“Are [we] still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?”

The president failed to give his base their promised apokálypsis.

I have never been particularly “plugged in” to the Jeffrey Epstein drama. The pedophile financier was abhorrent, despicable, and deserving of Hell, but I find people who make grimdark conspiracy theories about child sex trafficking into their hobby and whole personalities to be dishonest and unsavory. Still, President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice’s announcement that “no further disclosure [of Epstein documents] would be appropriate or warranted,” (in other words, “the case is closed, there is nothing to see here, move along!”) ought to result in at least Attorney General Pam Bondi, who previously said there were a “truckload” of documents to be released, getting kicked to the curb.

Mr. Epstein has been dead for five years and 11 months, though according to Mr. Trump, he is “a guy who never dies.” I have finite mental bandwidth, and other things between 2019 and today have merited more attention. Until there is new evidence, I see little reason to sift junk, clickbait, and speculation from the reality of human trafficking. How many times have people cried “bombshell” before posting the same flight logs and phonebook pages?

“Epstein evangelists” like FBI Deputy Director and former podcaster Dan Bongino accept as fact (“headcanon,” as the nerds would say) conclusions that are unsupported by the source material. They treat the meme “Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself” as if it were true, proven, and profound, but the Department of Justice has found it was a suicide. A savvier insinuation might have been that he was “allowed” to die due to bribery and corruption, but conspiracists prefer the flashier narrative of murder. It was always plausible that he preferred to die rather than live in jail as a pariah.

If Mr. Trump’s DOJ is lying and Mr. Epstein did not tie his bedsheet into a noose, then I remind the forgetful that on August 10, 2019, the president was Mr. Trump, and the Bureau of Prisons was his responsibility. If some mysterious assassins were involved, they were likely in service to Republicans.

I presume Mr. Epstein’s association with Mr. Trump was wholesome, but the Mandarin Mussolini’s administration had some troubling connections to Mr. Epstein.

Mr. Trump’s second attorney general was William Barr, whose father, Donald Barr, authored science fiction about teenage sex slaves and served as the headmaster of the Manhattan Dalton School when Mr. Epstein, despite lacking a college degree or any qualifications as a teacher, was hired to teach physics in 1974. The pedophile left within two years, trailed by allegations of impropriety. Sus.

Mr. Trump’s first Secretary of Labor, Alexander Acosta, was the U.S. attorney who had negotiated the 2006 non-prosecution agreement that spared Mr. Epstein a lifetime in the slammer, “getting him off the hook” for the sexual abuse of dozens of underage girls in Palm Beach. Mr. Acosta, the prosecutor, alongside Mr. Trump’s future attorneys, Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr for the defense, handcrafted for the pedophile the world’s sweetest plea deal—a one-year or so sentence with privileges to leave jail for twelve hours a day, six days a week. Petty drug offenders would be so lucky.

If association with Mr. Epstein merited much scrutiny from Mr. Trump’s team, that association would have “barred” Messrs. Barr, Acosta, Dershowitz, and Starr from darkening the White House’s doorways. But it did not. Mr. Acosta was only dismissed after Mr. Epstein’s 2019 arrest, and Messrs. Dershowitz and Starr were not hired as the president’s attorneys until the 2020 impeachment.

And of course, Mr. Epstein was famously friendly with Mr. Trump. Gossip columnist-turned-author Michael Wolff said that, alongside Tom Barrack, the pedophile and playboy were a set of “nightlife musketeers.” More recently, Mr. Wolff indicated that much of the “tea” spilled in the 2017 book Fire and Fury was sourced from Mr. Epstein. Mr. Wolff produced audio to the Daily Beast of Mr. Epstein calling the orange clown a “closet friend,” and has suggested he saw incriminating photographs of the president in the pedophile’s vault, including one where there is “[a] telltale stain on the front of Trump's pants, and [young, topless] girls are pointing at him and laughing.”

