Trump-Vance DOJ Smears John Paul II to Distract from Epstein Scandal
In perhaps its most brazen deflection yet, Donald Trump’s Justice Department is using a photo of Pope John Paul II with Jeffrey Epstein to launder Trump’s own ties to the sex offender.
Dear friends —
Tonight, I’m writing with an urgent story that encapsulates just how contentious that intersection has become under Donald Trump’s return to power.
This weekend, Trump’s Justice Department stooped to a new low: to deflect attention from Trump’s own ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the White House promoted photos of everyone else with Epstein — even a pope.
Yes, you read that right.
In a brazen bid to muddy the waters, the DOJ released an image of the late Pope John Paul II meeting Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as a slew of pictures of Bill Clinton with the disgraced financier.
They want the headlines talking about Clinton and even a sainted pope — anyone but Trump. It’s an outrageous tactic, and outside our community it’s barely been reported for what it is.
Letters from Leo is the first outlet to call this hideous anti-Catholic behavior out, shedding light on Trump’s pattern of attacking Catholic leaders and twisting the truth.
After a wave of backlash from Catholics and others , the DOJ quietly removed the pope photo from its document dump. But we’re not fooled.
Using St. John Paul II as a political shield crosses a line that’s sending shockwaves through the faithful and beyond.
That’s why I’m diving deep in today’s essay. We’ll unpack how Trump’s team is weaponizing a decades-old papal photo to launder the president’s own salacious relationship with Epstein’s world.
We’ll set the record straight that John Paul II had zero personal ties to Epstein – any insinuation otherwise is pure fabrication. And we’ll place this episode in the bigger picture of Trump’s year-long feud with the Catholic Church and Pope Leo XIV.
From attacks on Leo’s social teaching to this new smear of a beloved former pope, it’s clear: the Trump-Vance White House is increasingly at odds with Catholic values, and they’re not above dragging holy figures into the mud to save themselves.
This is exactly the kind of story Letters from Leo exists to explore. Political outlets won’t catch the religious nuances, and religious media might miss the D.C. machinations. Here, we connect the dots others miss — and we do it thanks to you.
If you believe in this mission, here’s how you can help us this holiday season:
Subscribe as a paid member to receive exclusive posts about the life and formation of Pope Leo and help sustain this newsletter.
Donate with a one-time gift to fuel this project’s mission.
Share this post (and Letters from Leo) with a friend who might enjoy it.
Paid subscribers will receive immediate access to our Advent Reflection Series.
Whether you give $0, $1, or $1,000, your presence here matters — no matter your faith or your politics.
Thank you for reading. I’ll see you on the road.
On Friday, the Trump-Vance administration began its court-ordered release of the long-secret Epstein files. Instead of full transparency, however, the initial document dump was selectively curated to shift scrutiny away from the president.
While Donald Trump barely appeared in the files, former President Bill Clinton featured prominently.
The DOJ’s release included several photos of Clinton — on Epstein’s private jet, relaxing in a pool, even sitting in a hot tub with a woman face blurred.
These grainy images are 20+ years old, but Trump’s team eagerly spotlighted them. Trump-friendly outlets like The Daily Wire “somehow” obtained a Clinton-Epstein picture even before the DOJ’s release.
It was a coordinated spectacle: flood the zone with lurid Clinton shots so that the highly anticipated documents would steer conversation away from Trump.
Behind the scenes, even some of Trump’s allies admitted this was a deflection.
“Trump was wrong to suggest the Epstein files would incriminate Clinton,” his own chief of staff Susie Wiles conceded. Indeed, Clinton has never been accused of wrongdoing in the Epstein case and has expressed regret for ever associating with him.
That didn’t stop Trump’s DOJ from plastering Clinton’s face across the media.
Angel Ureña, Clinton’s spokesman, blasted the tactic: the White House was “shielding themselves from what comes next… They can release as many grainy 20-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has been, never will be.”
In other words, Trump’s camp was using Clinton as a human shield – a diversion from whatever may be lurking in those files about their own man.
Then came the truly jaw-dropping move: amidst the thousands of pages, officials slipped in a photograph of Pope John Paul II greeting Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
The image itself is real — a moment from the early 2000s when Epstein and Maxwell managed to attend a Vatican event and receive a brief blessing from the Pope.
It’s been public for years. Epstein reportedly even displayed the framed photo in his home as a trophy), and House Oversight Democrats had already released it earlier this month.
In the DOJ’s hands, however, this innocuous snapshot was repurposed for political theater. By publishing the pope picture alongside the Clinton images, Trump’s Justice Department concocted a false equivalence: look, Epstein cozied up to Bill Clinton and even a pope.
The subtext they hoped for was clear — if Trump knew Epstein, well, so did all these other big names, so nothing to see here. A Justice Department spokesperson all but admitted the strategy, bragging on social media that no politically exposed persons were redacted.
In their cynical view, splashing Clinton and John Paul II’s faces across the Epstein files would inoculate the President. It’s a smear by association, and a shameless one at that.
No, John Paul II Had Zero Relationship with Epstein
Let’s be perfectly clear: Pope John Paul II never had any relationship with Jeffrey Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell.
The photo in question shows a brief greeting in a crowd, the kind of encounter the Pope had with thousands of pilgrims and dignitaries during his nearly 27-year pontificate.
Vatican insiders confirm that John Paul II would not have had a clue who Epstein was — the financier hadn’t even been convicted of anything at the time of the photo.
Epstein and Maxwell were simply among a throng of people granted a moment with the pope, facilitated by former Senator George Mitchell.
It speaks volumes that Trump’s DOJ would drag a revered Catholic saint into this mire.
St. John Paul II is beloved by millions of Catholics — especially conservatives — for his role in defeating communism and upholding traditional Church teachings. He’s hardly a figure the MAGA base would typically scorn.
Yet by dangling this photo out of context, Trump’s team effectively slandered John Paul’s legacy, treating him as just another famous face to exploit. The backlash was swift.
Catholic social media lit up with outrage at the blasphemy of linking the beloved pope to Epstein’s crimes. Even many Trump-supporting Catholics were uneasy, struggling to rationalize why their president’s DOJ would stoop to sullying a Pope’s name.
The uproar grew loud enough that, after the initial shock, Justice officials removed the photo from the original cache.
But that only raises the question: why did they do this in the first place? The answer, of course, is that it served Trump’s deflection narrative.
They calculated that a pope’s presence in the Epstein files would create a media buzz that distracts from Trump himself.
As an analysis in The Guardian put it, the immediate appearance of these famous figures’ photos “benefits Trump, creating the impression that it was not unusual for powerful men to hang out with Epstein.”
It’s a classic misdirection play. But using the late Pope as a pawn in this game is a new kind of low, one that has deeply angered those who hold John Paul II in esteem.
A New Low in Trump’s War with the Church
For those of us following the trajectory of Trump’s renewed presidency, this smear campaign didn’t come out of nowhere — it’s the latest salvo in an escalating clash between Trump World and Pope Leo and the Catholic Church.
