Tangle - The Epstein emails.

Episode Date: November 17, 2025

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on legislation to force the Justice Department to release all of its files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. After suggesting last week that House Republicans should vote against the measure, President Donald Trump said on Sundaythat they should pass it “because we have nothing to hide,” calling the story a “Democrat Hoax.” The vote follows the House Committee on Oversight’s release of approximately 20,000 documents from the Epstein estate; the documents contain repeated mentions of Trump and other public figures. Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: Do you believe the Justice Department is holding information about Epstein that incriminates other powerful people? Let us know.Disagree? That's okay. My opinion is just one of many. Write in and let us know why, and we'll consider publishing your feedback.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by: Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Kendall White, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. It is Monday, November 17th. your host, Isaac Saul. And on today's episode, we are going to be talking about the Jeffrey Epstein emails that were released last week. Before we jump into that episode, I want to give you guys a reminder that we've released a members-only reader listener mailbag over the weekend. We answered questions about how Tangle would have covered the rising Nazi party in Germany in the 1920s, whether unauthorized migrants are really stealing jobs from Americans. The debates around rising

autism rates, what being anti-woke means, and whether AOC is an anti-Zionist, among many other questions, you can listen to that full episode by just going back in your podcast feed one episode. You'll find it. And if you want to check it out, I highly recommend becoming a member to unlock the full thing. You can get a membership by going to readtangle.com forward slash membership. All right, with that, I'm going to send it over to John for today's main topic, and I'll be back for my take. Thanks, Isaac, and welcome, everybody.

Hope you all had an absolutely wonderful weekend. We're going to jump right into our quick hits, but it is Monday, and it's a fresh week with fresh possibilities. So, as always, let's bring the best of ourselves to everything that we do and spread some positivity to those around us. All right, here are your quick hits. First up, President Donald Trump suggested, that the U.S. may hold discussions with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro amid a military

buildup in the Caribbean Sea and ongoing strikes against boats allegedly trafficking drugs from Venezuela to the U.S. Separately, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. will designate Venezuela's Cartel de Los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization, alleging that it is responsible for terrorist violence throughout our hemisphere. Number two, the Federal Aviation Administration lifted its emergency order requiring cuts to flight volume at major airports across the U.S. The cuts were implemented to address fatigue and staffing issues among air traffic controllers during the government shutdown, which ended on Wednesday.

Number three, President Trump issued an executive order removing tariffs on some goods that are not produced in the United States, including coffee, bananas, and cocoa. The administration says the rollback is a result of new trade deals with several countries that export these products. Number four, protests led by the group Generation Z Mexico took place across the country on Saturday, calling for reductions in crime and corruption. The demonstrations followed the killing of Urupan Mayor Carlos Manzo during a public event on November 1st. 120 people, including 100 police officers, were reportedly injured in Mexico City, and 20 people were arrested.

And number five, the first round of voting in Chile's presidential election did not result in an outright winner, sending the election to a runoff vote in December between Communist Party candidate Jeanette Hara and far-right candidate Jose Antonio Cast. Back with breaking news, the House Oversight Committee has just released new emails from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Some are focused on President Trump. These are records that the Department, or rather the House Oversight Committee, subpoenaed from the Epstein estate, reams, thousands of people.

pages worth released this morning by Democrats on that panel, several mentioning President Trump by name. On Tuesday, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on legislation to force the Justice Department to release all of its files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. After suggesting last week that House Republicans should vote against the measure, President Donald Trump said on Sunday that they should pass it because we have nothing to hide, calling the story a Democrat hoax. The vote follows the House Committee on Oversight's release of approximately 20,000 documents from the Epstein estate. The documents contain repeated mentions of Trump and other public figures. Since the start of President Trump's second term,

a range of new information about Epstein has been released, some of it pertaining to his relationship with Trump when he was a private citizen. In July, the Wall Street Journal published a report claiming that Trump signed a letter containing a lewd drawing and sexually suggestive text as part of a birthday album for Epstein in 2003. Trump has maintained that he did not write the letter and sued the journal for defamation. Separately, the Justice Department has released batches of files related to Epstein, including over 100 pages of documents and audio recordings and transcripts of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche's interview with Epstein Associate Galane Maxwell in July.

Also in July, the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation wrote in a joint memo that they had found no evidence that Epstein blackmailed powerful figures kept a client list or was murdered. On Wednesday, Representative Robert Garcia, the Democrat from California, the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee released three emails from 2011, 2015, and 2019, in which Epstein discusses Donald Trump.

