Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is lying. Yes, I know. Writing that is like writing “cats are furry” or “it’s pumpkin spice season.” But the current purpose of the lie is even more depraved than we usually get from this self-proclaimed beacon of Christian morality. The purpose is silencing the victims of infamous child sex predator Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged fellow abusers. Worse, it’s all done to protect President Donald Trump, a man who was already found by a civil jury in New York to have sexually abused journalist E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room.
The Louisiana Republican has already gone to great lengths to make sure FBI files chronicling the alleged misdeeds of Epstein and his associates never see the light of day. In July, Johnson started the House’s summer recess early to avoid Democrats bringing up a bill that would force the Justice Department to release the voluminous files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. The reason for Johnson’s action wasn’t mysterious. Trump, whom Epstein called his “closest friend,” is reportedly in the files. According to a lewd birthday message attributed to Trump by the Wall Street Journal — that was leaked by House Democrats — Trump wrote to his longtime buddy, “We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.”
There is allegedly more. During Attorney General Pam Bondi’s recent Senate hearing, for instance, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., asked about “photos of President Trump with half-naked young women.” Bondi refused to answer.
Now Johnson has found another excuse to block a House vote to release the Epstein files: The government shutdown. The speaker has adjourned the House and refused to seat Rep.-Elect Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz., blaming the shutdown — despite the fact that the Senate is still open and holding votes. Grijalva has pledged to be the deciding vote on a discharge petition to release the Epstein files. In comments to the Arizona Republic, Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., was blunt in assessing the situation: “Speaker Johnson is protecting pedophiles. That’s what this is all about.”
Johnson has denied the charge, but his pattern of behavior is clear. He knows that if Trump turns against him, he would likely lose the speakership. Hiding the Epstein files appears to be Johnson’s first priority, even above reopening the government so federal employees can be paid.
All this, and especially Trump’s reelection in 2024, should remove all doubt that there is a backlash to the #MeToo movement, which peaked in 2017 and 2018 amid a sea of sexual abuses being publicly outed. For years, there has been a wave of whiny “manosphere” influencers and right-wing pundits telling men that they are the real victims — that feminism has gone “too far” and masculinity is under attack. This anti-feminist reaction has been wrapped in a misleading moral justification regarding “innocence.” Women, we’re told, got so revenge-minded about sexual abuse that they went overboard, sweeping up blameless men in the cancel culture dragnet.
This narrative is false and distressing, but Johnson’s actions tell the uglier truth: The backlash to #MeToo was never about male innocence. It was about protecting those who are likely guilty — and reasserting male privilege to abuse women, and even children, without consequence.
This narrative is false and distressing, but Johnson’s actions tell the uglier truth: The backlash to #MeToo was never about male innocence. It was about protecting those who are likely guilty — and reasserting male privilege to abuse women, and even children, without consequence.
While we still don’t know the full extent of the information the FBI collected on Epstein and his buddies, Trump’s determination to bury the evidence shows he’s deeply worried about the truth getting out. There can be little doubt that Johnson knows he’s covering for a sexual abuser. This has been adjudicated twice by civil courts, with juries finding that Carroll told the truth when she said Trump sexually abused her in a department store dressing room. There is also a tape of Trump bragging about grabbing women by the genitals in a way that directly echoes Carroll’s experience.
The backlash against #MeToo is also geared toward silencing victims of sexual assault. It’s worth remembering that Epstein was charged in 2019 because of the #MeToo movement. Epstein had been prosecuted 11 years before, ending up with an infamous “sweetheart deal” from Trump ally Alexander Acosta, who was serving as U.S. attorney and later became labor secretary during Trump’s first term. Under his plea agreement, Epstein barely served any time; he was able to return to his playboy lifestyle without missing a beat. But because of dogged investigative reporting by the Miami Herald’s Julie K. Brown — and the determination and willingness of victims to speak out — Epstein faced federal prosecution in New York.
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There is no doubt of the message being sent to abuse victims by Johnson, Trump, Bondi and everyone else involved in the cover-up: There’s no use in speaking out, because you will never see justice.
The GOP’s shameful actions are just the most blatant example of how the #MeToo backlash has nothing to do with innocence, and everything to do with shielding men from the consequences of bad behavior. For all the endless chatter about false allegations in the past few years, the reality of such incidents has been anemic to non-existent. The men dangled out as “victims” of #MeToo are rarely, if ever, targets of false accusations.
There have been situations, such as with the actor Kevin Spacey, when there wasn’t enough evidence for prosecutor to obtain a conviction in court. But the sheer number of Spacey’s accusers suggests that his acquittal was hardly an exoneration. In other cases, such as those involving the comedians Louis CK and Aziz Ansari, there. has been debate over whether their aggression toward women crossed some ill-defined “line” to justify public opprobrium, but there was little dispute that the women who spoke out against them were telling the truth. The closest example I could find was Tara Reade’s accusation of sexual assault against former president (and then-Delaware Sen.) Joe Biden. But her story swiftly fell apart, and Biden was unscathed, making this an example less of the danger of false allegations and more an example of why such accusations don’t survive scrutiny.
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The #MeToo backlash has even made it to the big screen. “After the Hunt” is a film currently playing in theaters that tells an entirely fictional story about a marriage ruined by a sexual assault allegation. Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times has dismissed it as “a silly anachronism.” But i’s worse than that. “After the Hunt” is an attempt to use fiction to conjure what reality kept failing to provide critics of #MeToo: A genuine example of a male victim of overzealous feminists. Despite having a loaded cast, the movie’s premise is reminiscent of a film like “God’s Not Dead,” a self-pitying Christian right propaganda film based on a flat-out false urban legend shared in email chains. When you’re so bereft of real examples of your imaginary oppression that you’re forced to literally make it all up, it’s time for introspection in a therapist’s office — not manifesting your persecution fantasy into a feature film.
This struggle encapsulates why E. Jean Carroll has become such an icon, especially for those who clearly see that the #MeToo movement’s main flaw was in not going far enough, as evidenced by Trump’s current political standing. Carroll wasn’t just a victim of sexual violence. She also faced the primary backlash tactic: Falsely accusing victims of lying. She didn’t just sue Trump for sexually assaulting her, but for repeatedly defaming her by accusing her of lying. Even after she won $5 million, he continued to defame her. So she sued him again, this time winning $83 million in damages.
Those two cases laid bare the ugly truth about the backlash to #MeToo. Carroll’s critics didn’t think she was lying. They were mad she told the truth — and they want victims to shut up and let men get away with abuse. It was never about anything else.
