| The ghost of Jeffrey Epstein continues to haunt the corridors of Washington. While President Donald Trump dismissed the intense interest in the government’s files on the late, disgraced financier and convicted sex offender as “sort of a witch hunt,” the topic just won’t fade away. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced today he planned to talk to Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime associate who’s serving prison time after being convicted of child sex trafficking and other charges in 2021. In a statement on X, Blanche said he was acting for fulfill Trump’s directive “to release all credible evidence” in the Epstein case, Bloomberg’s Chris Strohm, Cam Kettles and Billy House report. Trump told reporters at the White House that he didn’t know anything about the outreach to Maxwell, but said it “sounds appropriate to do.”  Trump Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg In the House, meanwhile, the Oversight Committee voted unanimously to subpoena Maxwell. Speaker Mike Johnson sent lawmakers home for their summer recess a day early to sidestep Republican divisions on whether the House should demand release of the Epstein files, Bloomberg Government’s Maeve Sheehey reports. Democrats were happy to join a group of Republicans to force the issue. But Johnson — who promised “maximum transparency — said he wanted to give the Trump administration time to release any Epstein records on their own. Trump has tried to redirect the focus to other subjects. Today, he ran through his long standing list of unresolved grievances about the former President’s Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and the 2016 and 2020 that he said should be getting attention. Still, there’s a sizable chunk of president’s base that has been primed to believe that there must be some damaging information about political and financial elites in the Epstein files that the government has been covering up. That was evident in the angry reaction when Trump’s Justice Department announced there wasn’t anything more to see. Republican Representative Thomas Massie, who has been leading the charge for a vote on releasing the files, said the issue isn’t going to fade away and “will follow each individual Republican through the midterms.” — Joe Sobczyk | 
