The Trump administration had promised a bombshell. People, a lot of whom had spent years questioning over the unknowns within the Jeffrey Epstein case, would lastly get their fingers on the key recordsdata that may clarify all of it. What actually occurred when the accused intercourse trafficker died in jail again in 2019? And who was on his “shopper checklist”—a rumored assortment of well-known and highly effective individuals who participated in Epstein’s crimes?
In a September 2024 interview on the Lex Fridman Podcast, Donald Trump prompt that he would launch the checklist if reelected. “Yeah, I’d be inclined to do the Epstein; I’d haven’t any downside with it,” Trump mentioned. He indulged hypothesis about Epstein after his reelection as properly. In February, the White Home hosted a group of MAGA-world influencers and gave them binders stuffed with closely redacted Epstein-related paperwork labeled Part 1, suggesting extra to come back.
The Trump administration has been unusually targeted on messaging about such info, making a present of pulling the curtain again on supposed secrets and techniques. Trump equally promoted the discharge of additional paperwork associated to the John F. Kennedy assassination, together with data on the killings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. In an govt order signed this January, the administration framed these efforts as “PROVIDING AMERICANS THE TRUTH.” At an April listening to on these recordsdata, Nancy Mace, a Trump ally and consultant from South Carolina, introduced up the so-called Epstein checklist. In a meandering assertion, she spoke about her want to see paperwork concerning Epstein, in addition to Hunter Biden’s laptop computer and the origins of the coronavirus. All have been recurring web fascinations amongst Trump’s supporters. “Sunshine actually is the very best drugs,” Mace argued.
A private want checklist of coveted secrets and techniques shouldn’t be precisely the identical factor as a principled name for presidency transparency. However the two are straightforward to conflate and might have some incidental overlap, which may be politically helpful. The promise of beforehand withheld revelations has allowed Trump to border himself as an outsider combating on behalf of voters who’ve been saved at nighttime by the institution. The catch is that when he was again in workplace, he was put within the awkward place of getting to ship.
On Monday, the FBI launched a memo saying that it had reviewed all of its recordsdata on Epstein and that it doesn’t plan to launch extra in spite of everything; there shall be no Part 2. In response to the FBI, solely a “fraction” of the remaining materials would have grow to be public if Epstein had lived to go to trial, as a result of it contains “a big quantity” of unlawful content material involving underaged victims of sexual abuse—in different phrases, materials that can not be launched to the general public. The memo additionally famous, in a single breezy paragraph, that the bureau’s overview had uncovered neither a shopper checklist nor proof “that Epstein blackmailed outstanding people as a part of his actions.” There shall be no new investigation towards “uncharged third events,” the memo mentioned. This has come as a shock to a bunch of people that have lengthy purchased into the concept that Trump would in the future unmask an evil ring of Democrats and liberal-coded celebrities.
Anna Paulina Luna, a consultant from Florida and the chair of the Activity Drive on the Declassification of Federal Secrets and techniques, which facilitated the latest doc releases concerning JFK, informed me that she shall be asking the Division of Justice to authorize the discharge of extra Epstein particulars anyway. “I believe the American individuals nonetheless have questions and there’s stuff that they’ll launch,” she mentioned. She didn’t remark particularly on the existence of a shopper checklist and mentioned she didn’t but know precisely what sort of paperwork the FBI would possibly nonetheless have (clarifying that she agreed that the bureau shouldn’t launch any non-public particulars about victims or child-sexual-abuse materials).
Within the meantime, the about-face on the Epstein recordsdata is splintering MAGA world, and lots of Trump allies are feeling betrayed and unmoored. “Nobody believes there’s not a shopper checklist,” wrote Marjorie Taylor Greene, the consultant from Georgia who has avidly promoted QAnon conspiracy theories. “This can be a shameful coverup to guard probably the most heinous elites,” one of many influencers who went to the White Home in February, Rogan O’Handley (who goes by “DC Draino”), informed his greater than 2 million X followers on Monday. Longtime Trump loyalists, together with the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, began sharing a meme on Monday that depicted a bunch of cartoon lizard individuals laughing about having pulled one over on the unsuspecting public but once more. Unusual—some readers could also be sufficiently old to recollect when it was Hillary Clinton and different Democrats who had been the shadowy reptilian elite, secretly shedding their human pores and skin at any time when out of public sight.
