By Jim Geraghty
Monday, July 14, 2025
You can’t begrudge any Trump voter or MAGA supporter for
feeling more than a little bewildered and betrayed to hear the president
insisting this weekend that no one cares about Jeffrey Epstein, and an
out-of-the-blue contention that unspecified “Epstein Files” were created by
former President Obama, former Senator Hillary Clinton, and other officials
from a Democratic administration.
The president, on Truth Social, 5:21 p.m. Saturday:
What’s going on with my “boys” and,
in some cases, “gals?” 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. We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and
“selfish people” are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey
Epstein. For years, it’s Epstein, over and over again. Why are we giving
publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the
Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration, who conned the World with the
Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, 51 “Intelligence” Agents, “THE LAPTOP FROM HELL,”
and more? 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. Why didn’t these
Radical Left Lunatics release the Epstein Files? If there was ANYTHING in there
that could have hurt the MAGA Movement, why didn’t they use it? They haven’t
even given up on the John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr. Files. No
matter how much success we have had, securing the Border, deporting Criminals,
fixing the Economy, Energy Dominance, a Safer World where Iran will not have
Nuclear Weapons, it’s never enough for some people. We are about to achieve
more in 6 months than any other Administration has achieved in over 100 years,
and we have so much more to do. We are saving our Country and, MAKING AMERICA
GREAT AGAIN, which will continue to be our complete PRIORITY. The Left is
imploding! Kash Patel, and the FBI, must be focused on investigating Voter
Fraud, Political Corruption, ActBlue, The Rigged and Stolen Election of 2020,
and arresting Thugs and Criminals, instead of spending month after month
looking at nothing but the same old, Radical Left inspired Documents on Jeffrey
Epstein. LET PAM BONDI DO HER JOB — SHE’S GREAT! The 2020 Election was Rigged
and Stolen, and they tried to do the same thing in 2024 — That’s what she is
looking into as AG, and much more. One year ago our Country was DEAD, now it’s
the “HOTTEST” Country anywhere in the World. Let’s keep it that way, and not
waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.
Thank you for your attention to this matter!
If you want people to stop talking about Epstein, a long
angry tirade about Epstein is probably not going to do the trick. And if you
don’t want people to believe that there is some document that ties Trump to
Epstein in some deeply embarrassing or scandalous way, it is probably not
helpful to preemptively insist that the “files” were created by political
enemies.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal
Bureau of Investigation announced the results of what they described as “an
exhaustive review of investigative holdings relating to Jeffrey Epstein”:
This systematic review revealed no
incriminating “client list.” 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. . . .
One of our highest priorities is
combatting child exploitation and bringing justice to victims. Perpetuating
unfounded theories about Epstein serves neither of those ends. . . .
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. This
conclusion is consistent with previous findings, including the August 19, 2019
autopsy findings of the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, the
November 2019 position of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District
of New York in connection with the investigation of federal correctional officers
responsible for guarding Epstein, and the June 2023 conclusions of DOJ’s Office
of the Inspector General.
If you read Trump’s Truth Social tirade above and think,
“Wait, asking questions about Epstein is a waste of time and effort? That
doesn’t sound like what Trump said about Epstein before,” you are correct. At
least twice on the campaign trail in 2024, Trump was asked about releasing any
information the government had about Epstein.
President Trump, in an interview on Fox and Friends, June 2, 2024:
Rachel Campos-Duffy: Some people
think that one way to build trust is to declassify things that everyone’s
talking about. I know you talked earlier about ‘I don’t want to be a conspiracy
theorist.’ So if you were president — you can answer yes or no to these — Would
you declassify the 9/11 files?
Donald Trump: Yeah.
Campos-Duffy: Would you declassify
JFK files?
Trump: Yeah. I did a lot of it.
Campos-Duffy: Would you declassify
the Epstein files?
Trump: Yeah, I would. I guess I
would. I think that, less so, because you don’t want to affect people’s lives
if it’s phony stuff in there because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole
world.
