Jeffrey Epstein, MAGA conspiracy theories and Donald Trump’s dilemma

Donald Trump has won the United States presidency twice by channelling the anger of millions of mainly white Americans towards the neoliberal elite—despite being part of that elite. Conspiracy theories help address and obscure the contradiction between Trump articulating this anger and doing nothing to address it. So, much of his base of support in the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement has been roiled by the apparent cover-up of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Justice files on Jeffrey Epstein, a serial abuser of underage women and sometime close friend of Trump.1 Moreover, in September 2025, the scandal brought down Britain’s ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson, when his messages to Epstein, as the latter faced charges of soliciting prostitution from minors in June 2008, were published by Bloomberg. Grotesquely, Mandelson had told Epstein, “Your friends love you” and urged him to “fight for early release”.2

Epstein used his vast wealth and political influence to traffic and abuse large numbers of teenage women. First indicted in 2007, Epstein’s elite connections saw him escape lightly. Re-arrested on serious charges in 2019, he was found dead in a prison cell within weeks, with murder widely thought to be more likely than the official line that he committed suicide. It was a scandal that fitted the well-worn QAnon conspiracy theory of many MAGA supporters. This theory emerged in 2017 and developed into the broad far-right and antisemitic belief that “deep state” actors, including prominent Democrats such as Hillary Clinton, have been in league with a global child sex-trafficking ring, which, incredibly, only Trump was capable of unmasking. Surely, it seemed to them, Epstein must have been a prime facilitator of abuse involving leading Democrats and “globalists”.

Epstein was certainly a member of the elite. A trader at US investment bank Bear Stearns in the 1970s, he rose to become a partner and later a financial consultant and multi-millionaire investor on his own account.3 He cultivated financiers, politicians, members of the British royal family and paedophile men for whom he organised exclusive parties. He had close links to former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and appeared to dabble in blackmail, seeking favours in return for his discretion.

Police in Palm Beach, Florida, where Epstein lived and Trump has his Mar-a-Lago resort, began investigating Epstein in 2005. He was indicted by a grand jury on charges of solicitation and prostitution in 2006, but the police department then referred the case to the FBI on the grounds that the indictment did not reflect “the totality of Epstein’s conduct”.4 The FBI compiled evidence of the abuse of more than 30 underage women in a 53-page indictment outlining 60 criminal counts against Epstein, while the police charged Epstein on four counts of unlawful sex with minors and one of sexual abuse in 2007. However, Epstein’s lawyers negotiated a plea bargain granting him immunity from federal criminal charges in return for a guilty plea on two felony prostitution charges. The prosecutor for the Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of Florida was Alex Acosta, whom Trump would appoint secretary of state for labour in 2017. The FBI case was closed and Epstein sentenced to 18 months in jail. Rather than being sent to a Florida state prison like a regular sex offender, Epstein was jailed in the private wing of the Palm Beach County Stockade and allowed on “work release” for up to 12 hours a day. He served 13 months, then, during his probation, was allowed private jet trips to Manhattan and his property in the US Virgin Islands.5

In July 2019, when the law finally caught up with Epstein again, he was arrested on federal charges of sex-trafficking minors and remanded in jail. Within four weeks, he was dead, the cause of death officially given as suicide by hanging. There was no need to be a QAnon adherent to be suspicious of the official account, especially when it was reported that almost three minutes of prison CCTV footage of Epstein in his cell in his final hours, released by the US Justice Department, were missing. This turned out not to be true and a Department of Justice Review of the evidence found his death consistent with suicide, not strangulation, despite noting a “combination of negligence, misconduct, and outright job performance failures” on the part of prison staff.6 Yet, MAGA conspiracy theorists had a field day. So, when Trump was campaigning for re-election as president, campaign allies pledged to expose what was deemed a cover up. Dan Bongino, now FBI deputy director, claimed “the Epstein client list [would] rock the Democrat Party”.7 JD Vance, now vice-president, vowed to name Epstein’s wealthy clients. Then, in July this year, attorney general Pam Bondi, head of the Justice Department, announced there was nothing to release on Epstein. The Epstein client list did not exist.