In one email, Epstein refers to Trump as the dog that hasn't barked and claims that one of his victims, whose name was redacted, spent hours at my house with Trump. The White House said that the victim was Virginia Joufrey, who previously testified in detail about her relationship with Epstein

and said she never saw Trump engage in any wrongdoing. In another email, says, of course Trump knew about the girls, as he asked Galane to stop. Later that day, the Republican-controlled Oversight Committee released the additional 20,000 documents from Epstein's estate, containing further mentions of Trump and correspondence with prominent political figures such as former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, former White House Counsel Kathleen Roomler, and journalist Michael Wolfe. Last week, Trump administration officials met with Representative Lauren Bobert,

the Republican from Colorado, in the Situation Room, to discuss a petition to force a vote on the full Epstein-Files release, which Bobert supported. President Trump also reportedly sought to discuss the petition with Representative Nancy Mays, the Republican from South Carolina, another one of the four House Republicans who backed it. Discharge petitions require support from 218 members to force a vote on legislation. All Democrats joined the four Republicans in signing the petition, which reached the 218 vote threshold after Representative Adelita Griehlva, the Democrat from Arizona, was sworn in on Wednesday. The petition clears the away for a vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a bill introduced by Representative

Roe-Kana, the Democrat from California, in July, that would compel the Justice Department to release all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in DOJ's possession that relate to the investigation and prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein, including materials related to Galane Maxwell, flight logs, and travel records, and individuals named or referenced, including government officials, in connection with the investigation and prosecution of Epstein. Before President Trump said House Republicans should vote for the bill, Representative Thomas Massey, the Republican from Kentucky, suggested that over 100 Republicans were preparing to support the measure, which, with the addition of full Democratic support, would give it a veto-proof

majority. If passed, the bill would head to the Senate, where the timeline for consideration is unclear. Today, we'll share views from the left and the right on the latest in the Epstein saga, and then Isaac's take. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right. First up, let's start with what the left is saying. The left views the Epstein issue as a deepening political problem for the president. Some say Trump is seeing conspiracies he promoted come back to bite him. Others say the story has always been about more than just Trump.

In the Atlantic, Jonathan Lemire said Epstein returns at the worst time for Trump. Jeffrey Epstein is dead, but the disgraced financier and sex offender continues to shadow Trump. The storyline's re-emergence yesterday, with the release of thousands of Epstein's emails, some of which highlight his relationship with Trump, delivered another blow to a president already at the weakest moment of his second term, Lemire wrote. Trump's party got wiped out in last week's elections as voters assigned it the greater portion of blame for the shutdown. the Supreme Court seems set to unravel his signature tariffs.

His poll numbers have dipped, as Americans conclude that he cares too much about gilded ballrooms and has not focused nearly enough on bringing down high prices. What exactly is Trump trying to prevent from being released? For months, White House aides have snapped at reporters who even mentioned the word Epstein. But in private moments, members of the president's inner circle acknowledge that they don't know the true extent of Trump's relationship with Epstein, Lemire said. Few people in the White House believe that the Epstein matter will swing many votes next year, but it has the makings of an unrelenting distraction, a scandal that could bogged down

Trump's presidency. In Bloomberg, Timothy L. O'Brien suggested Trump stoke the Epstein scandal. It's come back to bite him. The White House dismissed the trove as nothing more than selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump. The reality is that it was conspiracy-minded Republicans who set the Epstein firestorm in motion last summer, outraged that Trump's Justice Department ended an investigation into Epstein's suicide and clientele, O'Brien said. Trump, who hasn't been accused of any crimes in connection with Epstein,

once made political hay stoking conspiracy theories about Epstein's relationship with elites. He knitted that tale into a broader narrative about institutional malfeasance smothering average Americans. It should have crossed Trump's mind, of course. After all, he and Epstein were pals. Trump once bragged to me that their friendship was stronger than mere business

after showing me a prized Palm Beach property that he had outbid Epstein to secure. For his part, Epstein considered himself deeply familiar with Trump, O'Brien wrote. The Epstein episode transcends questions about Trump's character alone. What remains to be discovered and delineated is whether he secured sexual liaisons through Epstein or whether the same president who has been busily enriching himself from the Oval Office also once made use of some of Epstein's murkier financial services. In the nation, Jeet here wrote, Jeffrey Epstein was a warlord. We have to talk about it. Trump richly deserves whatever reputational harm and possible legal retribution may come to him as a result of his ties to Epstein.

