Jeffrey Epstein

Donald Trump has thrived on conspiracy theories – “birtherist” lies that Barack Obama was born outside the US; the lunacies of the Q-Anon movement; false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. All centred on the idea that the “deep state” was lying to, and thus cheating, ordinary people. Mr Trump was their tribune.It’s hard not to feel schadenfreude now that he’s at the sharp end of a theory that he at times encouraged and allies eagerly pushed: claims that the prison death of the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein might not be suicide after all, and that wealthy and well-connected associates were trying to hush up connections to the financier. Mr Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, promised that “truckloads” of documents would help reveal the truth and claimed that a client list was “sitting on my desk right now”.Then, abruptly, the department of justice said that the financier’s death was not murder, that no more files on the investigation against him would be released, and that there was no list of “clients”. The administration says that Ms Bondi was referring to general files on the case. In short: many of those who promoted the idea that vast, vile secrets were being concealed now claim that there are no secrets at all – with no clear explanation for their volte-face.The result has been uproar in the Maga movement, with far-right politicians and media figures including Marjorie Taylor Greene, Laura Loomer and Alex Jones among the unsatisfied. Mike Johnson, speaker of the House and a key ally, said that the justice department should “put it out there”.Mr Trump attempted to dismiss the story as “boring”, before attacking his own supporters as “weaklings” for “[buying] into this ‘bullshit’”. Then, hours after a Wall Street Journal report that he sent a “bawdy” letter to Epstein – which he denies – he told Ms Bondi to seek the release of grand jury testimony on the sex-trafficking case.Epstein’s crimes are fact, not a “hoax”, and it’s also fact that he had repeated contact with high-profile figures, including Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and Mr Trump himself – who once remarked of the financier: “Terrific guy … It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” The files need not suggest, let alone confirm, any wrongdoing to embarrass anyone mentioned in them: highlighting the association is enough.At the heart of all Maga conspiracies lies another kernel of truth: that the rich and powerful often get away with exploiting vulnerable people through connections to the state. Yet Trump voters fail to see how that relates to the administration’s broader actions.They are unmoved by his reverse Robin Hood budget legislation, which snatches from the poor to give to billionaires – like those in his cabinet. It’s less visceral than Epstein’s crimes, and its brazenness may, counterintuitively, make it less viral. Many on the right blame imaginary weather modification, rather than the global heating caused by fossil fuel dependence, for Texas’s deadly floods. Conspiracy theories give those who feel powerless a sense of power; of knowing something that others can’t see. Even so, the truth revealed by the Epstein scandal – that ordinary Americans are deeply angry at the unfairness and abuses created by elites – is worth heeding, and demands a better political and economic response.

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Donald Trump’s followers, and the conspiracist influencers turned government officials through whom he persuades them, have turned on the president and US attorney general after they declared an end to federal inquiries into Jeffrey Epstein’s death. But it would be a mistake to think that the investigation scandal is sui generis. It’s more like the culmination of a long-running trend, one in which Trump’s exploitation of the conspiracist fictions, distrust of institutions, and prurient fascinations of his base have finally come back to bite him.A pedophile ring at the center of power is a recurring theme in rightwing conspiracy theories of the Trump era. During the 2016 presidential election, supporters of Trump, then an outsider challenger for the Republican nomination, began to spread dark claims about his rival for the presidency, Hillary Clinton. Online, far-right trolls and members of the population now called “low trust voters”– people who believe that something nefarious and conspiratorial is going on in the halls of American power, even if they don’t know exactly what – speculated that Clinton was at the head of a huge human trafficking and pedophilic abuse ring based inside Comet Ping Pong, a pizza restaurant in Washington DC. There was no secret ring. But that didn’t stop a disturbed man from showing up with a gun.Pizzagate, as it was called, gave way to QAnon, the elaborate mass delirium in which Trump supporters believed that they were receiving secret messages from Q, a fictitious but supposedly highly placed security official. QAnon, too, centered around the notion that powerful people – Democrats, mostly, but also some Hollywood celebrities – were secretly running a vast pedophile network. In his dispatches, Q detailed Trump’s efforts to dismantle a deep state ring of child sex trafficking. None of that was true, either, but that didn’t stop thousands from believing in it.Trump exploited these fictions, nodding to them deliberately with varying degrees of enthusiasm and plausible deniability. They were useful to him, stories in which he was a hero, and his political opponents were maximally morally repulsive. The conspiracies helped paper over the gap between the near-messianic esteem in which Trump’s followers hold him, and the shambolic, incompetent and often cruelly sadistic character of his actual administration. And the content of the stories – dealing as they did in secrecy, power, helpless innocents and forbidden sex – made them potent tools, igniting the fiercest passions and darkest imaginations of his fans.To a man with a bottomless appetite for self-aggrandizement and no principles, the conspiracy theories’ emergence must have seemed like a great stroke of luck. Trump lies like he breathes, and the national media, his fellow politicians, and all manner of experts have lost both the ability and the will to correct the record. Over the past 10 years, through the force of his personality and with mounting attacks on universities, journalists and other outlets for knowledge