Early today—on Christmas Eve Day—there was reporting that the White House has taken over DOJ's X account in order to handle the increasing controversy about Donald Trump’s inclusion in the Epstein files. Axios reports that “The account is also taking on a sharper tone that has more of a rapid-response campaign edge and less of the stodgy just-the-facts tone associated with the department.”

No other person whose name surfaces in a criminal case gets this sort of boost on the official Justice Department account, and it’s an outrage (and another marker of authoritarianism) that this president does. The Justice Department doesn’t represent the president, or at least it isn’t supposed to. But this DOJ is led by an Attorney General who represented Trump when he was impeached and a Deputy Attorney General who was his personal criminal defense lawyer. Many of the U.S. Attorneys bear strong personal loyalty to Trump. It’s unprecedented, but that doesn’t mean we can’t label an outrage as an outrage.

The news is also revelatory in the sense that it means Trump, or people close to him, believe he needs protection from the rest of the Epstein file disclosures. Trump has been calling the Epstein Files a “Democratic hoax” in recent weeks, but what’s come so far demonstrates that is not the case. Many of us support believing women who come forward to report sexual abuse and violence. It’s difficult and dangerous, especially when powerful men are involved, as the Epstein saga demonstrates far too well. But for those who are unwilling to believe women, the documents and new information, like the fact that Trump flew on Epstein’s plane far more times than he has previously acknowledged, suggest this is far from a hoax.

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