“We ought to release what’s releasable.”
That’s the take from Kansas Second District Congressman Derek Schmidt on KVOE’s airwaves late last week as he commented on the ongoing debate on how the trump administration should handle the Jeffrey Epstein files. Having worked 12 years as the state’s attorney general before going to Congress, Schmidt says he has seen a lot of cases involving child sexual abuse.
In Schmidt’s words, “everything else oughta get out there.”
Epstein and Trump were associates starting in the late 1980s, and Trump is one of a long list of both Republican and Democrat politicians, large-scale donors and entertainers associated with Epstein — who was officially accused in 2019 of sexually abusing underaged girls for years as part of an illegal trafficking operation before committing suicide about a month after charges were filed. Epstein’s co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, was sentenced to 20 years in prison as part of the investigation and is now talking with the US Attorney General’s Office about her part in the case.
The relationship between Trump and Epstein, which Trump says ended in 2004, has been a periodic topic of interest nationally because of long-running allegations of child sexual abuse involving Epstein before federal charges were filed. It returned to the national spotlight earlier this month after the federal government said there was no client list in the Epstein file, although US Attorney General Pam Bondi said there were names shortly after she took office and reports from the Wall Street Journal now indicate Bondi told Trump his name appeared several times in the Epstein files. Trump has not been officially accused of any illegal activity as connected to Epstein. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump said he planned to release more information about the Epstein case. Recently, he has said he supports the release of “credible” information as recommended by Bondi.