building, fact-finding, and expertise, he has helped to accelerate a total epistemic collapse in national politics. Policy and public opinion alike are now unmoored from factual reality. What is true is no longer what matters.The story of Epstein, the dead financier and prolific sexual abuser of young women and girls who killed himself in a jail cell in 2019, was in retrospect always bound to become a central character in these vast fantasies. Part of the reason is because of the true horror of Epstein’s crimes, and the uncanny ways some of the facts of his story – as demonstrated in court transcripts, unredacted documents, testimony from his victims, and the dogged, years-long investigations of the Miami Herald’s Julie K Brown – mirror some of the darkest details of QAnon’s fever dreams. A billionaire investor with ties to a shocking number of prominent people across the political spectrum – prominently including Trump himself – Epstein carried out his abuse of dozens of teenage girls over the course of years, allegedly trafficking them for abuse on his private island and aboard his private plane, and, according to some of the girls, now women, who have testified about their experiences with him, pawning them off for abuse by his rich friends. He was a man who lived in tremendous luxury, who mingled with the rich and famous, and who treated human beings – girls – as objects to be consumed, with a kind of casual indifference to their will or wellbeing. He was evil – and, to those on the right who seem to understand both conspicuous consumption and the sexual abuse of women as markers of status, he was also darkly aspirational. In some of the breathless coverage of Epstein, particularly as it emerged on the podcasts and web forums of the conspiracist right, you could detect in the fascination with Epstein not only moral revulsion but an acute envy.It’s unclear why Trump is now trying to wrap up a conspiracy theory that has paid such dividends. Perhaps, as some are suggesting, Trump worries that sustained attention on Epstein’s case will draw more attention to his own abuse of women, though such revelations about Trump have been many, and have not hurt him before. Perhaps he just thinks that he cannot deliver, from his perch atop the federal bureaucracy that is so implicated in crimes and cover-ups in the imaginations of his supporters, the kind of earth-shattering revelations that the conspiracy theory’s narrative structures demand. Either way, Trump has turned abruptly and dramatically against the Epstein theory. He’s trying to reassert control over reality, trying to dictate which fantasies his movement adopts, and which they leave behind. It’s not working. The post-truth conspiracist world he helped to usher in is too unwieldy to be redirected at will.There’s a grim irony in the fact that it is a case of sexual violence that has underscored the dangers of epistemic collapse for Trump himself, because sexual violence represents an arena where a post-truth reality long predates him. No one knows better than sexual violence victims, who are routinely disbelieved, dismissed, or punished for telling the truth, what it means for the facts of your own life not to matter as much as the passions and prior commitments of your audience.What people tend to forget about Epstein’s life – clouded as it has been by all the speculation about his death – is that much of what he was doing to those women and girls was out in the open. Epstein had already been convicted and served prison time on charges pertaining to his sexual abuse; when he’d gotten out, he’d resumed his place among the rich and famous: his status was undiminished by the revelation of his violence. Maybe this is the real delusion at the heart of the conspiracy theories about Epstein and the other pedophile rings that populate the rightwing imagination: not that widespread sexual abuse happens, but that it is concealed, hidden, waiting to be unveiled by the righteous. For sexual abuse, at least, the real horror has always been this: that no one cares enough about the victims for the abusers to have to hide.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

It was a friendship that spanned three different decades. To Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein was a “terrific guy”. Epstein believed himself to be Trump’s “closest friend”, and praised the future president as “charming”.The relationship would eventually break down, the men falling out over a bidding war on a property in Florida. And after Epstein was convicted of child sex offences in 2008, Trump distanced himself from the financier, claiming he was “not a fan” and wondering, in recent days, why his supporters would “waste time and energy” on demanding that FBI and Department of Justice files on Epstein be released.But photos, videos and anecdotes paint a picture of a close friendship, of two middle-aged men who repeatedly partied together both alone and with their partners, including with Melania Knauss, who would go on to become Trump’s third wife.“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”Trump’s insight into Epstein’s predilections would be proved true in macabre fashion, when Epstein was found guilty in 2008 of sexually abusing girls aged between 14 and 17 years old. When Epstein was charged with sex trafficking of minors, in 2019, Trump attempted to play down their relationship, insisting: “I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him.” Trump said the pair had fallen out years earlier, and claimed: “I was not a fan of his.”But during the 15 years that the men were friends, there were plenty of incidents that displayed Trump and Epstein’s closeness.The New York Times reported that in 1992, George Houraney, a Florida-based businessman, had organized a “calendar girl” competition at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private members’ club where he would later live full-time.Houraney flew more than two dozen women to Mar-a-Lago, but he had a surprise when they arrived.“I arranged to have some contestants fly in,” Houraney told the Times. “At the very first party, I said, ‘Who’s coming tonight? I have 28 girls coming.’ It was him and Epstein.”Houraney said he was surprised. “I said: ‘Donald, this is supposed to be a party with VIPs. You’re telling me it’s you and Epstein?’”It ended up being just Trump and Epstein.Back then, Trump made no secret of the friendship. He was pictured with Epstein at events and parties from New York to Florida.Video from a party at Mar-a-Lago in 1992 shows the pair in conversation as a dance track booms through the speakers. Trump whispers something into Epstein’s ear, prompting Epstein to bend over laughing. The tape was aired by NBC News during Trump’s first term as president, and the news channel reported that it showed both Trump and Epstein pointing out women, while at one point Trump gestures to a woman and says: “Look at her, back there … she’s hot.”In 1993 Stacey Williams, then a professional model, visited Trump at Trump Tower with Epstein. On arrival, she would later tell the Guardian, Trump put his hands “all over my breasts”, waist and buttocks while Trump and Epstein smiled at each other, in what she believed was a “twisted game” between the two men.“It became very clear then that he and Donald were really, really good friends and spent a lot of time together,” Williams said in 2024. Karoline Leavitt, then a spokesperson for Trump’s election campaign, described Williams’s accusations as “unequivocally false. It’s obvious this fake story was contrived by the Harris campaign.”What is undeniable is that the men maintained their relationship through the 1990s. They were photographed at Mar-a-Lago, and the same year were pictured together at a Victoria’s Secret Angels event in New York. The relationship endured. Photos show Trump and Epstein with Melania Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell at an event in 2000. Maxwell would be sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022 for procuring teen girls for Jeffrey Epstein for him to abuse – when she was charged with the crimes Trump responded: “I just wish her well, frankly.”The Wall Street Journal also reported on Thursday that Trump allegedly wrote Epstein a birthday card as part of a 50th birthday album organized by Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003. The letter was fashioned in the shape of a woman’s body, and consisted of an imaginary dialogue between the two, the Journal said.“Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it.Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?” it read, with Trump’s signature squiggled as it were pubic hair on the outline of the body.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump once believed Epstein to be a terrific guy, but he wasn’t the only one who talked up the friendship. Years later Epstein would tell the journalist Michael Wolff that he had been Trump’s “closest friend for 10 years”, in audio tapes published on Wolff’s Fire and Fury podcast last year. Epstein also told Wolff that Trump liked to “fuck the wives of his best friends”, and said the first time he slept with Melania Trump was on Epstein’s plane. Trump’s camp claimed that Wolff was engaging in “false smears” and “election interference”.The close friendship wouldn’t last. The relationship soured in 2004, according to reports, after the pair became embroiled in a bidding war over a property in Palm Beach. In 2019, after Epstein was arrested, he said he had not spoken to Trump for 15 years. And despite his own close relationship with Epstein, Trump would go on to criticize others for the same thing, with Bill Clinton a particular source of deflection. Trump even shared a conspiracy theory that the former president was involved in Epstein’s death – ironically sparking more intrigue in the case. Trump told reporters days after Epstein died:“The question you have to ask is, did Bill Clinton go to the island? Because Epstein had an island. That was not a good place, as I understand it, and I was never there.” Trump adds: “So you have to ask, did Bill Clinton go to the island? That’s the question. If you find that out, you’re going to know a lot.”Clinton has denied going to Little St James island, which Epstein owned and later became synonymous with his crimes.Trump now finds himself in a mess that is partly of his own making. The “Epstein didn’t commit suicide” conspiracy theory in which he dabbled quickly spread among rightwing commentators and media figures – many of whom demanded that documents related to Epstein’s associates be released. When the Department of Justice failed to do so last week, it caused a rarely seen rift between Trump and his supporters, with Trump trying to brush off the saga, and his supporters angry at a perceived lack of transparency.When Trump was elected in 2024, his supporters believed they were getting an administration that was anti-swamp and pro-open government, the kind of government that holds back no secrets. But looking back at Trump’s statements on the Epstein files during the campaign, the president appeared to be leaving himself wriggle room.Asked in an interview in September if he would declassify “the 9/11 files” and “the JFK files”, Trump said yes. He is then asked if he would declassify “the Epstein files”, and initially said yes, but added:“I think that [declassifying the Epstein files], less so, because you don’t know – you don’t want to affect people’s lives if there’s phoney stuff in there, because there’s a lot of phoney stuff with that whole world.”That wavering hasn’t helped Trump, however, as he has attempted to quash his supporters’ rebellion. In a cabinet meeting last week the president expressed surprise that people were “still talking” about Epstein, later pleading with his base to “not waste time and energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about”.How wrong he was. It turns out loads of people care about Jeffrey Epstein – particularly the people who support Trump. It was something Trump addressed on Wednesday, when he explicitly attacked his supporters in a post on Truth Social. “​​My PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker,” Trump wrote.He added: “I have had more success in 6 months than perhaps any president in our country’s history, and all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the fake news and the success starved Dems, is the Jeffrey Epstein hoax. Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore!”Trump revels in his relationship with rank-and-file rightwing Americans, a relationship that has benefited him to the tune of two presidential terms and hundreds of millions of dollars. For the past decade it has seemed as if that relationship could endure any scandal, any broken promise.But now, for the first time, Trump is finding cracks in his support. That past friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, the “terrific guy” turned “creep”, could prove to be the president’s undoing. More