United States President Donald Trump is facing growing frustration from some of his supporters after appearing to back away from earlier suggestions that he would release documents linked to disgraced financier and child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
During the 2024 election campaign, President Trump had hinted at making public a so-called 'client list' and other files related to Epstein, who prior to his 2019 death moved among the most wealthy and well-connected social circles in the US and beyond.
That possibility was met with enthusiasm from Trump’s support base, who perceive there has been a lack of transparency from government agencies who investigated Epstein’s life and crimes.
They believe an unwillingness to release ‘The Epstein Files’ is part of an on-going cover up, and that elite members of society named within the files are being protected by the so-called ‘deep state.’
They hoped Donald Trump was going to dismantle that perceived cover-up once in office.
Yet in a post on his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday, he dismissed much of discussion about the Epstein files as a "hoax," a move that has sparked backlash from parts of his Make America Great Again (MAGA) supporters.
The shift has reopened questions about what President Trump actually promised, and why the Epstein conspiracy theory continues to have such a grip on American political culture.
The Epstein case has long fueled speculation. Epstein had links to numerous public figures, royals and celebrities, including President Trump.
He died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges involving underage girls. He allegedly groomed young and underage women for sexual abuse by the rich and powerful. Epstein's cause of death was later confirmed by an autopsy, but conspiracies abound online and among Trump’s supporters that he was murdered to protect others who could become associated with his crimes.
His longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, was later convicted on federal charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy for recruiting and grooming underage girls.
During the 2024 election campaign, President Trump suggested he might release sealed files related to Epstein’s so-called client list and circumstances of death.
But that position shifted on Wednesday.
"My PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker," he wrote. "Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats’ work. I don’t want their support anymore," the president wrote.
It was a remarkable turnaround, and an attack on his own supporters.
It was also factually incorrect to say Democrats have driven a focus on the Epstein case – a focus on Epstein has been driven for years by individuals now within the Trump Administration on conservative radio and podcasts.
These include the two leading figures in the FBI under Trump, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, who long promoted Trump as the man who would tear down the curtain and reveal the truth of the Epstein case once he re-entered the White House.
Base shift
Why has the shift provoked such a strong reaction from his base?
President Trump himself fed that narrative. In June 2024, during the US election campaign, Mr Trump, then a presidential candidate, was interviewed by Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy.
She asked if he would declassify the 9/11 and JFK files if re-elected, Mr Trump said he would.
"Would you declassify the Epstein files?" she followed up. "Yes, yeah I would," he replied in the version that aired on TV.
In the full unedited clip, however, he added a qualifier: "I think that less so, because you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because there’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world."
Ms Campos-Duffy then asked whether releasing the Epstein files would "help restore trust?"
Mr Trump answered, "Yeah. I don’t know about Epstein so much as I do the others. 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."
On 3 September 2024, President Trump echoed similar sentiments in a podcast with Lex Fridman, saying he’d "take a look."
"Yeah, I’d be inclined to the do the Epstein, I’d have no problem with it," he said.
Many others within his administration have made similar statements.
Speaking to podcaster Theo Von in October 2024, then Senator and now Vice President JD Vance said: "Seriously, we need to release the Epstein list. That is an important thing."
After taking office in January 2025, President Trump appointed several figures to senior roles who had previously called for the release of the so-called Epstein client list. Among them was US Attorney General Pam Bondi, who had said in 2024: "It should have come out a long time ago."
In February, when asked if the Department of Justice (DOJ) would release the list, Ms Bondi told reporters: "It is sitting on my desk right now, to review." Days later, she confirmed to Fox News that she had the list.
On 28 February, Elon Musk, then a key figure in the administration, told the Joe Rogan Experience podcast: "Well, it better come out, hopefully tomorrow… I think the public will be rightly frustrated if no one is prosecuted for the Epstein client list, no one at all."
In early March, Ms Bondi continued to suggest that disclosure was imminent. When asked on Fox News whether the public would see the names of "perpetrators," she replied, "Well, certainly, nothing can be withheld on that."
Days later, she claimed the FBI was in possession of a "truckload of evidence."
However, last week, the DOJ and the FBI released a joint memo stating that there was no incriminating "client list" tied to Epstein.
In the memo, the two agencies said they had conducted an "exhaustive review of investigative holdings relating to Jeffrey Epstein," including more than 300GB of data and physical evidence.
