| The far right is at war with itself this week over unsubstantiated beliefs, about which Trump administration officials helped fan the flames: the purported existence of a secret list of powerful people who paid financier Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse teenage girls. This week, the Trump officials who drove a lot of these claims about Epstein said there was nothing to it, enraging some of their most loyal supporters. The case gets at what happens when you elevate people who espouse such unsubstantiated claims to the highest levels of government, and it underscores how much claims like this — from the extremist group QAnon to the Epstein files — have fueled the political right in recent years. “The Epstein case is very attractive to the right-wing movement because it taps directly into this narrative of these global corrupt elites, the idea the powerful are exploiting the powerless because the system is rigged,” said Cynthia Wang, who studies the issue as head of Kellogg’s Dispute Resolution and Research Center at Northwestern University, which focuses on conflict management. “In general, we are in a world of chaos right now, and when there’s a lot of uncertainty, it drives people to believe in these conspiracy theories.” Here’s what’s going on with the fight over these claims. The background Epstein was a wealthy socialite and child sex offender who died in jail in 2019 in what was ruled a suicide after he was charged with abusing dozens of teenage girls. Since then, unproven claims about whom he associated with and how he died have thrived. It’s an easy target, Wang says. His death left unanswered questions, and his story is sensational. “Epstein was connected to so many powerful people — Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, [President Donald] Trump, of course, and tech leaders,” she said. “There is a sense Epstein had so much influence over these elites.” Why Epstein is coming up now The Justice Department, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, a Trump loyalist, issued a memo this week saying that there was no secret list of wealthy people who used Epstein to abuse teenage girls, and that the FBI confirmed he died by suicide in jail. That directly contradicts what many commentators on the political right have spent years pushing — and that Bondi herself appeared to feed when she got into office. “It is sitting on my desk right now,” she said in February about of an alleged client list. But this week, the department she leads announced that there are no files and that it’s closing its investigation. A vocal subset of Trump loyalists who followed this closely are furious They believed the government was protecting the powerful elite by hiding alleged Epstein files and were counting on the Trump administration to share them. “Pam Bondi looked the American people in the eye and said she had Jeffrey Epstein’s list. Now she says there never was a list,” conservative radio host Erick Erickson said on X. “Pam Bondi should be fired for lying to the American public repeatedly.” “As someone who voted for the president, campaigned for the president a lot — I’m not attacking the president, but I think even people who are fully on board with the bulk of the MAGA agenda are like, ‘This is too much, actually,’” conservative pundit Tucker Carlson said. It’s not clear whether this will cause harm to Trump’s standing with his loyal base. As a senior White House official told The Washington Post’s Natalie Allison: “If people want to leave Donald Trump — he was the founder of the MAGA movement, he’s sacrificed more than any person who’s ever run for office in our nation’s history, he almost lost his life twice, gave up his successful business, fought off more than 130 indictments, was threatened with imprisonment to lead our country — over a conclusion provided by the Department of Justice over Jeffrey Epstein, that does not seem like a rational choice.” Trump administration officials helped fuel Epstein speculation There are three major unsubstantiated theories about Epstein, and Trump administration officials drove a lot of talk about them: How he died, whether he had a client list and whether Trump is on it. (The latter hasn’t animated the right nearly as much as the first two.) Here’s what we know. 1. How he died: Before they held powerful jobs in law enforcement, FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, repeatedly alleged that Epstein was killed to cover up for the powerful elite who would have been implicated in his case. Both FBI leaders have since said Epstein killed himself, which all the available evidence also suggests. 2. Whether he kept a client list: There isn’t evidence for this, despite Bondi strongly suggesting such a document was “on her desk.” The government (through multiple administrations) has had years to comb through Epstein’s files, and nothing has been made public or been leaked. “There is no client list,” journalist Tara Palmeri, who has covered the case for years, writes in her newsletter “The Red Letter.” “That fantasy has lived in the fever swamps of conspiracy X and been weaponized by powerful men who want to use Epstein’s crimes as political ammunition.” 3. If Trump is implicated: There is no evidence Trump is in criminal files related to Epstein. The two appeared to socialized together, and they were photographed together in the early 2000s. “He’s a lot of fun to be with,” Trump said in a 2002 interview with New York Magazine. “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.” Trump has since distanced himself from Epstein, saying he was “not a fan.” Elon Musk, as he was falling out with Trump last month, declared in a now-deleted post on X that Trump “is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.” But Musk, despite his money and power, has espoused enough misinformation or false information on social media that it casts doubt about his credibility as a source on this information. “Are people still talking about this guy? This creep?” Trump said when asked by a reporter about Epstein during a Cabinet meeting this week. Congressional Democrats aren’t convinced, for what it’s worth. They sent a letter this week to Bondi demanding release of all files related to Epstein in case they contain information about the president: “It is not a coincidence that President Trump installed his personal legal team to top positions at the [Justice Department],” they wrote. “ … By doing so, DOJ has all but turned into President Trump’s personal law firm, ensuring that damaging information about him would remain hidden from public view.” Why the right cares so much — and what this says about democracy Widely spread unproven claims are not just the domain of the political right, but in recent years they’ve been more animating for conservatives who tend to have more distrust of institutions, Wang says. Trump has embraced such claims and implicitly fed others. His first big step into politics was when he alleged that President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States. In Trump’s first term, he tacitly breathed life into QAnon, whose adherents composed a growing part of his base. Now, he has placed people who trafficked misinformation and unsubstantiated claims at the highest levels of government, which Wang says undermines public trust in fact-based information and, ultimately, a democratic society. “It’s almost like we’re talking two different languages,” she said. “It’s hard to have any type of dialogue if even the basic facts are being viewed very differently.” | 
