Trump stoked the Epstein scandal. It’s come back to haunt him

Jeffrey Epstein, who took his own life in 2019 while imprisoned on charges of being a sex trafficker and a paedophile, continues to haunt the Republican Party and its leader, President Donald Trump.

- Bloomberg

A poster with a photograph of Donald Trump (right) and Jeffrey Epstein in London.

(REUTERS)

Republicans released about 20,000 pages of Epstein documents on Wednesday, shortly after Democrats published a handful of emails Epstein once sent to confidantes and acquaintances suggesting that Trump knew more about Epstein's predations than he had acknowledged. The disgraced financier also seemed to allege in the documents that Trump kept company for hours with one of Epstein's victims.

The White House dismissed the trove as nothing more than "selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump". The reality is that it was conspiracy-minded Republicans who set the Epstein firestorm in motion last summer, outraged that Trump's justice department ended an investigation into Epstein's suicide and clientele.

Trump, who hasn't been accused of any crimes in connection with Epstein, once made political hay stoking conspiracy theories about Epstein's relationships with elites. He knitted that tale into a broader narrative about institutional malfeasance smothering average Americans, and it may not have occurred to him that some of the traps he set would eventually snap back.