Campos-Duffy: Did you think that
would help restore trust?
Trump: I don’t know about Epstein
so much as I do the others. Certainly, about the way he died, it would be
interesting to find out what happened there, because that was a weird
situation, and the cameras didn’t happen to be working, etc., etc., etc. But
yeah, I’d go a long way toward that one. The other stuff, I would.
Trump, in an interview with podcast
host Lex Fridman, September 3, 2024:
Lex Fridman: There’s a moment where
you had some hesitation about Epstein releasing some of the documents on
Epstein. Why the hesitation?
Donald Trump: I don’t think . . .
I’m not involved. I never went to his island, fortunately, but a lot of people
did.
Fridman: Why do you think so many
smart, powerful people allowed him to get so close?
Trump: He was a good salesman. He
was a hailing, hearty type of guy. He had some nice assets that he’d throw
around like islands, but a lot of big people went to that island. But
fortunately, I was not one of them.
Fridman: It’s just very strange for
a lot of people, that the list of clients that went to the island has not been
made public.
Trump: It’s very
interesting, isn’t it? It probably will be, by the way, probably.
Fridman: If you’re able to,
you’ll be—
Trump: Yeah, I’d certainly take a
look at it. Now, Kennedy’s interesting because it’s so many years ago. They do
that for danger too, because it endangers certain people, et cetera, et cetera,
so Kennedy is very different from the Epstein thing, but I’d be inclined to do
the Epstein. I’d have no problem with it.
For that matter, JD Vance, in an interview with podcast host Theo Von, October 22, 2024:
“Seriously, we need to release the Epstein list. That is an important thing. We
can go down that rabbit hole.”
Of course, Trump isn’t the only figure in the
administration who has made a sudden about-face regarding allegations that
there is a government coverup to hide the extent of Epstein’s crimes and
associates.
Current FBI director Kash Patel, in an interview with
Benny Johnson, December 19, 2023:
Kash Patel: It’s the same thing
with Epstein’s list. What the hell are these Republicans doing?
Johnson: I saw you make news this
morning about that. I’ve got to get to that. You say that the FBI has Epstein’s
list. They’re sitting on it. That doesn’t seem like something you should do.
You’re protecting the world’s foremost predator. That seems like an evil thing
to do, regardless of who may be embarrassed by the release of that list. Why is
the FBI protecting the greatest pederast, the largest-scale pederast, in human
history?
Patel: Simple, because of who’s on
that list. You don’t think that Bill Gates is lobbying Congress, night and day,
to prevent the disclosure of that list? And why is it that the Senate — and you
know, good for Senator [Marsha] Blackburn [of Tennessee] to get it out, but
[Illinois senator] Dick Durbin comes over the top and says, ‘no, we’re not
going to release the names.’ I don’t care about the list itself, but release
the names, right? What the hell are the House Republicans doing? They have the
majority? You can’t get the list? You’re going to accept Dick Durbin’s word or
whoever that guy is, as to who is on that list and who isn’t, and that it can
or can’t be released? Put on your big boy pants and let us know who the
pedophiles are! We have an election coming up, and we need to adjudicate this
matter at the polls! God knows the FBI and DOJ aren’t going to do anything!
Again, Kash Patel is now the director of the FBI. A bit
more than a year ago, he was irately demanding that House Republicans do more
to obtain a list that he insisted was in possession of the bureau, and he
contended their failure to do so was a sign that they were incapable of putting
on their “big boy pants.”
Who is incapable of putting on big boy pants now?
Patel’s right-hand man at the FBI is deputy director Dan
Bongino.
