Epstein is MAGA’s Frankenstein monster. It’s turning on its creator
The “move along, nothing to see here” approach from the White House over the Epstein files was never going to pass muster.
The decision to suppress the Epstein files was like pouring avgas on conspiracy theories and reaching for a match. The “who’s who” in the files has formed a fully blown organic political scandal with a life of its own.
The MAGA base is in an uproar. It had been promised so much and handed so little.
A month ago Donald Trump tried to shut it down. “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years,” Trump said. “Are people still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable.”
Perhaps more telling is that Trump has moved from spreading salacious gossip to now labelling the Epstein scandal “a hoax”.
Epstein is MAGA’s Frankenstein monster, animated by bizarre conspiracy theories, lurching forward in the expectation of the disclosure of sex crimes among the political and industrial elites.
The base expected to see senior Democrats frogmarched off to face trial for supping on draughts of adrenochrome during infanticidal satanic rituals. Through it all, Trump shovelled out catnip to his base. The monster is now turning on its creator.
The Wall Street Journal revealed that Trump’s name appeared multiple times in the Epstein files and that he was made aware of this by his Attorney-General, Pam Bondi, in May. In February Bondi had the files, if not the Epstein client list, on her desk. Come July, the US Department of Justice and the FBI sent out a memo that reads in part, “it is the determination of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted”.
Talk about things that make you go hmmm.
In MAGA-land brows furrowed under red caps and a month later outrage has not diminished. On Tuesday in Washington, Democrat and Republican members of the house oversight committee voted to subpoena Bill and Hillary Clinton, former FBI director James Comey and a raft of former DOJ officials.
Committee chairman James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, also is seeking to compel testimony from former attorneys-general in the George W. Bush, Obama, Biden and Trump administrations. Deposition dates span across the next three months, with former attorney-general William Barr to be deposed on August 18 and Bill Clinton, the last, in October, keeping the scandal bubbling away. Clinton can give evidence voluntarily but as a former POTUS he cannot be compelled to give testimony before the committee.
There are other moves afoot in to lift the lid on the Epstein files. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, and California Democrat Ro Khanna have been working to force a vote on declassifying the Epstein files when the house returns in September. A petition circulating requires 218 signatures to bring a resolution to the floor of the house when representatives return. The Democrats hold 212 seats in the house.
In his first year in the White House Trump told the press: “What we’re saying is we want an investigation. I want a full investigation, and that’s what I absolutely am demanding. That’s what our attorney-general, our great attorney-general, is doing.” The attorney-general at the time was Barr.
In campaign mode in 2024, Fox News’ Rachel Campos-Duffy asked Trump, “Would you declassify the Epstein files?”
“Yeah, yeah. I would,” Trump replied. That grab went viral and was pumped out by Trump’s campaign operation, the Trump War Room, in a post to Elon Musk’s X platform: “President Trump says he will DECLASSIFY the 9/11 Files, JFK Files, and Epstein Files.” The edited clip received almost 250,000 views.
Trump’s complete answer to the question did not surface for weeks later.
“I don’t know about Epstein so much as I do the others,” Trump said. “Certainly about the way he died. It’d be interesting to find out what happened there, because that was a weird situation and the cameras didn’t happen to be working, etc, etc. But yeah, I’d go a long way toward that one.”
In August 2023 during an interview with Tucker Carlson, Trump replied to a question asking if it was possible that Epstein had been murdered in his cell at Metropolitan Correctional Centre in Lower Manhattan.
“Oh, sure, it’s possible. I mean, I don’t really believe – I think he probably committed suicide,” Trump said.
The Department of Justice has met with Ghislaine Maxwell but even if she did seek to clear Trump’s name in sworn testimony, many will ask if her remarks made under oath have been motivated by a desire to receive a pardon or commutation of her 20-year jail sentence.
I’ve listened to the compelling argument that Trump should not have much to worry about because had the Democrats found some dirt on Trump in the Epstein’s files they would have weaponised it against him.
The Democrats flick the switch to play dirty comfortably, but were they smart enough to pull off the stunt or are they playing a longer game?
In any event, the Epstein files were sealed until January 2024 and the Biden administration released numerous court documents that showed several celebrities and political figures were in Epstein’s company, including Bill Clinton and Trump, but there were no allegations made against anyone besides Epstein and Maxwell.
This entire unseemly scandal may be a lot of noise about nothing when it comes to Trump but that doesn’t matter either.
We have moved a long way from reality. Trump and his cronies have been peddling nonsense on Epstein for years.
If you live by the disinformation sword you can be cleaved in two by it, too.
The Epstein scandal has shifted from perception to reality and back to perception again.
What must be troubling the White House is that it now bears the hallmarks of all political scandals, where the cover-up becomes the real crime.
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