For months now, disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein has been the Democratic Party's go-to subject for attacks on President Donald Trump. Yes, other events have presented an occasional target of opportunity, such as accusing Trump of murdering drug runners or wanting to hang Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, (D-AZ), which Kelly seems particularly fond of that; he has been fundraising nonstop, sending out emails that begin, "President Trump is calling for me to be hanged." But Democrats always return to Epstein, much as they did with Russia in the early years of Trump's first term.
In recent weeks, though, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have gone to extremes, resorting to tampering with documents and doctoring images to suggest that there is evidence linking Trump to Epstein's wrongdoing. In so doing, they appear desperate to claim that they have found incriminating evidence when they have not.
Last month the Oversight Committee, following a subpoena issued by Republican Chairman James Comer (KY-1), received 23,000 emails from the Epstein estate. Democrats rushed to release three — three — of those emails in hopes they would suggest some sort of improper activity on Trump's part. In the most intriguing of them, from 2011, Epstein wrote that the late Virginia Giuffre, the most well-known of Epstein's victims, "spent hours at my house with [Trump]." But in the email, where Epstein had written "Virginia," House Democrats inserted a black block with the word "VICTIM" on it — as if they were redacting Giuffre's identity to protect a previously unknown victim.
Republicans quickly released the original email, which the estate had sent to Congress unredacted, that showed Epstein wrote "Virginia." Once that was confirmed, everyone knew that Giuffre had gone public years ago and had testified under oath that Trump "didn't partake in any sex with us ... [and] never flirted with me." Giuffre also said she never saw Trump and Epstein together and never saw Trump at Epstein's houses in Florida, New York or New Mexico or on Epstein's island. After the Democrats' redaction ploy was exposed, the notion that the email was some sort of smoking gun disappeared.
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But by manipulating the original document, the email, Democrats tried to make something appear sensational when it wasn't. Now, they've done it again.
The House committee has received another trove of documents from the Epstein estate, this time around 95,000 photographs. As they did before, Democrats rushed to release a tiny number of them — 19 this time — to suggest wrongdoing by Trump.
In one picture in particular, Trump was shown with women around him. There were six women, all of whom had their faces blacked out — a redaction done by Democrats in the House, not by the Epstein estate. The blacked-out faces led to the obvious question: Were the women in the picture with Trump underage Epstein victims?
The redaction had its desired effect on MS NOW's legal analyst Lisa Rubin. "That suggests to me that either the estate and/or the committee believe that some of these women are either minors and/or survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell," Rubin said.
Wrong. When journalists looked into the original, un-doctored photo, they found the women, all six of them, were adult models representing the suntan product Hawaiian Tropic at an event at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's home in Florida. The photo was taken sometime in the late 1990s. One of the women told The Telegraph that she remembered Trump being "very nice and gentlemanly." And with that, another Democratic misrepresentation fizzled.
To an extraordinary degree, Democrats have based their opposition to Trump on the hope that somehow, somewhere, they will find evidence of Trump involved in improper behavior related to Epstein. Obviously, it will have to be old — Trump had a falling-out with Epstein around 2004, and there is no evidence the two had any contact in the last 20 years. But Democrats keep searching.
In addition, for all the talk about "releasing the Epstein files," the fact is, a lot of material in the Epstein case has already been made public. Why do we know what Giuffre said under oath about Trump? Because six years ago, a court released her deposition in a lawsuit she filed against Epstein's accomplice, Maxwell. There has been plenty of other litigation in the case, and many documents made public.
Yes, there are other documents that still need to be released. But remember that back in July, Glenn Kessler, who was the Washington Post's fact-checker and who went through the voluminous public information on the Epstein case, wrote, "No credible allegation has emerged to connect Trump to any of Epstein's crimes. If the full [Epstein] file is ever released, we are confident that no connection would be found."
So far, that is turning out to be correct. No, it's not guaranteed. Maybe it will change. Maybe there will be some future discovery that will give Democrats the incriminating evidence they so desperately want. But it doesn't seem likely. And until then, Democrats appear to be happy to make things up.
This content originally appeared on the Washington Examiner.
Byron York is chief political correspondent for The Washington Examiner. Email him at byork@washingtonexaminer.com. For a deeper dive into many of the topics Byron covers, listen to his podcast, The Byron York Show, available on the Ricochet Audio Network.
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