PBS News Hour

JOHN YANG: Welcome to the "News Hour."

Nearly six years after he died, disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein is still at the center of controversy.

Parts of President Trump's political base are angry over the Justice Department's handling of the files from the investigation into Epstein's death in a New York City jail cell and charges of sex trafficking.

Some say Mr. Trump himself has become part of the cover-up that they accused the Biden administration of perpetrating.

MAN: I still love the president, but this Epstein stuff not going away.

JOHN YANG: As President Trump's MAGA base demands more transparency, last night, he made a concession, posting that he wants Attorney General Pam Bondi to ask the court to make some Epstein investigation documents public.

It came as The Wall Street Journal said Mr. Trump had set Epstein a 50th birthday greeting in 2003 that included the outline of a naked woman and closed with, "May every day be another wonderful secret."

The president called the story fake and filed a lawsuit.

House Democrats have seized on the division among Trump supporters to press a bipartisan resolution sponsored by Republican representative Tom Massie of Kentucky and California Democrat Ro Khanna.

It calls on the Justice Department to release material from its sex trafficking investigation into Epstein.

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): You should put everything out there and let the people decide it.

JOHN YANG: On a podcast earlier this week, Speaker Mike Johnson, who rarely breaks with the president, agreed with critics who say the attorney general must be more transparent.

REP. MIKE JOHNSON: She needs to come forward and explain that to everybody.

JOHN YANG: So far, Mr. Trump has backed Bondi, who once claimed to have Epstein's client list on her desk, but now says no such list exists.

On a podcast last fall, before the election, Mr. Trump also referred to a list.

MAN: It's just very strange for a lot of people that the list of clients that went to the island has not been made public.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: Yes, it's very interesting, isn't it?

Probably will be, by the way.

MAN: So, if you're able to, you will be... DONALD TRUMP: I'd certainly take a look at it.

JOHN YANG: So did his running mate.

J.D.

VANCE, Vice President of the United States: Seriously, we need to release the Epstein list.

JOHN YANG: Online, conservative influencers and activists have harshly criticized the president.

ALEX JONES, Host, "The Alex Jones Show": Total disaster, the way Trump handled all this.

CHARLIE KIRK, Founder, Turning Point USA: The young men in the Gen Z audience that I represent, they are flaming mad right now about this stuff.

CANDACE OWENS, Host, "Candace": Who is Trump protecting?

Because he's clearly protecting someone.

Is it himself?

JOHN YANG: But, today, even some of the conservative critics or the president's handling of the Epstein matter rushed to defend him over The Wall Street Journal report.

Charlie Kirk posted that he doesn't believe it.

Elon Musk wrote that it didn't sound like Mr. Trump.

An activist Laura Loomer called it totally fake.

For more on all of this, Glenn Thrush, who covers the Justice Department for The New York Times, and Dave Weigel, who covers politics for Semafor.

Glenn, I want to start with you.

The request the president made of the attorney general was to ask a judge to release pertinent grand jury transcripts.

Why now?

Why make this request now?

GLENN THRUSH, The New York Times: Well, I think it's purely for political reasons.

There are not important investigative reasons.

In fact, it's coming around 10 days after Pam Bondi closed down the investigation altogether.

So it represents a bit of a reversal of course.

Let's talk a little bit about what is available.

First of all, we don't know which grand jury we're talking about.

Is it Jeffrey Epstein's grand jury which was convened prior to his death, his hanging, or was it Ms. Maxwell, his associate's, which was convened in 2020 or 2021 and ultimately led to her conviction?

There was also some grand jury activity in Florida and perhaps in some other states, I was told.

So we don't know where they're going to release this testimony from.

The other question is, how do they define pertinent?

We don't know.

Is that just relating to Epstein?

But the deeper question here is, what are we even talking about?

These are transcripts that are very narrowly tied to the Jeffrey Epstein case.

The real trove of documents, the ones that Bondi, Kash Patel, the FBI director, Dan Bongino, his number two, have referred to is this group of documents, thousands and thousands of documents and videos that are stored in Winchester, Virginia, outside of D.C., that they have spent the better part of three months poring through anyway.

