Over the past two months, the US Department of Justice has released millions of documents related to its sex-trafficking investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. Now, the president wants the nation to move on - but will it?
Deputy US Attorney General Todd Blanche has said the government's review of the Epstein files - which was mandated by a law passed by Congress in November - is over, and there are no grounds for new prosecutions.
There's a lot of correspondence. There's a lot of emails. There's a lot of photographs, Blanche said on Sunday. But that doesn't allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody.
While the justice department's review may be over, on Capitol Hill, the House of Representatives is pushing ahead with its own Epstein inquiry. Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are scheduled to testify later in February after Republicans threatened to hold them in contempt of Congress.
Members of Congress and Epstein's victims, meanwhile, are continuing to call for further disclosures. They point to documents they say exist but weren't included in the released files.
It is yet another sign of just how difficult to shake this story has become for those, like President Donald Trump, who are clearly keen to move on.
For the moment, however, the president has emerged from the storm with no apparent lasting damage. That is not true for some of the other rich and powerful figures whose ties to Epstein were more prominently detailed in the files, and who had continued contact with him long after he became a convicted sex offender in 2008.
In the latest batch of files, the justice department also released a list of unverified FBI tips, including some from 2016 when Trump was in the midst of his first presidential campaign. The list includes numerous allegations of sexual abuse made against Trump, Epstein and other high-profile figures.
The FBI tips, many of which were made without supporting evidence, temporarily disappeared from the justice department's document website on Saturday. That only served to fuel a feeling in some quarters that the department was working to protect the president.
Democrats have alleged the lack of damning evidence against Trump may mean the justice department withheld incriminating documents.
Anger and frustration among Trump's supporters over the administration's apparent reluctance to release all of its Epstein files – perhaps the most potent threat to the president's political standing – appears to have diminished with this wave of newly produced documents, however.
While some critics continue to condemn the president, much of his Make America Great Again base appears to have moved on from the Epstein news.
But Democrats, citing legal requirements, are demanding access to unredacted versions of many of the released documents. And the Clinton testimony could create serious political fireworks.
The president may insist that it is time for the nation to move on, but years after Epstein's death, this saga has shown that it still has a life of its own.
