Trump, Epstein files & Streisand effect: Why Republicans have failed to kill the story

A lingering problem

The so-called Epstein files saga is a fiasco of Trump’s own making. While campaigning last year, Trump and his allies had promised to release the investigative files; but after coming to power, they have made a full u-turn.

Trump personally has “made it clear he wants the Epstein talk to disappear”, The New York Times reported. He called the recent documents “hoax” to malign him, and rejected the claim that he was associated with Epstein’s sex trafficking ring or had any knowledge of the matter.

Meanwhile, Americans across the political aisle have been calling for transparency. This has put Republican politicians, who have to balance their personal loyalty to Trump and the demands of their voters, in a tight spot.

In an effort to deflect criticism, House Republicans in September directed the House Oversight Committee to continue an investigation into the Epstein case, one which had already been ongoing. This symbolic move, they felt, would take some heat off their backs.

But pretty much the opposite has happened. As The NYT put it, “The Republican-led committee has, almost in spite of itself, produced a number of striking revelations that have intensified the drumbeat of demands for more transparency and kept attention on Mr. Trump’s past ties to Mr. Epstein.”

In part of a trove of emails released by members of Congress on Nov. 12, 2025, an excerpt from an April 2, 2011 email sent by Jeffrey Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released emails suggesting that Donald Trump knew more about Jeffrey Epstein’s activities than he has acknowledged. (via The New York Times)

In fact, everything that Trump and the Republicans have tried to divert attention from the story has backfired: the issue just won’t die down.

Streisand effect

The Epstein files saga is an example of the Streisand effect.

Coined by blogger-entrepreneur Mike Masnick in 2005, the Streisand effect describes a situation where an attempt to censor, remove, or hide information backfires and draws more public attention to it.

Masnick, founder of the website Techdirt, coined the term after singer-actor Barbara Streisand sued the photographer Kenneth Adelman in 2003 for $50 million. Adelman had taken thousands of photos for the California Coastal Records Project, a resource that provided pictures of California’s coastal erosion to scientists and researchers; one of these photos happened to show Streisand’s mansion in Malibu.

While Streisand’s concern for her privacy was not unfounded — indeed, she had been stalked many times before — her intervention spectacularly backfired. Not only did she lose the legal case and had to pay Adelman’s legal expenses, her lawsuit directed attention to the photo which might otherwise have eluded much of the public. In other words, she would have been better at leaving things alone.

The Streisand effect is the product of human beings’ innate desire for the forbidden. This desire is as long as history itself. As Evegeny Morozov, in The Net Delusion (2011) points out: “Throughout history there has hardly been a more effective way to ensure that people talk about something than to ban discussions about it. Herostratus, a young Greek man who in 356 BCE set fire to the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, may be the world’s first documented case of the Streisand Effect. Herostratus’s ultimate punishment—that is, in addition to being executed—was for his act to be forgotten, on strict orders from the Ephesean authorities, who banned anyone from ever mentioning his name. And here we are, discussing the story of this narcissistic pyromaniac thousands of years later.”

That said, the Internet has undoubtedly amplified the phenomenon: it is much harder today to clamp down on discourse. As a result attempts to censor or push something under the rug are far more transparent and obvious than before. And information itself is far more accessible.

Take the example of Trump and the Epstein files. There is no way for the story to be buried without people realising that it is being buried — that is exactly what happened when the GOP tried to divert attention by talking up the House Oversight Committee investigation.

With the cat now out of the bag, sooner or later Trump will have to release the Epstein files or face mounting backlash for not doing so.