Epstein Files: What Trump’s Opponents Need to Know

Donald Trump and his allies either fed a baseless conspiracy theory about Jeffrey Epstein. Or they’re defending a global pedophile ring. Any way you slice it, the president doesn’t look good.

Uriel Epshtein (no relation to Jeffrey Epstein) is the CEO of the Renew Democracy Initiative, publisher of The Next Move.

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The Epstein Files madness is a disaster of Donald Trump’s own making. And those of us trying to bring sanity back to our democracy have to better understand the situation in order to start to move past this mess.

Here’s what you need to know:

When financier-turned-serial sex offender Jeffrey Epstein killed himself (well, probably killed himself) in prison six years back, his death immediately became red meat for the types of people who reflexively believe every word from the far-right tinfoil hat crowd. Epstein was wealthy. He had connections to elites ranging from Bill Clinton and Al Gore to Prince Andrew, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and Donald Trump himself (this last part, conveniently, never stuck). Epstein was a pedophile, and pedophilia is an obsession of the American fringe right (remember Pizzagate?). Oh, and he was Jewish—a veritable cherry on top for any conspiracy theorist.

While there are some unanswered questions here, I honestly don’t think a cabal of the rich and powerful silenced Epstein to prevent their involvement in the international Jewish pedophile ring from coming to light. Epstein was a pathetic criminal who did irreparable harm to countless people. His megalomania knew no bounds. Epstein mused about chasing immortality and seeding a master race by impregnating his victims. While I don’t know for sure what happened in that missing minute of video, the simplest answer to my mind is that Epstein was never the image of good mental health and having finally lost everything, he decided to end it all. I don’t believe some huge cross-section of Democrats and Republicans would be able to keep their mouths shut about something more sinister than this. (Seriously, since when did we start assuming discipline and competence on the part of politicians?) And I don’t think an administration that shares war plans (sorry, attack plans) on Signal is capable of pulling off a massive cover up. Trump generally does whatever he’s going to do out in the open.

But again, that’s just me. Millions of Americans disagree. And during the 2024 presidential race, Trump’s campaign decided to play to that crowd. Appearing on Lex Fridman’s podcast last September, then-candidate Trump said he would release the so-called Epstein “client list” if elected. The following month on another popular podcast, JD Vance did some chest-thumping about the “need to release the Epstein list.” “That’s an important thing,” the future vice president intoned. FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino respectively made Epstein’s client list a central point in their former podcast careers. Then, about a month after the inauguration, Attorney General Pam Bondi said that she had Epstein’s client list “on her desk.”

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Since taking office, the administration has been rapidly scrambling to meet the demand that it fed during the campaign for some kind of big Epstein revelation. The problem appears to be that there isn’t actually a “there” there. We already know two US presidents, including Trump, along with other politicians, executives, and celebrities had close relationships with Epstein. Who else? Jimmy Carter? Say what you will about their policies, I can assure you that he, along with George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden are not on any Epstein Island flight manifest. So Trump is left in the position of a grade schooler who has to constantly come up with excuses as to why they haven’t brought their talking dog in for show-and-tell.

Meanwhile, Democrats and other critics of the increasingly powerful conspiracy industry have a rare opportunity to inject some small measure of reality into our politics. To their credit, many Democrats, up to and including Hakeem Jeffries, have already been doing this, and they should keep up the pressure. Keep the Epstein situation in the news, and force those who believed Trump’s allies, including Don Jr., to confront one of two realities: either A) Trump and his associates were full of it when they said that if elected, they would unmask a global pedophile ring headed by Epstein and supported by countless democratic boogeymen; or B) They told the truth then and are now inexplicably protecting a global pedophile ring.

American politics over the last decade has evolved into a horrifying episode of Whose Line is it Anyway, where “everything is made up and the points don’t matter.” It’s possible that the Epstein saga might be the thing that for some people, finally breaks through. It’s certainly not the issue I would have chosen, but you have to meet people where they’re at.

And as we’re highlighting the internal inconsistency around the Epstein saga, it’s important to tie it to the administration’s other threats to the American republic. They misled you on Epstein–where else might they be misleading you? Maybe the 2020 election wasn’t actually stolen? Maybe the DOJ’s pursuit of sensitive voter information is not in everyone’s best interest?

Demagogues need to create crises in order to remain relevant. In Russia, that perverse logic leads to brutal wars in Ukraine, Syria, and the Caucasus. Here in the United States, it’s manifested in the stupidest possible political scandal. Far-right influencers knowingly created the ongoing Epstein saga—what they did not expect was to lose control of the story. For once, the headline is “MAGA in disarray,” and the opposition ought to seize the narrative and act.

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