Since his “Bad Blood” breakup with former co-President Elon Musk, Mr. Trump never smiles at anyone, but he always grinned in photos with Mr. Epstein. In 2002, he told New York Magazine: “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen 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.” “Likes them… younger” is not something people say about “terrific guys” in most contexts, and in this one, seems to be a damnable admission of knowledge about the pedophile’s sexual proclivities. In 2019, Mr. Trump would claim to be “not a fan,” but late disavowal does not alter the past.

We should also not forget that, for no particular reason, Mr. Trump regularly flew around on the recommissioned Lolita Express jet during the 2024 election. Was it specially requested? Was it a happy circumstance? Did he feel nostalgic inside that plane?

Mr. Trump and other members of his family, including Ivanka, are listed multiple times in Mr. Epstein’s “little black book.” Despite my acidic persona, I am a charitable and gracious person and do not presume that the president’s affiliation with one of America’s most notorious pedophiles implies he assaulted children himself. It is unkind to make such allegations without foundation.

However, MAGA Republicans delight in that exact sort of innuendo, and have fantasized that former President Bill Clinton and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who also affiliated with Mr. Epstein, must be guilty of every sexual abuse imaginable. Goose, gander, et cetera, but I tend to think only a smaller cohort of Mr. Epstein’s acquaintances were involved in sexual abuse. It is typical for villainous individuals to surround themselves with non-creeps to enhance their credibility—otherwise, the first time someone decent stumbles upon their affairs, “the jig is up.”

Mr. Trump agrees, and warned disgraced ex-Fox News host, chronic sexual harasser, and falafel fetishist Bill O’Reilly that “there are a lot of names associated with Epstein that had nothing to do with Epstein’s conduct… [who] maybe had lunch with him or maybe had some correspondence for one thing or another…. If [those] name[s] get[] out, those people are destroyed because there's not going to be any context.”

In June, former co-President Elon Musk, owner of Twitter, Tesla, and SpaceX, CEO of Neuralink and the Boring Company, and founder of xAI, said: “Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.” Did he know something, or was this bullshit?

If Mr. Musk lied when he said he knew the president was on the Epstein list—which, again, the DOJ says does not exist!—I think it would be fine for Mr. Trump to sue him. More misinformation should not come without consequences. Mr. Musk expects us to presume that Mr. Trump confided to him that he had committed sex crimes, which would be odd, or perhaps the CEO is implying that he “hacked the Gibson” and took that data from the FBI’s computers, which would be illegal. Maybe he was guessing to see what would happen.

If Mr. Musk believed the president abused children, why did he donate hundreds of millions to the campaign and blow up Tesla’s reputation to work in the White House? Would Mr. Musk have been “fine” with child prostitution if Mr. Trump were more pliant to his needs? “Protecting pedophiles from prosecution, I can excuse, but I draw the line at the Big [Bitch] Bill!”

Mr. Epstein was involved with Mr. Musk, too—we have been asked to accept, on Mr. Musk’s word (despite the clear incentive to lie) that the photograph of him standing and smiling with the pedophile fancier’s pimp and ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell was a “photobomb.”

The other Musk brother, Kimbal, got “hooked up” with another one of Mr. Epstein’s ex-girlfriends, and, according to Business Insider, was in “regular contact” with Mr. Epstein and even gave his entourage a tour of SpaceX in 2012—after the 2006 arrest! These people have rubbed elbows, but I make no assumptions based on those facts.

MAGA media made money and grew their fame and influence selling blockbuster stories of secret Mossad blackmailer Jeffrey Epstein, his indices of sins, and cover-ups that go to the very top. Not only the freaks or influencers, either, but FBI Director Kash Pattel (or as I like to call him, “Kush Pattel,” because that fool has got to be smoking something), Donald Trump Jr, Mr. Bongino, even Vice President J.D. Vance. Now, Mr. Trump says: “Are [we] still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” It either matters or it doesn’t. Were they lying then, or are they lying now?

The Department of Justice denies, and I always doubted, that Mr. Epstein kept a “client list.” It was too neat and fanciful to imagine there was an envelope that, once opened, would expose every elite villain. Mr. Epstein likely trashed any notes he took on his criminal fucking conspiracy after his first arrest.

