President Donald Trump’s latest efforts to defuse the ongoing uproar over the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case files, and his administration’s refusal to provide the transparency they promised on the issue to a conspiracy-hungry base, stunned former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-VA) as he analyzed the situation in an MSNBC panel on Wednesday evening.
This follows reporting that Vice President JD Vance was hosting a secret meeting on how best to disappear Trump’s name from the Epstein files — widely speculated to be a key reason the administration doesn’t want the files released in full — although the administration swiftly denied any such meeting was planned.
“I think the first thing is, you know, we were talking before this about the victims,” said Riggleman, a frequent critic of Trump who helped advise the House January 6 Committee. “I have three daughters … I have three granddaughters. I have a beautiful wife. And I was wondering about the victims and — you know, and how it seems like we’ve sort of forgotten that there’s so many people that were affected. And how do we come at this? Right, in a way that’s respectful, but also calls out the ridiculousness that you see in this administration. And it’s something that’s really bothered me about this, because I don’t know how to get my arms around it.”
“I think the problem that they have — first of all, I think JD Vance is looking for more relevancy,” continued Riggleman. “And like Tulsi Gabbard, I think he wants to pull a carcass in to say, look, I’m here for you to get that, that kind of pat on the back. But also, I think when people are starting to call this ‘the Trump files’ and they’re wondering if Epstein’s name is in it as much as Trump, I think that’s their problem.”
“And then for people to come off the top rope, you know, and say, hey, you know, this isn’t messaging about, you know, pedophiles or things like that?” said Riggleman. “I don’t know if in my lifetime — I’m 55 — if I’ve ever heard about a meeting behind closed doors to find out how to message around a pedophile, just because you won’t release the things you said you were going to release during your campaign — how do you even make sense of this? What is the common sense barometer that we’re missing here? What is the standard operating procedure for protecting against something that you can’t even see or you can’t even do?”
“Like, I think for people out there, I think they’re coming to a realization — and I know this is the understatement of the year — that maybe President Trump isn’t telling the truth and maybe he’s hiding something,” he added. “I think maybe they’re coming to that realization.”
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