What did Donald Trump do today?

He released all kinds of files to distract from covering up files.

Trump has been facing deep and bipartisan fury over his stonewalling on releasing the so-called Epstein files. Jeffrey Epstein was a convicted sex offender who apparently committed suicide in 2018 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges related to a massive operation involving dozens of minors. He was also a close friend and intimate confidant of Donald Trump for many years—among various other connections between the two men. 

A poll released today show that an astonishing 89% of Americans want the information collected by the federal government released to the public. Those files may contain information about which, if any, of the wide circle of wealthy and politically powerful people who moved in Epstein's orbit were also clients for his child prostitution ring. 

Today, Trump ordered the release of two massive tranches of government investigative material—about Hillary Clinton and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, who previously took an illegal campaign donation from Donald Trump and later served as his personal lawyer, announced the release today. On its face, it might seem like a good political distraction for Trump to once again attack Clinton, whose 2016 presidential bid was hampered by a lingering FBI investigation into her supposed insecure e-mail server practices dating to her time as Secretary of State. But the results of that investigation have already been released, and neither Clinton nor anyone associated with her campaign was found to have engaged in any wrongdoing. Bondi did not commit to releasing the entire files. 

The abrupt and previously unscheduled release of the FBI's files on Martin Luther King, Jr's assassination. was sharply opposed by his family and the foundation that carries on his work. In an episode with increasing relevance for the second Trump administration, King was intensely surveilled by the FBI for years in the hope of linking him to criminal or politically unsavory activity. Not only was it an unlawful invasion of King's privacy, it was focused on finding or creating embarrassing information. The King family statement addresses this:

The release of these files must be viewed within their full historical context. During our father’s lifetime, he was relentlessly targeted by an invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing disinformation and surveillance campaign orchestrated by J. Edgar Hoover through the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The intent of the government’s COINTELPRO campaign was not only to monitor, but to discredit, dismantle and destroy Dr. King’s reputation and the broader American Civil Rights Movement. These actions were not only invasions of privacy, but intentional assaults on the truth – undermining the dignity and freedoms of private citizens who fought for justice, designed to neutralize those who dared to challenge the status quo.

In 1999, our family filed a wrongful death civil lawsuit in Shelby County, Tennessee. The jury unanimously concluded that our father was the victim of a conspiracy involving Loyd Jowers and unnamed co-conspirators, including government agencies as a part of a wider scheme. …While we support transparency and historical accountability, we object to any attacks on our father’s legacy or attempts to weaponize it to spread falsehoods. We strongly condemn any attempts to misuse these documents in ways intended to undermine our father’s legacy and the significant achievements of the movement. Those who promote the fruit of the FBI’s surveillance will unknowingly align themselves with an ongoing campaign to degrade our father and the Civil Rights Movement. 

The files in question had been under court seal since 1977, and are not believed to contain any substantive information about King not widely known to the public—only the raw work product of the FBI smear campaign led by its longtime director, the overtly white supremacist J. Edgar Hoover.

In other words, Trump stands to benefit from a chaotic dump of unreviewed information on King in two ways: it may distract from the intense public pressure he is under to release files related to a sex trafficker of children that may be personally catastrophic for him, and it may provide raw material that white supremacists sympathetic to his presidency can use to tar King's legacy, and by extension the idea of a multi-racial America.

Also today, the Republican leadership in the House adjourned the Rules Committee for the summer, rather than allow it to act on a petition joined by many House Republicans aimed at forcing the release of the Epstein files.

Why does this matter? 

• The American people have a right to know how deep Trump's connections to Jeffrey Epstein go, no matter how upset that makes him.

• If Donald Trump wants to make a politician look bad for flagrantly breaking the law over classified documents, he can release his own FBI file. 

• This is what weaponizing government looks like.