The problem for Trump is that he was close friends with Epstein for decades until they fell out—a split for which Trump has provided more than one explanation and suggested conflicting dates for when they fell out. When Trump and Tesla boss Elon Musk traded insults in June, Musk highlighted the president’s vulnerability over his relationship with Epstein, claiming on his social media platform X that Trump was named “in the Epstein files”.8 Musk has more than 200 million followers on X and, despite deleting the post, the damage was done.

In July, the Wall Street Journal, part of the Rupert Murdoch media empire that includes the Trump and MAGA-supporting US TV news station Fox News, reported Trump had written a sexually suggestive note to Epstein on the abuser’s 50th birthday.9 Trump responded by slapping a $10 billion lawsuit on Murdoch and the Journal.10 In September, the release of Epstein-related documents by Democrats on the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee confirmed the Wall Street Journal report. The documents included the sketch of a woman’s body and a photo of Epstein holding an oversize cheque for $22,500 signed DJ Trump, with the caption, “Jeffrey showing early talents with money + women”, suggesting the money was for a “fully depreciated” woman whose name had been redacted.11

Trump cannot escape his past relations with Epstein. The pair knew each other over three decades and were close friends for half that time. Trump told New York Magazine in 2002: “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. He likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side”.12 The two regularly attended parties together, with Epstein telling US journalist Michael Wolff he had been Trump’s “closest friend for 10 years”.13

As far back as 1992, Florida-based businessman George Houraney said he had organised a “calendar girl” competition at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago private club, flying more than two dozen women in specially. Houraney told the New York Times: “At the first party I said, ‘Who’s coming? I have 28 girls.’ It was him and Epstein. I said: ‘Donald, this is supposed to be a party with VIPs. You’re telling me it’s you and Epstein?’”14 A video from a 1992 Mar-a-Lago party aired by NBC News shows the pair talking and laughing together. Stacey Williams, a professional model, testified in 2024 that she accompanied Epstein on a visit to Trump Tower in 1993 and, on arrival, Trump groped her “while he and Epstein smiled at each other”.15 The pair continued to be photographed at events together into the 2000s.

They fell out in 2004 over competing claims on a property in Palm Beach, according to one version of events, and Trump distanced himself from Epstein when the latter was convicted of sex offences in 2008—just as he had from lawyer Roy Cohn, a man who helped him enormously in his early career, when Cohn was dying of Aids.16 Trump subsequently insisted of Epstein: “I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him. I was not a fan”.17

However, Trump has since claimed they fell out after Epstein “stole” one of his most prominent accusers of abuse and trafficking, Virginia Giuffre, and other young women from staff roles at Mar-a-Lago.18 Poor Giuffre committed suicide in April 2025. The president claimed on a flight back from a golf trip in Scotland in July that he kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago “because he did something inappropriate, he stole people who worked for me”. Giuffre alleged in a lawsuit that she was hired from Mar-a-Lago’s spa by Ghislaine Maxwell on behalf of Epstein in 2000, when 16 years old. Yet, Trump was still referring to Epstein as a “terrific guy” in 2002 and the Miami Heraldreported Epstein remained a Mar-a-Lago member until 2007. Trump’s 2003 birthday card message to Epstein included a dialogue between the pair that had Trump saying: “We have certain things in common, Jeffrey” and Epstein replying: “Yes, we do”.19

So, while Trump may be wondering why his supporters “waste time and energy” demanding the Justice Department and FBI release their files on Epstein, it must seem obvious to many Maga followers. The mess is partly of Trump’s making. When he won re-election, his supporters believed he would release all kinds of withheld documents. Asked in September 2024 if he would declassify the 9/11 and John F Kennedy files, Trump said “Yes”. Asked about the Epstein files he initially said “yes” but added: “I think less so, because you don’t want to affect people’s lives if there is phoney stuff in there, because there is a lot of phoney stuff”.20

