President Donald Trump’s Jeffrey Epstein problem isn’t going away.
Influential voices on the far right, including some of the president’s biggest MAGA allies, are incensed at his administration for refusing to release more information about the 2019 death of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in prison.
Some are warning it could backfire on the Republican Party in next year’s midterm elections and even in the 2028 presidential race.
“It’s not just about a pedophile ring and all that, it’s about who governs us, right?” right-wing pundit and former Trump aide Steve Bannon said Friday. “For this to go away, you’re gonna lose 10% of the MAGA movement. If we lose 10% of the MAGA movement right now, we’re going to lose 40 seats in 2026, we’re going to lose the presidency.”
“They’ve disheartened the hardest-core populists,” he added.
Trump’s Justice Department and the FBI concluded this week they have no evidence that Epstein, a convicted sex offender, blackmailed powerful figures, kept a “client list” or was murdered in prison. The DOJ memo, released by Attorney General Pam Bondi, concluded Epstein died by suicide, directly contradicting conspiracy theories shared by prominent Trump supporters, including Vice President JD Vance and FBI Director Kash Patel, about Epstein’s activities and his death.
The conspiracy theories surmised, without evidence, that powerful individuals in the federal government helped cover up Epstein’s misdeeds because they were implicated themselves ― particularly prominent Democrats. Only now, Trump leads the federal government, and MAGA pundits say they still aren’t getting answers they’re looking for.
Far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who has called on Bondi to resign or be fired over the whole episode, said Friday that Patel and Don Bongino, the deputy director of the FBI who also dabbled in Epstein conspiracy theories prior to being appointed by Trump, are “livid” with Bondi for failing to release more information about Epstein’s associates.
“Source tells me Dan Bongino is taking the day off today from his job as Deputy Director of the FBI, and there’s now speculation on whether or not he will return to his job at the FBI over his disgust with Blondi’s lack of transparency and handling of the Epstein files,” Loomer wrote in a post online.
“I’m told Kash and Bongino are furious with Blondi and the blowback she has caused them with her lack of transparency,” she added, using a nickname for the attorney general that references her hair color.
But Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, denied the existence of any tension and said that Patel and Bongino “worked closely” with the DOJ on its Epstein investigation.
“All of us signed off on the contents of the memo and the conclusions stated in the memo. The suggestion by anyone that there was any daylight between the FBI and DOJ leadership on this memo’s composition and release is patently false,” Blanche wrote online.
It’s not just fringe voices on the right questioning Epstein’s death, either. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who often shares false conspiracy theories online, suggested that Epstein may have been a “government asset” as one possible reason to explain the lack of more information about his death.
“I’ve just heard a lot of people speculating, including some people who claim to know a fair amount about him, but it’s also just one of those things you can look at when something doesn’t make sense,” Lee told HuffPost this week. “You try to make sense of it any way you can, and that’s one of the only things that I can imagine that might cause the laws of physics to seemingly rearrange themselves midstream.”
Even Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii said there may be more to the story.
“I am probably among the least conspiracy minded people you would ever meet but this is getting pretty nearly impossible to explain,” Schatz wrote on X in response to a WIRED report on Friday detailing how metadata contained in the raw video footage of Epstein’s prison cell was “likely” modified.
But Trump himself has no interest in discussing the matter. The president lashed out during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Tuesday after a reporter asked Bondi about the man he used to party with in the 1980s.
“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years,” Trump said. “You’re asking — we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things. And are people still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable.”