You may have once again noticed that a lot of people on TV, the internet, and in your real life are talking about files. The Epstein files. They want them released! They want Donald Trump in jail! They want to know what the hell is going on! Seriously, though, what the hell is going on?
As Defector’s chief file-explainer, I am here to once again tell you all you need to know about the latest files.
So what are the Epstein files?
That is a somewhat complicated question, but I would say that in the circles where the term has historically been used, it describes a cache of documents that would reveal the names of many powerful people who engaged in underage sex trafficking with Jeffrey Epstein. One of these files, Epstein’s “client list,” was recently brought to everyone’s attention by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. A few months ago, Bondi went on Fox News and said that a client list belonging to the infamous financier and child sex offender was “sitting on [her] desk right now to review,” implying that the list would eventually be made public. Last week, however, Bondi’s Justice Department and the FBI released a two-page memo stating that an “exhaustive review of investigative holdings relating to Jeffrey Epstein” had revealed that there is in fact no client list. From the memo:
This systematic review revealed no incriminating “client list.” There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.
Whoa, OK, that seems pretty scandalous!
Yes, devoid of certain context, there is a straightforward and explosive scandal here: The Attorney General of the United States told the world that she was in possession of Epstein’s client list, which people naturally assumed would implicate many powerful people in a child sex trafficking ring, given Epstein’s crimes and who he associated with, and then a few months later she essentially came out and said, Actually, never mind, there is no list. There is in fact nothing more to be learned about Epstein, his death, his associates, or his crimes, so let’s all move on.
Right. Big-time scandal! But what about the “context” you mentioned?
The context is that the Epstein files, as they are popularly understood, are an invention of the right-wing fever swamp. In the years between the two Trump administrations, MAGA influencers like Dan Bongino, Kash Patel, Benny Johnson, and Chaya Raichik turned the Epstein files into a kind of totem for the Trump base. Across dozens of podcasts and tweets and television appearances these people went on and on about how the Epstein files needed to be released, how the deep state was conspiring to keep them hidden, and how once Donald Trump was elected President, the sickos would finally be made to pay.
This was all, for lack of a better term, right-wing virtue signaling. Talking about this stuff, in this way, was just a method for demonstrating which in-group you belonged to, for the purpose of earning the trust and approval of a specific subset of Donald Trump fans whose mental health crises have left them particularly concerned with defeating the deep state and ridding the country of powerful pedophile networks. We’re talking about everyone who went to see Sound of Freedom in theaters more than once.
This is how you end up with JD Vance quote-tweeting Jack Posobiec in 2021 to say, “What possible interest would the US government have in keeping Epstein’s clients secret? Oh…” and then a few years later going on Theo Von’s podcast to say, “Seriously, we need to release the Epstein list, that is an important thing,” in a tone that can only be described as “trying and failing to riff with the boys.”
None of this meant anything. Everyone was just playing a game, having a laugh, and trying to demonstrate their based-ness in a way that is required for anyone who wants to gain a foothold in right-wing culture, which is now entirely defined by what happens online.
OK, but none of that changes the fact that the current Attorney General said she had the damn list and then very suspiciously changed her tune
It doesn’t, but it does change what kind of meaning you might take from that sequence of events. “Release the Epstein files!” eventually became something of a guidepost for the entire MAGA movement, and then made its way into the Republican platform by osmosis. But not just by osmosis. Kash Patel is the director of the FBI, and Dan Bongino is his deputy director. The freaks are inside the house, and whatever thin membrane might have existed between the Trump White House and the most feverish ranks of the MAGA movement during Trump’s first administration has entirely dissolved during the second.
This was never more clear than in February, when Bondi and Patel made a big show of releasing what they called “phase 1” of the Epstein files. More than a dozen right-wing influencers—Raichik, Posobiec, someone who calls himself “DC Draino,” freaks of that nature—were invited to the White House and given binders that were said to contain a portion of the Epstein files. There was nothing in these binders that wasn’t already in the public domain. Logs and passenger lists belonging to flights to and from Epstein’s private island, names that were in his little black book—these have all been out there for years. What was in the binders wasn’t the point of “phase 1,” though.
