Why House Republicans voted for the Epstein cover-up

[marmar]

Why House Republicans voted for the Epstein cover-up
Despite their smokescreens, Republican leaders still support Trump's efforts to hide the truth

By Amanda Marcotte
Senior Writer
Published July 16, 2025 6:45AM (EDT)


(Salon)

Update: Since this was filed, Charlie Kirk has abandoned his pledge to stop talking about Epstein and has returned to the topic. It is further proof that MAGA influencers are torn between their love of conspiracy theories and their desire to cover for Trump.

One usually thinks of cover-ups as secret affairs conducted behind closed doors, but Donald Trump is running the conspiracy to kill the Jeffrey Epstein files right out in the open. Despite Trump and his allies promising for years that they would release all the Justice Department documents on the infamous sex trafficker, now that he’s in the White House, Trump has very much changed his mind.

It’s not surprising. He was close friends with Epstein, who raped and abused hundreds of underage girls and young women. While it’s unlikely Trump has specific knowledge of what the Justice Department has in its unreleased case files, he seems worried about what is in them, considering how often he partied with Epstein throughout their years of friendship. This makes it all the more remarkable that Trump is orchestrating the cover-up in public.

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It’s a testament to this deep emotional need that House Republicans are still pretending they want to release the Epstein files, even as they do everything in their power to help Trump suppress them. On Tuesday, the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post released a story with a wildly misleading headline: “Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republicans break with Trump on Epstein.” This is false. As the story acknowledges four paragraphs in, Johnson “opposed a procedural motion advanced on Tuesday by Democrats that would have set up a House vote to release them.” He also voted against releasing the Epstein files. But he is claiming he wants “transparency,” even as he fights for censorship.

....(snip)....

As long as the “Epstein files” existed more in the realm of fantasy, right-wingers could enjoy role-playing the avenging heroes without the worry that it could come back to haunt them. Trump’s freakout, however, took this out of the world of QAnon-style fever dreams and instead pointed to his court-adjudicated history of sexual violence. It’s fun for MAGA to pretend to go after imaginary — or, in Epstein’s case, dead — rapists. But when it comes to real-life sexual predators, especially if they’re privileged white men, MAGA knows what to do: Deny, defend, minimize and protect. They’ve been doing this on Trump’s behalf for a decade now, and his defensive behavior around Epstein was a signal that they should go into shield-the-dirtbag mode. .................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/07/16/why-house-republicans-voted-for-the-epstein-cover-up/