| | | | BY PHILIP ELLIOTT
Senior Correspondent, TIME | Here's the thing about conspiracy theories: once they take hold, there's no turning back. And when you layer over them a political ideology and make Donald Trump the lead pitchman, they metastasize at a pace beyond control. | Trump has openly flirted with nearly every major conspiracy theory of the last half century, and championed one of the most reckless through his insistence without evidence that the 2020 election was stolen. Add to those doozies this latest from the Trumpist legions: that the MAGAverse is being denied the truth about how registered sex-offender billionaire Jeffrey Epstein lived and died after years of a promised epiphany if only Trump were given back control of state secrets. | Like so much else that grew into a headache for Trump, this started with his chase of a quick headline without thinking through how it might end. The Epstein saga has become a snowball racing down Mount MAGA that the President has lost the capacity to stop. In the snowball's immediate path? Some of the highest profile members of his administration, all of whom have gone quiet on what they had previously characterized as a dangerous conspiracy that needed to be brought to light. | But there are signs that this MAGA kerfuffle may be different from the ones before it. The cleft in the MAGA Movement is pronounced. Trump's base may not so easily move on to the next culture war battle or shiny conspiracy theory. This could reverberate into next year's midterm election and beyond, potentially shaping the second half of Trump's term. | Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon is warning that as many as 10% of Trump supporters may defect over feeling short-changed, perhaps costing House Republicans a dozen seats next November. | House Speaker Mike Johnson, typically deferential to Trump's whims but mindful his majority is razor thin and in danger, told right-wing podcast Benny Johnson in an interview released Tuesday that he favors transparency—and to move on from this intra-party fight. "It's a very delicate subject but we should put everything out there and let the people decide it," he said. | | In a sign that this is eclipsing almost everything else, even those eyeing a 2028 campaign are taking the bait and weighing in. "Release the Epstein files and let the chips fall where they may. This is why people don't trust government," former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley posted on X. "You can never go wrong with being transparent. Redact victims' names but release the rest." And Charlie Kirk, who leads the populist Turning Point USA powerhouse with younger MAGA activists and has churned plenty of content out of the Epstein saga, has abruptly adopted a nothing-to-see-here approach and said he was done talking about it. | Let's rewind the tape. Epstein was at the center of a network of super-rich and privileged people rumored to exploit young women and girls as part of a sex-trafficking scheme that was said to include a whole host of bold-faced names. Trump, who counted Epstein as a friend for over a decade, fed suspicion about the former Mar-a-Lago regular at campaign rallies and in online posts. | In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida on two state felony charges, paid restitution to three dozen victims, and registered as a sex offender. A decade later, Epstein pleaded not guilty in New York to multiple charges, including sex trafficking. | Epstein died in 2019 in a Manhattan jail cell; officials ruled it a suicide, yet many Trump fans were convinced he was murdered to protect the hyper-connected insiders who might have been implicated should Epstein turn on his former pals. After all, there is a missing minute of video on the footage of his door the night he is said to have killed himself. | (Epstein's former girlfriend and associate Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted in 2021 on federal charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy. She was accused of helping Epstein recruit and abuse minors. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison.) | For years, Trump hinted there was an Epstein client list. Weeks into Trump's second term, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced it was on her desk, and MAGA influencers were handed binders of documents that they waved for cameras. (Those binders carried no real bombshells, just documents that were already mostly out there.) But last week, Bondi and her fellow Trumpers Kash Patel and Dan Bongino—the director and deputy director at the FBI—released a statement saying no further disclosures about Epstein was in the offing: "It is the determination of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted," the organizations said in a joint statement. | | The memo went off like a bomb within the President's political base. Trump's biggest boosters were unswayed by his contention that the findings were penned by former President Barack Obama, who left office in early 2017, and "Crooked Hillary" Clinton, who has held no government job since 2013. Trump bristled during a Cabinet meeting last week when Bondi was asked about the so-called Epstein files, saying no one was really interested in that old chestnut. He then unfurled an unhinged social media rant, essentially telling his supporters to back the heck off. | Trump understands the power of the rumble—and the unpredictable nature of sparked kindling. Over a decade ago, he fed the wrong and racist trope that Obama was not born in the United States and thus an illegitimate President. He promised to release the files linked to John F. Kennedy's assassination, along with those of his brother Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. He promised to release the files on 9/11, which he famously claimed without factual basis included Muslims dancing in the streets and on roofs in metro New York that day. He similarly suggested someone needs to audit Fort Knox for missing gold. | Trump now faces this ugly reality: he promised the goods, and either the goods don't exist or they are potentially embarrassing to him or his buddies. Either way, it has triggered his conspiracy-addled allies in a way we did not see in his first term. | Fellow agitator Laura Loomer—a conspiracy theorist who accompanied Trump to Ground Zero on the 9/11 anniversary last year—has been calling for Bondi to get the boot if she can't pony-up proof of l'affair Epstein. In the interim, Loomer proposed taking it off her desk and passing it to a special counsel. Benny Johnson, the influencer who published his interview with Speaker Johnson on Tuesday, suggested that Trump's law-and-order team haul former President Bill Clinton in for questioning. And Bongino, who spent years peddling Epstein innuendo and out-nuendo alike, was so palpably angry that he and Bondi clashed in the West Wing and he skipped work on Friday while contemplating leaving a job he has openly hated. | For their part, Democrats are cautiously capitalizing on the opposition party's disarray. On Monday night, they forced a vote on the House Rules Committee on requiring the release of the Epstein files, leading the Committee's Republicans to be the ones to block it to avoid overriding Trump. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters on Monday he may get behind efforts to force the White House or Justice Department to provide a fuller accounting of what it knows about Epstein, saying either they lied about having the goods before or are lying about it now. For now, Democrats seem happy to help this snowball of a crisis keep rolling and allow it to distract Trump from a moment when he should be taking a victory lap on major domestic legislation. | READ THE STORY » | | | | | | | |
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