To assume that the escalating right-wing meltdown over the Justice Department’s dismissal of the “Epstein files” affair will be a fatal blow to the MAGA cult is very tempting. But it’s probably best to resist that temptation, at least for the moment. Over the years, there have been so many instances that felt as if they had to be the beginning of the end, and they all ended up being false alarms. In each case, the country moved on and Donald Trump only grew stronger. Still, this one has a characteristic that we haven’t seen before: The calls are coming from inside the house.
If Attorney General Pam Bondi, and perhaps Trump himself — who was pictured many times over the years in the company of Epstein and his paramour, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in federal prison for sex trafficking — thought this would draw a line under the whole affair, they were wrong.
On July 6, the Justice Department released an unsigned memorandum concluding there was no evidence that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein kept a “client list” from which he blackmailed powerful figures in politics, finance and entertainment, or that he was murdered in prison, as so many on the right have come to believe. If Attorney General Pam Bondi, and perhaps Trump himself — who was pictured many times over the years in the company of Epstein and his paramour, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in federal prison for sex trafficking — thought this would draw a line under the whole affair, they were wrong. For a movement that was founded on conspiracy theories in which the powerful, especially those in government, protect themselves, the Justice Department’s memo has turned out to be a major problem.
The conspiracy theories around this case have become a MAGA obsession, with activists and influencers on the right raising doubts about how Epstein died. Trump, who always has an ear to the ground, picked up on their fervor, and his campaign’s promise to thoroughly investigate the case was believed by his base to be one of the most important he made. Funnily enough, he never seemed that eager to talk about it. In a November 2024 interview with Fox News, he hesitated when asked about releasing the files.
Trump was president during the federal case that landed Epstein in jail and led to his presumed suicide, so he may very well have had inside information that he didn’t want released. (I think we can be fairly sure that if information had implicated his political enemies, he would have pledged to do so with relish.) That should have set off alarm bells to his flock. But as with so much else, they didn’t even notice, seeing what they wanted to see. They believed the assurances of Trump’s most fervent MAGA influencers that, if elected to serve a second term, he would expose a vast conspiracy.
After all, MAGA has been primed for this moment for years. QAnon conspiracy theories dominated Trump’s first term. Although there were many tentacles, at the center of MAGA ideology was the notion that the world is run by a secret cabal of wealthy and powerful pedophiles who pull all the strings of the Deep State actors in the U.S. government, including the Justice Department, and beyond. They were predictably said to be kidnapping and trafficking vast numbers of children to feed their depraved appetites. In December 2016, this led one man to drive from North Carolina to Washington, D.C., and, armed with an assault rifle, revolver and folding knife, open fire in a popular pizza joint while searching for children he believed were being held captive in the basement. There were no children. There wasn’t even a basement.
MAGA world became excited when Epstein was exposed in 2018 with the publication of a three-part series in the Miami Herald. The stories revisited his conviction a decade before for sex-trafficking, which had been swept under the rug and ignored by some very powerful people who continued to associate with him. Julie K. Brown, the intrepid reporter who investigated and wrote the stories, was motivated to look into the case when Trump nominated Alex Acosta, the U.S. Attorney who had given Epsten a sweetheart deal, to be his secretary of health and human services.
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Here was a real life, elite, pedophile and sex trafficker with many friends in high places. QAnon was right! They were ecstatic when Trump’s Justice Department took up the case and arrested Epstein in 2019. Soon, the world would know the whole truth. Except Epstein, the most high-profile prisoner in the country, friend of presidents and billionaires, was somehow able to commit suicide in his cell. For an awful lot of people, that didn’t pass the smell test, and a whole new set of conspiracy theories were ignited.
Nonetheless, as usual, they didn’t hold Trump responsible. They didn’t even blink an eye when Trump sent well-wishes to Maxwell when she was arrested in July 2020. They blamed the deep state, specifically the Department of Justice and the FBI, which they already held responsible for the “Russia Hoax” and for favoring Hillary Clinton. Among the most vociferous critics were Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, the current FBI director and deputy director. Bongino reportedly had an angry confrontation with Bondi at the White House last week.
The appointment of Patel and Bongino — as well as Bondi, who jumped into pursuing the scandal with both feet, promising far-right influencers that she was personally overseeing the investigation — made MAGA true believers believe they were about to get their hands on what Glenn Beck called “the Rosetta Stone of public trust.” These new appointees were the very ones who had been chasing this scandal for years, and they were now in a position to blow the lid off the whole thing. All those who had mocked the MAGA movement as kooks would soon be proven fools.
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The Justice Department’s memo was a slap in the face to the MAGA faithful. They were stunned. And when Trump rudely dismissed their concerns in a cabinet meeting and then admonished them on Truth Social in a long rant blaming former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, demanding that his followers focus on the scandals he wants them to focus on, the crushing betrayal was personal. Never before has a Trump post received such a massive negative response on his own platform. Even his most loyal influencers, including popular MAGA commentator Benny Johnson and Fox News, were hostile.
Trump’s loyal base has taken all that heat for so long, defending Trump through everything, and now it appears their Dear Leader is just another deep state operative covering up the crimes of his accomplices — and possibly his own. They are confused and angry and inconsolable. Have they had a mass epiphany and collectively awakened to the fundamental dishonesty and corruption of the man they worshipped for the past ten years? It’s hard to believe.
Like so many other Trump scandals, maybe it will all dissipate. But we’ve never seen one like this before: A Judas kiss that went straight to the heart and shattered their deepest convictions.