Important ire has been directed at Lawyer Common Pam Bondi, who responded to a query a few shopper checklist in February by saying it was “sitting on my desk proper now to overview.” Throughout a press convention on Monday afternoon, White Home Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt mentioned that Bondi had truly been referring to “the whole lot of all of the paperwork” on Epstein and to not a selected doc. Shortly thereafter, the net crowd started questioning why Leavitt had not been carrying her ordinary cross necklace on the briefing—an indication, maybe, that she was mendacity and didn’t need to achieve this in entrance of God (to paraphrase the posts, which had been largely ruder than that). After I requested Luna if Trump’s supporters had a proper to really feel pissed off, she deflected the query, saying, “I can’t converse for individuals on the web or the president. What I can say is President Trump is on the cusp of negotiating a everlasting cease-fire with Israel and Hamas in Gaza. That is overshadowing the quantity of success the administration has had in that sense.”
But that is undeniably a turning level for the extremely on-line amongst Trump’s base. The story of the shopper checklist had successfully morphed right into a extra palatable and believable model of the QAnon conspiracy concept. As does QAnon, it includes a secret ring of evildoers, although it doesn’t have sure ostentatious parts of that conspiracy (no harvesting blood). However each theories encourage individuals to disbelieve every little thing the federal government tells them. Till now, Trump and his appointees had been positioned as exceptions to that rule—the deal was that in the event that they acquired again into energy, they might reveal all.
Mark Fenster, a professor on the College of Florida’s regulation college who has written about authorities transparency and conspiracy theories, noticed to me that, along with his administrative appointments, Trump had made implicit guarantees to his supporters. “He particularly nominated individuals for high-level positions who’ve been engaged in conspiracy theories for the previous five-plus years,” Fenster identified. For example, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino have supplied wild theories in regards to the Epstein case previously—Patel as soon as prompt that the FBI could also be protecting up proof to guard unnamed elites, whereas Bongino mentioned he’d heard a rumor that Epstein was a international intelligence agent.
Now the conspiracy is mutating once more to suit the administration’s reversal. “To listen to Pam Bondi and to listen to Kash Patel and Don Bongino saying there is no such thing as a checklist—you’re going to say, ‘Properly, they have to be a part of the conspiracy too,’” Fenster prompt, which is actually one avenue individuals have gone down. As a result of the FBI’s memo coincided roughly with a diplomatic go to of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White Home, others have began suggesting that Epstein was secretly a Mossad agent (a declare typically expressed with anti-Semitic rhetoric). Alex Jones, who was initially livid in regards to the FBI memo, has since speculated that Trump has truly taken “management” of the alleged checklist and is utilizing it to blackmail the “deep state” behind the scenes.
In fact, some have began choosing aside the FBI memo itself. It concluded with hyperlinks to 2 movies of a hallway within the Metropolitan Correctional Heart the place Epstein had been held, exhibiting that no person went into his cell the evening of his demise. Viewers rapidly seen that the clock within the nook of the video skips from 11:59:00 to 12:00:00, which prompt to them {that a} minute of footage was lacking.
On Tuesday afternoon, when a reporter tried to ask Bondi in regards to the foreign-intelligence concept and the video-clock problem, Trump minimize in. “Are you continue to speaking about Jeffrey Epstein?” he requested incredulously. “This man’s been talked about for years. You’re asking—now we have Texas, now we have this, now we have all the issues, and are individuals nonetheless speaking about this man, this creep? That’s unbelievable.” Bondi mentioned she didn’t thoughts answering the query, however Trump went on. “I can’t consider you’re asking a query on Epstein at a time like this the place we’re having a number of the biggest success and in addition tragedy with what occurred in Texas,” he mentioned, referring to the flooding that has killed a minimum of 120 individuals.
Ultimately, he waved for Bondi to go forward. She informed the reporter she had no information of Epstein being an agent, then defined that the video hadn’t been doctored and that the clocks on the outdated cameras within the Metropolitan Correctional Heart at all times soar forward as they method midnight. From what I noticed, hardly anybody on-line was shopping for this clarification, which comes as no shock. Trump and his administration invited conspiracy theories into the White Home. Now they’re going to have a tough time getting them out.