Trump and England’s Prince Andrew, both friends of Jeffrey Epstein, meeting in 2019.Matt Dunham/AP
Late Sunday night, Axios reported that the Department of Justice and FBI have concluded that billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide. A two-page memo issued by the two agencies and obtained by Axios also stated that Epstein wasn’t engaged in a blackmail operation and didn’t have a “client list” of people who are believed to have engaged in sex crimes against women and girls alongside him. The DOJ also released surveillance video from outside Epstein’s prison cell in New York City’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, meant to help show that no one could have entered to murder him. Besides Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s procurer who is serving 20 years in prison for sex trafficking, the department determined that no one else will be charged in connection with his case.
“Next the DOJ will say ‘Actually, Jeffrey Epstein never even existed,’” complained Alex Jones.
“This systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list,’” the memo reads. “There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”
This was, of course, cause for considerable uproar, both in the MAGA world and across the aisle, where Epstein conspiracy theories are also deeply rooted. The Trump administration has continually claimed they would declassify shocking and never-before-seen Epstein files, conducting a weird little stunt in February where a group of conservative bloggers and influencers were given folders full of supposedly unreleased Epstein-related material; the move flopped when it became clear that they held no new information. Earlier that month, Attorney General Pam Bondi even claimed that she had Epstein’s client list “sitting on my desk right now to review,” adding that doing so had been a “directive by president Trump.”
Among the MAGA faithful, the news of the Justice Department’s decision brought a sense of betrayal and profound confusion, with some seeming to mistake it for a vindication of Epstein. Catturd, a prolific far-right Twitter poster and booster of the administration whose real name is Philip Buchanan, tweeted, “So all the girls who have testified about being raped on Epstein’s island were lying and Giselle Maxwell is in prison for being the madam for nobody? Please tell me this is fake news.”
“Assuming this leaked Epstein Files memo is true, then we all know this is a shameful coverup to protect the most heinous elites,” tweeted Rogan O’Handley, better known as “DC Draino,” another right-wing commentator and Trump stalwart. “We were told multiple times the files would be released and now it looks like backroom deals have been made to keep them hidden.”
“I don’t understand this,” echoed conservative political commenter Glenn Beck, sounding a plaintive note. “I’ve invited AG Bondi, Patel, and Bongino to discuss. Hope someone takes me up on the offer.”
“This is the type of lying that radicalizes people. Sigh,” tweeted “Autism Capital,” another large pro-Trump news aggregation account. (The account is followed by several members of the Trump administration, including Director of the National Institutes of Health Jay Bhattacharya and Kingsley Wilson, a Pentagon spokesperson with a history of inflammatory and bigoted tweets.)
Even Benny Johnson, a former Buzzfeed writer and plagiarist turned MAGA personality with close ties to the administration who frequently interviews various senior officials, responded with fury.
“To say there are thousands of ‘victims’ in a convicted sex trafficking ring and then to say there were no ‘customers’ when the operation happened right before our very eyes insults our intelligence,” he tweeted. “Trafficking women to no one? I don’t buy it.”
“There are other dark forces at play here,” he added, before quoting George Orwell: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
Yet skepticism of the decision wasn’t just limited to the MAGA world. People on the left and throughout American society also seemed doubtful. For instance, the Rise Above Justice Movement, which advocates for survivors of sexual violence (and was previously known as Survivors 4 Harris), shared an Instagram post which read, “We all know Donald Trump is on the Epstein list… That’s why they’re concealing and redacting it. They admitted there was a list. Now they’re backtracking… We know why.” (Ellipses theirs.)
The department’s memo comes not long after a Trump ally-turned-frenemy Elon Musk claimed that Trump is “in the Epstein files,” adding, “That is the real reason they have not been made public.” (After souring on Trump, Musk recently announced the formation of a new political party, dubbing it the America Party.)
While Musk appears to have since deleted those tweets, it is of course a documented fact that many powerful people socialized with Epstein, including Trump himself. The future president told New York magazine in 2002 that Epstein was a “terrific guy,” adding, “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” Trump and Melania were also photographed alongside Epstein and Maxwell at Mar a Lago in 2000.
Musk greeted the news of the memo with a new fusillade of conspiracy-stoking tweets. “What’s the time?,” he posted very late Sunday night. “Oh look, it’s no-one-has-been-arrested-o’clock again.” He also retweeted a post from another conservative activist named Sarah Fields, which read, “If the entire government is protecting pedophiles, it has officially become the government against the people. I hope you understand that.”
“Next the DOJ will say ‘Actually, Jeffrey Epstein never even existed,” agreed conspiracy kingpin Alex Jones, responding to Musk. “This is over the top sickening.”
The complaints from Trump allies are part of a developing pattern in which administration officials—many of whom, like FBI deputy director Dan Bongino, were part of right-wing media before assuming roles in government—make sweeping promises of disclosure that they likely can’t ever fulfill. (On Monday, notably neither Bongino nor Bondi had tweeted anything about the Epstein memo.)
If Epstein’s death has become the JFK assassination of this generation, this memo stands to be its version of the Warren Commission report concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Skepticism about the JFK assassination and the commission itself took root almost immediately after it finished its work in 1964, with a considerable percentage of Americans believing that Oswald had accomplices or that the commission failed to answer lingering questions about the killing. Some saw the report as an attempt to simply put debate about the shooting to bed. The U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, for instance, later wrote that the commission’s “investigation into the possibility of conspiracy in the assassination was inadequate. The conclusions of the investigations were arrived at in good faith, but presented in a fashion that was too definitive.”
We’re heading down the same long road again, with the Trump DOJ and FBI’s bizarre stunts and sweeping promises serving only to cement Epstein’s death further into the conspiracy firmament. In their memo, both agencies tried, faintly and quite ironically, to prevent the tide of recrimination they surely know is coming, writing: “One of our highest priorities is combatting [sic] child exploitation and bringing justice to victims. Perpetuating unfounded theories about Epstein serves neither of those ends.”