Good evening everyone. I hope you are having a good Saturday night. It has been a slow news day, and Washington, D.C. feels frozen in more ways than one. That is why tonight I want to focus on something that should never fade into the background. The Trump Administration is actively using the Epstein files to confuse the American public and to deliberately sow chaos.
I want to be clear about why I am writing this, and why I continue to cover it so closely. This kind of reporting is not welcomed by the White House. If you choose to subscribe, you are directly supporting independent reporting that does not answer to political pressure or network executives (unlike 60 Minutes and CBS). That support is what allows this work to continue. Please consider subscribing today.
I have seen this tactic before. I saw it as a lawyer handling complex civil and criminal cases involving millions of documents. I am seeing it again now as a journalist. That perspective matters, because what is happening here follows a familiar pattern.
In litigation, there is a well known strategy used when one side wants to bury damaging information. It is called a document dump. Instead of withholding evidence outright, which courts punish, a party produces an overwhelming volume of documents with no context or guidance. The goal is simple. The most harmful material disappears into the noise.
That is exactly what is happening now.
The Trump Administration has already released thousands of Epstein-related documents, many without explanation. Now it claims to have newly uncovered more than one million additional documents.
That claim alone strains credibility. You do not suddenly uncover one million documents in a federal investigation. In any ordinary civil or criminal case, conduct like this would prompt serious court challenges and possible sanctions.
At the same time, the Administration is intentionally fostering chaos. By releasing documents without context, it allows speculation to spread. The public is left to draw conclusions without the information needed to do so responsibly.
We saw this play out with the purported Epstein-Nassar letter. The document was released without explanation. The public reacted. Hours later, the Justice Department stated it was fake. Even assuming that explanation is accurate, critical questions remain. We know a handwriting analysis was ordered. The results have not been released.
Another example is the Justice Department’s release of raw FBI tips containing disturbing allegations. One of those tips, now circulating widely online, involves claims connected to Lake Michigan. The document reflects a complainant alleging sex trafficking by her uncle and Jeffrey Epstein when she was thirteen and pregnant, followed by the murder of her newborn child. It also names Donald Trump.
That document is a tip. It is not evidence. Tips require investigation and corroboration. The problem is not that the DOJ received such a tip. The problem is that it released the tip without context while withholding the investigative record that would allow the public to understand whether it was substantiated or dismissed, and why.
It also raises a more troubling point. By releasing highly inflammatory tips like the one above without corroboration or supporting evidence, the Trump Administration is not seeking transparency. It is attempting to plant doubt. The strategy is simple. Introduce documents that may be false or unverified so that the public begins to question the credibility of all the documents, including the authentic ones. Once the Department of Justice has you wondering whether a document is real or whether a survivor’s account is truthful, it has achieved its objective.
This pattern extends to the redactions. Key documents are being released with inconsistent and potentially illegal redactions. One internal Justice Department email references a photograph of Donald Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell allegedly found on Steve Bannon’s phone. The image is entirely redacted. That should not happen under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
According to the Department of Justice, millions more documents will be released in the coming weeks. When reading them, it is important to understand that confusion is not an accident. It is the point.
I will continue to read every document, as I have done from the beginning. I will continue to report what matters, even when it is inconvenient to those in power. And if you choose to subscribe, you are choosing to keep this kind of independent, survivor-centered reporting alive.