His attempts to quash his supporters’ enraged reaction have been, like most things with Trump, half baked. In a cabinet meeting, he expressed surprise that people were “still talking” about Epstein, “somebody that nobody cares about”.21 He went so far as to attack his own supporters in a post on his Truth Social platform, saying:

My PAST supporters have bought into this “bullshit,” hook, line, and sinker. I’ve had more success in six months than any president in our country’s history and all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the fake news and success-starved Dems, is the Epstein hoax. Let these weaklings continue and do the Democrats work. I don’t want their support anymore!22

Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House

As Alex Callinicos has pointed out, the affair “underlines how a movement built on conspiracy theories can be undermined by them”.23 A series of books on Trump and the White House by US journalist Michael Wolff shed revealing light on Trump’s character and motivation, and while Callinicos is right to dismiss a suggestion by Financial Times US editor Edward Luce that “psychology is a better lens” than any political disagreements on the behaviour of Trump and Elon Musk, Trump’s peculiar character, prejudices and predilections are a factor.24

Wolff specialises in fly-on-the-wall profiles of the mega-rich and powerful. He has drawn criticism over the years for inventing material, making up quotes, and not checking his facts. The Guardian review of his book Too Famous criticised Wolff’s lacerating put down of Christopher Hitchens after the latter’s death and his portrayal of Epstein in 2019, and Wolff was caught on the wrong side of the News International phone-hacking scandal in 2010 when he suggested the New York Times was only covering it to attack Rupert Murdoch.

His books are not history, or even a first draft of it, though he nails the chaos and confusion around Trump, his entourage and administration more convincingly than a high-minded, Washington reporter such as Bob Woodward.25 Trump’s relationship with Epstein does not feature in Wolff’s books about the president, but he makes explicit reference to it in a 2024 documentary Rewriting Trump, admitting he feels uncomfortable at Epstein’s exclusion from the books—presumably at the say-so of the publisher since any reference would inevitably have attracted legal action and no doubt an injunction.26

Trump knew Wolff when he became president, perceiving him to be a celebrity-profile-type writer who might flatter him while posing little threat. So, in 2017, Wolff was granted unfettered access to the White House through the first 200 days of Trump’s presidency. When the resulting book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, appeared, it became a bestseller. In it, Trump presented himself “as a billionaire 10 times over” yet as a businessman “could not even read a balance sheet” and, though he prides himself on his deal-making, “his inattention to details” made him “a terrible negotiator”.27 In Wolff’s telling, Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon—chief strategist for seven months of Trump’s first term—and initial chief of staff Reince Priebus doggedly worked against one another, with each finding “his own way to appeal to the president. Bannon offered a rousing, defiant show of force. Priebus offered flattery from the congressional leadership. Kushner offered the approval of blue-chip businessmen”.28 Bannon and Kushner built networks of competing media contacts “creating a White House that simultaneously displayed extreme animosity toward the press, yet great willingness to leak to it. Everybody was a leaker”.29

Trump’s desires of the presidency are “to break things, sign bills and [win] the love and respect of New York machers [“operators” in German]”.30 He has little interest in core Republican policies, with “no interest in repealing Obamacare” for example, and at one point asks: “Why can’t Medicare simply cover everybody?”31 For Trump, Wolff notes: “The great value of being president was that you’re the most famous man in the world and fame is venerated and adored by the media.” Fox News chairman and chief executive Roger Ailes tells Wolff: “For Trump, the media represents power much more than politics and he wants the attention and respect of its most powerful men”.32

Unsurprisingly, Trump denounced Wolff’s portrayal of him as “full of lies”, denying Wolff had even been granted access. No longer welcome in the White House, Wolff’s subsequent books—Siege, Landslide and All or Nothing—had to be written from a distance, drawing on Wolff’s contacts inside and outside the White House, including Trump family members, serving and former officials and advisers, lawyers, political donors and the garrulous Steve Bannon.

