What happens when irresponsible media personalities hype a conspiracy theory, only to see it unravel before their eyes?
We’re finding out right now.
Myriad right-wing media figures have, for years, suggested that the government is hiding secrets relating to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted pedophile who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.
Many versions of the conspiracy theory have asserted that the government is covering up a list of powerful men who also committed heinous crimes.
This theory has often been shorthanded as an Epstein “client list,” even though the best-sourced reporter on this beat, Julie K. Brown of the Miami Herald, said “those who have worked with the FBI on the case for decades say there is no evidence Epstein kept a ledger or a list of clients who were involved with his sex trafficking operation.”
Nevertheless, President Trump – who was friends with Epstein decades ago – talked during the 2024 presidential campaign about potentially releasing more governmental files about the disgraced financier.
While Trump wasn’t fully committal – “you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there,” he said on Fox last year – he signaled his administration would probably open up the records.
And that’s what attorney general Pam Bondi sought to do earlier this month, saying Trump directed her to review government files about Epstein and provide transparency to the public.
As The New York Times observed, “it was a moment that said much about the Trump administration:” Bondi and FBI director Kash Patel “chose to prioritize a long-concluded case to assuage conservative media and the obsessive core of Trump supporters who see the case as nefarious unfinished business.”
Bondi evidently decided to give a “scoop” to a group of fifteen pro-Trump social media personalities who were at the White House for briefings on Thursday.
The influencers (many of whom have hyped other conspiracy theories for years, and thus have big fan bases on the right) walked out of the White House with white binders labeled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1.”
Some of the attendees looked triumphant, as if they’d finally figured out what the government had been hiding.
“But they quickly soured after opening the binders,” Julie K. Brown wrote, “realizing that they contained pages of redacted material and flight logs that were already made public in 2021.”
Indeed, many volumes of evidence relating to Epstein’s crimes has been in the public domain for years, but pro-Trump media stars have insisted that there must be more, and that it was being concealed for political reasons.
The lack of new revelations on Thursday led to angry posts on X and other right-wing media social media sites.
Some conservative media voices, like National Review senior writer Noah Rothman, lambasted the conspiracy theorists, writing, “they’re telling you that you’re the dupes” by “handing you fake folders of stuff that has been public knowledge for nearly a decade and putting fake declassification markers on it for photo ops. They’re making you out to be fools.”
But many MAGA media heavyweights couldn’t or wouldn’t come to that conclusion. Radio host Glenn Beck asked instead: “Who is subverting POTUS?” He imagined a new plot.
That’s often how conspiracy-thinking works: The goalposts have to shift. A new theory has to take shape. A new villain has to be blamed.
Right on cue, Bondi wrote a letter to Patel claiming that thousands of Epstein-related documents were being withheld by the FBI’s New York field office. She demanded the documents and asked Patel to investigate why they were withheld. She proposed a Friday morning deadline.
This enabled conservative TV hosts like Laura Ingraham to excitedly tease the release of the “Epstein files” on Thursday night while cautioning, as correspondent Kevin Corke did, “we’ll probably learn a lot more tomorrow morning.”
Or not. After all, the most effective conspiracy theories are the ones that are never fully resolved.
For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
