Welcome to the beat. I'm Ari Melbert. And we do have some fun stuff by the end of the week.

That's tomorrow. We start with some serious stuff because the Jeffrey Epstein uproar and the heat on Donald Trump is only growing, his own failed secrecy efforts, the haphazard and at times bizarre responses and the attempts to dodge what has been scrutiny from the right, the center, and the left.

We talk about how we're divided in America,

and people may be interested in this story for a range of different reasons,

but this pressure is universal.

And you can get a lot of people who followed this story,

even in the sort of summer doldrums,

on the same page that Donald Trump and Pam Bondi

and this Justice Department

under Donald Trump have blown it, that they have been secretive, they have issued falsehoods

where they were either lying then or lying now, and the pressure is only building. Today,

Republican Senator, breaking with the usual MAGA loyalty that people have become accustomed to,

demanding answers. New scrutiny on the DOJ,

which has been quiet and secretive since its unusual jailhouse interview with Ms. Maxwell.

And then a demand for accountability now coming from the people involved in all this who have

been hurt the most, the victims and their surviving families

in some cases. Because for all of the conspiracy theories and all of the talk and questions and

sometimes downright, ghoulish right-wing, online sort of feeding frenzy, there was, of course,

a very real set of horrific crimes here and real victims. In fact, just this week, we heard

from one of the reporters who wrote a book about In fact, just this week, we heard from one of

the reporters who wrote a book about this, not for the politics, not for the conspiracy theories, but

about the victims and how this system did mistreat and fail them. So this is going to the family of

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