Epstein, Media Hysteria, and the Collapse of the Trump Fairy Tale…A Giant Nothingburger at the End of the Frenzy

by Jeff Childers

Here we go! It’s the Epstein-avalanche everyone was waiting for. It’s finally here. The BBC’s incredible headline read, “Epstein files live updates: Photos appearing to show Andrew on all fours over female included in new release.” Meaning, former Prince Andrew. Um. Awkward.

Maybe he’s just demonstrating CPR?

As a lawyer, I have some trouble understanding why accomplished men who seem to have it all would make horrible decisions and allow themselves to get into compromising positions chasing skirts. But it happens. He was probably thinking with the little prince. What’s much harder to square is why these men would let themselves be photographed doing it.

I call this manufacturing evidence.

It’s a mystery whose tendrils extend back to King David, who horned in on his friend’s wife Bathsheba. They may not have had cell phone cameras back then, but it still came out. (God saw.)

Yesterday marked the end of the beginning. The DOJ released three million more pages of Epstein materials, including all-new photos and videos. Believe it or not, Democrats are already criticizing the document dump. Within two hours after the release, the ‘victims group’ held a press conference claiming the DOJ was still withholding things. How they reviewed three million documents in two hours is up for debate. Speed reading or something.

🔥 The DOJ said that all documents in its custody have now been released, with certain exceptions. Here is Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, explaining what is (and isn’t) in the final document dump:

Todd Blanche Said DOJ Excluded CSAM, Physical Abuse & Content Depicting Death (Snuff Films?) From Epstein Release; Names of Politicians & Government Officials In Files Will Go To The House & Senate!

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced today that the DOJ released more… pic.twitter.com/onKOcfZ8Wq

— LIZ CROKIN (@LizCrokin) January 30, 2026

Blanche began by admitting that “there’s a hunger or a thirst for information that I do not think will be satisfied by the review of these documents.” Here are the main points from Blanche’s comments:

• No records were withheld or redacted for national security purposes.
• Redactions were made to protect victims, for attorney/client and work product privileges, and to protect the FBI’s “deliberative process.”
• In photos, all women’s faces were redacted (except Ghislaine); no men’s faces were redacted.
• Child sexual abuse videos and violence (snuff films? holy moly) were withheld.
• Criminal investigations may be ongoing (he neither confirmed nor denied).
• Blanche said the list of ‘public officials’ exposed in the document —required by the discharge petition— is forthcoming soon. (He didn’t commit to when.)
• Blanche invited Congressmen to review any redacted or withheld document, photo, or video.

Presumably supercharged by AI, the rush to mine all the embarrassing gold in the files is on.

🔥 Two immediate American targets included billionaires Bill Gates and Reid Hoffman, who together donated hundreds of millions to elect Joe Biden. Many folks have recalled Elon Musk’s comments to Tucker Carlson from a couple years back, when Elon speculated that part of the reason people fought so hard to stop Trump’s re-election was fear of Epstein files exposure.

One new email making the rounds is a literally unbelievable draft argument, where Epstein saved a response to Bill Gates’s effort to decouple from their relationship— apparently after Epstein “accidentally confessed to Melinda” (what he confessed wasn’t clear). In it, Epstein reminded Gates that the software billionaire got an awkward STD from some Russian hookers, and had to ask Epstein for antibiotics that he could slip to his wife Melinda without her noticing.

It’s hard to imagine how Gates, slippery cockroach though he is, can survive this one. (The divorce already cost Gates half his empire.) Read the whole email.

Portly tech billionaire and Democrat super-donor Reid Hoffman was also a popular figure in the new releases. His relationship with Epstein obviously went far beyond the occasional meetup. Hoffman’s name appears more than 2,600 times in the DOJ’s Epstein files, revealing hundreds of emails, Zoom calls, dinners, and meetings between Epstein and Hoffman from 2013–2018— long after Epstein’s first conviction.

