What did Donald Trump do today?

He said that the victims of a horrific sex-trafficking operation were a "Democrat hoax."

Survivors of the child sex-trafficking ring run by Trump's former close friend and confidant Jeffrey Epstein asked Congress today to fulfill Trump's campaign pledge to release the Justice Department's criminal investigative files. 

The nine women who spoke out today described being groomed and manipulated by Epstein at ages as young as 14, isolated from their families, and forced to have sex with him, his partner Ghislaine Maxwell, and men who paid Epstein for access to them. They spoke, as they had to investigators and at trials, of the lingering effects of the physical and emotional abuse. One of his victims, who met Epstein while she was employed by Trump as a "masseuse" at Mar-a-Lago, has committed suicide. 

Today, speaking specifically in response to their call for action, Trump called it a "Democrat hoax."

Trump campaigned on a promise to make the files public, in order to shed light on the extent of Epstein's criminal empire. But in July, his former defense attorney Pam Bondi (now Attorney General) suddenly declared that there was nothing of interest in them. In response to bipartisan fury at the abrupt change—and the attendant suspicion that Trump might be covering up his own misdeeds, or his friends'—the Trump administration released about 3% of the total files, most of which had already been made public before.

That's not to say that Trump hasn't taken action, though. Through another former personal defense attorney, Todd Blanche (who is now the Deputy Attorney General) Trump arranged to have Epstein's co-conspirator and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell "interviewed" in July under a grant of immunity from prosecution. 

Prior to the interview, Maxwell's attorney made clear that she expected to be rewarded for "assisting" Blanche. After claiming that she never saw Trump commit any untoward acts in her presence, Trump moved her to a minimum security facility described as a "country club," something a convicted child sex trafficker with most of a 20-year sentence left would normally never get under Bureau of Prison rules. 

It's not clear why Trump thinks Maxwell's assurances about her good behavior will do him much good. Maxwell also claims she never saw Epstein himself do anything wrong either, something that dozens of survivors of the sex-trafficking ring have testified under oath is a lie. She was indicted for perjury as a result of making that claim in a civil trial against Epstein before his death.

The kid-gloves treatment Trump has shown Maxwell isn't a new development. After her sex trafficking conviction in 2020, he refused to condemn her or her actions, and would only say "I wish her well." 

Trump has not yet been accused by any of the survivors of taking part in Epstein's crimes. But dozens of women, including at one point his first wife and the mother of three of his children, have independently accused Trump of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape. 

Why does this matter?

• Victims of the most horrific sex crimes imaginable don't cease to exist just because they're politically inconvenient to Donald Trump. 

• It's just about impossible at this point to come up with an innocent explanation for Trump's handling of this scandal.