We've Been Had

On November 16, 2023, Representative Ro Khanna appeared on Meet the Press, hosted by NBC News' Kristen Welker.  The California congressman and Republican Thomas Massie were the sponsors of, and were heavily invested in, the House bill which purportedly would force the Justice Department to release all of the files pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein. 

At that point, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene had joined Massie, Representative Nancy Mace, and Representative Lauren Boebert as the few GOP Representatives willing to buck the White House and endorse the Massie-Khanna initiative, although, as Khanna told Welker, he was hoping for at least 40 Republicans overall to jump on board. 

So the NBC personality asked the Californian "Your joint bill with Thomas Massie is going to come to a vote on the House floor. It's expected to this week. Do you think you have enough votes for it to pass?" Massie responded "We do, and there's nothing I have been prouder of or more meaningful than this work. The credit goes to the survivors."

 

If this was his proudest moment, he set the bar very low.  The House passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act (with only one "no" vote), the Senate followed suit, and three days after the Meet the Press interview The Washington Post reported that President Donald J. Trump had announced

that he has signed a bill directing the Justice Department to release the Epstein files, documents related to the sprawling sex-trafficking investigation into the onetime powerful financier that are fervently sought by Trump’s political opponents and members of his political base.

After Trump’s announcement, made in a social media post, the Justice Department will have 30 days to release all unclassified documents about Jeffrey Epstein, who was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019 and died in an apparent suicide while in federal custody.

At that point, waiting thirty days was no big deal, and that period is almost over as of today, December 14, 2025. However

despite Trump’s signature, there are many reasons to doubt that a bulk release of the files is imminent — the legislation calling for the release of the files includes major loopholes, and the Justice Department has said little about its plans….

What Congress is “legally entitled to” is a more complicated question than the rhetoric from Capitol Hill might imply.

The legislation that Trump and Congress agreed to pass gives the Justice Department a few exceptions under which it can refuse to release material. Among them: if release “would jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution.”

On Friday, Trump ordered Bondi to launch a federal investigation related to Epstein — this one aimed at his ties to several prominent Democrats….

That new investigation could become a reason for the Justice Department to block release of many files. Bondi and her deputies have previously said they cannot release information about active investigations.

Other information could be covered by grand jury secrecy rules. The bill does not explicitly waive those.

The Justice Department has also said many of the files cannot be released because they contain sensitive victim information and pornographic material. The legislation contains another exception allowing the Justice Department to withhold material that “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” or “depicts or contains child sexual abuse.”

Nonetheless, Khanna has taken us for idiots. As The Guardian noted

a warning for those in the Trump administration who may find themselves pressed to withhold information: comply or face the consequences.

“Now, it’s federal law for those documents to be released, and if the justice officials don’t release it, they will be prosecuted, and they … could be prosecuted in a future administration,” Khanna told the Guardian on Wednesday evening, shortly before Trump put his signature on a bill intended to reveal the truth about what he spent weeks calling a “Democrat hoax”.

“The career officials [that] are making these decisions have to think that they’re going to be subject to future contempt of Congress or criminal prosecution, and they’re taking a huge risk … if they violate that, given that administrations change,” the California lawmaker added.

Oh my gosh, they're quaking in their boots, they are. We are reminded that in Barack Obama's first term, the President

made it clear that we don’t torture now — but he’s done very little to ensure that we won’t do it again in the future.

The Justice Department’s Thursday announcement that it has closed its investigation into all torture-related actions save two particularly gruesome fatalities was a poignant reminder of that inaction.

Obama has renounced torture. He has issued a new executive order defining acceptable interrogation techniques. He has reasserted the illegality of many of the techniques used in American prisons around the world during the first few years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

But he has also repeatedly expressed his desire to “look forward instead of looking backward.” As a result, there has yet to be any accountability for the actions of the Bush/Cheney administration. And none appears forthcoming.

And without accountability — without either criminal prosecutions or some sort of official national reckoning of what took place — there’s no reason to think that the next time a perceived emergency comes up, some other president or vice president will not decide to torture again.

President Trump has not decided to have anyone tortured- not yet, anyway- but the expansion the power of the Executive branch in his Administration has grown beyond what was expected by even those who long ago warned that he is a fascist. Meanwhile, Barack Obama, he of the "look expected instead of looking backward," remains not only Democrats' most popular politician, but enormously popular in the mainstream media, and in the media generally.

So those career officials Representative Khanna is warning need not fear having to appear before bar of justice in the next presidential administration or at any time. In the very unlikely event they are held accountable, Donald Trump and the American people will little notice, and care less. Even Khanna's admonition itself is telling, being directed not against President Trump, Attorney General Bondi, or even Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, but against "career officials." That's quite a bit down the chain of command.

Evidently, Trump has the least to worry about because we learned in July that

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy Todd Blanche informed President Donald Trump in May that his name appeared multiple times in the government's files on Jeffrey Epstein that the Department of Justice and the FBI reviewed.

The officials told Trump of their plan not to release any additional documents, the report says, because the material contained child pornography and the personal information of victims.

Here is a safe guess: the child pornography and/or the personal information of victims were not mutually exclusive of the name "Trump."

Now they are, thanks to the FBI's work on behalf of Bondi and Trump. As is probably obvious to Representatives Khanna and Massie, the full, unadulterated Epstein files will not be released even if the Justice Department complies with the law as written. On a positive note, we will know whether the Administration has chosen to be fully transparent or instead hide behind issues of national security, current investigations, or claimed concern for victims. If after release, there is a deep and widespread, fully bipartisan call for President Trump's resignation, we will have seen much of what had been hidden.. If not, we've been had.

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