If such a plot device existed, it would have surfaced already, depending on whom it implicated. I do not believe there is any single Democratic figure, save former presidents Barack Obama or Joe Biden, that a Democratic Department of Justice would have hesitated to expose if it ended the national disaster of MAGA Trumpism. Even Mr. Clinton would have been kicked to the curb in exchange. Is there any Republican not named Trump that Mr. Trump would protect? I would have thought not—but now I wonder.

Ms. Bondi told FOX News (whose owner, Rupert Murdoch, was also in Mr. Epstein’s “black book”) on February 21, 2025, that she had seen what host John Roberts called “a list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients,” and that “it [was] on [her] desk.” Five months later, the FBI says: “A systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list’… We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.” Was she lying then, or is she lying now?

Her backpedal is that she meant the whole “case file”—but that still suggests dishonesty. If she made a careless allusion to the broader file that was misinterpreted as a promise of a bombshell that would expose a vast ring of celebrities, politicians, and business elites, an honest person would have issued a clarifying statement. Otherwise, this has the energy of a teenager telling his parents: “I spoke truly when I said I was going to Dairy Queen. I never said I would not smoke reefer in the woods behind it!”

So how should people who consider exposing and destroying Mr. Epstein’s elite pedophile cabal their number one political interest and priority respond? Will they change the subject and find a new conspiracy to perseverate on? Will those angry voters now think their leaders are on the take?

I am still perplexed by Mr. Trump asking, “Are [we] still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” Is he unaware his whole political subculture made this Epstein mystery its central cause? I do suspect the orange dotard is deep in cognitive decline, but is it plausible to his MAGA Republican base, who presumably still consider him as possessing at least nominal savvy, that he is so checked out just seven months into his term?

TheBlaze’s Steve Baker suggested the “hypothetical” that reporters might “get a call from someone at the FBI, at 1:30AM, telling [them] to back off.” I cannot determine if he means this happened to him, if he heard that it happened to someone, or if he is imagining it could be a thing that happens. Could not be me. The last time I got a threatening phone call that said, “You need to drop this story. Leave it alone if you know what is good for you,” I knew what was good for me, and I left it alone because I did not want that smoke.

Will the brave right-wing digital warriors who have made the Epstein case central to their worldview, persona, and business interests look like cowards if they “back off” now? Their audiences think they must keep investigating until they “get to the bottom of it.” What happens if, at the bottom, they find a mirror?

Though they will not be convinced Mr. Trump, who has discussed inappropriate situations in locker rooms full of teenagers and made unsettling remarks about his daughter, is complicit in such wrongdoing, they should appreciate the opportunity to “just ask questions.”

This administration cannot claim to respect the public’s intelligence if they tease this true crime story of mass-scale child exploitation when they need support, then, disregarding it was of serious concern to people, the president says we should all move on. No, the country needs to see Messrs. Trump, Clinton, Dershowitz, whom-the-fuck-ever, tell us under oath what that story is.

In my view, Democrats must “get dirty” here if they want to make inroads with paranoid podcast listeners—perhaps convert them into “leather jacket liberals,” as I call them, cool guys who smoking cigarettes on the Denny’s sidewalk and complaining about The Man that our party was missing at the ballot box in 2024). You do not need to act like a Republican—do not accuse Mr. Trump of crimes in excess of what you believe—just “tell it like it is.” “Call balls and strikes,” whatever that means. The bare facts damn the ever-damnable GOP.

Democrats of good character will not be, or should not be, concerned about collateral damage. If Mr. Clinton or Andrew Cuomo or Elliot Spitzer or Moon Boy for all I know have to answer embarrassing questions or go to trial off anything found in that investigation, well, great! We are better without anyone stinking of Little St. James. Democrats would find bipartisan consensus to publicly tar anyone involved.

