The hosts of MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” went scorched earth Tuesday over the Trump administration‘s ongoing delays in releasing the Epstein Files, with host Joe Scarborough pointedly asking, “What are you trying to hide?”
It has been over a month now since the Congress-mandated Dec. 19 deadline when the Department of Justice was supposed to have released all of its Epstein Files to the general public. The DOJ has said that the delays are due to its desire to protect the identities of certain victims named in the documents, but Scarborough was not having any of that. “Whatever,” the “Morning Joe” host said, adding. “The question is: Who is the Trump administration protecting?”
“Why are they breaking the law? Who is the DOJ protecting? They handed out binders filled with nothingness the first week of the Trump administration. [U.S. Attorney General] Pam Bondi said she had the Epstein File list on her desk!” Scarborough continued. “But it’s just delay after delay after delay and then Congress passes the Epstein Transparency Act, only one dissenter in the House, and a month later they still have released, what, maybe 1% of those files?”
“We saw pictures of Bill Clinton in a hot tub. Great. Alright. Wasn’t a shock, was it?” the “Morning Joe” host noted, referring to one of the DOJ’s first Epstein Files releases. “But what did you redact? What’s behind all of those redactions?” Visibly frustrated and angry, Scarborough asked again, “Why do you continue to break the law every day and not release the Epstein Files? What are you trying to hide?”
You can watch the full “Morning Joe” segment yourself below.
Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski were joined Tuesday morning by New York Times opinion columnist David French, who stated that Congress’ deadline for the Trump administration does not matter because the president does not ultimately want it to matter. “What we know is that Trump doesn’t want to apparently comply with the law,” French explained. “We know when Trump doesn’t want to comply with the law, the law doesn’t matter anymore.”
“He did not want to see this law passed. He fought, he fought, he fought until he realized it was going to pass anyway. Now he’s fighting compliance,” French added. “This is what he does, and it leaves people to speculate.” Later on, “Morning Joe” co-anchor Jonathan Lemire echoed French’s thoughts.
“This is in some ways a microcosm of how Donald Trump has asserted his will and expanded executive power in his second term,” Lemire said. “He is simply ignoring what he has been told, compelled to do, and this administration has twisted itself in knots justifying not releasing these files.”
