The release of thousands of unpublished pages about the Jeffrey Epstein case by the Department of Justice on Friday night hit the leadership of the Republican Party like a bomb. The content, which brings new details about President Donald Trump's past and implicates billionaire and government ally Elon Musk, has sparked an internal war within the party and is already altering the calculations for the crucial midterm elections in November.
The focus is on testimonies from 2016, now declassified, that detail an allegation of sexual abuse supposedly occurring in 1994. Additionally, flight records and phone logs confirm a social intimacy with Epstein much greater than the White House admitted, contradicting the narrative that Trump had "banned" the financier from his circles decades ago. The CEO of Tesla and X (formerly Twitter), a key player in communicating with the conservative base, appears in email exchanges from 2013 requesting information to visit Epstein's private island ("Little St. James"). Although Musk denies that the visit took place, the association of two of the biggest icons of the American right with the sex trafficking network has created a perfect storm for the Democrats.