Meanwhile, in another Epstein email…

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by Chuck Ross and Collin Anderson:

Former Obama White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler has attempted to downplay a steady drip of revelations about her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein by claiming he never “compensated” her. Newly released emails, however, show the convicted sex criminal showered Ruemmler with luxury gifts, including a $9,400 Hermes handbag, an Hermes-branded Apple watch, and a spa treatment package at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, D.C., emails reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show.

The gifts, revealed in documents released Friday by the Department of Justice, came years after allegations of Epstein’s sex crimes against children became public knowledge and undercut Ruemmler’s attempts to distance herself from Epstein.

Ruemmler, now the top lawyer for Goldman Sachs, has faced intense criticism as troves of Epstein records shed light on her relationship with the sex pest. When CNN reported last month that Ruemmler advised Epstein on media strategies, she told the outlet she “did not represent him and was not compensated by him.”

The documents released Friday show otherwise. In emails ranging from 2014 to 2019, Ruemmler routinely corresponded with Epstein’s associates to accept gifts or express her gratitude to Epstein. In some cases, she asked for specific items.

The priciest gift likely came in August 2016, when Epstein purchased Ruemmler a $9,400 handbag from the French luxury brand Hermes. Epstein took a particular interest in ensuring Ruemmler received the bag, directing one of his associates, Lesley Groff, to “confirm receipt with Kathy” and “follow up to make sure it happens.” When Ruemmler received the bag, she wrote to Groff, “OH MY GOD!!!!! He is in so much trouble!!!! I am dying. It is so beautiful,” as Groff relayed to Epstein. Used versions of the same bag—a Jypsiere 31—now sell for around $5,000.

Some two years later, in November 2018, Epstein bought Ruemmler an Hermes edition of the Apple Watch, which retails for $1,300. Emails show that Ruemmler asked for a specific model and watch band and said the gift was “so sweet of Jeffrey!”

“If truly okay with him to do the Hermes, I would love the 40 mm, stainless Hermes with bleu indigo swift leather double tour,” Ruemmler wrote at the time. “I’ll wear that one every day, whereas the sportier ones I would likely only wear on weekends or when exercising, etc.” When Epstein’s associate, Groff, relayed the gift to Epstein’s accountant, Richard Kahn, Groff wrote, “I knew Kathy would want Hermes.” Epstein bought another Apple Watch for Steve Bannon around the same time, according to the emails.

Epstein also appeared to be attuned to Ruemmler’s schedule and professional achievements.

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by Jasmyn Jordan

Previously unreleased emails reveal sustained, strategic, and often personal communications between journalist Michael Wolff and Jeffrey Epstein, with exchanges focused on political messaging, media influence, and repeated discussions about Donald Trump—including efforts to shape public narratives about his candidacy and presidency.

Among the newly released records from the Department of Justice—part of a 3.5 million-page document production under the Epstein Files Transparency Act signed by President Trump—are emails between author Wolff and Epstein that reveal a striking level of political discussion, media planning, and apparent coordination related to Trump’s rise in 2015 and beyond.

The released records include a February 2016 message from Wolff warning Epstein, “NYT called me about you and Trump. Also, Hillary campaign digging deeply. Again, you should consider preempting.” Epstein responded simply, “Lots of reporters.” To which Wolff replied, “Yeah, you’re the Trump bullet.”

In another exchange from October 2016, Wolff said, “There’s an opportunity to come forward this week and talk about Trump in such a way that could garner you great sympathy and help finish him. Interested?”

Wolff workshopped talking points and responses with Epstein, in December 2015 musing: “If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?” The question came in response to a heads-up from Wolff the night before: “I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship wit= you–either on air or in scrum afterwards.” The next afternoon, Wolff followed up with strategic advice:

I think you should let him hang himself. If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt. Of course, it is possible that, when asked, he’ll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.

