California Rep. Ted Lieu wants to know why Donald Trump’s ties to the late Jeffrey Epstein aren’t getting more media coverage. At a news conference on Tuesday, Lieu brought up newly unsealed court documents that he suggested highlight Trump’s relationship with Epstein, the convicted sex offender.
“We hear a lot from our constituents on different issues, but something I’ve heard that doesn’t seem to be getting covered are the Epstein files. These files were released. And, like, Donald Trump is sort of all over this,” Lieu said. “Y’all might want to look at that, because that’s highly disturbing. And again, it shows that Donald Trump is unfit for office.” Lieu also pointed to Trump’s felony conviction for falsifying business records and the finding of civil liability for sexual abuse as indicators he is unfit for the presidency.
Lieu has taken some heat for overstating the contents of the Epstein documents in his remarks. The most recent document to be released came out earlier this month, a 176-page grand jury transcript that does not reference Trump. Previous document releases in January 2024 made passing references to Trump but didn’t implicate him in anything nefarious. (For the record, New York Magazine has a more thorough breakdown of what document releases have already revealed about Trump and Epstein’s ties.) Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said those releases “thoroughly debunked” any claims about Trumps ties to Epstein. Trump has always denied any wrongdoing.
But the congressman has a point: For three consecutive presidential elections now, Trump hasn’t been pressed enough by reporters on the campaign trail about his relationship with Epstein.
There is video of Trump partying with Epstein at Mar-a-Lago in 1992; Trump said in 2002 that Epstein was a “terrific guy” who “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” Trump wished Epstein’s co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, well in her failed attempt to stay out of jail during her trial, and a court-ordered document released in 2021 revealed Trump flew on Epstein’s private plane between New York and Palm Beach seven times in the mid-’90s — despite Trump’s claims that he had never flown with Epstein. There’s also the 2016 lawsuit filed against Trump by a woman who claimed the former president raped her as a teenager at Epstein’s apartment. A Trump attorney at the time called the claim “frivolous” and “categorically untrue,” and the accuser dropped her lawsuit days before the 2016 election after her lawyer said she had received death threats.
Trump himself has seemed ambivalent about what information about Epstein might ultimately be revealed. When asked on Fox News this year whether he’d work to unseal some of the Epstein documents if he’s elected president this fall, he seemed to have reservations.
“I guess I would,” Trump said, “I think that less so because, you don’t know, you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would.”
All things considered, I agree with Lieu that Trump’s civil liability for sexual abuse and his criminal conviction in New York suggest his unfitness for office. Trump’s ties to Epstein seem deserving of further scrutiny, though, and that he’s been allowed to avoid addressing them is a media failure.
