Expert breaks down Trump's 'really bad' Epstein mistakes

President Donald Trump is exacerbating public distrust in him because of his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, reported an expert journalist — and he continues to only make things worse for himself.

“The American people don’t need any help being suspicious about the government’s handling of Jeffrey Epstein,” reported CNN’s Aaron Blake. “But the Trump administration keeps giving them more reason to be anyway.”

Blake ticked off various missteps, most prominently Trump not publishing dozens of FBI witness interviews including “three related to a woman who accused President Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her decades ago, when she was a minor.”

“In a statement, the White House called the allegations against Trump ‘false and sensationalist’ and pointed to a previous DOJ statement that ‘some of the documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump,’” Blake reported. “But the plausibility of the woman’s claims isn’t the main point; the point is that an increasingly politicized Justice Department — one where a massive banner of Trump was hung last week — did not release documents containing allegations about the president.”

He added, “In a vacuum, that would be problematic. But next to everything else, it’s really bad.” Three out of four Americans said Trump is “hiding information” about Epstein, according to a recent Reuters and Ipsos poll, while a recent CNN poll put the number at two out of three. Indeed, the Trump administration only released the Epstein files that were disclosed when forced to, and has subsequently “failed to redact lots of victim information while apparently redacting more than the law called for in other areas, including the names of potential and suspected Epstein co-conspirators. The administration claimed it didn’t ‘redact the names of any men,’ but it clearly did.”

Just as bad, Trump is not the only high profile administration member on the list. In addition to top Trump donors like Palantir CEO Peter Thiel and X CEO Elon Musk, the files mention Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who repeatedly visited Epstein despite previously adamantly denying having so.

“GOP Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana suggested to Bondi at a hearing that the FBI should interview Lutnick about his claims,” Blake reported. “There’s no indication that’s happened, and the administration has stood by him.”

Describing the administration’s decision to withhold files about Trump, National Public Radio’s (NPR) Stephen Fowler and MS NOW legal analyst Lisa Rubin reported that “the Epstein files are Donald Trump's 'political kryptonite,' experts say, as new evidence emerges that suggests his Justice Department has withheld documents relating to allegations that he sexually abused a minor. Anger has grown since only around half of the six million files relating to…. Jeffrey Epstein held by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) were released last month. The Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed in November 2025, was meant to force the whole tranche of documents to be made public."

Despite avoiding talking about Epstein’s victims, Trump recently expressed sympathy for the former UK prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who was recently arrested for his alleged crimes with Epstein.

“Trump is saddened by any embarrassment to the royal family,” William Kristol of the conservative publication The Bulwark wrote. “And there is no evidence the Trump administration has any interest in seeing justice done, or any intention of having the truth come out. We have an executive branch that is on the side of the Epstein class, not the Epstein survivors.”