In May 2016, Wolff reached out again ahead of a planned interview, asking, “Anything you think I should ask?” Epstein replied with a list of what he considered damaging topics for Trump, including “revenue of golf courses as income,” “total debt of all cost,” and “how much did his father leave.”

In a March 2016 email titled “Patterson,” Wolff advised Epstein that he needed an “immediate counter narrative” to the upcoming James Patterson book, proposing that Donald Trump offered “an ideal opportunity.” He wrote that “Becoming an anti-Trump voice gives you a certain political cover which you decidedly don’t have now,” and urged Epstein to go public. Wolff outlined a media strategy that could include a television interview, an op-ed, and social media efforts and suggested assembling a group of media allies to support the effort.

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by Ed Morrissey

After a full year of both parties seizing the Epstein Files monkey’s paw, the effort to get full transparency has at last come to a conclusion … at least as defined by Congress. Deputy AG Todd Blanche released the full inventory of material related to Jeffrey Epstein, totaling 3 million pages, 180,000 images, and 2,000 videos. That will give internet sleuths plenty of material to peruse, although the redactions mandated by Congress will likely frustrate them:

The files fulfill the DOJ’s obligations under the law Congress passed last year to compel the release, Blache said. It includes 2,000 videos and 180,000 images.

“Today’s release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people and compliance with the act,” he said. “The Department has engaged in an unprecedented and extensive effort to do so.”

The tranche comes more than a month after the Trump administration blew past the Dec. 19 statutory deadline for DOJ to make public all of the materials in its possession related to the federal Epstein investigation.

That’s because the statutory deadline demanded by Congress was absurd, considering the scope of this project. The DoJ could have met that deadline had Congress not also required the investigators to review all of the material and redact any data that could identify the victims. That, however, was never considered a viable option, since the big push for releasing the material came from victims and their families, joined at various times by Republicans and Democrats for political motives of their own.

Inevitably, then, we will soon start to see complaints about redactions in the material and claims that trafficking conspirators are getting protected. The problem with this complaint is that Congress literally required the DoJ to redact the material, which means we are not going to ever get a complete picture. If the victims waived the redaction requirement and Congress amended the law they passed late last year, the entire scandal could be put to rest, at least in terms of having the evidence – and unsubstantiated claims made to investigators as well – completely in the open.

Alan Dershowitz has long demanded the full, unredacted release of all Epstein-related material, not to condemn the guilty, but to finally vindicate the innocent. Too many of the allegations and assumptions in the Epstein case were false, and the entire episode has transformed into a McCarthy-esque travesty that only full transparency can resolve, he wrote last month:

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by P.J. Gladnick

“Trump, like Clinton, has not been implicated of wrongdoing, and the president has said he had a falling out with Epstein years ago.”

And with that brief observation by Politico on Friday by Hailey Fuchs in “DOJ announces full release of Epstein files,” all their absurdly frenetic efforts last year to somehow implicate President Donald Trump via the Jeffrey Epstein files look like they came up empty.

Millions of the Epstein files were released and as Politico sadly conceded, Trump was not implicated of wrongdoing (although for  Clinton that might not be the case due to the Clintons refusing to testify on this matter to Congress).

The best they could do is line up Democrats to keep complaining: “To be sure, Democrats were, in fact, not laudatory of the Friday release. Many of them have believed from the start the administration resisted releasing the Epstein files for months in an effort to shield Trump — who had a longstanding relationship with Epstein for many years — from scrutiny.” Politico obsessed like the network newscasts, which spent over 1,000 minutes on this story in the second half of 2025.

To get a sense of what a sad letdown this must be for Team Politico, one has to keep in mind that last summer, they were in the midst of an Epstein-files frenzy to the extent that we noted last July: “Politico Goes Full Frenzy with SIX Epstein Stories in 24 Hour Period.”

Their desperation to take down Trump became so absurd they even covered a South Park cartoon on this subject, “South Park skewers Trump over Epstein files, depicts him in bed with Satan.”

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