So in general, I would just say there is a great deal less here than meets the eye.

JOHN YANG: And given those limitations, is this going to satisfy the people who are demanding more transparency on this?

GLENN THRUSH: It isn't now.

I mean, I think it's putting a Band-Aid on a wound that is way too significant to be able to cover up.

I think what it does is, it gives him a talking point and it gives his allies on social media and in Congress a way to sort of say that he is taking decisive action.

And it gives Pam Bondi, who has been an even bigger target of Donald Trump's far right influencer class, a little bit of cover.

But I think, at the most, it gets him a couple of days.

And this story is not going to go away, even though we're seeing this concerted effort on the part of the White House and all of their surrogates to cast doubt on The Wall Street Journal, to raise counter issues, to bring up new questions about the previous DOJ under President Biden.

So I just think we're seeing a lot of the same patterns we have seen in previous Trump crises of distraction, counterattack.

But, ultimately, this is a different kind of a crisis that is going to require a different kind of a solution and one, frankly, I don't think the White House or the Justice Department have yet figured out.

JOHN YANG: Dave, these conspiracy theories about the Epstein investigation have been part of MAGA for a very long time.

And a lot of it was fueled by President Trump when he was in the White House the first time and as a candidate.

He wants his supporters to move on.

Are they going to?

DAVID WEIGEL, Semafor: They haven't been.

And let's define his supporters.

Elon Musk is probably the most influential of the people who were advancing this line that something was in the Epstein files, this is the catch-all term for all this, that would reveal perfidy crimes, pedophilia by pick a name out of the hat of your liberal enemy.

You can see him before the election talking to Tucker Carlson suggesting that people like Reid Hoffman might be in the files, Bill Gates might be in the files.

And there are people we have talked about all week, Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, who were advancing this, that there must be something in these files that the elites don't want me to know.

The way Elon put it was, the elites want Kamala to win.

They're giving her all this money because they know they will be exposed in the files.

With that not happening, that is a great disappointment.

That is religion predicting the world's going to end.

It doesn't end and people the wake up the next day.

That's what's been happening to true believers of this theory.

They're also true believers of the president.

And that is where Glenn was putting this really well.

The story has been moving.

And the Trump strategy of just being on the attack constantly, you have already seen where that's been moving, not just attacking The Wall Street Journal, but using the powers that they have in the DOJ, all the intelligence apparatus to say, well, look at this.

Look at this new information about the Russia investigation in 2016.

Look at this new information about, for example -- this was more recent -- how the Biden administration was looking at families that spoke up at school board meetings.

That's already where this is going is, look at the ways that Donald Trump and his administration now in power is delivering on other things you care about.

Please forget how much you cared about the Epstein story.

JOHN YANG: Politically, how serious is the fact that some of the supporters are sort of disenchanted with him over the Epstein case?

DAVID WEIGEL: It hasn't been that significant.

There hasn't been polling on this except for how is the administration handling this, and that's been terrible.

This is the first thing.

Quinnipiac's polling was only 40 percent of Republicans said they were satisfied with the way the president was handling the Epstein files.

That's not good.

They are not turning around and saying I'm going to vote for Democrats.

They are the hardest -- the people who are disappointed in this -- we talked a lot in the press about the podcast culture, the new media.

There are a lot of people who came in, voted for Trump for the reasons that I was discussing, Elon Musk supported Trump, who are not going to be enthused and are going to be disappointed.

It'll be hard to convince them that actually they should care about some other investigation, some other revelation instead, because that was not putting Hillary Clinton and Bill Gates in jail, frankly.

And with Democrats, you don't find a lot of -- they certainly don't believe that the files that are going to reveal everything about their enemies.

They have these photos.

We have all had the photos of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein together.

They have always seen this as something sort of embarrassing to Trump, but something that wasn't going to take him down.

JOHN YANG: Dave Weigel of Semafor, Glenn Thrush of The New York Times, thank you both very much.