The memo also stated there was no credible evidence that Epstein had blackmailed prominent individuals. It added that investigators found nothing to support charges against any unindicted third parties.
This prompted a backlash and mounted pressure on Ms Bondi, as Trump-supporting right-wing media figures became frustrated by delays. Some began to call for her resignation.
President Trump defended her in a statement, saying she was doing a "fantastic job." Speaking on Tuesday, he said Ms Bondi should release "whatever she thinks is credible" regarding the Epstein case.
He also downplayed ongoing interest in the matter, saying he did not understand "what the interest or what the fascination is" with the issue.
The reignited claims – which for a long time have been pushed by those who oppose Trump – that he himself is implicated within ‘the Epstein files.’
New revelations
In the days after the DOJ memo was released, the Wall Street Journal reported the existence of a birthday note bearing President Trump’s name in Epstein’s personal papers.
The note, allegedly part of a leather-bound album marking Epstein’s 50th birthday, ended with the line: "Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret," and was signed "Donald."
The page was said to feature a hand-drawn outline of a naked woman.
President Trump – who was pictured with Epstein and said he did meet him on occasion - called the letter a fake and threatened to sue the newspaper, its publisher NewsCorp, and owner Rupert Murdoch.
"If they print it, they will be sued," he wrote on Truth Social. Vice President JD Vance also dismissed the story as "complete and utter bulls**t."
The Wall Street Journal has so far declined to comment.
Trump and Epstein
Epstein and President Trump were well acquainted at one point.
In a 2002 New York Magazine profile of Epstein, President Trump, then a prominent businessman and media figure, said: "I’ve known Jeff for 15 years, terrific guy. 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."
However, when Epstein was arrested in 2019, President Trump said he "had a falling out with him a long time ago. I don't think I've spoken to him for 15 years...I was not a fan of his."
Following his death, conspiracy theories swirled that Epstein had in fact been murdered to protect people, and discussion ballooned about a ‘client list.’
It’s believed by some that the people named on this ‘list’ were being extorted by Epstein, yet it’s not clear if a list ever existed, although President Trump and his inner circle have consistently referenced one.
The list is core to the conspiracy theory: as part of efforts to counter that conspiracy – despite it once being a key narrative within MAGA – the FBI released a statement last week. This is the FBI under Trump, led by Kash Patel, who has long been a key driver of the Epstein narrative on Trump-supporting media platforms.
It reiterated that Epstein died by suicide in his prison cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City on 10 August 2019. To support that "full raw" video footage from outside Epstein’s prison cell door was released, it said.
"The FBI’s independent review of this footage confirmed that from the time Epstein was locked in his cell at around 10:40 pm on August 9, 2019, until around 6:30 am the next morning, nobody entered any of the tiers in the SHU (Special Housing Unit)."
It had released the roughly 11-hour surveillance video in an attempt to dispel claims that Epstein did not die by suicide. However, in the hours and days after the video was released, some online seized on time stamps in the footage, which skipped from 11:58pm to midnight.
The tech-focused news outlet WIRED then reported that metadata on the video files showed it had been stitched together with the video editing tool Adobe Premiere Pro from two video files, contradicting the Justice Department’s claim that it was "raw" footage.
Further analysis of the video's metadata showed that nearly three minutes of footage was cut from the video. It was unclear what, if anything, the minutes cut from the first clip showed, but the apparent editing of the footage raised new questions.
The DOJ has not yet responded to that specific query.
With all that happening almost at the same time, people who believed Donald Trump would bring transparency to the Epstein case began to say Trump’s administration are now part of the cover up.
Core MAGA movement voices have begun to express skepticism about Trump’s personal motivations. Elon Musk – who albeit is now not widely considered a generally reliable information source, but remains an influential figure in the Trump infosphere – claimed (and then deleted) that Trump’s name is in the Epstein files.
Republican lawmakers spoke out against Trump officials, calling for them to be more transparent.
It appears that a conspiracy stoked by many now within the MAGA movement is pulling it apart.
In the middle of it all is Donald Trump – the man who was supposed to expose all about the sex trafficker Epstein’s elite client list of child abusers.
He is now lashing out against some would-be supporters who accuse him of not just protecting Epstein’s elite clients, and not just of using the ‘deep state’ to hide the truth - but of being one of the clients and part of the ‘deep state.’
In the meantime, some of his media-supporters-turned-administration-officials who poured petrol on the flames of the Epstein case for years are suddenly trying to put out the fire.
