On the campaign trail, Donald Trump wielded populist fury over the “Epstein files” as a cudgel against a corrupt and out-of-touch Washington elite that the president’s MAGA movement has long blamed for the country’s ills.

His base had high expectations after Trump took office. But in the span of 11 months, misstep after misstep has turned an issue that helped Trump get elected into a political albatross he can’t shake. Over the past week, facing a deadline he signed into law, the stumbles continued.

The Justice Department’s initial disclosures on Friday — heavily redacted, partially rescinded and incomplete as to Trump’s relationship with the disgraced financier — seemed to satisfy no one.

“The public received a fraction of the files, and what we received was riddled with abnormal and extreme redactions with no explanation,” said a Monday letter signed by 19 survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuses. “Survivors deserve truth,” it continued. “The public deserves accountability. And the law must be enforced.”

The Justice Department tried again late on Monday, releasing another tranche of documents that featured more mentions of Trump and tips received by investigators, which was also heavily redacted. The law allows for accommodations to protect survivors.

The department, in an unusual move, then sought to cast suspicion on the veracity of the files that made mention of Trump.

“Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump,” the Justice Department said in a Tuesday post on X. “To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.”

The haphazard process has prompted Congressional Democrats and some Republicans to say the administration is in violation of the Epstein Files Transparency Act — the law mandating the release of the documents that Trump signed in November only after his furious lobbying of Republican members of Congress failed to block the measure from coming to a vote.

“This is a White House cover-up,” Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said in a statement Tuesday.

That came after Republican Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who co-sponsored the disclosure law and has frequently clashed with Trump, said on X that the Justice Department’s release “fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law” the president signed.

Trump has repeatedly shifted gears as the Epstein controversy overtook White House messaging. While opposing the Epstein bill’s passage in Congress, he then called the entire case a Democratic “hoax” before embracing passage of the law requiring the release.

“This whole thing with Epstein is a way of trying to deflect from the tremendous success that the Republican party has,” Trump said Monday during an event at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. He added that he didn’t like photos of former President Bill Clinton being released. Massie, the Kentucky Republican, is “being used by the Democrats,” Trump said.

It wasn’t just the last-minute timing of the releases that drew criticism. Several photos that were initially posted on Friday were later pulled down, including one of a desk in which an image of Trump could be seen.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche — a former personal attorney for Trump — said Sunday that the photos were retracted to comply with a judge’s order, but the Trump image was later restored.

Adding to suspicions about the role of politics in the release, the paucity of Trump photos contrasted with several featuring Clinton, who has denied wrongdoing with Epstein. But his spokesman on Monday said the manner in which the documents were released made clear that “someone or something is being protected.”

“We do not know whom, what or why,” Angel Ureña said in a post on X. “But we do know this: We need no such protection.” He went on to call on the Justice Department to publish all materials referring to, mentioning or containing a photo of Clinton.

“Refusal to do so will confirm the widespread suspicion the Department of Justice’s actions to date are not about transparency, but about insinuation,” he added.

As frustration grew over how the release was handled, Democratic Representative Ro Khanna said lawmakers could hold Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt and fine her $5,000 per day until all the records are released.

That threat came after the attorney general’s approach to the entire Epstein case was dismissed by White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in an interview conducted before the deadline. Bondi has “completely whiffed” in handling the case, Wiles told Vanity Fair.

“First she gave them binders full of nothingness,” Wiles said, citing a February decision in which Bondi handed out recycled Epstein documents to pro-Trump social media influencers. “And then she said that the witness list, or the client list, was on her desk. There is no client list, and it sure as hell wasn’t on her desk.”

There were plenty of signs that it was going to be difficult for an administration staffed by some leading proponents of conspiracies about Epstein – such as the theory that his death wasn’t a suicide — to tamp them down now that they run government agencies.

Conspiracy theorists recoiled when the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s deputy director, Dan Bongino, conceded in an interview early this year that Epstein had taken his own life while in custody in 2019. His boss at the FBI is Kash Patel, the right-wing activist who had demanded of the bureau in 2023: “put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are.”

There has been no clear explanation for the administration’s unwillingness to do what it had called for. But what some see as sloppy public relations moves increasingly strikes others as an effort to protect the very elite the documents’ release was supposed to help bring down.

“It’s about this Epstein class,” Khanna said. Trump “was supposed to expose these people. He was supposed to be on our side. Why is he protecting these people?”

Instead, now it’s Bongino who announced recently that he will leave the FBI in January, and Bondi who is feeling the heat from lawmakers and a vocal part of the Make America Great Again movement.

It’s not clear yet whether that frustration will have a lasting effect on perceptions of the president and his party – or whether it will matter to voters who’ve been especially focused on the economy and rising prices heading into the 2026 midterm elections.

A recent Quinnipiac Poll shows 55% of Republicans surveyed said they approved of Trump’s handling of the matter, compared to large majorities of Democrats and independents who don’t approve. In all, 65% of those surveyed said they don’t approve of Trump’s handling of the matter.

Yet as it drags out, the Epstein scandal holds multiple political perils for Trump. For one, some of the documents revealed even before the past week’s release have expanded the public record about how well Trump knew Epstein, how often the two men were together and how likely it is that Trump may have known that Epstein had abused underage girls.

The president has denied any knowledge of Epstein’s abuse, but has acknowledged he knew the financier decades ago. Trump distanced himself from Epstein, saying they had a falling out in the early 2000s that resulted in Trump kicking Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club.

Among the email records released so far by Democrats in Congress is a message from Epstein, saying in part that Trump “knew about the girls.” The broader context of the message isn’t clear.

None of Trump’s approaches have calmed the waters. For the president, sustaining that anti-establishment energy he ran on is complicated now that he and his party have control of the executive and legislative branches of government.

Besides raising questions among his base, the feud already cost the president one of his closest allies in the House — Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who split with Trump over his handling of the situation. He called her a “traitor” in response.

“I’ll tell you right now, this has been one of the most destructive things to MAGA,” Greene said at a rally in November.

The past week’s actions almost ensure that destruction will continue.

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With assistance from Caitlin Reilly, Courtney Subramanian and Kate Sullivan.

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