House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that President Trump’s struggle to contain the MAGA outcry over the Jeffrey Epstein files is a monster of his own making.
“Democrats didn’t put this into the public domain,” Jeffries told reporters in the Capitol. “The conspiracy theory provocateur-in-chief is the one — along with his extreme MAGA Republican associates — who put this whole thing into the public domain for years.
“And now they are reaping what they have sown.”
Trump, on the campaign trail, had suggested that, if elected, he would release the government files related to Epstein, a wealthy financier and convicted pedophile who died in 2019 in a Manhattan jail cell, where he was awaiting trial for the sex trafficking of minors.
Many of Trump’s supporters believe those documents, including an alleged “client list,” are the Rosetta stone needed to uncover a much broader criminal enterprise of sex trafficking and pedophilia undertaken by a who’s who of global “elites” who were being shielded by the government.
Those far-right voices also speculate that Epstein did not die by suicide, the official cause of his death, but was killed to ensure his silence — another narrative Trump has advanced.
Last week, however, Trump’s Justice Department (DOJ) released an unsigned memo refuting each of those narratives. There is no client list, the memo stated, nor did the DOJ find evidence that Epstein attempted to blackmail other figures who might have committed sex crimes. His death was by suicide, the memo added, not foul play.
The memo infuriated many of Trump’s most loyal supporters, who saw Trump’s decision to place vocal Epstein conspiracy theorists in top administration positions — including Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel — as a sign that the release of the Epstein files was forthcoming.
Vice President Vance fueled those hopes in October, when he said it was “important” to release the files. And Bondi stoked them again in February, when she said she had Epstein’s client list on her desk and was ready to review it for release. Now they’re saying there’s no “there” there.
The episode has put Trump in a position he’s rarely in: under fire from a MAGA movement he created over a uniting narrative of “us versus them.”
On Wednesday, Trump lashed out at those same base supporters, calling them “weaklings” and disavowing their support moving forward.
“I have had more success in 6 months than perhaps any President in our Country’s history, and all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the Fake News and the success starved Dems, is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore!”
Trump also shifted the blame for the Epstein controversy from the conservatives who have fueled it, including himself, to top Democrats.
“They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called “friends” are playing right into their hands,” Trump wrote.
The president’s message has done little to convince many conservatives that the Epstein files should remain under wraps. On Capitol Hill, a number of those lawmakers brought the House to a standstill Thursday, blocking a vote on a major spending cuts bill until it was accompanied by a separate measure requiring the DOJ to release the documents.
The resolution is symbolic: Congress has little power to force the hand of the executive agencies, and it remains unclear if a messaging vote will satisfy those conservatives, both on and off of Capitol Hill, who want to see the Epstein files made public.
Jeffries, for his part, said transparency is crucial to maintaining the public’s trust in Washington.
“The most important thing that can be done at this moment is for Congress to act in a bipartisan way to demand that the American people get the transparency that they deserve,” he said. “What is the Trump administration hiding from the American people?
“That’s the question that needs to be answered.”
