An attorney representing nearly a dozen Epstein survivors isn’t expecting the DOJ to act on the list of names.
Page A11From§Eachthe early bird edition — 2 September 2026
DOJ says Epstein list doesn't exist, Congress hands over one, 89% now call government corrupt
As it ran on the front
I've got a page here somewhere, hold on. Every notebook I own, it's the same — three coffee rings and half a phone number with no name on it. Here. July 7th, 2025. I wrote it down because I thought I'd misheard it the first time, sitting in that lousy Buick of mine waiting for it to decide if it felt like starting. The Department of Justice, they said, had announced the list didn't exist. Not "we can't release it." Not "it's sealed, come back Tuesday." Didn't exist. I remember thinking, well, that settles that, and I closed the notebook.
Except I didn't close it, because a fella doesn't close a notebook on a sentence like that, does he. "Doesn't exist." That's a strange thing to say about a piece of paper. You'd expect "we lost it" or "it's classified." But "doesn't exist" isn't an evidence problem, it's a definition problem. And I'm a guy who likes definitions. My whole life I've been the one at the counter asking what "diagnostic fee" means before I let anybody near the car.…
…(cont) So this week I go back through the notebook — and here, found the second page, it was stuck to a gas receipt — and now it says a member of Congress handed the DOJ a list. Of Epstein co-conspirators. Handed it to them directly. So the thing that didn't exist in July of last year, somebody had sitting in a folder thirteen months later. Now, I've never been inside the DOJ building, I don't know how they keep things. But I know how I keep things. I've got a toolbox out in the garage, three drawers, and I know for a fact there's no 10-millimeter socket in the top one — I've gone looking for eleven years. If my neighbor walked over tomorrow and handed me one, I don't think I'd stand in the driveway telling him the socket doesn't exist. I think I'd say thanks, and I'd use it.
The DOJ, according to an attorney representing the survivors, isn't expected to use it. Isn't expected to act on the list at all. So now I've got two pages — one where the thing doesn't exist, one where the thing exists and nothing happens to it anyway — and I'm standing here trying to figure out which page is the lie, or if maybe neither one is, and that's the part that keeps me out here past dinner.
Because there's a third page, and this one's from Wednesday. It's not about Epstein at all — it's a poll. Gallup asked people straight out, is the government corrupt, or not, and 89 percent said corrupt. Eighty-nine. My wife saw me writing that number down twice and asked if I'd forgotten it already. I hadn't forgotten it. I just wanted to see if it looked different the second time. It didn't. Up ten points from wherever it sat before — which tells me whatever this is, it isn't new, it's just been getting worse while the rest of us were out driving around not noticing.
So I'm standing in the garage now, notebook open on the workbench, and I keep coming back to that word from the first page. Doesn't exist. If a list can not exist in July and turn up handed to the Justice Department by September, whose job was it to know, the whole time, that it did? And if a department can be given the very thing it swore wasn't there and still not open the folder, what else are those 89 percent of people supposed to call it?
Oh — hold on, before you go. You said the Department "hasn't acted" on the list. Acted how? What would that even look like, from where you're sitting — a memo, a hearing, a name read out loud? Because I wrote all this down, and nowhere on any of these three pages does it say.
“They didn't lose the list — they told you it doesn't exist, which is a different lie, the kind you tell when you need everyone to stop asking, not the kind you tell by accident. Then Congress hands them the thing anyway and it just sits there, because "no such list" only works as a cover story if nobody ever opens the drawer. Eighty-nine percent of the country just told Gallup they smell it — that's not a poll number, that's a whole country's nose working fine.”
“Look, "doesn't exist" was accurate at the time it was said — that's a snapshot, not a promise, and if a member of Congress produces something a year later that just means new information came in, that's how oversight is supposed to work. As for why nobody's opened it — you don't want the Department rushing a list like this, do you? Due process takes — did I say "rushing"? That's not the word I meant.”
The receipts
A new poll released Wednesday showed that Americans' perception of corruption in the U.S. government has hit a record high. The survey, conducted by Gallup, found that 89 percent of respondents answered affirmatively to the question, “Is corruption widespread throughout the government in this country, or not?”
· The United States Department of Justice announces that the alleged "Epstein client list" does not exist, in contradiction of Attorney General Pam Bondi's claims of possessing it, and reaffirms that Je from the morgue, 7 Jul 2025
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.