Donald Trump is in no rush to release the Epstein files. But the Earhart files—that’s a different matter.
The president reportedly gave FBI agents in New York and D.C. less than 24 hours to trawl their records for material on the American aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, who went missing over the Pacific in 1937.
“Per a priority request from the Executive Office of the President of the United States, please search any areas where papers or physical media records may be stored, to include both open or closed cases, for records responsive to Amelia Earhart,” the order, marked with high importance, read, CNN reports.
The message, sent late Tuesday, apparently gave recipients a deadline of Wednesday to file their responses, and follows Trump’s announcement last month that his administration would be facilitating a fresh look at the case.
“Her disappearance, almost 90 years ago, has captivated millions,” he posted to Truth Social. “I am ordering my Administration to declassify and release all Government Records related to Amelia Earhart, her final trip, and everything else about her.
An aviation pioneer, Earhart was embarked on a historic attempt to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe when her plane went missing over the central Pacific in July 1937. After a 16-day search for her remains, authorities declared her and her navigator lost at sea.
Conspiracy theories about her disappearance range from Earthart having been working for the U.S. government to spy on Japanese military activities in the Pacific to the pilot in fact having survived her journey, only to return and make the inexplicable decision to spend the rest of her life in obscurity as a New Jersey banker.
It’s hardly the first time the president, himself a known proponent of conspiracy theories, has instructed government agencies to release case files on the deaths of high-profile figures at a time when his administration is facing mounting scrutiny over other issues.
His partial release in October 2017 of documents on the 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy notably came as he faced criticism for firing James Comey over the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the previous year’s presidential election.
In March this year, amid massive backlash to Elon Musk’s DOGE slashing federal spending, Trump ordered the mass release of more files on the JFK murder, as well as those on the deaths of Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
This time around, Trump’s administration is facing urgent crises on multiple fronts, ranging from a government shutdown, public backlash to the Jeffrey Epstein case, to an accelerating slide into martial law. None can compete, it appears, with an unexplained 1937 plane crash.
The Daily Beast has approached the White House and the FBI for comment.