Bongino, appearing on
Tim Pool’s podcast, back on May 22, 2023:
I’m in a green room at Fox. And I’m
not gonna say who, because they didn’t give me permission to share, but the
short story, you know who they are. He says, ‘You know Epstein’s an
intelligence asset for people in the Middle East, right?’ I’m like, ‘No, I
didn’t know that.’ I’m like, ‘You sure of that? The person, let’s say, is like,
‘I’m absolutely sure of that. That he’s either very witting or unwitting asset,
intelligence asset meaning his plane and that island, the cameras — there’s a
big assumption out there that these videotapes were exclusively in the custody
of Epstein. That’s a huge mistake. The reason they wanted this story to go away
is because there’s an assumption like ‘Oh yeah Epstein had them — no he wasn’t
the only one who had them, according to this source. These assets — that’s why
this blackmail story makes so much sense! Which Middle Eastern countries they
are, I don’t know, but this person who’s a very, very good reporter I mean,
aces, right, swore Epstein was either a witting or unwitting intelligence asset
and they may have had his plane wired up and they’re the ones who have all this
stuff.
(Note that Johnson and Pool worked for Tenet Media, which was the
centerpiece of a “$10 million scheme to create and distribute content to U.S.
audiences with hidden Russian government messaging,” according
to the U.S. Department of Justice. Neither Johnson nor Pool were charged
with any crime; apparently they had no idea they were working for figures in
the Russian government and thought it was one of those perfectly normal
business arrangements where a Belgian private-equity-fund manager with no paper
trail or online presence and whose name is spelled different ways on different
documents pays them a monthly fee of $400,000 to make one video a week. You
know, the usual.)
Remember, now the FBI declares, “perpetuating
unfounded theories about Epstein” does not help combat child exploitation and
bring justice to victims.”
And as noted last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi said
that Epstein’s client list was “on her desk” during an
appearance on Fox News Channel, February 21:
Anchor John Roberts: The DOJ may be
releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients?
Attorney General Bondi: It’s
sitting on my desk right now to review. That’s been a directive by President
Trump. I’m reviewing that, I’m reviewing JFK files, MLK files, That’s all in
the process of being reviewed, because that was done at the directive of the
president from all of these agencies.
Roberts: So have you seen anything,
that you said, ‘Oh, my gosh?’
Bondi: Not yet.
Last week at the White House, Bondi said, “In February, I
did an interview on Fox that got a lot of attention because I
was asked a question about the ‘client list.’ My response was, ‘It is sitting
on my desk to be reviewed’ — meaning the file, along with the JFK and MLK files
as well. That is what I meant by that.”
You can watch Bondi’s exchange with Fox News’ John
Roberts at the link above; it is extremely difficult to believe she did not
understand the question was about “the list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients.”
All these figures — Trump, Vance, Patel, and Bongino —
were perfectly comfortable embracing and promoting the belief that Epstein had
many unnamed clients involved in sordid crimes, that these figures were being
blackmailed, that there was a list of these perpetrators of sex crimes, and
that the list was being suppressed and hidden by individuals within the FBI.
And now that Trump, Vance, Patel, and Bongino are running and overseeing the
FBI, they’re forced to stand silently as the bureau announces there is no
evidence this list ever existed, nor that anyone was being blackmailed, nor is
there evidence that Epstein was murdered.
Throw in Bondi now contending she accidentally referred
to documents that don’t exist, and we have a group of people running federal
law enforcement who have proven themselves untrustworthy. So far, they are
dealing with this by calling up their preferred MAGA-adjacent reporters and
leaking against each other.
There are a lot of people in MAGA-world who will respond
to this by choosing one figure and declaring that one the truth-teller, and
contending that everyone else is involved in the coverup. No one will reexamine
their prior beliefs, no one will ask what they chose to believe in the absence
of evidence, and every inconvenient fact will be dismissed as a “psyop.”
ADDENDUM: This past weekend, Steve
Bannon told his audience, “We need to get to the bottom of Epstein. Because
Epstein is the key that picks the lock.”
If Epstein is indeed “the key that picks the lock,” you
would figure Bannon would release
the 15 hours of interview footage he has with Epstein from a
never-completed documentary about him, right? Kind of weird how, with all the
public fascination about Epstein, in all these years since Epstein’s death,
Bannon never released any of that, isn’t it?
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