Jeffrey Epstein files could take center stage as Congress wraps for the summer
Happy Monday! Welcome back to another edition of our Under the Dome newsletter focused on President Donald Trump.
In the past week we heard a lot about disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. And I believe that conversation will only intensify as members of the House finish their final week in Congress before the annual August recess.
Both House Democrats and Republicans are positioning to bring to the floor a measure to force the Trump administration to release the rest of the Epstein case files. And both sides are accusing one another of showboating; not actually intending to provide the public anything.
Let me break down this whole saga.
Trump and Epstein had a well-documented friendship.
Epstein was a convicted child sex offender. And in 2019, he died in prison while facing charges of sex trafficking.
Trump and Epstein had a falling out, according to Trump, not over the criminal cases — those came later — but over a real estate battle, The New York Times reported.
During Trump’s reelection campaign, he helped popularize conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein’s death in prison, and that a client list existed that Epstein used to blackmail powerful people.
In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed to Fox News that the client list existed, was sitting on her desk and was ready for her review.
But skip ahead to this month when the Department of Justice and the FBI announced that the client list does not exist and they would not be releasing further information.
MAGA world was livid.
They literally began burning their MAGA hats.
Conservative media personality Glenn Beck called the Epstein files a “vessel” for Trump supporters, for their hopes and dreams” that someone would clean up Washington.
“After months of promises of transparency, after Pam Bondi TOLD US the evidence was sitting on her desk and the (Southern District of New York) was withholding information, we were told the list never existed,” Beck wrote on social media. “We were told to move on after being LED ON. That’s why we can’t be satisfied with this. It feels like the vessel has been shattered.”
Trump called his supporters “weaklings” for their fixation on the case.
But some Republicans, like former Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Sen. Thom Tillis, have sided with Trump’s supporters.
“Release the damn files,” Tillis told WBT on Wednesday morning. “This could be over in an instant.”
Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Republican from Banner Elk and chairwoman of the House Committee on Rules, found herself twice this week holding votes in committee about releasing the files. That made her go viral online.
Late Thursday night, Republicans on the Rules committee did advance a measure that could bring a motion to the floor to force the full body to vote for the release. But Foxx would not commit to when Republicans might schedule a vote, and it has not yet been calendared.
What else we’re working on:
- More than 300 protesters gathered at Halifax Mall near the State Capitol building to protest Trump, among other things, Twumasi Duah-Mensah reports.
- Attorney General Jeff Jackson sues the Trump administration for withholding $7 billion in federal education money, T. Keung Hui writes. He also reports how Wake County’s school system is hoping to avoid laying off staff paid from those funds.
- Jackson is also suing the Trump administration for terminating $225 million in grants earmarked for infrastructure resiliency and disaster preparedness projects, Avi Bajpai reports.
- Congress served a ‘devastating blow’ to public broadcasting, slashing funding that was supposed to go out Friday.
- And Tillis, who approved the vote, issued a warning to the White House not to break promises they made to him if he supported the measure.
- Former federal prosecutors criticized Tillis for his decision to support Trump’s nomination of Emil Bove to serve a lifetime appointment as a Court of Appeals judge.
- Former North Carolina Transportation Secretary Tony Tata was confirmed to a top spot at the Department of Defense, despite controversies that stopped his nomination in 2020. Read more about that here.
- A Supreme Court decision led to the termination of employees at the National Institute of Health at Research Triangle Park. Brian Gordon has more.
- Chantal Allam takes a look at the Trump administration’s cancellation of government leases and what that means for the Triangle.
- Tillis raised $1.6 million in the past quarter for his 2026 reelection campaign. Now that he’s out of the race, Sophia Bailly looks at what he will do with the money.
That’s it for now.
Thanks for reading. Check back tomorrow for the Under the Dome podcast newsletter. And be sure to keep an eye on the Under the Dome politics section, where you’ll find all of our latest stories.
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And if you have any feedback or tips for this edition of the newsletter, feel free to reach out to me, Danielle Battaglia, directly at dbattaglia@mcclatchydc.com.
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