Together with:
Back in February, Attorney General Pam Bondi invited a group of right-wing influencers to the White House to receive a first look at new documents related to the 2019 death of Jeffrey Epstein, the notorious financier and convicted sex offender.
@JackPosobiec was there. And @DC_Draino. And @LibsOfTikTok. It was who’s who of the online MAGAverse.
The attendees had spent years promoting unproven conspiracy theories about Epstein, suggesting that he hadn’t died in jail by suicide, as officials said, and that his death had instead been brought about by someone in his web of powerful associates (a network that stretched from Bill Clinton to Prince Andrew) who was trying to prevent Epstein from revealing their own secrets.
No evidence has ever emerged to support those allegations.
But, after years of speculation, Bondi was promising answers. “This Department of Justice is following through on President Trump’s commitment to transparency and lifting the veil on the disgusting actions of Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators,” Bondi said in a statement.
She was also putting on a show. Each of the influencers was given a binder with an official-looking Justice Department seal and the watermark “DECLASSIFIED,” even though it wasn’t clear that any of the documents in them had actually been classified before. The binders were emblazoned with a titivating title: “The Epstein Files: Phase 1.”
No Phase 2 has materialized since then.
Instead, Bondi’s Justice Department released a memo last week announcing that their review of materials related to Epstein had abruptly concluded. No more documents would be released. “After a thorough investigation, FBI investigators concluded that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City on August 10, 2019,” the memo said, aligning with previous conclusions by state and federal officials.
Rumors have long circulated about a theoretical Epstein “client list,” a document naming powerful people who participated in his sex-trafficking ring. When Bondi was asked by Fox News in February about such a list, she seemed to confirm its existence.
“It’s sitting on my desk right now to review,” the attorney general responded. “That’s been a directive by President Trump. I’m reviewing that.”
But last week’s memo sang a different tune: “This systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list,’” it said.
Prominent Trump supporters — who were already dissatisfied by the “Phase 1” release, widely derided as a nothingburger — immediately erupted with anger, feeling like Bondi had once again strung them along. After years of accusing Democrats of hiding the truth about Epstein from them, these influencers now trained their suspicions at Trump’s handpicked officials.
“We were promised transparency on the Jeffrey Epstein files. Instead, we got Pam Blondi [sic], a Fox News addict waving around a binder of heavily redacted and recycled documents like it’s some sort of bombshell,” far-right commentator and outside Trump adviser Laura Loomer wrote on X. “President Trump appointed her. Now, he needs to fire her. The base is furious, and they have every right to be.”
“I want answers on Epstein,” the alt-right activist Jack Posobiec added. “As many as possible. Not press releases. Answers.”
“It’s definitely a full reversal on what was all said beforehand, and people are just not willing to accept it,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) told reporters.
Divisions began to crop up inside the Trump administration as well. Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, who spent years promoting Epstein conspiracy theories as a conservative podcaster, is reportedly considering resigning over frustration with Bondi’s handling of the Epstein case.
Last Friday, he was so mad that he didn’t show up to work — which is apparently an option for the number-two official at America’s top law enforcement agency? (Per CNN, he did return to the office on Monday but still might call it quits. “Bongino is out of control furious,” a well-placed source told NBC. “This destroyed his career. He’s threatening to quit and torch Pam unless she’s fired.” Vice President JD Vance is apparently trying to play the role of mediator.)
MAGA had been split in two, and everyone was waiting for the movement’s leader to weigh in. Would he side with Bondi or Bongino?
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At this point, it’s worth noting that Trump isn’t an entirely disinterested party here. Trump and Epstein ran in similar social circles in the 1980s and 1990s. Epstein was a regular at Mar-a-Lago; in fact, Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s accusers, has alleged that it was at Trump’s resort that Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell recruited her, leading to her eventually being directed to have sex with Epstein and his powerful friends. (Giuffre claimed that she was sex-trafficked to Prince Andrew and the former Democratic politicians Bill Richardson and George Mitchell, among others. All three men deny her claims. Giuffre died by suicide earlier this year.)
“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York Magazine in 2002. “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 Epstein eventually had a falling-out in 2004 when they vied for the same Florida mansion, which Trump succeeded in buying. Two years after that, Epstein was arrested for the first time for sex crimes. Trump has denied any knowledge of Epstein's wrongdoing. During his very public breakup with Trump last month, Elon Musk alleged that Epstein’s hypothesized “client list” hadn’t been released because Trump’s name was on it. No evidence has emerged to support that claim, which Musk later deleted.
