A thought keeps rattling around in my noggin that I just cannot shake loose … and it has everything to do with Donald Trump and his one-time bestie, the late sex trafficker and child molester Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump keeps insisting he and Epstein only were pals, that he took no part in the sexual escapades of which Epstein was convicted. Fine, Mr. POTUS. But why in the name of full disclosure do you keep resisting calls to show us the entire catalog of files that have been dug on Epstein? If there is no “there, there,” then show us for real, Donald.

We’ve waltzed down the pea patch with Trump already. He said he broke no laws in filing his income taxes, but won’t allow us to see them. Now we hear that his name appears in those Epstein files thousands of times. He once pledged to release them all. Then he backed away.

Look, I am willing to give Trump the tiniest benefit of the doubt on this matter. I do not believe he diddled underage girls along with Epstein and any other of the perverts who’ve been singled out.

The overarching question in my mind is … what did Trump know about Epstein’s behavior and when did he know it? I believe it is important for Americans to know when a man who would become president was a BFF with a guy who would be convicted of horrifying sexual crimes against girls.

He won’t tell us anything about that. He won’t allow the public to see files that well could clear him of any criminality. He is engaging in a coverup on a scale that seems set to dwarf anything that the Nixon administration did during the Watergate scandal more than five decades ago.

Come clean, Mr. POTUS.