U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi discusses a drug enforcement-related announcement during a press conference at DEA Headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., July 15, 2025. REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Sarah Burris is a long-time veteran of political campaigns, having worked as a fundraiser and media director across the United States. She transitioned into reporting while working for Rock the Vote, Future Majority and Wiretap Magazine, covering the Millennial Generation's perspective during the presidential elections. As a political writer, Burris has had bylines at CNN, Salon.com, BNR, and AlterNet and serves as a senior digital editor for RawStory.com.
A former Republican Party spokesperson and Bulwark host thinks that President Donald Trump is sunk when it comes to trying to deny his links to Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaking to MSNBC's Katy Tur, Tim Miller, who left the GOP, said that denying his involvement will no longer work for Trump.
Tur noted Trump and his allies have fed conspiracy theories about a sex ring with Democrats drinking the blood of children. They started a fire, she described, and now are trying to keep it contained.
"He had a little bit of a scapegoat in the first term, right? When he wanted to change the subject," Miller recalled Trump would claim, "Oh, the deep state is blocking me. And I have these old establishment Republicans that we need to get rid of."
Now, however, he's installed people like Kash Patel, Dan Bongino and Pam Bondi, all of whom have promoted the release of the Epstein files.
"So, I don't know, it seems like they have some personnel issues, but like, so he doesn't have an excuse this time, right? Like, you know, there's nobody that he can point a finger at and say it's their fault. He put these people in and said, 'This time I'm coming back to get revenge,'" Miller continued.
Meanwhile, the president's former personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, is now working with Epstein's girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted sex trafficker linked to the sex ring.
"This whole thing is like, look over there, squirrel!" Miller continued. "Like that works if you're at Mar-a-Lago and Joe Biden's in charge, you can blame him. Or if you're like, the deep state is in charge. You can't do that now. And to me, the biggest news about this story, just one sentence on it real quick, is when Hakeem Jeffries first talked about this about a week out."
Jeffries said that the country is now confused as to whether the Trump administration was lying about Epstein before or they're lying now.
"Either it's a cover-up or they didn't really have the goods and they're pretending to. This pretty much makes clear that this is a cover-up," he said of the Journal report. "Which is a very different story and much harder to contain, because now, if the Democrats ever get back in power, all these people are going to be subpoenaed. It's not a five-week story for Mike Johnson. It's a two-year story in 2027. Now they're all going to have to discuss this meeting. And so, I mean, I just think that that makes a big difference over where the story was a couple days ago."