The Republicans left town for a month in the hopes that it would be gone when they got back. So why are they now keeping it going? Well, their constituents are still adamant about seeing those files:
While Republicans had hoped that legal rulings might insulate them from having to confront the issue, the courts have yet to intervene. Back in their districts, lawmakers have continued to face questions about the Epstein investigation from their constituents. And the Justice Department, which ignored a Friday deadline from Senate Democrats and is set to miss another on Tuesday to comply with a bipartisan subpoena to provide the materials to Congress, has yet to release anything.
On Monday, Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said that the Justice Department would begin sharing its Epstein records with his panel by Friday. He also suggested that the release of the documents would take some time, all but ensuring that questions about the Epstein affair will drag on for weeks.
At the same time, Democrats, in some cases with the help of Republicans, have laid a series of procedural traps that will make it all but impossible for the G.O.P. to avoid confronting the issue again when Congress reconvenes in September.
“We’re going to keep the pressure up — 100 percent,” Senator Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona, said at an event in Iowa this month. “As often as we can, until we know exactly what happened, why it happened.”
Even with Congress in recess, the Epstein case continues to generate attention in Washington. On Monday, William P. Barr, who was President Trump’s attorney general when Mr. Epstein died, testified in a closed-door deposition for the Oversight Committee.
Lawmakers of both parties concede that the Trump administration could quiet the furor over the Epstein files on Capitol Hill and nationwide by simply releasing them to the public. Mr. Comer’s statement on Monday was the only public indication to date that it might do so.
Comer said on Tuesday that Barr didn’t see anything that implicated Trump but the ranking member Robert Garcia insisted that Comer needs to release the transcript of Barr’s interview because Barr did not actually clear Trump at all. Let’s see it.
These guys aren’t helping themselves by keeping this in the news cycle. It indicates that for all the pooh-poohing we hear from the pundits, these people are still getting an ear full from their constituents who are dying to prove that big Democrats are all involved in an international pedophile ring. Why they think Trump, Bondi and company would cover that up is beyond me but they apparently believe that’s the case.
And from what I understand the Trump supporting manosphere is still very focused on this story too. They aren’t particularly after the Democrats they just think Trump is a liar about all this and they feel had. They were.
Stay tuned. The Epstein saga isn’t going anywhere,