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Welcome back to False Flag! MAGA world has been roiled with disappointment over the Trump administration’s attempt to quash Jeffrey Epstein–themed conspiracy theories for good. It’s a story I’ve been following for six years now, and let me just say: This is an absolute tinderbox for the Trump administration. I get into it below.
I also talked about the Epstein non-bombshell with The Bulwark’s Sam Stein over on our YouTube channel. And on the Secret Podcast, JVL and Sarah Longwell discussed what the Epstein saga says about the dismal state of American politics.
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— Will
MAGA World’s Mega Meltdown Over Latest Epstein Flop
The online right wants the attorney general fired after being told that the disgraced sex trafficker did not, in fact, have a client list.
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The Epstein Client List Blowup
IN FEBRUARY, ATTORNEY GENERAL Pam Bondi boasted in a Fox News appearance that she had the much-anticipated client list of the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein literally on her desk. Soon, she implied, she would be given the clearance to release it.
“The DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients? Will that really happen?” Fox anchor John Roberts asked.
“It’s sitting on my desk right now to review,” Bondi replied. “That’s been a directive by President Trump.”
An official White House account on X posted the clip, which gave Bondi’s remarks the administration’s public imprimatur. The Epstein conspiracist community was thrilled.
But nearly five months later, all that excitement has come crashing down. On Sunday evening, Bondi’s Justice Department said in an undated, unaddressed, and unsigned memo—provided to Axios—that the Epstein client list wouldn’t be released. Why? Because it apparently never existed at all.
“This systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list,’” the two-page document reads.
The memo also says that Epstein killed himself in jail, rather than being a victim of a murder, and that no further Epstein documents would be released. Maybe most injurious to pro-Trump conspiracy theorists, the memo also claims that Epstein wasn’t blackmailing anyone and that the 300 gigabytes of Epstein-related material in the bureau’s possession did not implicate any third parties, puncturing the very idea—held up as an article of faith by some on the MAGA right—that the disgraced New York financier was running a CIA or Mossad honeypot.
All of that has infuriated some of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters, who are alternatively calling for Bondi to be fired, or accusing CIA Director John Ratcliffe of orchestrating a larger coverup, or wondering if the tentacles of the Deep State reach far deeper than they previously believed.
But the Epstein memo fiasco also shows something bigger: the serious bind the administration finds itself in after promising to uncover evidence of conspiracy theories that, apparently, just don’t exist.
The memo has also left a more immediate question for the White House: What did Bondi mean when she said Epstein’s client list was on her desk?
On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Bondi was using “client list” as a kind of shorthand for all Epstein-related documentation.
“She was saying the entirety of all the paperwork, all of the paper,” Leavitt told Fox’s Peter Doocy.
Somehow, that hasn’t cleared up the confusion or washed away the anger.
“Trump has to fire Pam Bondi!” right-wing media influencers “The Hodge Twins” posted on X. “She went on camera and told the world she has the Epstein client list on her desk. Now they say there is no list??”
“Next the DOJ will say ‘Actually, Jeffrey Epstein never even existed,’” Alex Jones tweeted. “This is over the top sickening.”
THAT’S JUST A SMALL SAMPLING of the aggrievement. Perhaps no one has been more sore about this than the right-wing influencers whom Bondi roped into the Epstein binders debacle.
To recap: On February 27, an assor