Politics
WSJ Backtracks On Criticism, Sides With Trump On Key Epstein Decision
Pressure appears to be mounting for the Wall Street Journal to retract, or at least partially walk back, some of the most explosive claims in Thursday’s story exploring an alleged closer connection between President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein than previously reported.
Now, the paper’s editorial board is firing back, siding with Trump against the suggestion that a special counsel be appointed to oversee any further release of files as part of the government’s investigation.
A new column, bluntly titled “No Special Counsel for the Epstein Files,” explains why the president is right to doubt whether a special counsel would be fair and impartial — or even constitutional.
“Donald Trump, skeptical of special counsels. Who would have guessed? That’s a joke, since Mr. Trump’s first term was derailed by the Robert Mueller investigation into alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 election,” the authors wrote.
“That’s pretty much what would happen under any special counsel to investigate the Jeffrey Epstein investigators,” the board continued. “Forget about any immediate disclosure of anything new. The questions that MAGA minds want answered would instead get buried for months or more. Rumor and innuendo would reign. And if the special counsel emerged after a year and announced there really wasn’t much to see here, would any of the Epstein theorists really be convinced? Unlikely.”
Going further, editors at the paper wrote that Trump gave a “fine” directive to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to unseal additional grand jury testimony “subject to judicial orders and sensitivities to privacy.”
“It’s easy for those on the outside to demand more disclosure, since they don’t have to make those hard calls or be accountable for them,” they added.
It remains “unknowable” for now what would remain from the Epstein investigation after any sensitive information is scrubbed. The Journal’s editors pointed to a recent op-ed by Alan Dershowitz, a former friend of Epstein, who confirmed he never saw a “client list” during his time around the late pedophile.
“The FBI interviewed alleged victims who named several ‘clients,’” he wrote. “We don’t know whether the accusations are true,” Dershowitz wrote for the WSJ this week.
Thursday’s bombshell story alleged that Trump sent Epstein a “bawdy” birthday card in 2003 containing drawings of a naked woman and a euphemistic, imagined dialogue about “enigmas” and “secrets.” In response, Trump denied having anything to do with the alleged message and announced he was suing both the paper and its owner, Rupert Murdoch.
Trump also claimed to have “personally” warned Murdoch about allowing his paper to run the story, and the two were seen together at the FIFA Club World Cup in box seats on Sunday, Politico reported.
Epstein died in 2019 while in jail awaiting trial on human trafficking charges, leaving behind a simmering controversy that played a minor role in the 2024 presidential election. Trump fanned the flames, accusing Democrats from Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden and past leaders of the FBI of working to cover up an alleged ring of powerful pedophiles in the upper echelons of government and high society.