And, to be less coy, how is the opposition party the one that treats Bill Clinton as its most valuable elder statesman? It's somehow Epstein all the way down. Glad I'm a left-wing Chomskyite, cynical about all of those corrupt, elite institutions. Wait...
tl;dr: Because there were ongoing investigations (which was true) and it's generally considered bad to release your evidence before trial, or something like that, IANAL.
This will also be Trump's (false) reason for not releasing them.
IMO the most egregious reason is the July 2025 memo from DOJ/FBI saying there was nobody else to investigate, after months of public interest and official statements they were working on it. If they now flop back to claiming they can’t release because of investigations, then that’s unequivocally a false reason.
> Bill Clinton as its most valuable elder statesman?
Huh? Bill Clinton has been a relatively invisible ex-president compared to the other modern ones (aka Carter & Obama, Biden hasn't been gone long enough for data).
Perhaps that's because he didn't want to overshadow Hillary, but it's at least partly because of the Lewinsky affair.