Trump, Epstein, and the Politics of Denial by Edoardo Moretti

Donald Trump has built a career on branding, himself, his wealth, his bravado, and, perhaps most notably, his enemies. He’s always been quick to sling accusations, often with little more than rumor and insinuation as fuel. One of his favorite rhetorical tools over the years was the ominous “Epstein client list”, a mythical ledger of names that, in the fever swamps of conspiracy, could bring down celebrities, royals, billionaires, and yes, powerful politicians. He wielded it like a cudgel, particularly against Democrats, alluding to their alleged proximity to Jeffrey Epstein as proof of moral rot and corruption.

But now, the weapon he once so gleefully sharpened may be pointing straight back at him.

The Department of Justice once again refused to release the full Epstein client list, an expected yet still explosive decision, insisting that this list ...doesn’t exist; an unexpected decision. What wasn’t expected though was the chilling silence from Trump’s corner. No furious Truth Social tirade, no MAGA rallies erupting into chants of “release the list!” This, from the man who practically trademarked the phrase. Why the silence?

Simple: Trump’s name has hovered around Epstein’s world like a persistent ghost for decades. Photos of them together at Mar-a-Lago. Eyewitness accounts of their parties. Flight logs. And most damning of all: mounting speculation that Trump’s own name may appear in the very list he once demanded be made public.

To be fair, Trump has always danced along the edges of scandal with uncanny survival instincts. He’s the political Houdini of our time, wriggling out of norms, indictments, impeachments, and ethics like they're wet ropes. But the Epstein affair is different. It has no political party. It has no ideology. It’s not about policy, it’s about proximity to something undeniably dark and cruel: a globe-spanning network of abuse, manipulation, and predation that destroyed lives and protected the powerful.

So when Trump shrugs off the list now, when he waves it away as fiction or irrelevant, we should be asking why. Why would a man who once spotlighted it as proof of elite Democratic corruption suddenly pretend it doesn’t matter? Why the DOJ’s refusal of its existence does seem to strike such a convenient chord with the former president?

It’s not hard to imagine why. Theories flourish in the absence of transparency, and the DOJ’s decision, whatever the rationale, only nourishes suspicion. When justice hides names in the name of propriety, the public imagination fills in the blanks. And increasingly, people are filling them with Trump.

His defenders will, of course, scoff. They'll point out that Trump kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago, that there's no confirmed evidence of misconduct, that Bill Clinton flew on the infamous “Lolita Express” far more often. But this defense misses the point. Trump didn’t just position himself as a neutral observer to Epstein’s crimes, he made himself the self-appointed prosecutor of everyone associated with them. Now that same prosecutorial spotlight is spinning around.

You can’t build your case on the alleged sins of others and then claim victimhood when your name slips into the conversation. That’s not how moral high ground works. That’s how hypocrisy works.

Let’s not forget: the Epstein scandal is not a sideshow. It’s not some political pawn to be moved around the culture war chessboard. It involves real victims, young women and girls whose lives were upended. If Trump is innocent, he should want that list released more than anyone. He should be demanding it, not dismissing it. But he isn’t. And therein lies the rot.

There’s a wider sickness in the way we treat these stories, through tribal lenses, through red and blue filters. But sexual exploitation, especially at the scale Epstein enabled, is a crime against humanity. And if Trump, or anyone else, was involved in that network, the truth should not be gated by bureaucracy, delay, or politics. The truth should burn through all of it.

Until then, Trump’s record is not one of moral outrage or principled consistency, it’s a testimony of a man who will say anything until the story threatens to turn back on him. And then, suddenly, it never mattered.

The list either exists or it doesn’t. If it does, the American people deserve to see it. And if Trump is on it, no amount of political spin should keep his name out of the fire he helped ignite.