, “We are going to do what is legal.”
In the days leading up to the House vote compelling the release of the files, Trump demanded that the DOJ open new investigations into several Democratic figures for their alleged ties to Epstein. The department “hopped to it,” as Zeteo put it, giving the administration a ready made excuse to withhold certain documents on the grounds that they relate to active criminal probes.
That strategy has set off alarm bells among transparency advocates and legal experts. In an interview with Time, the Republican congressman who led the charge to force the House vote, Thomas Massie, called the new investigation a “smokescreen” and a “last-ditch effort to prevent the release of the Epstein files,” warning, “If they have ongoing investigations in certain areas, those documents can’t be released.”
Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney, was even more blunt. “My cynical view of this announcement is that it is a strategic effort to block the release of further documents in the Epstein case,” she told Time, noting that with a pending investigation “the DOJ can assert executive privilege and try to prevent any more documents from being released.”
Suebsaeng’s reporting fills in the emotional backdrop to that legal maneuvering. A separate Zeteo piece, co written with Prem Thakker, describes Trump unleashing “an outrageous level of corruption” in order to advance his Epstein cover up and devoting “a towering amount of time and government resources to burying the Epstein files.” One Trump adviser told Zeteo the scandal “really f—— pisses him off,” adding, “That is why he’s doing all this.”
It is not hard to see why the president is rattled. Justice Department officials have already told him that his name appears in the still secret materials, and major outlets have reported on a long, tangled history between Trump and Epstein that stretches back to their Palm Beach days. The new law commands the attorney general to release thousands of pages of records, with only narrow carve outs to protect victims and genuine ongoing investigations, exactly the loophole Trump’s allies are now frantically trying to widen.
Suebsaeng has summed up the administration’s approach as “the latest phase of the virtually unprecedented campaign of intimidation, dirty tricks, and abuses of power” that Trump’s government has waged to keep the ugliest Epstein material out of public view. That campaign has ranged from months of lobbying against Epstein disclosure, to a sudden public flip in which Trump urged Republicans to back the release, to this new behind the scenes effort to weaponize the DOJ as a brake on transparency.
On MSNBC’s All In, Chris Hayes framed Suebsaeng’s latest reporting as proof that a “rattled” Trump is now leaning on increasingly brazen “dirty tricks” to keep the worst Epstein bombshells locked away, even as survivors and their families demand answers.
