You may hear the phrase "Epstein files" and feel overcome by a certain strain of repetitive news fatigue.

It's not that Jeffrey Epstein's terrible crimes have diminished over time, or that his survivors can ever be made whole. It's that the massive scandal has spun off in so many directions that it's almost impossible to get your arms around the enormity of it.

Epstein's 2019 arrest and suicide have been followed by a torrent of aftershocks: the arrest and imprisonment of his accomplice, convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, Capitol Hill hearings, survivor news conferences, lawsuits, books and documentaries, multimillion-dollar settlements with Epstein's estate, resignations, shamings, a royal banishment and even an act of Congress.

More than 3 million pages of the Epstein files have been released, yet millions more remain under DOJ lock and key, subject to lawsuits, redactions and accusations of coverup.

With the midterm elections dominating the news, the Iran war far from resolved and Americans suffering from sky-high fuel prices, the Epstein mess has retreated from the public imagination. Yet, this thing is far from over. Sometimes we need a nudge to remember that.

Last week, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee breathed new life into the scandal, releasing a 52-page report examining the relationship between President Trump and his onetime pal. Playing off the infamous 50th birthday wishes Trump sent to Epstein in 2003, the report is titled "We Have Certain Things in Common, Jeffrey."

"A growing body of evidence demonstrates that Donald Trump was an active participant in Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse of young women during the mid-to-late 1990s," the report says. "The Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation are doing everything they can to keep the American people in the dark about it."

In a statement accompanying the report's release, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the committee, demanded that an independent special counsel be appointed to investigate the ties between Trump and Epstein.

The White House dismissed the report as "a desperate attempt by crazed Democrats to distract Americans." Trump, whose name appears thousands of times in the Epstein files, has said repeatedly they "totally exonerate" him.

It's true that Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said he found nothing in the files that would lead him to open criminal investigations against any uncharged third parties, including Trump. Then again, Blanche is Trump's former criminal defense attorney and has made it clear he works for the president.

Blanche also declined to pursue an Epstein investigation after a bizarrely chummy two-day visit with Maxwell at a Florida federal prison in July 2025. Maxwell, who has been angling for clemency , told Blanche that Trump had always behaved like a gentleman in her presence, and also stated — don't laugh — that she only learned about Epstein's involvement with underage girls after his arrest. A week later, Maxwell was moved to a minimum security prison in Bryan, Texas, dubbed "Club Fed." (Biotech fraudster Elizabeth Holmes is a prison mate.)

Trump has consistently downplayed his relationship with Epstein, but, as the House report documents, they were close friends for much of the 1990s. In January 2024, Trump wrote on social media that he'd never traveled on Epstein's plane, but the report reproduces flight logs for Epstein's private plane, which list Trump as a passenger at least eight times in the 1990s.

Most disturbingly, the House report presents the accounts of 11 women who link Trump and Epstein. Five directly accuse Trump of rape or assault in Epstein's company or presence. Three others describe what they believed were attempts by Epstein and Maxwell to traffic them to Trump.

With one exception, the alleged assaults took place between 1992 and 1997, apparently a golden age for horny middle-aged playboys with connections to unregulated modeling agencies and beauty pageants. Trump hosted Elite Model Management competitions for teenagers and had ties to the agency's founder John Casablancas, who openly acknowledged his attraction to "child-women." Trump also palled around with the modeling agent Paolo Zampolli, who until his recent firing was one of the president's embarrassingly ill-suited political appointees.

A lot of the material in the House report has been made public, but one account, derided by the White House as fictitious, is new:

In 1993, Beatrix Keul, a Miss Switzerland runner-up, was recruited to attend the Donald J. Trump American Dream Pageant for 16- to 22-year-olds in Atlantic City and New York.

According to her interview with the House Judiciary Committee staff, Keul, now a 53-year-old Swiss banker, said Trump told her Zampolli would arrange a visa for her, and that Trump would secure her admission to New York University. Later that day, Keul said, she was ushered into a suite for what she thought was a private meeting with Trump. Instead, she alleges that he forcibly raped her.

Afterward, Keul said, Trump sat her on the edge of the bed, repeated his offer for a visa and NYU admission, told her to keep quiet and said, "The show must go on."

And so it did. About two years later, Trump sexually abused the writer E. Jean Carroll in a Manhattan dressing room.

Ten years after that, he uttered the infamous words, "When you're a star, you can do anything."

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