Now, Trump is decisively taking Bondi’s side in the MAGA schism, telling his supporters to move on from worrying about Epstein.
“What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday. “They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! We’re on one Team, MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening.”
Trump urged his followers not to “waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.”
That message seems to have worked for some: At least week’s Turning Point USA conference, for example, Charlie Kirk asked attendees whether they sided with Bondi or Bongino. “It’s 7,000 to zero,” he joked after the crowd thundered back “BONGINO!” But after speaking with Trump, Kirk said on Monday that he was “done talking about Epstein for the time being” and that he had chosen to “trust my friends in the government to do what needs to be done.”
Not all of Trump’s “boys” and “gals” have been so quick to take his advice.
Trump’s Truth Social post has 43,000 likes and 48,000 replies, making it the first time he’s been “ratioed” on the platform he owns and which is largely populated by his fierce supporters.
“You promised us Sir,” reads one reply. “Putting your MAGA base down is not going to make this go away. Pam Bondi has LIED to us time and time again. Who is advising you?”
“This statement breaks my heart, Mr. President,” says another.
“This is going to cost you so many supporters,” one user predicted. “I being one of them.”
So far, Trump has stayed the course. Democrats, meanwhile, have spied an opening, forcing a pair of House votes on releasing more Epstein documents, one of which was defeated in the Rules Committee and the other of which was defeated by Republicans on the House floor. The latter move would have scrapped the GOP’s entire agenda for the day, which helps explain why Republicans uniformly voted against it. But after the vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson called for “transparency” and said, “We should put everything out there and let the people decide it.”
On social media, Democrats are doing whatever they can to call attention to the split in Trump’s coalition: one 70-year-old Democratic congressman even used the opportunity to compose a song about the situation, which he played on guitar to the tune of Jason Isbell’s “Dreamsicle.” So there’s that.
As always, it’ll take some time to see whether this story has legs; some conservatives are calling for Bondi to appoint a special counsel (à la Jack Smith or Robert Mueller), while others are calling for Maxwell to testify before Congress. Those are the sorts of events that would surely keep the Epstein saga in the headlines.
But, absent developments like those, I wouldn’t rush to assume the controversy will have a major impact. “Trump’s Fans Forgive Him Everything. Why Not Epstein?” reads the headline of one opinion piece in The New York Times, emphasizing the possibility that the Epstein spat could become a major vulnerability for Trump.
But pieces like that assume the Laura Loomers and Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world are representative of the average Trump supporter — always a risky assumption. The internet is not real life. A rebellion on Truth Social is interesting, but the app has around 6 million users. Seventy-seven million people voted for Trump last November, and there’s no reason to assume the most online among them are an especially representative sample.
A new CNN poll found bipartisan dissatisfaction with the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein documents. But more Republicans said they didn’t care or hadn’t heard much about the case (56%) than said they were dissatisfied (40%). Anti-Trump voters were also more likely than pro-Trump voters to express dissatisfaction, suggesting that the issue is animating people who dislike Trump already more than it’s firing up his core supporters.
According to a poll by Data for Progress, 55% of Republicans who have heard “a lot” about the Epstein files disapprove of how Trump has handled them. But only 23% of Republicans said they had heard “a lot” about the case.
A much larger percentage (52%) have only heard “a little” about the files — and this group said they back Trump on the issue, 59% to 31%. The 25% of Republicans who haven’t heard anything about the files also stood behind the president. “Uhm, does anyone care about the midterms anymore?” Loomer wrote on Tuesday, suggesting this issue will haunt the GOP in November 2026. But assuming that the average voter is as engaged as you are — or will care about an issue currently in vogue 15 months from now — is a classic activist’s mistake.
Still, the Epstein controversy does offer an interesting window into what happens when an anti-establishment movement becomes the establishment, and the tensions that inevitably follow when its leading lights have to distance themselves from the speculative and extreme claims they made before entering office. (Notably, similar tensions are playing out over Trump’s decision to enter into an arms deal with NATO and Ukraine after he spent his campaign criticizing the conflict as “Biden’s war” and promising to end it quickly.)
It also raises the question of what the MAGA movement stands for. Is there a set of hard-and-fast principles that unites the group, like increased government transparency or aversion to foreign conflicts? Or is it more of a personalist movement, following Trump wherever he goes?
With most Republican lawmakers rallying behind Bondi, some MAGA influencers starting to move on, and Fox News mostly steering clear of the issue, it seems like “In Trump we trust” may just remain the movement’s motto.