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Great news, everyone! We can all stop thinking about Jeffrey Epstein, who was charged with the sex trafficking of minors in 2019 and found dead in his Manhattan jail cell shortly after, apparently of suicide. Great minds have looked into the case and discovered there is nothing more to uncover. So don’t waste your time wondering which powerful people might have been part of Epstein’s alleged trafficking operation. There’s nothing to see here – nothing at all. Case officially closed.
That, in essence, was the message from the Trump administration over the weekend. On Sunday, Axios reported on a memo from Trump’s justice department and the FBI that concluded there is no evidence that Epstein was involved in blackmailing people, kept a “client list” or was murdered. Most importantly, the memo said there is no “evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties”.
This is a big deal because Trump and his lackeys have spent a lot of time and energy dangling Epstein-related conspiracy bait in front of their base, constantly insinuating that they’re on the verge of revealing the shocking truth about Epstein’s network of elite predators. When asked about an Epstein client list (the one that the new memo says is nonexistent) during a February appearance on Fox News, the US attorney general Pam Bondi said: “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review.” Shortly after that interview there was a big to-do where Epstein-obsessed Maga influencers were invited to the White House and given binders titled the Epstein Files, full of information that Bondi promised “will make you sick”. Shock horror, there was nothing new or notable in those binders and Maga had a meltdown.
Now, a second Epstein-induced meltdown is in full swing. Elon Musk, who is back to publicly fighting with Trump, and has threatened to start a new political party, has been firing off jabs about the justice department’s Epstein U-turn. On Monday, Musk, who previously accused Trump of being in the Epstein Files, retweeted a post by a woman called Sarah Fields that said: “If the entire government is protecting paedophiles, it has officially become the government against the people.” Bit late figuring out the Trump administration doesn’t work for “the people” – but hey, welcome to the resistance, Elon!
The conservative activist Robby Starbuck is also fuming. “Pam Bondi said the Epstein client list was on her desk to review for release to the public just a few months ago,” Starbuck tweeted. “Now the DOJ she leads claims that there’s no Epstein client list. Sorry but this is unacceptable … We deserve answers.”
It’s always fun when the Maga crowd realise what the people they propelled into power are really like. But why are rightwing voices the loudest on this topic? Starbuck is right that the current situation is unacceptable: everyone should be demanding more answers about Epstein. Everyone should be outraged that there is only one person, Ghislaine Maxwell, who has actually faced justice in what was, by all accounts, a vast trafficking operation. Some people have paid in other ways – in 2023 Deutsche Bank agreed to pay $75m (£60m) to settle a lawsuit brought by a group of women who accused it of helping facilitate Epstein’s operations – but Maxwell is the only person to have got prison time.
There are, it should be said, a lot of ridiculous Epstein-related conspiracy theories circulating. Those obviously should not be indulged. But I’ll tell you what is not a conspiracy: the fact that there are a lot of high-status people who are very interested in covering up their association with the disgraced financier. It is not a conspiracy to say the US has a two-tier justice system where rich and powerful people can do terrible things and face no consequences.
Earlier this year, Virginia Giuffre, one of the most prominent Epstein victims, died of suicide. She was the third Epstein accuser who is reported to have died of suicide or a drug overdose. Epstein destroyed countless lives. And he didn’t do it alone: he was enabled by “respectable” people who actively facilitated his crimes. And, more broadly, he was enabled by people who looked the other way, who helped whitewash his reputation, who hobnobbed with him in high society. Those people are still out there, living their best lives. And it is looking increasingly likely they will never be held accountable.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
