A Republican lawmaker has warned President Donald Trump that the joint U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran “won’t make the Epstein files go away.”
Operation Epic Fury began in the early hours of Saturday morning and saw airstrikes on Tehran and other Iranian cities that ultimately led to the killing of the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and a wave of retaliatory strikes by the regime across the Middle East.
At least four U.S. soldiers have already been killed, three American fighter jets have been brought down over Kuwait in an apparent friendly fire incident, the exchange of hostilities has spread to Lebanon, and Trump has said he is anticipating the mission continuing for “four to five weeks,” urging the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to surrender and the people to rise up.
All of which has succeeded in knocking the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein scandal down the news agenda, despite the strikes commencing a matter of hours after Bill Clinton testified before the House Oversight Committee over his past association with the pedophile billionaire and was peppered with awkward questions.
But Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie, who spearheaded the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act through Congress last year, says the action overseas cannot be used as a smokescreen to obscure the revelations in the files.
“PSA: Bombing a country on the other side of the globe won’t make the Epstein files go away, any more than the Dow going above 50,000 will,” Massie wrote on X (Twitter) on Sunday afternoon.
He was not the only person to draw a connection between Epstein and the Iran conflict.
Appearing in character as Trump on Saturday Night Live, James Austin Johnson, parodying the president’s Truth Social video in which he first announced the operation, said: “I launched this attack after me and my Board of Peace decided we were bored of peace.
“As we all know, Iran has been two weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon for like the last 15 years or something, so we had to act now. War, what is it good for? Distracting from the Epstein files!”
Before that, former MAGA congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who broke with Trump last year and resigned her post, issued a lengthy attack on the president Saturday for pursuing regime change missions abroad rather than sticking to his “America first” principles and delivering results at home, in the course of which she invoked the files.
“For years we demanded to release the Epstein files, demanding transparency and justice for thousands of victims, women and children, by the richest most powerful men in the world and we had to fight Trump himself to do it, even after we all campaigned on it,” she wrote.
“And not a single person has been arrested and likely won’t be, no accountability, no justice. Instead, we get a war with Iran on behalf of Israel that will succeed in regime in Iran. Another foreign war for foreign people for foreign regime change. For what?”
Another Republican with strong words for Trump was Massie’s fellow Kentuckian, Sen. Rand Paul, who expressed sympathy for the people of Iran and quoted John Quincy Adams.
America “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy,” Paul wrote, echoing Adams. “She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”
He continued: “The Constitution conferred the power to declare or initiate war to Congress for a reason, to make war less likely. [James] Madison wrote that ‘the Executive Branch is the branch most prone to war, therefore, the Constitution, with studied care, delegated the war power to the legislature.’
“As with all war, my first and purest instinct is [to] wish Americans soldiers safety and success in their mission. But my oath of office is to the Constitution, so with studied care, I must oppose another presidential war.”
Among Republicans defending the strikes so far have been Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, who serves on the Armed Services Committee, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, as well as the MAGA representatives Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, the latter taking part in a particularly heated debate on MS NOW.
However, initial polling suggests that just one in four Americans supports the administration’s actions, which could pose a problem for their party in November’s midterms, especially if the conflict proves to be a more drawn-out affair than anticipated.
