PBS's Washington Week with The Atlantic remains a reliably Democrat-boosting/Republican-bashing political roundtable, but this Friday, the show featured a tiny, overdue peek into an under-covered angle of the sordid Jeffrey Epstein saga, which thus far the media has used as a cudgel against President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress.
It turns out Democrats have their own hypocritical partisan reasons for not pursuing the Epstein case, according to a story by Sarah Fitzpatrick of The Atlantic magazine, going back to the elitist media's favorite power couple, the Clintons.
Guest moderator Vivian Salama of The Atlantic, filling in for their editor Jeffrey Goldberg, tossed to her magazine colleague Fitzpatrick.
SHOCKER: On PBS's 'Washington Week with The Atlantic,' they discussed an article they published on how Democrats avoided focus on the Epstein files because the Clintons didn't want it. More senior Democrats like Nancy Pelosi put the kibosh on it. But not any more. pic.twitter.com/jJajlvnNBy
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) March 1, 2026
VIVIAN SALAMA, THE ATLANTIC: Yes. Sarah, you know, you have a great piece out today….one of the things that you've mentioned in passing is that, for years, Democrats didn't pursue the release of these files in part because of that Clinton link. Can you talk a little bit about that and how, as your story talks about, it became a bipartisan issue?
SARAH FITZPATRICK, THE ATLANTIC: Absolutely. This is one of the things that I find most fascinating about this story, because all of these files, millions of these files could have been released at any point by a Biden Justice Department, by the first Trump administration. I mean, these have been there for a very long time. But the reason that this is coming out now, I think, is because party leadership had been very, very clear to a rank and file, do not pursue this, in part, I think out of concern about donors, about the Clintons, also for the fact that it was viewed as a distraction versus things like health care.
But now, I think what we saw as younger Democrats, to your point, realize that this is a transparency issue. This is a trust in government issue….One of the things that's in my piece is that the Clintons were actively lobbying, calling around on Capitol Hill to Democrats to try and prevent this vote and to kind of influence how this was being done. And I think that really does not -- it just hits the wrong way with Democrats that are already feeling very jaded, given what happened with allegations of a cover-up about Biden's health and Harris’s loss….
ANDREW DESIDERIO, PUNCHBOWL NEWS: It is generational too, because Nancy Pelosi was the one actually behind closed doors, admonishing those younger Democrats for even entertaining the idea of voting to hold the Clintons in contempt of Congress….
Not to quibble about a rare media bright side, but the “most fascinating” part about Democratic qualms is 40 paragraphs down in Fitzpatrick’s underlying Atlantic article:
Democrats have had their own crisis over the Epstein files: How do they separate themselves from the party’s elder statesmen and wealthy donors who have been revealed to have been close to Epstein?
During Joe Biden’s four years in office, the Justice Department did not pursue releasing records related to Epstein and lawmakers did not pursue legislative action. Democrats in Congress told me that their party leadership sought to dissuade them from pursuing the effort in recent months, changing their stance only after feeling public pressure and seeing internal polling.
