How Jeffrey Epstein tore apart Trumpland

Donald Trump said yesterday that the Maga backlash over the Jeffrey Epstein case was a “scam” by Democrats and that his past supporters had bought into it “hook, line, and sinker”.

So what? It is his current allies who are asking questions. Conspiracy theories are Maga’s lifeblood and the one about Epstein, a sex offender who died by suicide in 2019, is the most enduring. The main claim is that the financier kept a ‘client list’ and was murdered in his cell to stop him releasing compromising material on prominent individuals. This has been fuelled by:

• Dan Bongino, deputy director of the FBI, who said in 2021: “The Epstein thing drives me crazy. They’re hiding something.”
• Kash Patel, head of the FBI, who said in the same year that Congress should put on its “big-boy pants and let us know who the paedophiles are.”
• JD Vance, the vice president, who said in October: “Seriously, we need to release the Epstein list. That is an important thing.”

Full circle. After spending much of his political career piggybacking on conspiracy theories, Donald Trump finds himself embroiled in one. Trump and Epstein were friends who regularly partied together in New York and Florida.

Trump told New York Magazine in 2002 that Epstein was a “terrific guy”. In a now infamous line, he added: “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

Tit-for-tat. Since falling out with Trump, X owner Elon Musk has repeatedly referred to this relationship. Last month he said, without evidence, that Trump was in the Epstein files and that was the “real reason” they’re not public.

To note. Being in the files would not be prima facie evidence of wrongdoing. FBI investigation caches typically include call logs and statements by victims and witnesses. But Trump’s base is convinced Epstein’s also contain evidence of secret crimes committed by the rich and powerful.

Damp squib. The spark for the current controversy came in February when Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, said Epstein’s client list was “sitting on [her] desk”. She invited right-wing influencers to the White House and handed them a bunch of files. These mostly contained information that had been publicly available for a decade, including Epstein’s address book.

Good try. Last week the Justice Department and FBI released a short memo that concluded there was nothing to the conspiracy. It said there was no “client list”, no credible evidence that Epstein blackmailed high-profile individuals, and that the financier had taken his own life.

Cue the outrage. The memo has lit a fire under the Maga movement. TV host Tucker Carlson alleged that Bondi was covering up “very serious crimes by their own description”. The House speaker Mike Johnson said: “We should put everything out there and let the people decide it.”

Unanswered questions. Trump has urged supporters to “stop revisiting” the conspiracy and called it “fake news”. But several points remain murky, including:

• What exactly is in the files. This is the main thing that Maga acolytes want to know.
• Epstein’s final hours. The DoJ and FBI released 11 hours of “raw” CCTV footage from outside Epstein’s jail cell the night before he was found dead, but Wired found that around three minutes had been removed.
• Trump’s level of friendship. The journalist Michael Woolf claims he has a hundred hours of taped conversations with Epstein detailing his “deep relationship” with Trump.

Coalition cracks. The furore is the latest rift between the president and his base. Others include bombing Iran, giving weapons to Ukraine, and supporting H-1B visas for tech workers.

What’s more… Of all these, it is the Epstein story that has caused the most fury. As Trump puts it, he’s a “guy who never dies.”

Photograph by Davidoff Studios/Getty Images