As a lawyer for a conservative think tank, Ms. Bondi, now the attorney general, filed a Supreme Court brief last year saying service members who followed such orders were committing crimes.

© Eric Lee for The New York Times

Even if the wisdom of releasing the files is a nuanced issue, the president’s behavior has been indefensible.

Aren’t his apologists exhausted by their moral calisthenics?

The Epstein files are coming. But will Americans be able to fully trust them?

“You need this renewal. You need new figures who are untouched, who were never part of these awful power games,” the columnist Lydia Polgreen argues.