The Trump-Epstein Emergency Isn't in the Files

Trump has distorted the political landscape so badly that it's warping the moral intuitions of people and institutions of account.

Photo By Arnaldo Magnani/Getty Images)

Donald Trump repeatedly skates past wrongdoing and scandal that would debilitate—if not destroy—any other public person. Pardoning violent rioters who assaulted police for him; granting trade concessions to countries when their officials send him billions; launching an openly racist diatribe against an entire community of Americans.

Any one of these examples…and there are many, many more…make those of us with normal moral impulses feel outrage. But taken together, the sprawling and relentless onslaught of Trump’s behavior is disorienting people and institutions in a funhouse of ethical distortion and collective blindness.

This surreal effect is maddeningly apparent in how the press is covering the Epstein files. Look at this week’s warning about Trump and the files from the New York Times editorial board. They rightly caution that Trump has manipulated the public at every step of the process, and that his manipulations will continue. You shouldn’t trust any information Trump clears for release, according to the Times, given:

• Trump’s long friendship with Epstein and his jokey statements about Epstein’s perversions

• The creepy cartoon birthday card Trump drew for his pal

• Trump’s use of Epstein file conspiracy theories for campaign advantage, only to pretend the whole thing was a hoax once he was responsible for disclosure

• Pam Bondi’s gleeful displays of fake transparency to MAGA podcasters, followed by her ham-fisted stonewalling after informing Trump that he’s in the files

• And finally, Trumps machinations, intimidation and threats to (unsuccessfully) block a Congressional vote, and, thus, to keep the files secret

All of that, but not a single word about Ghislaine Maxwell. How is this possible?

Trump’s treatment of Maxwell—a convicted sex trafficker— is by far the most glaring, brazen, and openly corrupt part of the current moment involving the president. It should be a show-stopper. It should be sending reporters into the faces of every Trump ally and causing them to fall over each other with incredulity at every Oval Office press availability. But in the warped reality surrounding Trump, it’s being taken, by all of us, as some strange, lower-priority, given.

Ah Maxwell, What Can You Do?

When the politics of the Epstein fiasco began to tighten on Trump over the summer, he dispatched the Deputy Attorney General to Florida to privately interview Maxwell. We now know, thanks to Epstein’s emails, that Maxwell lied about how much Trump knew about Epstein’s and her own abuse. DAG Todd Blanche, formerly Trump’s personal attorney, left the receipts from the Epstein estate out of the chat.

Whether by intention or error, he failed to get the truth out of Maxwell.

(“Mr. President, when will you order Todd Blanche to re-interview Maxwell given the evidence contained in Jeffrey Epstein’s emails, and why haven’t your ordered it already? Don’t you want to know the truth?”)

Immediately after her jailhouse interview, someone in the Trump Administration moved Maxwell from a high-security federal prison in Florida to a much more comfortable one in Texas. Maxwell is a sex offender and under Bureau of Prison rules not eligible for minimum security incarceration. But she’s also getting special meals, private access to the gym, visit time with a dog, and other privileges like unlimited toilet paper, according to a whistleblower. According to experts, the only people authorized to issue the special waiver allowing Maxwell to be treated unlike virtually any other sex offender are the BOP director and the Deputy Attorney General.

(“Mr. President, you claim you didn’t know about Maxwell’s transfer. But now that you know, why haven’t your ordered the Bureau of Prisons to return her to maximum security?”)

(“If you won’t order her return, why not? Why should she stay in a prison the rules say isn’t fit for a sex offender?”)

(“Maxwell was your friend for many years. Sir, why is your Administration giving her special treatment?”)

In July, 2020, Maxwell was arrested and charged with six felony counts including conspiracy, perjury, and sex trafficking minors as young as 14. In the face of these alleged abominations, Donald Trump, the President of the United States, would only say of Maxwell, “I wish her well.”

(“Mr. President, in 2020 you said repeatedly that you wish Ghislaine Maxwell well. Why would you wish someone charged with trafficking 14-year-old girls well?”)

(“Sir, Maxwell said in her jailhouse interview that she likes you and admires your achievements. And you’ve said you wish her well. Why are you and a child sex trafficker saying such friendly things to each other through intermediaries?”)

One Right Answer

Ghislaine Maxwell, her appeals exhausted on a 20-year sentence, has been perusing a pardon from her longtime friend Donald Trump.

Then last month, aboard Air Force One, Trump was asked if he’d ruled out granting Maxwell clemency.

“I don’t rule it in or out. I don’t even think about it,” he said.

Outside the distortion field of Trump’s proudly and relentlessly amoral presidency, this answer would make the press pool, pundits, editors, and prime-time cable show executive producers simply crash out. If physics allowed Air Force One to screech to a halt mid-air, this would be the cause.

Because to anyone with intact moral architecture, the question “are you considering pardoning a person convicted of trafficking teenage girls for sexual abuse?” has one correct answer. Absent a clearly demonstrable, gross miscarriage of justice, it is, “No. Absolutely not, never.”

But here, the president, who in 2020 would only wish the (at the time) accused sex trafficker well; who rewarded with a cabinet post the engineer of the wrist-slap deal that allowed Epstein to terrorize more girls; and who permitted and hasn’t reversed obvious, open inducements for the case’s most important and well-informed fact witness, won’t say what everyone listening knows is the only right thing.

Why?

Why?

(“Mr. President, why can you not say that you would never pardon a child sex trafficker like Maxwell?”)

(“Sir, most people look at a sex trafficker and abuser of girls like Maxwell and say she should serve her full sentence behind bars. Why won’t you?”)

(“Mr. President, given Epstein’s emails and the vote on the files, the public wants to learn what Maxwell knows about your relationship with Epstein. What is the reason you appear not to want her to think a pardon is off the table?”)

I’ve complained to journalist colleagues about the relative non-reaction to Trump’s refusal to reject a pardon for the sex trafficker. At least two of them pegged “I don’t rule it in or out” simply as classic Trump, keeping his options open for the best deal. Forget about moral valence of childhood sexual abuse and what the “best deal” with a perpetrator actually means. Beyond writing up Trump’s response, there’s no real follow-on news value to the president, with all his maneuvers and history, refusing to say “no”?

I’m no genius journalist. I certainly have no special moral standing above other reporters, or the New York Times editorial board, whose list of Trump's abuses to watch out for fails to even mention Maxwell. I feel like the guy in every good sci-fi horror movie, who, having realized the terrible truth, races through the town square screaming it into his neighbors’ faces. But the world is upside down, so the zombified townfolk answer his desperate pleas only with vacant stares.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Each of the Oval Office questions above has a version for GOP lawmakers ignoring this surreal insanity for political convenience; or for Democrats not holding a field hearing on it tomorrow; or for voters eating eggs and scrapple in a Western Pennsylvania diner. They’re also questions readers, viewers and scrollers should be asking themselves, and demanding answers to.

NYT is right, though. Trump will surely manipulate the Epstein files to impugn his enemies and protect himself.

Everyone one else should start here: The most urgent news isn’t the selective history recorded in the redacted Epstein files. It’s what the president is doing with his immense power, here, now, in public, apparently so that a child sex trafficker won’t tell what she knows.