Americans think Trump administration is hiding information about Epstein’s ‘clients’

“Folks, the Epstein client list is a huge deal because it speaks to an enormous problem we have in this country”, he told his listeners. “It is that there is a connected class of insiders that feel that they can get away with anything because they can.”

The failure of the Biden administration to release files relating to the death of the wealthy financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has become one of the key grievances of the Maga movement. ​​

There are two main claims: that Epstein kept a client list that he used to blackmail co-conspirators and that he did not commit suicide, but was murdered in his jail cell so that he wouldn’t release compromising material on prominent associates.

Kash Patel, a Trump aide turned influencer, went on another right-wing podcast in 2023 to urge Republicans in Congress to force the White House to reveal all. “What the hell are the House Republicans doing? They have the majority,” he said. “You can't get the list? Put on your big boy pants and let us know who the paedophiles are.”

This was no fringe view. Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, was also a believer. “We need to release the Epstein list,” he said last October.

Vance is now vice-president, Patel is the director of the FBI and Bongino is his deputy. But instead of releasing the files, earlier this month the Trump administration released a memo insisting that there is no “incriminating list” of clients, “no credible evidence” that Epstein blackmailed anyone, and that Epstein definitely took his own life.

The memo, and Trump’s own increasingly angry stance towards anyone who cares about the “boring” story, has ripped apart the Maga movement. Patel, Bongino and the attorney general Pam Bondi have been accused of being sellouts, while Trump has also found himself in the line of fire.

He, in turn, has accused supporters of being “weaklings”. Part of the reason for Trump’s anger may well be his own friendship with Epstein. The Wall Street Journal revealed last week that Trump wrote a lurid birthday message for Epstein in 2003, which Trump denies.

Trump has kept a tight grip on his Maga base for a decade, in part by playing to their paranoid instincts about stolen elections, immigrants, vaccines and the deep state. But thanks to Epstein, he is now caught up in the kind of conspiracy theory he loves to cultivate.

Epstein first faced criminal charges in 2006, but his high-profile relationships only reached the public eye in earnest in January 2015. That month Prince Andrew and other unnamed “powerful men” were referenced in a civil case against Epstein and Gawker published the contents of his little black book. Continuing legal battles and dogged reporting sustained interest over the following years, but the story also took on a life of its own online. By the time Epstein died in 2019, the US had become fertile ground for conspiracy theories.

Epstein’s death, while he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges, ignited a firestorm online. #EpsteinMurder, #ClintonBodyCount and #TrumpBodyCount trended on Twitter, while the phrase “Epstein didn’t kill himself” gained traction both in jest and in earnest.

Speculation wasn’t confined to the fringes. Epstein’s defence attorney expressed “significant doubts” that his client took his own life. These doubts were shared by other public figures, including Trump’s then ­personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and the Democratic representative Al Green.

These beliefs were encouraged in the aftermath of Epstein’s death by the revelation that prison guards failed to make regular checks on the financier, as well as by reporting that alleged Epstein had wired his home and private island, and boasted to the New York Times about the dirt he had on famous people.

Interest rumbled on with the 2021 conviction of Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell on child sex-trafficking charges. Meanwhile, after Trump was voted out of office, conservatives homed in on the Democrats. Maga acolytes baselessly accused the Biden administration of suppressing incriminating details related to Epstein, including his so-called client list.

Over this period, despite his previous friendship with Epstein, Trump was held up as a man who railed against the sort of people who associated with the sex offender. When the FBI searched Trump’s Florida residence in August 2022, the far-right commentator Jack Posobiec told his followers: “We now know the judge who signed off on the Mar-a-Lago raid was Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyer. Don’t question it!” Fox News later aired a doctored picture that falsely showed the judge next to Maxwell. Trump himself rarely engaged. When he was campaigning for a second term in June last year, he suggested he would declassify files about Epstein. But he didn’t sound enthusiastic: “You don’t want to affect people’s lives if there’s phony stuff in there.”

Trump’s trouble began when he returned to office. Now in office, Patel, Bongino and Vance have all changed their tune. Patel no longer calls for the release of the client list, Bongino told Fox News in May that Epstein “killed himself”, while Vance admonished the Wall Street Journal on Thursday for reporting on the alleged letter from Trump to Epstein.

It is plausible that this shift is the result of having access to more information, but not everyone is buying it. A major aggravating factor came in February when Bondi raised expectations by suggesting that Epstein’s client list was “on her desk”.

She invited right-wing influencers to the White House and handed them what was then described as the “first phase” of the Epstein files. These documents contained no client list, but mainly information that had been publicly available for a decade.

This stirred unrest among Trump supporters who believed incriminating details were being withheld. The floodgates opened on 7 July, when the Justice Department and FBI released a short memo that concluded there was nothing to the Epstein conspiracy. Rightwing influencers were up in arms at the way the administration had handled the documents. The conspiracy theorist Alex Jones said it was “over the top sickening”.

The conservative influencer Liz Wheeler said it “seems like unforgivable behaviour”. Trump attempted to close the door on the matter, dismissing the files as the “Jeffrey Epstein hoax” and accusing his “PAST supporters” of falling for it “hook, line, and sinker”. But this had the opposite effect. The rightwing commentator Benny Johnson said it was the “worst response” he had seen from Trump. The white nationalist Nick Fuentes called Trump “stupid” and a “joke”.

On Tuesday, the Republican House speaker Mike Johnson called for more Epstein documents to be released. “It’s a very delicate subject,” he said, “but we should put everything out there and let the people decide it.” A couple of days later, Trump asked Bondi to unseal court documents related to Epstein.

But this falls short of the full disclosure called for by many on the right. Meanwhile, the controversy has renewed attention on Trump’s 15-year friendship with Epstein, previously documented in photos, videos and interviews. Trump told New York Magazine in 2002 that he was a “terrific guy”.

The journalist Michael Woolf claims he has 100 hours of taped conversations with Epstein, detailing his “deep relationship” with Trump.

Despite the focus on conservatives, there is widespread unhappiness about the administration’s handling of documents related to Epstein. Last week, a Reuters survey found that nearly 70% of Americans believe the administration is hiding information about Epstein’s “clients”, while a CNN poll found that only 3% of Americans are satisfied with what the government had released.

Photographs by Chris Tuite/imageSPACE/MediaPunch; Davidoff Studios/Getty Images; AP Photo/Matt Rourke