The enormity of the files is only emphasized by their lack of emphasis, and it is the duty of Catholics to drill in on the truth as opposed to the news.
By Sean Fitzpatrick
Crisis Magazine
April 21, 2026
Happy Easter. Christ is risen from the dead (indeed, He is risen!) and the Epstein Files have been consigned to the tomb to never rise again. Rest in peace. Was there ever anything to be so concerned about in the end ? If anything can be judged by their staying power, the Epstein thing couldn't have been terribly important. What's a couple torture videos between billionaires, after all?
The darkest thing about the three million heavily redacted files out of the six million the DOJ holds is how quickly they evaporated into the ether. For the treasure trove of evidence they seem to be, the way they churned through the news cycle like any old pulpy travesty or tragedy is astonishing. Nothing like sending Iran back to the stone age to divert the attention of planet earth, is there ? Or should it be outrage over the gas pump ? How about another do-si-do around the moon ? Anything but the Epstein Files.
Granted, the Senate Judiciary Committee fomented over the files for a while, grilling Attorney General Pam Bondi who sputtered back like a belligerent, blonde sausage. But there was nothing to show for it. Nothing to show except for the show we are all a part of. The puppet masters continue their control-regime apace and the outcries are dying away, as they always do. The deepest silence of all, though, is Donald Trump's-and to the devil's delight.
The files include footage of Epstein being interviewed by Steve Bannon, which intended to highlight Epstein's philanthropy and help sweep away his criminal record. In a line of questioning about why Epstein chose to work with so many corrupt individuals, Bannon suddenly asks him, "Do you think you're the devil himself?" "Why would you say that?" Epstein smiles slightly, intelligently, and then replies, "No, the devil scares me."
For a man who swings in satanic circles, that's scary. The devil's finest trick, according to the French poet Baudelaire, is to persuade you that he doesn't exist; but to those he can't trick, he would have your taciturn-if browbeaten-sanction. Of course, the devil prefers noise, but he also appreciates a certain silence-as in, the lack of objection or acknowledgment of the evil he labors to make the norm through mass acquiescence.
Silence is the devil's trump card. He doesn't want to proclaim himself too overtly, and he wants you to accept him with quiet complicity. And there's a good deal of that don't-tell silence from the most powerful man in the world, who is running a government that should expose and prosecute those who have ravaged the innocent. But the devil scares President Trump, too.
One of the now infamous Epstein Files is an email from Epstein to his minxish abettor, Ghislaine Maxwell, in which he said that the "dog that hasn't barked is Trump." This, of all things, is a reference to a Sherlock Holmes story. In "The Adventure of Silver Blaze," Holmes deduces the culprit by the circumstance that the watchdog didn't bark on the night of the crime, pointing to its familiarity with the perpetrator.
What Epstein was referring to regarding Trump's silence is not altogether clear. It could have been a comment on the "Teflon Don," how Trump always avoided mention and implication regarding the Epstein victims and their accusations. Considering the time stamp, he could also have been musing how Trump never disavowed being an informant to the police during the Palm Beach investigation which led to Epstein's conviction as a sex offender.
Donald Trump still hasn't barked, and it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to peg him as a suspect. The leader of the free world should be outraged at the stench of such slavery-but he is not. He has been all too silent about what everyone should be talking about: the high-rolling pedophile ring of traffickers that hold the strings of money and power.
"Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?" Trump has said incredulously. He's been calling the Epstein Files a "Democrat hoax," even though he admitted years ago that Epstein surrounded himself with beautiful women, many of whom were on the "younger side."
The Epstein Files are anything but a hoax. They are a horror, and the sculptures by guerilla artist The Secret Handshake appearing on the National Mall of Trump and Epstein frolicking and flying Jack-and-Rose-style over the prow of the Titanic are wickedly and unwelcomingly incisive.
Trump may say nonchalantly that he has nothing to hide, but his DOJ clearly does. It redacted victims and perpetrators alike in a compulsory, uneven, and even vindictive rollout that tried to make everyone want the Epstein Files to go away as much as Trump did. The files very likely incriminate Trump, but the blowback over his initial refusal to release them forced him to reveal some of them, and the Justice Department kept them all sufficiently stunning, yet unsubstantiated.
The ouster of AG Pam Bondi is more than likely another instance of Trump's refusal to address the monsters that stalk among us. Trump's firing of Bondi appears to be, in part, for her mishandling of the files-and she was pretty cringy: from her crowing that Epstein's client list was "sitting on my desk to review," to saying there was no Epstein client list, to thumping that no files would be released, to yelling at Congress between redacted blocks that Trump was "the most transparent president in the nation's history," while reminding everyone that the Dow was over 50 thou (implying that the stock market would fall if those who ran the stock market fell).
Bondi was a mess. But, in all likelihood, her removal is a reward for a job well done (despite her failure to indict Trump's political enemies), keeping the crosshairs off the rich and powerful people that Trump wishes to protect because he is one of them-and because he fears what could happen to him (or to his family) if the devilish details were released. These masters of our universe are so fearful-fearful of each other, fearful for what is at stake, and fearful of the one they have sold their souls to.
Bondi has done her DOJ duty in "releasing" the Epstein Files according to order in a show of being too loyal to the president, carrying out whatever he wants no matter how absurd or illegal. It destroyed her credibility-which is fine, since Trump doesn't want any credibility around the Epstein files. Bondi protected them from the public to protect the people Trump wanted protected (probably including himself).
A new spring dawns on an old darkness that hardly retreats to caves and cracks as it used to-an evil that is beginning to grin smugly in the sun, not bothering to hide anymore before a people who have grown numb to it. Their silence can be counted as acceptance. Can yours?
Be wary. No one can reasonably accept that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in his prison cell. (The Mossad is slicker than that.) Whether he was murdered or is still alive is up for debate, and so it must be when the official narrative is clearly a lie. Question everything—or, alternatively, question nothing.
That is what the devils desire. The Epstein Files are becoming part of the fabric of conspiracy-theory entertainment. They have a Netflix series already, where everything is reduced to fantastic fluff, while Trump keeps up his "nothing to see here" shoulder-shruggery when there is clearly much to be seen that will never be seen because it would expose an evil whose admission would be totally unsupportable in society. (But have you seen the drawings for the new White House ballroom?) Trump is still the dog that didn't bark, trying to divert attention by not sounding the alarm on the files.
The enormity of the files is only emphasized by their lack of emphasis, and it is the duty of Catholics to drill in on the truth as opposed to the news. Trump's silence and inaction on the Epstein scandal might be tantamount to complicity and even guilt. The way he used Bondi as a sacrificial lamb doubles down on this view that he simply wants to protect the perpetrators in the files.
The news becomes old news far too quickly—to the detriment of human intelligence—which is the devil's freshest and finest stratagem. It is his trump card, designed to bury his progress or else flash it as far too advanced to do anything about—so why even bother about it ? Trump's dogged silence should not be overlooked or Trumpsplained away—it is criminally eloquent and bespeaks the realm of sin that Catholics must conquer by the grace of the risen Christ.
In his first interview with Fox News, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said, "I think that to the extent that the Epstein Files was a part of the past year of this Justice Department, it should not be a part of anything going forward." The light of spring and the Resurrection will burst through this determined darkness, and Catholics must be bearers of that light.
As Mr. Holmes reminds us, "The devil's agents may be of flesh and blood"; but a resurrected people aren't scared of the devil. Only dead things go along with the stream. We live in our God, and so we say: long live the Epstein Files. The game's afoot. Release the hounds.