Sarah McCammon / Tamara Keith / Domenico Montanaro (primary hosts; multi-voice label primarily Sarah McCammon)

And Stephen, I mean, rumors about these documents or these kinds of documents have been obviously swirling for a long time.

But how much of this is new information?

So there's a lot there and a lot of it doesn't sound great for President Trump.

Tam, what is President Trump saying about the release of these documents and what's in them?

Yeah.

And a lot of those documents come from after Trump has claimed to have completely severed ties with

with Jeffrey Epstein.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there are any correspondence between the two of them.

He's just a topic of much conversation and fascination.

Today, the president has been very active on truth social.

And what he has been saying is that this is a hoax.

Now, the exact part that is a hoax is not clear, but the president is now asking the Justice Department to investigate Jeffrey Epstein's ties to prominent Democrats, including Larry Summers and Bill Clinton.

And he is also making it very clear that he sees this as an effort by Democrats to harm him and that he needs Republicans to push back on the effort to get these files out

Because it's just a Democratic hoax aimed at harming him.

And as Stephen suggested earlier, there's quite a bit more to what's become known as the so-called Epstein files sort of colloquially.

Right.

I mean, what other documents might be out there?

So what Stephen is alluding to here is that for some time now, there has been an effort in the House, primarily led by Democrats, but there are a few Republicans who've signed on.

And Congressman Thomas Massey of Kentucky has also been leading the charge on this to gather signatures on what is called a discharge petition to force a vote by the House of Representatives on instructing the Justice Department to

to release the so-called Epstein files.