If Trump Isn’t a Pedophile, Why Is He Hiding the Epstein Files?
We don’t know what’s in the Epstein files — but Trump is trying very hard to make sure you never find out. Pope Leo reminds us evil won’t prevail.
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Former President Joe Biden often repeats a lesson from his father: “the greatest sin is the abuse of power.”
This maxim rings urgently true as new revelations link former President Donald Trump to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
The Wall Street Journal reported today that Trump’s own Justice Department identified his name “multiple times” in Epstein case files — files his administration has refused to fully release, despite earlier promises.
As Washington grapples with what looks to be a far-reaching cover-up to protect the powerful, Pope Leo is offering a starkly different vision of power: one grounded not in exploitation, but in humble service to the vulnerable.
In the pope’s words, “God loves all of us, and evil will not prevail!” — a hopeful reminder that truth and justice can triumph over even the most entrenched corruption.
Abuse of Power and Scandal
In Catholic teaching, scandal is more than just bad press or personal embarrassment.
It is defined as “an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil”, and it’s considered especially grave “by reason of the authority of those who cause it”.
In fact, anyone who abuses power in a way that draws others into wrongdoing “becomes guilty of scandal” and is responsible for the evil they encourage.
By this standard, the Epstein affair is a case study in systemic scandal: a public degradation of moral order perpetrated and perpetuated by the powerful. Trump’s entanglement with Epstein — a convicted sex offender who moved in elite circles — and the lengths to which officials have gone to suppress information, represent not just isolated misdeeds but a broader moral failure.
Years of impunity among American elites have gradually desensitized the public to scandal, normalizing a culture in which leaders caught in wrongdoing simply double down on spin and conspiracies.
This numbing of our moral sensibilities is itself part of the scandal. As Catholic moral wisdom would warn, evil flourishes when people become indifferent to it.
A Cover-Up that Corrodes Trust
What we are witnessing now is not a routine political controversy but a profound abuse of authority.
According to the Wall Street Journal report (which the White House tried to dismiss as “fake news”), Attorney General Pam Bondi informed Trump back in May that his name appeared in Epstein-related documents alongside “many other high-profile figures”.
Instead of transparency, Trump’s Justice Department quietly decided not to release more files. Bondi and the FBI Director — both Trump loyalists — walked back earlier promises to disclose the Epstein records, effectively placing the protection of the president above the public’s right to truth.
Their public statement claimed “nothing in the files warranted further investigation” even as it admitted briefing the president on the findings.
In other words, they downplayed the significance of the content while ensuring it stayed hidden.
Meanwhile, evidence keeps surfacing that hints at the depths of this relationship.
Just last week, the Journal revealed a 2003 birthday note Trump allegedly sent to Epstein that ended, “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
Trump has angrily denied its authenticity (even suing the newspaper), but the mere notion of such a note — two decades of shared “secrets” — has Americans asking what else might be lurking in those suppressed files.
Trump’s history with Epstein is not a distant acquaintance; by his own admission they “socialized” in the 1990s and early 2000s. Epstein, of course, was a man who in 2008 secured a sweetheart plea deal for sex crimes, and then in 2019 was charged with trafficking minors before dying in jail.
It’s hard to imagine more heinous wrongdoing than exploiting underage girls – precisely why so many have demanded a full accounting of anyone who enabled or participated in Epstein’s operations.
For any other public figure, being tied even tangentially to such a scandal would be career-ending. Yet Trump’s past sexual misconduct was so widely known that many observers cynically shrug, assuming nothing in the Epstein trove could shock us more than the Access Hollywood tape or his numerous accusers.
That cynicism is deeply amoral — an abdication of our responsibility to uphold moral standards. You can’t laugh off a scandal that effectively brought one branch of the U.S. government to a standstill: this week, House Speaker Mike Johnson abruptly sent Congress home early rather than hold a vote on demanding the Epstein files be released.
Think about that — in the face of uncomfortable truth, our elected officials preferred paralysis over transparency. More than two-thirds of Americans now believe the administration is hiding the truth about Epstein’s network. Such erosion of trust is poisonous to a democracy.
It didn’t have to be this way, but a president desperate to hide “something pretty bad” (as even some of his allies suspect) has chosen to manipulate the levers of government to protect himself, rather than protect the vulnerable.
Perhaps most alarmingly, Trump has even enlisted the intelligence community in his campaign of deflection. As reporters pressed him about Epstein, the president lashed out with a wild counter-narrative: he accused former President Barack Obama of orchestrating a “coup” against him — a charge of “treason” that he offered without evidence.