The point was to get all the assembled weirdos posed in front of the White House for a photo op. Everyone was still playing the game, having fun, throwing slop to the hogs.
Dammit, what are you trying to say? Are the Epstein files real or not?
What I’m saying is there is no satisfying answer to that question, because there is no satisfying way to square the fact that the same people who were clamoring for the release of the “Epstein files” a year ago are now the same people who are claiming those files don’t exist. If this were a more normal period of American history, one in which the people who occupy the offices of FBI Director and US Attorney General could be trusted to at least be semi-competent and qualified for their jobs, this would remain a legible scandal: The government saying it was going to release explosive and incriminating evidence relating to an infamous sex abuse case, and then saying that the evidence doesn’t actually exist, should ring alarm bells.
This is not a normal period of American history, though. This might in fact be the stupidest time in American history, as evidenced by the fact that the current administration is staffed by many of the dumbest motherfuckers to ever live. The Attorney General going on TV and saying that Epstein’s client list is sitting on her desk loses a great deal of meaning when you remember that the person saying that has had her brain fully cooked by the right-wing discourse machine from which she takes her cues. The rest of her quote from that TV interview is revealing: “… I’m reviewing that, I’m reviewing JFK files, MLK files. That’s all in the process of being reviewed because that was done at the directive of the President from all of these agencies.” That is a person who is just saying shit.
It is similarly hard to rate the conspiratorial might of the FBI when two of its top officials are a steroidal podcast host and a man who constantly looks like a baby recognizing colors for the first time. It doesn’t help that their only motivation for saying or doing anything is to curry favor with a President who, having realized that Bondi’s memo enraged a significant part of his base and buried him under fresh heaps of suspicion, is trying to navigate this crisis by releasing rambling statements that begin with sentences like, “What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?'”
Most scandals like this can be explained as the result of dishonesty or stupidity. The snag in this case is the fact that our cast of characters offers no barrier between “liar” and “stupid.” They are all lying and stupid, all the time, which leaves the rest of us with no way to discern their motivations. To even call this a conspiracy is like watching a dog chase its tail for an hour, and then calling for a full investigation into the dog’s motives.
OK, well, all that aside, this does seem like this has all become a problem for Trump. Is this finally the jam that Ol’ Donny will be unable to wriggle out of?
This is where the story gets even more annoying. Having seen the size of the rake that Trump and Bondi stepped on last week, a number of liberal commentators and politicians have taken up the “Release the Epstein files!” rallying cry for themselves. Gavin Newsom is now doing JD Vance-style tweets about the Epstein files, Ruben Gallego made a big show of calling for their release on the Senate floor, and Cory Booker is writing strongly worded letters to Emil Bove. They’re out there doing Drake memes, for God’s sake.
Why is this annoying?
It’s annoying because Democrats are now doing the same thing people like Bongino and Patel were doing in 2021. Back then, the “Epstein files” was deployed as an undefined term over and over again because it filled people’s heads with the image of a pristine and maximally destructive list of Epstein’s clients. “People Who Paid Me To Have Sex With Children” was scrawled across the top of it, and below that were names like Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Tom Hanks, Beyoncé, George Soros, Rosie O’Donnell, and anyone else despised enough by your average Trump voter. Now the same vague idea is being invoked for the sake of getting as many boomer liberals all riled up over the possibility that there is a single piece of evidence proving that Donald Trump had sex with children locked in Pam Bondi’s drawer, and that posting about it on Bluesky and Facebook all day will bring about that document’s release, leading to the long-awaited downfall of Donald Trump.
The only person who has actually come close to explaining what they mean when they say “Epstein files” is Senator Ron Wyden, whose staff has been digging into Epstein’s bank records for the last three years. Wyden is now going to The New York Times to demand that the Trump administration make these records public. Why Wyden is making this demand now, rather than at any point over the last three years, is left unsaid.
It is hard to believe that any of these people actually care about the truth, or justice. They’re just playing the same angle that so many Trump surrogates have before, but from the other direction. Whereas Trump’s people were leveraging a desperate need in their own supporters (the need to believe that Trump will personally punish all of their enemies), the Democrats are now just making use of an equally desperate desire in their own base (the need to believe that one day there actually will be a scandal big enough to bring Trump down).
