Hurricane Epstein, just waiting for landfall

Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel may have said it best in an opening monologue on Wednesday. “We are carefully following the path of Hurricane Epstein right now. It is a Category 5; it is expected to make landfall sometime very soon.”

The hurricane is an unprecedented campaign that this week forced U.S. President Donald Trump to sign a bill — passed almost unanimously in both houses of Congress — authorizing the release of all files from the FBI’s investigations into the late and disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Those files are indeed hovering just outside the reach of Congress and the public, approved for release but not released as of yet. What is certain, however, is that the appetite of Republicans to see those files has inexplicably shattered the president’s iron grip on his own party.

Up until this week, whatever Trump wanted to do, he did with the blessing of Republicans in House of Representatives and the Senate. Detain and deport non-White U.S. citizens under the guise of immigration reform? Send masked ICE officers and the military to engage in martial law cosplay in some of America’s biggest cities? Unilaterally shut down departments, fire independent officers of government and cancel congressionally approved funding?

If Trump signed an executive order to do something, Republicans consented.

But then came Epstein.

Four congressional Republicans, motivated by the horrendous stories from Epstein’s victims, started a “discharge petition” which allows the House of Representatives to bring a bill directly to the floor without having to first go through committee. This requires 218 representatives to sign the petition, a threshold that remarkably was met on Wednesday.

Up until this week, Trump had vociferously opposed the release of the files, even though he had promised in the last presidential election campaign to allow for the materials to have a full, public airing. Trump, his allies in Congress and his cabinet secretaries obfuscated and deferred, finally declaring the files would not be released because there was nothing to see.

Trump either could not see the impending storm or he thought that, once again, Republicans would bend to his will.

When it became clear the required 218 signatures would be obtained, Trump and his inner circle tried coercing several Republicans to withdraw their names.

When they refused, he pivoted and announced that he would sign the bill if the house and senate approved.

The actual contents of the Epstein files is no longer the story here.

This is now the tale of a political leader who employed authoritarian rule to eclipse one of the world’s oldest democracies. He failed to stop the release of the files not because Democrats took back the house and senate in mid-term elections — which they very well might do — but because he no longer has dictatorial control over his own party.

It should be noted that just about everyone expects that Trump — who is reportedly mentioned more than a thousand times in the FBI files —will try to redact huge portions of what will ultimately be released. There are loopholes the White House can use to protect the president and scores of other wealthy, powerful people in his orbit who may be compromised by revelations in the files.

But here’s the rub: any further efforts to hide the details of the files will only serve to hoist Trump a little higher on his own petard.

Kimmel was right — Hurricane Epstein has not yet hit land. But it’s already shaken MAGA to its core and possibly — just possibly — shattered the spell Trump cast on the Republican party.