From praise to rage: conservative response to Epstein release is mixed

Conservative reaction to the partial release of documents in the Jeffrey Epstein case has been mixed, with Trump administration supporters highlighting the prominent presence of Bill Clinton and other Democrats in photographs, with others lamenting how the heavy redaction casts Donald Trump and Republicans in a bad light.

Administration officials defended the redactions with fervent hyperbole. “Never in American history has a President or the Department of Justice been this transparent with the American people about such a sensitive law enforcement matter,” said Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, who released a six-page letter describing the redaction process.

While Trump’s name and image appear in some of the documents, the redactions raise questions about what may be concealed behind the black blocks. Some Republicans immediately called for more transparency.

Rightwing Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene – who has recently fallen out with Trump - criticized the release, describing “the heavily redacted Epstein files”, the “failure to release them all by today’s lawful deadline” and the redaction of “politically exposed individuals and government officials” as “NOT MAGA”.

“People are raging and walking away,” she wrote.

In a social media post, the Republican Kentucky representative Thomas Massie said the redactions violate the law, and suggested that a future Congress may impeach the attorney general, Pam Bondi, for that violation. “Unfortunately, today’s document release by @AGPamBondi and @DAGToddBlanche grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law that @realDonaldTrump signed just 30 days ago.”

But some rightwing commentators and Trump loyalists swung firmly behind the administration.

The release – from a justice department run by close Trump ally Bondi – has hundreds of pages of case material that are completely redacted and many of the men depicted in photographs have their faces redacted.

But some do not, including high-profile figures like Clinton, pop singer Michael Jackson and academic Noam Chomsky. The presence of Clinton, especially, allowed some rightwing figures to go on the attack.

“It’s pretty rich how the Democrats falsely accused President Trump of being a pedophile, only for the Trump DOJ to release Epstein files that show Bill Clinton skinny dipping with a pedophile in the pedo’s pool,” write conservative commentator Laura Loomer. “Maybe now the media will stop obsessing over these files.”

“New Epstein Files show Bill Clinton shirtless in a hot tub with a female that is not his wife Hillary Clinton,” wrote Rogan O’Handley, an attorney whose dc_draino account on Instagram has more than 3 million followers. “There’s only 1 reason Epstein would photograph a US President with a girl in a hot tub: Blackmail.”

Clinton has repeatedly said he knew of no criminal actions by Epstein and has never been alleged to have engaged in any wrongdoing. “The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton,” Clinton’s spokesperson Angel Ureña said in a statement on X.

“This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever. So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be,” the statement added.

However, overall comment on the right was relatively muted on Saturday, especially when compared with the loud demands for action that preceded the congressional vote to pass a law requiring the document’s release.

Loomer, who recently accepted press credentials at the Pentagon after a revolt by conventional newsrooms against reporting restrictions adopted by the administration, had been among the loudest advocates for a release.

In February, Loomer chastised the administration broadly and Bondi specifically after a group of rightwing influencers were given physical binders of files earlier this year that contained no new information.