OK, that may be annoying, but isn’t it good to have people yelling about this stuff? If Trump really did awful things with Epstein, doesn’t all this attention increase the likelihood that the scandal will stick to him and something meaningful will come of it?
Possibly. It’s certainly brought renewed attention to Trump and Epstein’s relationship. On Thursday night, the Wall Street Journal reported that in 2003 Trump sent Epstein a bawdy birthday card that accounts for the most bizarre instance of well-wishing in recorded human history. From the Journal:
The letter bearing Trump’s name, which was reviewed by the Journal, is bawdy—like others in the album. It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.
[…]
It isn’t clear how the letter with Trump’s signature was prepared. Inside the outline of the naked woman was a typewritten note styled as an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein, written in the third person.
“Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything,” the note began.
Donald: Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.
Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.
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?
Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.
Trump: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.
This frankly incredible document is in step with a whole host of information, that has long been publicly available, demonstrating that Trump and Epstein had a close relationship. There’s all the results that “donald trump jeffrey epstein” returns from the Getty Images archive, the infamous video where Epstein and Trump chum it up at a party in 1992, and the 2002 New York Magazine profile in which Trump describes Epstein as a longtime friend who “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” just to name a few.
Maybe the intensity of this particular moment will make Trump’s well-documented association with Epstein more consequential than it has been in the past, but nobody can predict the future.
Wait, so is this birthday card part of the Epstein files? This can’t possibly be all there is, right?
That’s a perfectly natural question to ask, and a good example of why reducing everything that remains unknown about Epstein into a fight over the “files”—what’s in them, who does and does not want them released, to what extent do they even exist, etc.—risks further abstracting this conversation from reality. The undefined parameters and silver-bullet promise of the “Epstein files” makes it so that any revelation which does not live up to that promise is likely to be metabolized and cast aside quickly, so that attention can be focused on attaining the more important files to come. This is what makes the specter of the files such a useful tool for politicians and influencers looking to whip up the base: the files, not the ones that have been steadily reported on and made public for the last decade-plus, but the real ones, the ones that will actually end up mattering, can always be moved just a little further out of reach. The biggest revelation is always just around the corner.
So are you saying we should all just stop caring about this stuff?
No, not at all. What I am saying is that the Epstein case, both the actual facts of it and what is merely suggested by the unknown, is almost impossible to sit with. That is because doing so requires one to simmer in the idea that pure evil is a key ingredient to success in this country. It requires you to remember that years worth of criminal investigations, court proceedings, lawsuits, and investigative journalism have revealed Epstein’s connections to some of the most powerful people in the world, and yet to this day nobody aside from Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein himself has suffered any real consequences as a result. It forces you to confront the most ostentatious manifestation of elite impunity, and come away from the encounter knowing that there is no stopping the worst people in the world from doing whatever they want, to whomever they want, and getting away with it. They can get away with it so clean that they can become President for a second time.
You can understand why so many liberals are now eagerly taking up the cause of the Epstein files, because believing that there remains some fatally incriminating document that can still be attained is more comforting than sitting with what is already known: That Donald Trump was a really close pal of Jeffrey Epstein’s and still won two elections.
Because ultimately there’s nowhere constructive to put the feelings that come from that knowledge, which is why in the years since Epstein’s arrest and death the conversation about his case has been deep-fried and abstracted at every opportunity. Senate Democrats picking up where Dan Bongino left off is just the extension of an alienating process that started with “Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself” novelty T-shirts going on sale. All of this is, ultimately, a quest for comfort. To make Epstein a meme, or to invest belief in the “Epstein files,” is to have somewhere to put all those sickly feelings. The terror and dread that permeates like dust in the air is conveniently whisked away and consolidated somewhere else—in a joke, or a most meaningful cache of files that is, most importantly, always just out of reach.
OK, so, what happens next?
Well, Trump is so pissed off about that Wall Street Journal story that he is now claiming that he has instructed Bondi to “produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval” so as to finally put an end to the “SCAM” that is being “perpetuated by Democrats.”
Oh shit, so the Epstein files are about to drop???
Almost certainly!