"It's hard not to chuckle at the mess the Trump administration has made for itself" over Jeffrey Epstein, said Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times. For years, the president and his allies stoked conspiracy theories about the disgraced financier,

The controversy over Jeffrey Epstein rumbles on, despite President Trump’s efforts to put it behind him. It’s been almost three weeks since a joint, unsigned memo from the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) insisted “no incriminating ‘client list’” had been found among material related to Epstein.

We don’t yet know the full story of the Trump administration’s sudden reluctance to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. Its reversal appears to have coincided with the president being told his name appeared in the files,