But at its heart, this has always been a scandal about the ruling class as a whole, not one individual or political party, here said. The Epstein emails document his ties to a wide swath of the U.S. and global elite in ways that transcend partisan lines. Among those Epstein was on easy terms with were former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers who held high office under both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as well as Trump advisor Steve Bannon and right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel. The Jeffrey Epstein story makes no sense unless you realize

that he was deeply entrenched in the foreign policy elite, a fact that gave him much of the impunity he enjoyed for most of his life, he wrote. He had the same neoliberal worldview that has dominated the U.S. elite since the end of the Cold War. He was a believer in Washington Consensus U.S. military hegemony bolstered in the Middle East by the alliance with Israel, globalization, the privatization of government functions, stem-dominated education, and male-centered sexual hedonism, an ethos he took to sickening extremes.

All right, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. Many on the right say none of the available evidence implicates Trump in wrongdoing, and future releases are also unlikely to. Some argue Democrats are overplaying their hand. Others suggest the ongoing Epstein story could destroy Trump's presidency. National Review's editors wrote about Democrats Epstein-Dud. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released new emails the other day from Jeffrey Epstein that caused an instant frenzy in Washington, although they are more of what one would expect, given what we know so far. They are embarrassing regarding President Trump's relationship with Epstein, but contain no smoking gun regarding any misconduct, the editor said. In one email,

Epstein claims that Trump spent hours at Epstein's home with a victim, whose name Democrats conveniently redacted. The only reason to strike her name, Virginia Goufrey, was that people might go back and see what she said about Trump. In a deposition, she said she never saw Trump and Epstein together and never saw him at Epstein's home, and denied that he ever flirted with her. It seems that the push to release all the Epstein documents is an unstoppable train in the house, but this isn't the way to handle sensitive investigation documents or to treat innocent people who may be mentioned in them, the editors wrote. We favor maximal transparency overseen by relevant judges in the various ongoing Epstein-related

cases rather than a willy-nilly politicized push to violate every standard practice in the hopes of nailing Trump or exposing some vast elite criminal conspiracy. In the Wall Street Journal, Holman W. Jenkins Jr. argued Democrats get the Epstein wars wrong. Activists insisted Democrats show fight with the thankless government shutdown that finally ended this week. Now they want more fight over Epstein. Never mind that this represents the sorriest possible way of building on recent electoral successes and Mr. Trump's shrinking approval ratings, Jenkins said. Read carefully in a press somewhat chastened by its previous misreporting, and you'll learn a couple of things. Mr. Trump and Epstein socialized in Palm Beach, but Epstein and his chief accuser, the late Virginian Dufray, both left clear testimony Mr. Trump never behaved improperly.

I erred in 2016 in believing Trump's personal baggage would make him a risky nominee. In office, I thought he would be trampled like no president in history by attacks on his businesses and his history of financial and personal scandals. Wrong. All this disappeared from the public discourse in favor of a made-up story about Russia. In essence, Democrats immunized him from his own past by accusing him of one of the things of which he could be found innocent, Jenkins wrote. What keeps these Democrats from power are the antics of their national party.

The Russia folly, the border folly, the trans folly, the Biden incapacity folly. The Epstein distraction bids to be another piece of foolishness that does more to inhibit Democrats' return to real influence than advance it. In the free press, Eli Lake explored why Trump's Epstein problem won't go away. The White House has tried over the last half year to dismiss the Epstein files as a hoax spun up by the president's opponents, but the scandal hasn't gone away. Instead, it is becoming a crucial test of Trump's power leak, said. Until now, Trump has been able to keep his party in line in Congress. The Epstein matter, though, is different. There is a very good chance many Republicans

will break ranks next month. That would be a humiliation for a president who has punished members of his party who oppose him, targeting them in primaries and insulting them on his social media feeds. Trump, of course, has survived many scandals before, but the timing of this one is tricky. The president's poll numbers are going in the wrong direction. The economist's presidential approval rating tracker puts him at 39%. Earlier this month, Democrats dumped the GOP in the off-year elections, winning governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey. And while the rate of inflation dipped slightly in September, prices on many consumer goods continued to sort. Meanwhile, the president's coalition grows more fractious by the day, like Root.

For some factions on the right, the distrust of the Trump administration on Epstein is part of a broader fight over the direction of Maga and the Republican Party after Trump leaves the scene. All right, let's head over to Isaac for his take. All right, that is it for the left and the writer saying, which, brings us to my take. The Epstein story is truly a choose-your-own adventure of what you want it to be about. Some people want the story to be Donald Trump is a racist.

