Over the past two months, the US Department of Justice has released millions of documents related to its sex-trafficking investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. Now, the president wants the nation to move on - but will it?
Deputy US Attorney General Todd Blanche has said the government's review of the Epstein files - which was mandated by a law passed by Congress in November - is over, and there are no grounds for new prosecutions.
There's a lot of correspondence. There's a lot of emails. There's a lot of photographs, Blanche said on Sunday. But that doesn't allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody.
While the justice department's review may be over, on Capitol Hill, the House of Representatives is pushing ahead with its own Epstein inquiry. Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are scheduled to testify later in February after Republicans threatened to hold them in contempt of Congress.
Members of Congress and Epstein's victims, meanwhile, are continuing to call for further disclosures – pointing to documents they say exist but weren't included in the released files.
It is yet another sign of just how difficult to shake this story has become for those, like President Donald Trump, who are clearly keen to move on. For the moment, however, the president has emerged from the storm with no apparent lasting damage.
That is not true for some of the other rich and powerful figures whose ties to Epstein were more prominently detailed in the files, and who had continued contact with him long after he became a convicted sex offender in 2008.
The president, at the White House on Tuesday, stated he thought it was really time for the country to get on to something else. He also remarked, Nothing came out about me, despite the fact that Trump’s name appeared more than 6,000 times in the documents, frequently discussed by Epstein and his associates.
Furthermore, the latest batch of files included a list of unverified FBI tips, many of which included allegations against Trump, Epstein and other notable figures. The FBI tips were claimed to contain sensationalist accusations made against Trump just before the 2020 election. Although unsubstantiated, these allegations have fueled claims that the justice department may have withheld incriminating evidence.
Despite his insistence that it was time to move on, the ongoing inquiries, demands for transparency from Epstein's victims, and the political implications of upcoming testimonies suggest that the impact of the Epstein saga is far from over. As investigations continue, questions remain about the president's past associations and the fallout for other individuals linked to Epstein.
