“Well, initially, my reaction to all this was, ‘I don’t care. I don’t know what the big deal is.’ But now I see what the big deal is, and it was worth investigating. And the members of Congress that have been pushing this were not wrong. So that’s really my only reaction.”

— Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), quoted by NewsNation, on the release of the Epstein files.

A previously redacted FBI document from 2019 listed Les Wexner, a financial client of Epstein’s and former CEO of Victoria’s Secret, as a possible co-conspirator, USA Today reports.

“Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick admitted to senators during testimony on Tuesday that he visited the notorious island owned by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein despite previously telling senators that he had cut off all contact with Epstein after first meeting him in 2005,” The Hill reports.

Playbook: “Ten days on from the DOJ’s mass dump of Epstein files data, the revelations keep coming. The files thus far have largely exposed a murky world of conspiring elites with questionable moral standards.”

“And we are witnessing this through the prism of an entirely new phenomenon — an internationally crowdsourced scandal, unfolding in real time across your social media feed. In many cases, citizen journalists have been nearly as capable as professional journalists and investigators at finding insightful documents within the millions of DOJ files and bringing them to the fore.”

“President Donald Trump has repeatedly maintained that he had no knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes,” the Miami Herald reports.

“But in July 2006, just as Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal sex charge became public, Trump called then-Palm Beach police chief Michael Reiter to tell him that Epstein’s activities with teenaged girls were well known in both New York and Palm Beach.”

Said Trump, according to a FBI interview with Reiter: “Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this.”

“Elon Musk lobbed new attacks on former Trump adviser and current podcaster Steve Bannon over the weekend, reigniting an old feud that began months ago to highlight Bannon’s close ties to Jeffrey Epstein—despite the billionaire SpaceX CEO also appearing in email exchanges with the financier released as part of the Epstein files,” Forbes reports.

“Musk spent the weekend reposting commentary and attacks from conservative activists including Dinesh D’Souza and Roger Stone against Bannon, many highlighting how the former Trump strategist was working on a documentary about Epstein in the years before his 2019 arrest on sex trafficking charges and eventual death in prison that same year.”

“Musk called Bannon ‘evil’ in a post on Monday morning, linking to photos and records of Bannon and Epstein’s conversations by email and text message.”

Lawmakers have the opportunity beginning today to review the full unredacted files from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, so CNN has ranked the 13 most questionable redactions.

According to The Hill, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said after reviewing the unredacted Epstein files that the Justice Department appears to have flouted the law when concealing various names in documents.

Gilad Edelman: “Epstein is known to have paid or coerced dozens, possibly hundreds, of teen girls, some as young as 14, to perform sexual acts. Beyond what has been proved, the conventional wisdom holds that Epstein built his network by trafficking teen girls to other powerful men, whom he then blackmailed to generate his mysterious wealth; that his private plane and island were essentially brothels; and that even friends who didn’t participate in his crimes were surely aware of them, and chose to consort with him anyway.”

“Those assumptions are all widely held—but poorly substantiated. The Epstein files reveal plenty of powerful people to have tolerated or participated in disgusting and shameful behavior. Far from shedding light on a grand conspiracy, however, the files bolster the case that although terrible crimes were committed, there never was a larger conspiracy to begin with.”

“For anyone who has only passively kept up with the Epstein story, this is hard to wrap one’s head around.”

Idrees Kahloon: “There is an irony to the undying Jeffrey Epstein scandal: It may never be more than an annoyance for President Trump, who knew Epstein well, but it could topple British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who never met the sex-offender financier. Starmer has a 71 percent disapproval rating and leads the least popular British government since World War II.”

“The reasons for the Labour Party leader’s deepening plight are moral, because decency and shame still matter in British politics. But they are also institutional. An American president is less democratically accountable than the British prime minister, because partisanship has disabled the checks that the Founders placed on the chief executive.”

“Jeffrey Epstein’s life as a free man was about to end, but first he needed to cancel breakfast plans with a friend: Steve Bannon, the right-wing influencer and former adviser to President Donald Trump,” CNN reports.

“In the days leading up to Epstein’s arrest in July 2019, the two men exchanged a steady stream of text messages, veering from breezy banter and dark humor to more serious strategizing around Bannon’s efforts to foment a global populist movement.”

“The FBI pored over Jeffrey Epstein’s bank records and emails. It searched his homes. It spent years interviewing his victims and examining his connections to some of the world’s most influential people,” the AP reports.

“But while investigators collected ample proof that Epstein sexually abused underage girls, they found scant evidence the well-connected financier led a sex trafficking ring serving powerful men.”

“Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime companion, Ghislaine Maxwell, played a substantial role in supporting the creation of the Clinton Global Initiative, one of President Bill Clinton’s signature post-White House endeavors, new documents released by the Justice Department show,” the New York Times reports.

“Ms. Maxwell took part in budget discussions related to the first Clinton Global Initiative conference; talked through challenges about it with both Clinton aides and Publicis Groupe, the company that produced the inaugural event; and arranged to wire $1 million to pay Publicis for its work on ‘the Clinton project,’ according to emails in the massive cache of documents collected as part of the government’s investigations of Mr. Epstein.”

“The source of the money is unclear, including whether Mr. Epstein provided the funds. However, the emails show that he was aware of the payment.”