Trump’s former White House chief strategist and “intellectual” of the MAGA movement Steve Bannon served four months in jail for refusing to co-operate with the Congressional inquiry into the assault on the Capitol in January 2021 and makes little effort to hide his fascist leanings. Bannon gives voice to many of the contradictions within Trump’s base, not least by calling for Musk’s deportation as an illegal immigrant and urging Trump to investigate the Tesla billionaire’s drug use. Initially, he opposed Trump’s “bunker buster” strikes on Iran in June 2025, arguing that joining Israel in the attack would reignite the “forever wars” in the Middle East that Trump had vowed to end. He reversed this position almost immediately, claiming the strikes “defeated the neocons and the Israel First crowd”.33 Bannon calls openly for Trump to run for a third term as president in 2028 in breach of the US constitution, suggesting: “Trump’s not leaving. He’s going to be in your head for a long time”.34 The Trump Organisation is already selling $50 (£37) caps emblazoned Trump 2028.

Wolff’s 2019 follow-up book Siege laid bare Trump’s capacity for lying, noting: “Understanding the president was a bare-faced liar left his aides with a continual sense of alarm”. Yet, lying bolsters Trump’s resilience. Wolff writes:

Politicians and businesspeople dissemble and misrepresent and spin and prevaricate and mask the truth but prefer to avoid out-and-out lying. They have at least a fear of getting caught. But lying wilfully, adamantly, without distress or regret, with absolute disregard of consequences can be a bulwark. Somebody always believes you. Fooling some of the people all of the time defined Trump’s base.35

Alongside his lying, Trump modelled his business on a criminal enterprise. “The inspiration here was mobster life,” Wolff notes. “Trump not only knew and did business with mobsters he romanticised them. Mobsters had more fun”.36

Trump’s recourse to a stock set of responses when challenged is predictable because his behaviour has hardly changed over time, as noted by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman:

He has had only a handful of moves throughout his adult life. There is the counterattack, the quick lie, the shift of blame, the distraction or misdirection, the outburst of rage, the performative anger, the designed-just-for-headlines action or claim, the indecisiveness masked by a compensatory lunge, the backbiting about one advisor with another creating a wedge between them.37

Haberman adds: “A core tenet of the Trump political movement has been finding publicly acceptable targets as receptacles for pre-existing anger. His supporters…are bound to him more by common enemies—liberals, the media, tech companies, government regulators—than shared ideals”.38

A truckload of documents

When the Justice Department announced in early July 2025 that there was no basis for continuing the Epstein investigation, it triggered a backlash among Trump supporters, fuelling speculation about the president’s friendship with Epstein. The Wall Street Journal reported Attorney General Pam Bondi referring to “a truckload of documents on Epstein” in which Trump’s name appears “multiple times” and many other high-profile figures are named. Yet, Bondi and her deputy Todd Blanche issued a statement saying: “Nothing in the files warranted further investigation or prosecution.” The White House denied the Journal’s allegations, with a spokesperson dismissing the furore as “a continuation of fake news stories concocted by the Democrats and liberal media”.39

Asked whether Bondi had told him his name was in the files, Trump said: “No, just a quick briefing. These files were made up by [former FBI director James] Comey, made up by [Barack] Obama, made up by the Biden administration.” The next day, he posted on Truth Social that “radical left Democrats” and “fake news” were behind “the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax”. He told reporters: “I’m not focused on [the] conspiracy theories that you are”.40

However, Democrats and a dozen Republican members of the House of Representatives demanded answers, and the House Oversight Committee voted 8-2 to subpoena the Justice Department to release the files and also subpoenaed Maxwell to testify. Former Fox News pundit and outright Trump fan Tucker Carlson, MAGA influencer Laura Loomer and far-right Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene joined Musk in attacking the administration over its handling of the issue, while Republican congressman Eric Burlison of Missouri told CNN that queries on the Epstein files are “the number one call we get by far, probably by 500 to one”.41 House speaker Mike Johnson abruptly adjourned Congress for the summer to avoid a vote on releasing the files, yet did so while directly contradicting Trump saying: “This is not a hoax”.42

