This appalling Trump coverup cannot last forever — and may end sooner than he thinks

When Emmett Till’s mother lifted the veil from her son’s mutilated body in 1955, she forced America to face itself. She knew that if the nation could see what had been done to her child, it could no longer pretend innocence. That open casket was a moral explosion: it turned private grief into a public reckoning.

The same courage is needed now.

Amy Wallace, the co-writer of Virginia Giuffre’s memoir Nobody’s Girl, has said she knows the names of the men who raped and trafficked children with Jeffrey Epstein.

She says the FBI — and, presumably, Director Kash Patel — knows the names of those men.

She says the Department of Justice — and, presumably, AG Pam Bondi (who turned a blind eye to Epstein’s crimes during the eight years she was Florida’s Attorney General while he was raping children under her nose) — knows the names of those men.

The only ones kept in the dark are the American people.

Wallace’s words should set the country on fire:

“Yes, I know who the names are. Virginia knows who the names are. So does the FBI and the DOJ.”

Yet the files remain sealed, and the truth sits buried under bullshit excuses about “ongoing investigations” and “legal process” that are obviously designed to protect one person: Donald Trump. Was he also raping children? Was the Miss Teen USA Pageant he owned back then also part of Epstein’s network, feeding teenage girls to predators?

Is that what House Speaker Mike Johnson is working so hard to cover up? Are they haunted by the Newsweek headline: “Epstein Victim Was Contestant in Donald Trump’s Teen Beauty Pageant”? Is that why Johnson is refusing to swear Adelita Grijalva into office?

Most recently we’ve been treated to the naked lies Patel and Bondi are apparently telling (or shrouding with legalese) about not having “Epstein’s list” at all, something both of them previously claimed existed. Did it simply vanish? Did they destroy it, after Bondi told the press that it was “sitting on my desk right now” back in February?

Virginia Giuffre fought to expose Epstein’s network of predators who were, and still are, protected both by their great wealth and the status that can confer and, now, by the Republican Party itself. Her courage cost her her life, and her death leaves behind both a tragedy and a moral demand.

Her story is not gossip. It’s unambiguous testimony about how men in power like Donald Trump shield themselves from justice. It’s the record of an old boy system that would rather bury the victims than confront the abusers.

Every institution involved in this cover-up is rotting from within. The Republican-controlled House and Senate. Trump’s Department of Justice. His toady-controlled FBI.

We’ve seen this sickness before.

The Catholic Church protected pedophile priests for decades. George W. Bush’s administration lied about torture and murder.

Corporations selling tobacco, asbestos, fossil fuels, and opioids hid reports on their deadly products and hired corrupt “scientists” and paid off mostly-Republican politicians to help them continue killing Americans and our planet for billions in profits. Trump’s administration even tried to bring back asbestos.

There’s not a family in America that wasn’t touched by this criminality and these men’s lies: the asbestos industry’s executives’ coverups killed my father, and the tobacco industry’s executives’ coverups killed my younger brother Stanley.

The formula never changes. When uncomfortable truths threaten people who hold great wealth and power, they use that power to hide the truth. The result is always the same: a deep moral infection that spreads — and often kills — until the public rises up to clean it out.

The Epstein case is not about one man. It’s about a culture of privilege that believes laws are for the poor and justice is for the powerless.

If a large group of men are named in the files as abusers of children, and if the FBI and DOJ know who they are as Virginia Giuffre alleges, then every day of silence is a crime against humanity.

Every Trump administration official who stays quiet is an accomplice. Every Republican representative or senator who hides behind “procedure” and cowers in fear of Trump joins the conspiracy.

America cannot heal by hiding its wounds. Just as Emmett Till’s mother forced the nation to look at the face of violent racism, we must now look at the faces of those men Trump and Epstein traveled with who used children as sex objects and hid behind the power their great wealth conferred.

It may be painful to see, but the truth is always painful before it’s redemptive. The cover-up must end. The files must be released. The names must be spoken.

Those who raped and trafficked children with Epstein — including Trump, if the evidence points in that direction — must face public exposure and legal punishment. They should not hold office, sit on boards, or enjoy the comforts of respectability. They should face justice.

And those who know and remain silent must be held to account as well. We can’t have one standard for the powerful and another for everyone else. A democracy that protects predators because they’re rich or politically powerful is no democracy at all.

The FBI, the Department of Justice, Republicans in Congress, and every public servant with knowledge of these crimes must decide which side of history they stand on. If they choose secrecy, they stand with the abusers. If they choose truth, they stand with the victims and with the conscience of the nation. There is no middle ground.

This is not about revenge. It’s about cleansing the moral fabric of our country. Evil thrives in silence. It feeds on secrecy. When sunlight hits corruption, it dies. The moment those names are made public, the reckoning begins. That’s how justice starts.

Let the people see what’s been done. Let them see who did it. Let them see the truth that Trump and those around him have tried so hard to bury.

Emmett Till’s mother showed us what courage looks like. Now that same courage is needed again. Until the truth is out, until the names are spoken, until justice is real, the stain will remain on us all.