Choose Your Own Jeffrey Epstein Files Adventure
How folks felt and reacted to Jeffrey Epstein stories for over two decades now is probably how they'll feel and react going forward
If you are new to Jeffrey Epstein, as in you only found out about the story in the last few weeks of media coverage, you are way late to the party. Or, for that matter, if you’ve only been following the Epstein story since his death in 2019, you are still behind the curve. Frankly, if your antenna started twitching around the 2008 conviction and grossly controversial plea agreement of Epstein, you are still chasing it.
That now-famous photo of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein partying? That’s from 1992.
The pre-cursor to the “Epstein files” was the “Epstein’s flight logs” and “Epstein’s black book” that were talk radio and internet blogosphere go-to MacGuffins for years? Those cover a time period from 1993-1997.
Mainstream media coverage, you say? The oft-quoted New York Magazine feature subtly titled “Jeffrey Epstein: Interational Money Man of Mystery” in which Trump now infamously quoted ““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. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life” ran in 2002.
Epstein’s grossly lenient non-prosecution agreement that was so bad that Trump Administration I’s DOJ issued a 350-page report that former Labor Secretary and former Florida prosecutor Alex Acosta did so using “poor judgement” but stopped short of accusing him of misconduct? 2008 for the NPA and 2020 for the report trying to mitigate the stink of it.
Epstein being charged with federal sex-trafficking? That was six years and ten days ago.
Epstein hanging himself in his cell as he was being held on those charges? That was five years, 10 months, and 26 days ago, as of this writing.
Time it took the conspiracy theorists to claim Epstein didn’t hang himself and become experts on hyoid bone fractures? Nanoseconds.
Days it took Trump to tweet about Hillary Clinton being involved in Epstein’s death following Jeffrey’s orange bedsheet demise? One.
Lifetime’s “Surviving Jeffrey Epstein” multi-part documentary including interviews with victims who had accused him ran in 2020.
The conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell, whom the court deemed as “guilty of one of the worst crimes imaginable: facilitating and participating in the sexual abuse of children. Crimes that she committed with her longtime partner and co-conspirator, Jeffrey Epstein,” for which she has been in lock up ever since? That was December 29, 2021.
Prince Andrew of English Royal Family fame settling a lawsuit with Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre that paid her but did not admit to any wrongdoing on his part? That was early 2022.
Everyone currently riding the “Epstein files” algorithm train for clicks and glory has, of course, carefully considered and applied all that context…
The more current issues with Epstein and the modern media moment spring from the unsealing of court documents in January of 2024. The now-deceased Guiffre’s lawsuit materials in which she had tried to sue Maxwell has a lot of big names, lots of innuendo, plenty of circumstantial circumstances, but no real smoking guns. During the presidential campaign in September of 2024, Trump was asked about releasing the Conspiratorial Holy Trinity of “9/11 files,” “JKF files,” and of course the “Epstein files.” He was good with the first two, he said, but less so with that last one because “you don’t want to affect people’s lives if there’s phony stuff in there, because there’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world.”
Fast forward to February, and AG Pam Bondi said what she probably now wishes she didn’t that “It’s (meaning the Epstein materials) sitting on my desk right now to review.” A week later there was a photo-op outside the White House of the MAGA Media Grifting All-Stars marching out holding up binders with “The Epstein Files Phase I” on the outside and nothing of any relevance inside them.
By June, Elon Musk tweeted then deleted an accusation that “@realdonaldtrump is in the Epstein files. That is why they have not been made public” as part of the messy breakup of their bromance. By July 7th, the DOJ formally announced that Epstein did not keep a client list.
Cue cabinet infighting between AG Bondi and FBI Deputy director Dan Bongino, who did have a top 5 radio and top 5 podcast before swearing in, and thus understands audience capture better than some others in the administration.
By July 12th, President Trump’s official position is “Stop talking about Epstein.”
After giving “stop talking about it” a few days to marinade, President Trump has brought out the bigger rhetorical gun to put down the Epstein story: just call it a hoax.
Donald Trump, who has by his own admission known about Jeffrey Epstein for 40 years now, doesn’t want the support of anyone who doesn’t make the switch from “Epstein Files” to “Epstein Hoax” going forward.
This was inevitable. With Donald Trump, everything is a loyalty test. When the Epstein conspiracy theorists can help him, Trump spotlights his former fellow New Yorker turned Palm Beachian Epstein and the no good, terrible, horrible things he did that Donald totally knows nothing about. When it gets too close to home or he can’t make good on the big reveal at the end of the long con, Trump switches to the loyalty test to see who comes along.
Most will come along, if recent history is to be a measure.
How folks felt and reacted to Jeffrey Epstein stories for over two decades now is probably how they’ll feel and react going forward. It is also telling. Epstein was a cudgel to hit Bill Clinton with in the pre-Trump times, and the GOP was happy to do so while Team Blue defended the Great White Hope from Little Rock to the hilt on that and a slew of other abusive-to-women accusations. Switch sides and continue as Trump detractors used Epstein against Donald versions 1.0 and 2.0. Trump himself was down for getting to the truth before he was against getting to the truth before he was against the whole thing was a hoax. The real evil is not keeping up with Donald Trump’s truth along the way, you see.
But with Epstein there were real victims. Real shattered lives. The Epstein story being flexible to the infotainment needs of different audiences at different times is a damning indictment of how politics presses even the most horrific of stories into a usable media mold. The conspiracy theorists taking grains of truth and trying to reap entire fields of wrath tend to skip over that. Their righteous indignation at the women abused never quit reaches the same levels as the anger at the big names involved that they really want to see go down, and almost always skips the publicly available names of the victims we do know of.
While the news cycle comes and goes with Epstein content, the people involved are telling us all very important things about themselves. They are choosing their own Epstein adventure based on what is expedient at the movement. The media folks who made bank demanding the full truth of Epstein who fall silent because Trump told them to are telling us something. The folks who do the full Trump loyalty pledge in lieu of admitting anything wrong at all are telling us something. The folks who act like Epstein is just a Trump thing, or GOP thing, and not a systemic corruption that involved all sorts of powerful folks of various political stripes are telling us something.
From Limbaugh Clinton-era talk radio to federal court in NYC to the MAGA Media Grifting All-Stars photo-op, the Jeffrey Epstein sage has been an ugly, vile undercurrent to politics and media in America. Everyone who paid a lick of attention to Epstein at any point knew there were wicked deeds and big names involved. When and where and how folks decided to highlight the story for various purposes tells us more truth about those folks than we will probably ever know about the Epstein crimes, abuses, and enablers. We should judge accordingly.