There’s no pretending otherwise: disgraced and deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein has hijacked Washington. Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday announced he was starting the August recess a few days early to avoid the chamber having to vote on whether Congress should force the Justice Department to publish everything it has on Epstein,

Jeffrey Epstein is dead, but the White House can’t seem to kill his story. President Donald Trump and his aides have settled on silence as a strategy to stamp out criticism of his refusal to release files detailing the federal government's investigation of Epstein,