Some people wanted to be Democrats are running a child's sex ring. Some people wanted to be Epstein as an Israeli spy. Some people wanted to be about various governments across the globe that Epstein somehow infiltrated. Some people wanted to be about how elites all protect each other and prey on the innocent while others wanted to be about sleazy men who were held accountable during the Me Too movement.

No matter how you see this story, an email dump like last week's offers some fodder. The magnitude of influence Epstein maintained is genuinely remarkable. He writes about his personal relationship with President Trump. He writes to Steve Bannon and then to the White House Council under President Barack Obama. He exchanges emails with Peter Thiel and Larry Summers. He had conversations with Emeraldi and New York businessman, with Russian and Israeli and British politicians, with theoretical physicists from major universities,

and with famed academics like Noam Chomsky. Whatever conclusions you want to reach, you can probably find something to support them because Epstein really was injecting himself into just about every social circle and institution imaginable. To that end, to differentiate between what we can project and what we can reasonably surmise, I want to go through what these emails confirmed,

what requires more context, and what information is new. Let's start with the facts that these emails confirmed, even if a lot of people wanted to deny or ignore them. Number one, Trump and Epstein were close before they're falling out. They had a personal relationship and many friends and acquaintances in common. Number two, Epstein was well connected throughout the Democratic Party, including with Bill Clinton and the Obama administration.

Number three, Epstein was well connected among New York power players with foreign governments like the United Kingdom, Israel and Russia, and with business leaders all over the world. Number four, Epstein was abusing and trafficking young women, and he believed some of the people around him, including Trump, knew about the girls, though this could be a reference to Epstein recruiting girls away from Mar-a-Lago. Personally, I'm also reminded that Michael Wolfe is the kind of journalist you should not really trust to be impartial. Wolf, who has now written four books about Trump can be seen offering public relations and media advice

Epstein, even after allegations about his bad behavior had become public. Other parts of the email dump require additional context. For instance, one of the most eye-popping lines is Epstein writing to Galane Maxwell, quote, I want you to realize that the dog that hasn't barked is Trump, he says. A redacted victim name spent hours with him at my house. He has never once been mentioned. The name of the redacted victim here is important. It's Virginia Dufre, who died by suicide earlier this year. Dufre has given contradictory testimony over the years. In 2011, she said that she had encountered Trump during her time with Epstein, but she

withdrew that claim and swarmed testimony in 2015, and later said she had been quoted inaccurately. Joufrey worked at Maralago before she alleged Epstein recruited her, and while she said Trump was a good friend of Epstein's, she also said Trump never partook in any sex with underage girls, never flirted with her and never appeared with Epstein at his home. Now, you can make what you will of that testimony, but with Joufrey's name added, you can also make what you will of Epstein's email.

A lot of the recent release isn't new, partly because a hacker collective has been releasing troves of Epstein emails over the past few years. Major media organizations like Bloomberg have been digging into those emails, and the latest email dump provides frustratingly little new insight, especially into how Epstein amassed his fortune, which is a major piece of this puzzle that still

seems to be missing. Still, a few pieces of the information are new. One, Epstein believed Trump knew about the girls and that he was worried about how Trump would respond to his investigation. Two, many of Epstein's ties persisted long after his first sex crime conviction. Three, economists and former United States Treasury Secretary Larry Summers leaned on Epstein for advice. Four, Epstein offered his services to Sergei Lavrov, Russia's longtime foreign minister, in 2018, as someone who could offer insights on how to deal with Trump. Five, Epstein unsuccessfully tried to enlist the help of Huffington founder Ariana Huffington to clear his name. Of all the stories that the emails offer up, the president's role has been cast as the most salacious.

This makes sense. He is the sitting president. And I certainly think these emails reflect poorly on him. Let's remember the full picture here. Trump was accused of raping an underage girl in 2016. That woman said she was 13 years old when Trump sexually abused her at Epstein's residence, though she canceled a press conference and withdrew her lawsuit citing threats against her. The Trump-Ebstein relationship is well documented.

During his campaign and the early days of his presidency, Trump's team made a big deal about how they would release the Epstein files. But when Trump became president, they seemed to get gunshot. Amid this feud with Trump over the summer, Elon Musk said that the Epstein files won't be released because Trump was in them. Now, the files about Epstein are out, and to some degree, Trump is in them. Does that more complete picture confirm the president is a child rapist? Of course not. But is it fair to want more answers?