To complicate matters for Trump, Ghislaine Maxwell—serving 20 years in a federal prison—met federal prosecutors, including deputy attorney general Blanche, over two whole days in late July 2025 amid reports that Trump was considering pardoning her. Maxwell’s lawyers argued Epstein’s plea bargain in 2007 should have shielded her from prosecution. Administration officials told reporters: “Clemency for Maxwell is not something the president is even thinking about”.43 However, Maxwell was subsequently transferred from a Florida prison to a minimum-security facility in Texas. Trump had said: “I’m allowed to give her a pardon, but nobody’s approached me with it”.44 Reports suggest Bondi had a shouting match with FBI deputy director Dan Bongino who has claimed the Epstein files detail a vast conspiracy.

The president tried all sorts of distractions, with his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, holding a White House press conference on the day the Wall Street Journal story appeared, claiming to have uncovered a “treasonous conspiracy” by the Obama administration officials to manufacture allegations that Russia conspired to help Trump win the 2016 election. Gabbard also “revealed” that Hillary Clinton is on a “daily regimen of heavy tranquilisers”. A delighted Trump, claimed the Democrats were “playing another Russia hoax, this time under the guise of the Jeffrey Epstein SCAM” and accused Obama of “criminal acts”.45

Meanwhile, Trump tried all sorts of distractions, posting an AI-generated video of Obama handcuffed to FBI agents and wearing an orange jumpsuit.46 Then, the White House released 6,000-plus documents on the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, only for King’s daughter Bernice to suggest: “Now, do the Epstein files”.47 He even tried requesting release of the Epstein grand jury material, which a judge denied, before turning to Blanche, his attorney in the Stormy Daniels hush-money trial, to interview Maxwell.

Trump will no doubt continue to try to distract and deflect from the fissures in his base. The Epstein affair is only the most immediate and striking of multiple causes of fracture. Trump’s Maga coalition allowed him to build a far-right base and capture the Republican Party. Yet, the nature of Maga and the deep contradictions within it mean it’s prone to breaking apart. Trump’s acrimonious fall-out with Musk—which threatens who knows what damage without some kind of truce—is merely one sign of the tensions increasingly to the fore in his second term. Debate was also sharpening over the administration’s policy towards AI. As Melania Trump was telling a group of Silicon Valley chief executives at a White House dinner in September that AI represents possibly “the greatest engine of progress” in US history, Republican senator for Missouri Josh Hawley was claiming in a meeting of MAGA faithful that AI would “entrench the power of the people who are already the most powerful in the world”, whose “goal is to replace the farmer, the assembly line man, the construction worker”. The Financial Times noted Hawley’s comments were “endorsed by a growing chorus on America’s right even as Donald Trump’s administration scraps regulatory barriers and accelerates AI’s adoption”. It quoted an unnamed “Republican strategist” who noted: “It’s a real double-edged sword—the administration is forced to embrace [AI] because if the US is not the leader in AI, China will be. But you could see unemployment spiking over the next year”.48 Trump risks, moreover, support fracturing over Iran, Israel and Palestine, Putin and Ukraine, China, tariffs and trade policy and their impact on US livelihoods, and his “big, beautiful tax bill”, which will enrich the elite while impoverishing many supporters. None of these tensions show signs of abating. Trump and attorney general Bondi’s attempt to take direct control of the police in Washington DC in August 2025—a move rebuffed by the city’s mayor and attorneys—marked a new high point in their turn to state repression but merely heightened the sense of an administration under siege, and as protests grow that siege must surely tighten.49

Ian Taylor is a journalist and a member of the International Socialism editorial board.

Notes