Last week, the House Oversight Committee released over 20,000 pages of documents from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein, the biggest wave of new information on the accused sex trafficker since his former friend Donald Trump was reelected as president.

The most revealing documents from the tranche involve correspondence between Epstein and his influential friends dating from his time after getting out of prison on a charge of soliciting a minor for prostitution up to the days before his July 2019 arrest and death in federal custody. In long email and text threads, he is chummy with Harvard professor Larry Summers, former Trump White House official Steve Bannon, and the writer Michael Wolff as Epstein plots a comeback and positions himself as an expert in world affairs. He also positioned himself as an expert on Trump, frequently providing commentary on the president’s inner world, including an email in which he claimed Trump “knew about the girls.” All told, Trump is mentioned in more than half the messages.

In a surprising reversal, Trump signed a bill to compel the Justice Department to release documents from its 2019 case against Epstein within the next 30 days. As we wait for the long-anticipated Epstein files, we called experts who have followed the story for years to talk about the most revealing aspects of the latest document dump, the questions it raises, and what we may learn when the public finally sees what the government has been hiding.

Brace Belden: co-host of the Epstein-focused podcast TrueAnon
Nick Bryant: reporter who first obtained and published Epstein’s “little black book” and the founder of Epstein Justice
Vanessa Grigoriadis: co-creator of the podcast Fallen Angel, about Victoria’s Secret and the chain’s founder, Les Wexner, who was Epstein’s financial patron
Tara Palmeri: author of The Red Letter Substack and a reporter covering Epstein survivors

Brace Belden: I would say this tranche is medium-revealing, in that a lot of people are expecting some kind of smoking gun that takes down some prominent person they’ve heard of.

In actuality, the messages are a really good peek into how Epstein was operating toward the end of his career. His strategy of coordinating with Steve Bannon and Michael Wolff in terms of rehabilitating himself and coordinating with Bannon on political projects is really interesting. The way he saw himself being perceived by the public is really interesting and provides some good insight onto how he viewed everything........

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