Jimmy Kimmel didn’t buy the Trump administration’s excuse for declining to release any new information from the Epstein files to the public.
“Attorney General Pam Bondi, yesterday, made a big announcement,” Kimmel explained in his monologue Thursday. “She announced the list of Epstein clients and his flight logs would be released today at noon. Guess what? They weren’t released today at noon.”
On Thursday, the White House had first handed binders of the old Epstein details to right-wing influencers like Liz Wheeler, deeming the documents “Phase 1.” They were later published online, but it was soon discovered that none of the information released by Attorney General Bondi was actually new. Bondi later lay the blame on the FBI, accusing its New York office of holding “thousands of pages of documents” related to Epstein.
Kimmel played a clip of Wheeler, a former OAN host, telling her followers that Trump is “trying to give you transparency,” but “the deep state agents are trying to hide it.”
“That’s right, the deep state agents are trying to hide it,” Kimmel replied. “Well, first the deep state agents need to go through the documents to make sure they dot every I and cross out every DJT, and then they can release the documents."
Kimmel continued, “You know, the fact that these looney tunes keep conveniently forgetting that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were good friends is unbelievable.”
The late night host showed readers a passage from a 2002 New York magazine profile of Epstein, which bluntly covered Trump and Epstein’s relationship.
“This is quote from Donald Trump,” Kimmel said, reading, “‘I’ve known Jeff for 15 years, terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It’s even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social life.‘”
“And they’re running around with binders,” Kimmel mused. He added, citing a 2019 New York Times report: “Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein had a party at Mar-a-Lago. They called it a “calendar girl” competition. They flew in 28 women. The only men at the party were him and Jeffrey Epstein.”
“It was [Trump], Jeffrey Epstein, and 28 very disappointed calendar girls,” Kimmel concluded. “I hope that’s in the binder when it comes out.”
According to a report from People, Trump’s name is mentioned seven times in Epstein’s flight logs, according to the records.