Is it fair to be alarmed? Is it fair to say that the combination of these allegations against Trump and the months he spent trying to stop these files from getting released is suspicious? Yes, I think it is. The obscene story has become a legitimate political problem for Trump, as it seems to be one of the few things that transcends the Republican Party's loyalty to him. He's now asking House Republicans to release the files, whether the Senate will follow through, and what Trump's Justice Department would earmark for release remains unclear.

Meanwhile, Trump is openly instructing the DOJ to investigate the Democrats or Democratic donors implicated in the emails while totally ignoring the Republicans. As a quick aside, such blatantly partisan direction was unthinkable even just a decade ago, but now seems commonplace. I don't know where this goes next, but the Epstein story is obviously more complex than most of us understood even a few years ago,

and it goes much further than just Donald Trump. I hope the documents keep coming, and I hope they help expose the circle of people involved in abusing these girls and how these elite circles actually operate, whether or not the president is criminally implicated. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from Noel in Tempe, Arizona, who said,

I recently engaged on social media with someone who supports Trump and claimed that his legal expert friends, a prosecutor and a lawyer, said that this so-called hidden provision in Trump's one big beautiful bill is not a power grab and was inserted for cost savings. What is your take on this change to legislative language? Okay, so the provision in question reads, quote, no court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given. when the injunction or order was issued pursuant to federal rule of civil procedures 65C, whether issued prior to on or subsequent to the date of enactment of this section.

A lot of legalese there. Basically, this provision that was in Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill for a moment drew a lot of attention. I think Erwin Chemerinsky, who is the legal scholar quoted in Newsweek about this piece, is probably the biggest name who wrote about it. And his argument was that the bill could effectively disarm the United States Supreme Court. I have a great deal of respect for Erwin Shorensky, and, you know, I'm not going to pretend I understand the law better than he does. He's the dean of a major law school and a braxing lawyer. But I do think the reaction to this may have been a bit exaggerated, and either way it's irrelevant.

The provision never became law. The House stripped the language about how appropriated funds could be used, and then the Senate's version of this bill rewrote the entire provision, which became law. So it became neither a provision to grab power nor to save costs. All right, that is it for your questions answered. I'm going to send it back to John for the rest of the show, and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Thanks, Isaac. Here's your under-the-radar story for today, folks. On Friday, the Department of Transportation published a notice in the Federal Register that it is withdrawing a proposed rule put forth by the Biden administration that would have required airlines to pay travelers for extended flight

delays. Under the rule, airlines would have to pay passengers $200 to $300 for domestic delays lasting at least three hours and up to $775 for flight delays lasting at least nine hours. Proponents of the measure said it would have helped offset the financial cost of delays, particularly when they are exacerbated by mistakes made by airlines. However, the Trump administration said it decided to drop the proposal to allow airlines to compete on the services and compensation that they provide to passengers rather than imposing new minimum requirements for these services and compensation through regulation. CBS News has this story, and there's a link in today's episode description.

All right, next up is our numbers section. The minimum number of legislative days after a bill has been introduced and referred to a committee that a House member can file a motion for a discharge petition to force a vote on the bill is 30. The number of Republicans who signed onto the discharge petition to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files is four. The number of Democrats who signed onto the discharge petition to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files is 214. The number of files mentioning Donald Trump in the approximately 20,000 files from Jeffrey Epstein's estate released by House Republicans on Wednesday is 1,628. The number of files mentioning Barack Obama is 421. The number of files

mentioning Bill Clinton is 392. According to an October 2025, Reuters Ipsos poll, 9 and 10 Republicans say they approve of President Trump's overall performance. Four in 10 Republicans say they approve of President Trump's handling of the Epstein files. According to an October 2025 NPR PBS News Marist poll, 77% of U.S. adults say that they want all of the Epstein files released, but with the victim's names removed. And 9% of U.S. adults say they do not when any of the files released. And last but not least, our Have a Nice Day Story.

When he was in high school, Jamal Hinton received the text from an unknown number inviting him to Thanksgiving dinner. The sender, Wanda Dench, told Hinton that she had meant to send the text to her grandson, but she assured him he was still welcome to come.

And Hinton took her up on that offer. The exchange went viral, and for the past nine years, the pair has switched off hosting duties. This Thanksgiving will mark their 10th spent together It's just amazing to sit back and think that one mistaken text led to so many people's happiness and joy, Hinton said. Dench said she hopes her friendship with Hinton reminds people how awesome Thanksgiving can be. Today has this story, and there's a link in today's episode description.

All right, everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to reetangle.com, where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Law, signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me.

Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Wall. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kayback and associate editors Hunter Asperson, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul, Lindsay Canuth, and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at reetangle.com.