The political world’s frenzy over the Jeffrey Epstein scandal has essentially blotted out the sun. That’s even though Epstein has been dead for nearly six years, and the scandal around him has no apparent import to American public policy. So why is the obsession over it so intense?
The known facts around Epstein are genuinely mysterious and shocking. He became fabulously wealthy through unclear means, he cultivated a social circle full of powerful elites, he’s been accused of sex crimes by dozens of women (many of whom were underage), he owned two private islands, and he died in jail in what the FBI has said was a suicide.
But in the minds of many, the scandal has become something far more than the known facts — it’s become, basically, the mother of all conspiracy theories. Because a curious aspect to the Epstein scandal is that it has something to captivate just about every political subculture.
Depending on which parts of the story you zoom in on or studiously ignore, it can be a Me Too story of women being abused by a powerful man, a MAGA tale of liberal elites’ sex crimes, or a #Resistance scandal that will reveal the dark truth about Trump. Those inclined to suspect deep state malfeasance fixate on a cover-up or the hypothetical involvement of intelligence agencies. Antisemites focus on Epstein being Jewish.
Particularly, the MAGA right demonstrated extraordinary amounts of compartmentalization by becoming obsessed with Epstein while totally ignoring that the leader of their political movement, Trump, had well-documented ties to the man. The Epstein scandal would, they thought, reveal that Democrats were perverted sex criminals — and Trump would help expose the truth.
But any hopes of a revelatory new dump of Epstein info from the Trump administration have been extinguished, and Trump has desperately tried to change the subject to other topics. This may well be because Trump’s own name is in there. The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that, back in May, administration officials told Trump his name appeared in Epstein case documents, alongside many other people’s names — and that the files contained lots of unverified hearsay about these people.
Trump and his team’s contortions — and the unusual tension between the Trump administration and their base — have spurred a new round of investigative reporting about Trump and Epstein’s ties. Democrats, too, have glommed on to the scandal as a way to hurt Trump politically.
It’s gotten so awkward for Republicans that Speaker Mike Johnson cut short the House of Representatives’ work schedule this week, specifically to avoid votes on Epstein disclosures. But so far, every attempt by Trump and his allies to move on from Epstein has only spurred more interest in the topic — and more questions about whether they’re trying to hide something.
Epstein theories escaped containment on the right, getting out of Trump’s control
Trump, a longtime fan of conspiracy theories about his political enemies, has generally proved quite skilled at guiding and diverting the MAGA base’s attention to his preferred targets — mainly, top Democrats and government officials involved in investigating Trump.
But there’s always been an element of far-right conspiracy theorizing he couldn’t quite control — as demonstrated with Pizzagate and especially QAnon, two made-up theories about Democrats being involved in child sex crimes that were fervently believed by many on the right.
With QAnon in particular, Trump never outright endorsed the theory’s claims, but he recognized the power it held over many in his base, so he and his team pandered to it in coded ways.
The obsession with the idea that Democrats were secret child sex abusers transitioned neatly into the Epstein saga. Epstein was accused of sexually abusing underage girls, he had flown former President Bill Clinton around on his private jet in the early 2000s, and he had many connections in elite liberal circles, including from Hollywood and academia.
All this has only heightened suspicions that something is in those files that makes Trump look quite bad.
Then, Epstein’s 2019 death in jail was the clincher: Clearly, the right-wing base believed he was murdered before his trial to prevent him from implicating other powerful people in his sex crimes. Elements of the government were probably involved in this cover-up, they thought. The belief spread that there was an Epstein “client list” naming people he supplied underage girls to.
It would have been a perfect issue for Trump to use to fire up the base, if not for the inconvenient problem that Trump actually knew Epstein quite well.
Trump and Epstein frequently socialized in New York and Florida in the 1990s and early 2000s, Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet seven times, Epstein attended Trump’s second wedding, and Trump reportedly wrote Epstein a message for his 50th birthday saying they had “certain things in common” and alluding to a “wonderful secret.” In 2002, Trump even told a reporter that Epstein was a “terrific guy” who likes women “on the younger side.”
So Trump would’ve very much preferred his base not get so fixated on Jeffrey Epstein as the key to all conspiracies.
But the president couldn’t stop it. Over the past few years, the theory escaped “containment,” promoted by right-wing commentators, podcasters, and influencers who perceived that it was quite effective at boosting ratings and engagement. They all proved extremely adept at averting their eyes from the well-documented Trump-Epstein connections, but in practice they spurred the MAGA base on to demand the release of the “Epstein Files” once Trump was back in the White House.
Furthermore, Trump chose top law enforcement officials — Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino — who were extremely sensitive to how they were portrayed in right-wing media. Their ham-handed efforts to please the base on this topic just resulted in further uproars (and finger-pointing among themselves).
Finally, Trump himself stepped in to try to give his base their new talking points: that the Epstein story was a “Hoax” akin to the Russia investigation, cooked up by his political enemies to make him look bad. “Let’s keep it that way, and not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about,” he posted on Truth Social.
All this has only heightened suspicions that something is in those files that makes Trump look quite bad.
After some trepidation, Democrats have now embraced the Epstein scandal
In the past, Democrats have had a complicated relationship with the Epstein scandal. In the early 2000s, after Clinton left office, he became friends with Epstein, flying on his private jet several times during that period. Given Clinton’s own history of sex scandals, this looked awkward, even suspicious, when the allegations about Epstein started to become known in the mid-2000s. Hillary Clinton was viewed as the party’s future, so there was little desire to dwell on what happened with Epstein.
That changed during the Me Too era. With a societal reckoning against powerful men like Harvey Weinstein, who abused and mistreated women, Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown delved back into the Epstein case. Brown chronicled his victims’ stories and questioned whether prosecutors had given him a sweetheart deal during his first brush with the law. One news “hook” was that a prosecutor who’d arranged that deal, Alexander Acosta, was then serving in Trump’s Cabinet.
Brown’s reporting helped spur Epstein’s indictment and arrest in 2019, and the media prepared for what was sure to be a blockbuster trial. But the trial never happened, because Epstein was found dead in his cell just a month after his arrest.
After Epstein’s death, the MAGA base’s interest in him increased, while Democrats’ interest in him dwindled. “Epstein didn’t kill himself” became a common phrase on some parts of the right, but the idea of a secret jail murder conspiracy sounded silly to Democrats’ increasingly upscale and educated voter base.
What Democrats needed to revive their interest was for the Epstein scandal to become a Trump scandal. And that’s what Trump’s team has inadvertently brought about. Their botched disclosures and awkward attempts to change the subject spurred new investigative reporting about Trump and Epstein. And it’s resulted in a frenzy of public interest that Trump hasn’t been able to escape.
