Trump melts down over Trevor Noah joke, DoJ dampens Epstein file expectations

As the US Justice Department moved to lower expectations around the legal consequences of the newly released Jeffrey Epstein files, President Donald Trump responded not with reassurance, but with a late-night meltdown — triggered by a joke at the Grammy Awards.

On Sunday, deputy attorney-general Todd Blanche said bluntly that the trove of documents, emails, photographs and videos connected to Epstein does not provide grounds for new criminal charges. Appearing on CNN’s 'State of the Union', Blanche acknowledged the disturbing nature of the material but stressed that revulsion is not a substitute for evidence.

“There’s a lot of correspondence. There’s a lot of emails. There’s a lot of photographs — horrible photographs,” Blanche said. “But that doesn’t allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody.”

Within hours, Trump was posting furiously on Truth Social — not about the DOJ’s legal assessment, but about a punchline delivered by comedian Trevor Noah.

“The Grammy Awards are the WORST, virtually unwatchable!” Trump wrote, attacking the show, the network CBS, and Noah personally. He described Noah as “whoever he may be”, called him a “poor, pathetic, talentless, dope of an M.C.” and threatened to unleash his lawyers.

The provocation was a monologue joke linking Trump’s well-known fascination with acquiring Greenland — an idea he floated publicly in 2019 — with Epstein’s now-infamous private island. Noah quipped that artists coveted Grammys “almost as much as Trump wants Greenland”, adding that with Epstein’s island gone, Trump “needs a new one to hang out on with Bill Clinton”.

Trump responded in emphatic capital letters: “WRONG!!!” He insisted he had never been to Epstein’s island, “nor anywhere close”, and claimed that until Noah’s remark, he had “never been accused of being there, not even by the Fake News Media”. He labelled the joke “false and defamatory” and promised to sue “for plenty$,” urging Noah to “ask Little George Slopadopolus, and others, how that all worked out. Also ask CBS!”

The contrast was striking. While Trump was litigating a joke, the Justice Department was carefully drawing legal boundaries around the Epstein disclosures.

On 30 January, Trump’s own Justice Department began releasing more than three million pages of documents, along with over 2,000 videos and 180,000 images, under a law mandating greater transparency around Epstein’s activities and associates. The document dump has revived global scrutiny of Epstein’s social circle, but officials say it has not altered prosecutorial conclusions.

Department officials reiterated that a review conducted last summer found no basis for new criminal investigations — a position Blanche said “remains unchanged”. He acknowledged the frustration of survivors, who want accountability, but warned against retrofitting cases where evidence does not support charges.

“That doesn’t mean we can just create evidence or come up with a case that isn’t there,” Blanche said.

Among the documents are Epstein’s personal emails from the years after his 2008 Florida conviction and before his death — ostensibly by suicide — in 2019. Several show associates confronting him about his continued behaviour.

In one 2013 email, a correspondent warned Epstein about his decision “to surround yourself with these young women in a capacity that bleeds — perhaps arbitrarily — from the professional into the personal”, noting that the arrangement appeared, publicly, like “a powerful man taking advantage of powerless young women”.

In a separate 2009 exchange, shortly after Epstein’s release from jail, a woman berated him for breaking promises to avoid prostitutes and to try to conceive a child with her, writing that his “last minute suggestion to spend THIS weekend with prostitutes” was “too much for me to handle”.

The files themselves underscore that point. They contain extensive correspondence, contact lists and uncorroborated tips — including a spreadsheet summarising calls to the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center from people alleging wrongdoing by Trump and other public figures. Blanche said the FBI fielded “hundreds of calls”, many of which were “quickly determined to not be credible”.

The resurfacing of Epstein’s name has also revived old internet lore, including a crude phrase — 'blowing Bubba' — that has circulated widely since a previous tranche of Epstein-related emails was released.

That line appeared in a private 2013 email exchange involving Epstein’s brother Mark Epstein, referring to a supposed photograph. The phrase was widely interpreted online as a reference to Clinton, whose nickname 'Bubba' is well known. Mark Epstein later clarified that the comment was a flippant, private joke and not evidence of any such photograph or act, but the phrase has since taken on a life of its own as meme fuel whenever new Epstein documents surface.

That dynamic — salacious language untethered from prosecutable facts — is precisely what Justice Department officials are now warning against.

Elsewhere, the political consequences have been more immediate. In the UK, Peter Mandelson resigned from the Labour Party after renewed scrutiny of his past association with Epstein, saying he wanted to avoid “further embarrassment” while denying allegations of payments.

In Slovakia, a senior official stepped down after photos and emails showed meetings with Epstein after his release from jail. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Prince Andrew, long linked to Epstein, should cooperate fully with US investigators.

The newly released files also include Epstein’s correspondence with figures across politics and business, including former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch, and references to billionaires such as Bill Gates and Elon Musk.

Blanche said on ABC’s 'This Week' that the department’s review is effectively complete, aside from a small number of documents awaiting court approval. “This review is over,” he said.

House speaker Mike Johnson said he believed the department was complying with the disclosure law. Democratic lawmaker Ro Khanna disagreed, citing concerns from survivors after some names were briefly released without proper redaction — errors the department said it moved quickly to correct.

Against that sober legal backdrop, Trump’s eruption over a Grammy joke landed less as a defence of truth and more as a reminder of his reflexive response to cultural mockery. He has, at times, brushed off humour about himself — at least when he controls it. When he doesn’t, the lawyers tend to come out.

Noah’s representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Whether Trump’s threat results in an actual lawsuit or simply joins the long list of rhetorical legal broadsides remains, for now, an open question.

With agency inputs