Last Friday, Trump’s handpicked Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, released a batch of selectively declassified documents insinuating an Obama-era conspiracy in the 2016 Russia probe. Trump triumphantly (and falsely) claimed this was “irrefutable proof” of criminal sedition.
In reality, officials across the spectrum — including a bipartisan Senate committee — have long concluded Russia did meddle in 2016 and nothing in Gabbard’s truncated “report” changes that fact. Obama’s spokesperson rightly condemned Trump’s allegations as “ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.”
In plain terms, the president of the United States is using the organs of government not to pursue justice, but to distract from it, exploiting his power to shift blame and attention away from his own potential wrongdoing.
This is the very definition of abusing power — using authority not to serve truth or the common good, but to serve one’s own ego and impunity.
A Different Vision of Power
The new pope has consistently stressed that true leadership means humility and service, not self-serving domination.
Against this disheartening backdrop, Pope Leo XIV is calling the world’s leaders to a higher standard.
From the moment of his election in May, Leo XIV’s message has been one of moral clarity and hope. “God cares for us, God loves all of us, and evil will not prevail!” he declared in his first papal address, exhorting people of goodwill to move forward “without fear, united hand in hand” in pursuit of what is right.
He has explicitly rejected the idea that power is about prestige or domination. In an address to cardinals shortly after his election, Leo XIV reflected on the papal office itself, noting that ever since St. Peter, the pope has been nothing more — and nothing less — than “a humble servant of God and of his brothers and sisters.”
The role of any pope (and by extension any leader) “is not about power, prestige or personal greatness, but about service.” This simple but radical truth cuts to the heart of the current crisis. Leadership in any arena — religious or political — should be measured by how well it serves those under its care, especially the weakest.
By that measure, the abuse of power is not just a “sin,” as Biden put it, but a direct betrayal of leadership’s true purpose.
Leo XIV’s early teachings underscore the ingredients of moral leadership that our secular rulers would do well to heed.
For example, addressing diplomats from around the world, he reminded them that:
“Peace is built in the heart and from the heart, by eliminating pride and vindictiveness and carefully choosing our words.”
Humility and truthfulness, not prideful denial or vengeful distraction, lay the groundwork for justice. The pope has urged leaders to reject the cynical mindset that sees adversaries everywhere:
“Our neighbors are not first our enemies, but other men and women with whom we can speak,” he said, challenging the us-vs-them mentality that poisons public life.
Imagine if our political figures adopted even a fraction of this ethos — how differently might the Epstein investigation be handled?
Instead of viewing transparency as a threat to be dodged with smears and diversions, a leader imbued with Leo’s ethic would seek the light, confident that serving the truth is part of serving the people.
Ultimately, the pope’s call for a moral reckoning is about restoring the primacy of conscience and the common good in public life.
He reminds us that evil thrives on darkness and denial, but it will not prevail if enough people of courage insist on the truth. That insistence is not easy; it demands integrity from leaders and vigilance from citizens. It means refusing to become numb to injustice, even when scandal fatigue sets in.
It means expecting real accountability from those in power, not settling for performative outrage or partisan excuses. Pope Leo’s leadership — coming as it does from a place beyond partisan politics — serves as a beacon. He invites all of us to rediscover that power has meaning only when oriented toward service and justice.
In the Epstein saga, we see two models clashing.
On one hand, a worldly power that will lie, cover up, and even cripple governance to shield itself from shame. On the other hand, a moral authority who urges that true power serves the lowly and stands in the light. The contrast could not be more stark.
Biden’s maxim about the abuse of power being the greatest sin resonates here, but it is Pope Leo who completes the thought: the antidote to that sin is humble service.
As more ugly details emerge in this scandal, the question becomes whether America will continue to tolerate leaders who wield power like a weapon for personal protection — or whether we will demand the kind of servant-leadership that Leo champions, where protecting the vulnerable and upholding the truth are the highest priorities.
The soul of our nation’s moral order may well hang in the balance, and as the pope reminds us, evil only prevails if we let it.
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Paid subscriptions start at only $6.67 per month and will get you full access to the ongoing Fath and the Democratic Party essays and this multi-part series on the life and formation of Pope Leo. The third part of that series was released Monday.
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The Epstein material may or may not produce evidence of the president's moral failings before he took office and that is an issue between him and God. Coverups are an issue between him and the country.
Pope Leo speaks with moral clarity