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Jack the Insider

Jeffrey Epstein conspiracies find new life among Trump’s MAGA fanbase

Jack the Insider
Donald Trump and his then girlfriend Melania, Jeffrey Epstein and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell. Picture: Getty Images
Donald Trump and his then girlfriend Melania, Jeffrey Epstein and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell. Picture: Getty Images

We were told convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein made a list, checked it twice but now we don’t know who’s been naughty or nice.

The Epstein case files have been slammed shut and the mysterious client list that was set to “rock the world”, according to then humble podcaster, now Deputy Director of the FBI, Dan Bongino has no physical form. It does not exist.

In a memo released on Tuesday, the US Justice Department determined “ … that no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted” on the Epstein case files.

Conspiracy theorists and the MAGA base are in uproar. Epstein’s client list, sold to the gullible as a document that would reveal the good and the great were sex traffickers and pedophiles, have now been told to move along, nothing to see here.

Expectations of a round of public exposures were heightened five months ago. During an interview with Fox News in February, the US Attorney-General Pam Bondi was asked, “The DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients, will that really happen?”

She responded, “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review.”

It was an ambiguous reply and this week, Bondi clarified, denying that she had been talking about a “client list”. Instead, the “list” she was referring to was the Epstein case file. “That’s what I meant by that,” she said.

In that same February interview on Fox, Bondi also said, “(FBI) Director (Kash) Patel is going to get us a detailed report as to why the FBI withheld all of those documents,” adding that a “truckload of evidence was arriving” at the DOJ after she requested the documents from New York.

The truckload appears to have lost its way somewhere along the New Jersey Turnpike.

Earlier that month, political commentators and assorted conspiracists were given documents in lovely white folders with “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” emblazoned on the cover. The documents contained nothing especially revelatory. Indeed most of the material had been released during the Biden administration in January 2024. Some of the previously published material now appeared redacted for reasons that were not adequately explained.

In September last year, Dan Bongino told his podcast listeners “Folks, the Epstein client list is a huge deal. The reason the Epstein client list being revealed is so important is because I want you to understand that there is a class of benighted folks … who are not subjected to the same rules you are.”

“Folks, you’re going to see a lot of names on that,” Bongino warned. “It’s going to rock the political world. There’s a reason they’re hiding it.”

CCTV footage of the correctional facility at which Epstein committed suicide. Picture: Supplied
CCTV footage of the correctional facility at which Epstein committed suicide. Picture: Supplied

And now … nix, nada, nought, nil, zero, zilch.

FBI Director Patel has had a major change of heart, too. In something of a visual open letter, Patel addressed the then-leaders of the FBI on a YouTube vodcast in 2023, “Put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are.”

“As someone who has worked as a public defender, as a prosecutor who’s been in that prison system, who’s been in the Metropolitan Detention Center, who’s been in segregated housing, you know a suicide when you see one and that’s what that was.”

That was then. This is now. Patel and Bongino have both declared that, unlike the White House Christmas decorations, Jeffrey Epstein did hang himself in August 2019.

Other conspiracists were left aghast.

Trump ally, Laura Loomer, wrote on X: “Pam Blondi [sic] is covering up child sex crimes that took place under HER WATCH when she was Attorney-General of Florida,” adding that Bondi “needs to be fired”.

US Attorney-General Pam Bondi. Picture: AP
US Attorney-General Pam Bondi. Picture: AP
Deputy Director of the FBI Dan Bongino. Picture: AFP
Deputy Director of the FBI Dan Bongino. Picture: AFP

Infowars’ Alex Jones was in tears when the news broke. Clearly emotional, the large Texan had other, stranger physical reactions. “My mouth is watering right now because I have integrity. This tears my guts out,” he said. Pavlov’s dog disembowelled.

Jones went on to blame Mossad and the CIA for the cover up e.g. the Deep State. If I understand his convoluted take, the Deep State was going to kill Trump and that’s why his beloved POTUS had to do a deal. Jones offered this without evidence but when has Jones ever relied on even a scintilla of fact to make his claims?

Podcaster Joe Rogan has been struck dumb in disbelief. Elon Musk who had used his own platform to claim that President Trump appears in the Epstein files (he deleted the post days afterwards) when he first fell out with the White House in early June, has been posting madly implying cover-ups at the highest level all week.

“How can people be expected to have faith in Trump if he won’t release the Epstein files?” Musk posted on Tuesday.

Others have pondered why Epstein’s partner in crime, Ghislaine Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence in a federal prison.

She was convicted on five sex trafficking counts, two of sex trafficking a minor and three counts of conspiracy. She went to jail for procuring teenage girls to engage in sexual activities with her then lover, Epstein. This is not difficult to understand.

A bit of Occam’s razor should be applied. It is entirely likely that the MAGA mouthpieces like Patel and Bongino who chose to weaponise conspiracy theories for political gain now find that the mud in the Epstein Files can be flung across both sides of the political divide. But while fumbling their answers in a desperate attempt to urge the throng to move along, a new wave of conspiracies have been unleashed to replace the old.

The Left in the US has taken to its own perverse plots with Trump portrayed as an Epstein bestie. It doesn’t stand any scrutiny besides a few grainy images taken before the two men fell out over a property deal more than 20 years ago. The rest is AI generated imagery that fools only those who wish to be duped.

The truth is the long term victim. It really never stood a chance, kicked to death at the starting line by disinformation peddlers who breathed life into wild conspiracies. Now they find the conspiracies surrounding Epstein’s scandalous behaviour have a new life, spinning out of control, right back at them.

Jack the Insider

Peter Hoysted is Jack the Insider: a highly placed, dedicated servant of the nation with close ties to leading figures in politics, business and the union movement.

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/jeffrey-epstein-conspiracies-find-new-life-among-trumps-maga-fanbase/news-story/891e9545a7101efcad6da04773098165