Crucially, this is not even “getting into the mud.” Mr. Epstein really hurt real kids. Winning those victims’ closure and restitution is neither a bad goal nor bad politics, especially for a party “in the wilderness”—meaning without much else to do except talk shit until midterms.

“Cracking the case” on Mr. Epstein has near-metaphysical significance for a certain set of the population. As an example, Mr. Trump’s posthumanist, technofeudalist patron, Palantir founder Peter Thiel, who once denied being a “vampire” and injecting the blood of the young into himself through a process called parabiosis, named this administration’s mandate apokálypsis, meaning “revelation,” and called for a full public accounting of COVID-19 origins, MLK and JFK assassinations, whatever organization Mr. Epstein ran, probably UFOs as well. He wrote that “[answering] our deepest questions” about the “ancient regime” and “adjudicat[ing] … those who govern us” were necessary for his imagined revolutionary new Internet age. To Mr. Thiel, “the [I]nternet had already begun our liberation from the DISC [(“Distributed Idea Suppression Complex”)] prison upon the prison death of … Epstein in 2019. Almost half of Americans polled that year mistrusted the official story that he died by suicide, suggesting that DISC had lost total control of the narrative.”

I am compelled to note that Mr. Epstein had invested tens of millions of dollars in Mr. Thiel’s companies.

We ought not to have gotten the news “the case was closed” from Ms. Bondi. The president owed the public a more effortful explanation than “Are [we] still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” No, for the amount of air and electricity this speculation has consumed, it merited a primetime address to the nation.

The American people deserve to know the Department of Justice is not covering for pederasts, and may not take Mr. Trump’s word for it. They will not take Ms. Bondi on good faith. If Mr. Trump did understand and respect the gravity of these concerns, he would understand he cannot ask that it go away.

I have a request for the influencers who have spent years telling their audiences that Mr. Epstein did not kill himself. If you are convinced the Trump administration is not covering up a murder, could you explain to your audience you were wrong? Mr. Bongino should admit if he spoke assuredly out of his ass to titillate conspiracy theorists—without that confession, those paranoids are inclined to ask: “Well, were you lying then or are you lying now?”

Either the public was deceived by MAGA conspiracists, the DOJ was honest, and there is no client list—in which case, Ms. Bondi should resign for claiming to have it on her desk—or two Trump attorney generals, Bondi and Barr, have covered up that list—if so, Ms. Bondi should also resign. If she does not, then we can conclude that Mr. Trump has enabled one of these deceptions.

If Laura Loomer, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, and others, now allege that Ms. Bondi is sitting on evidence, and she has Mr. Trump’s support, then they are accusing Mr. Trump of obstruction.

I was on the verge of finishing this essay, smashing that send button, and going out to watch Superman at the theatre. But because there otherwise existed a possibility I could have gotten to enjoy something today, Mr. Trump ruined it with a ranting “bleat” on TruthSocial.

Begging this dumb motherfucker to learn how to use a carriage return.

Mr. Trump says: “Attorney General Pam Bondi [] is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! We’re on one Team,” so if his vice president, FBI director, son, or supporters keep talking about Mr. Epstein, they may not be “on [his] [t]eam.” What whiplash! If there is any sort of cover-up, now Mr. Trump has vigorously defended it.

“Why are we giving publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration…? They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called ‘friends’ are playing right into their hands. Why didn’t these Radical Left Lunatics release the Epstein Files?”

This is incoherent. The arrest and investigation of Mr. Epstein happened under Mr. Trump’s watch, not former President Obama’s, and former FBI director James Comey had been fired by 2019. Why would this have anything at all to do with people who were either out of power years before Mr. Epstein was arrested, or returned to power after he was dead?

What I take from this is that there are “Files”—capital F, too, so if they get a proper noun then we must assume they exist—and that they contain information damaging to Mr. Trump. Otherwise, there is no reason to suggest they were fabricated to hurt him. In his denial, Mr. Trump has affirmed that something has scared him. He could have said nothing—should have said nothing, and let Ms. Bondi take the heat. Is he panicked? Or just stupid?