Of all the thingsDonald Trumphas tried to stamp his name on lately, Jimmy Kimmel reckons he found the one the president actually earned.
The Jimmy Kimmel Live! host kicked off arunning biton Wednesday proposing that the Jeffrey Epstein case documents be rebranded the 'Trump-Epstein files.' By Thursday night, he had slapped a trademark symbol on the graphic and was urging viewers to spread the name around.
It practically writes itself. Trump's administration has already renamed the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Kennedy Centre, and the president has been lobbying to get his name on Penn Station and Dulles Airport. So Kimmel went searching for something Trump, in his words, 'actually deserves to be part of.'
He landed on the Epstein files.
Kimmel did not invent the figure. Representative Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, toldAxiosthat searching Trump's name in the unredacted Epstein files returned over a million results. Raskin later clarified he had typed 'Trump,' 'Donald' and 'Don' into the DOJ's search tool and acknowledged not every hit necessarily referred to the president.
None of that mattered much to Kimmel. On Thursday, he ran the graphic repeatedly, mocking JD Vance for weakly defending Trump while noting the president's name surfaces over a million times in what Kimmel now insists on calling the 'Trump-Epstein files.'
Then there was the access issue. The Justice Department gave lawmakers four computers at its headquarters to review the unredacted records. Four, for all 535 members ofCongress. 'I called the Burbank Library today,' Kimmel said. 'They have 22 computers.'
Jokes aside, the story underneath them is not particularly funny. Kimmel's Thursday monologue leaned into Attorney General Pam Bondi's contentious appearance before the House Judiciary Committee on 11 February, which he described as a five-hour ordeal. He was blunter about Bondi herself, joking she was the kind of neighbour you'd just move away from.
What made the segment more than late-night fodder was aphotographsnapped during the hearing. It captured a page in Bondi's binder labelled 'Jayapal Pramila Search History,' listing the specific Epstein documents that Democratic Representative Pramila Jayapal had searched during her visit to the DOJ reading room. Jayapal confirmed every entry on the list was hers and accused the department of surveilling lawmakers. Even House Speaker Mike Johnson, who seldom breaks with the administration, called the tracking inappropriate.
It is totally inappropriate and against the separations of powers for the DOJ to surveil us as we search the Epstein files. Bondi showed up today with a burn book that held a printed search history of exactly what emails I searched. That is outrageous and I intend to pursue this…https://t.co/nyZjmHoGUq
Source: International Business Times UK
