In the beginning of the Epstein saga, the narrative was that there was a cabal of rich and powerful Democrats running a pedophile ring and that the Clintons were afraid they would be implicated, therefore, they had Epstein murdered in prison. MAGA podcasters latched on to this conspiracy theory and talked about it incessantly for years. Trump ran on the premise that the Epstein files would be released immediately should he win the presidency and swift justice would come to the pedophiles. It turns out MAGA wasn’t totally wrong about the pedophile ring, they just didn’t count on so many of their own people involved.
Within a few months of Trump being sworn in to office, the coverup began. We all remember Pam Bondi inviting right-wing influencers to the White House to bestow upon them white binders of the Epstein files. Apparently, they thought this would be enough to appease MAGA’s appetite for all things Epstein. As it turns out, the files in those binders were already documents that the public was aware of. This had the exact opposite effect that the administration had hoped for. For the first time, the Trump administration was finding themselves on the receiving end of MAGA outrage for not living up to the campaign promise of full transparency.
Still, the Administration fought tooth and nail to keep the files from being released, creating distractions and attacking those Republican lawmakers who dared to demand the public release of the files. When it became obvious that the MAGA drumbeat was not going to go away, Congress caved and voted to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act. EVEN THEN, the Administration blew past the deadlines for disclosures and redacted names of potential co-conspirators, in clear violation of the law.
The reason for this is there are names in those files that are associated with the Trump administration and inner circle, including Trump himself who is named over 33,000 times. Howard Lutnick, Trump’s Commerce Secretary appears to have lied about his ties to Epstein based upon the documents in the files as well as Elon Musk and Navy Secretary John Phelan.
The narrative that this was only a Democrat problem is now shattered.
