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Last week, photos emerged of 15 right-wing social media influencers posing outside the White House, grinning and holding thick white binders. This set of people, which included the woman behind the bullying social media account Libs of TikTok and the Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich, had good reason to be excited: the Trump administration had promised them something explosive—something their fans had been clamoring for for years. On the cover of the binders, under the seal of the Department of Justice, printed in red letters, was the title “The Epstein Files, Part 1.”
This was a huge moment for the right-wing social media ecosystem.
Ever since financier and child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was found dead from suicide awaiting trial in his jail cell in 2019, certain conspiratorial-minded figures have insisted that he was killed to protect the identity of one or more powerful figures on an alleged “client list” of, presumably, sexual predators of underage girls. (No evidence of such a list has emerged.) In the vein of the Pizzagate and QAnon web of conspiracy theories, the Epstein conspiracy theories posited that the government had documentation that would prove that certain liberal celebrities and Democratic donors and politicians had sexually abused minors on board Epstein’s plane or on his private island.
This theory twisted something real—the horrific sex trafficking Epstein engaged in, as well as the protections and leniency his riches bought him in the criminal justice system—and leaped past genuine inquiry to wild accusations, fueling political disinformation. The rage it inspired relied on the notion that there was a cover-up: It wasn’t just that Epstein had criminally predatory friends among the elites—a plausible presumption. It was that the federal government was hiding slam-dunk proof of those elites’ crimes.
Trump, aware of his base’s enthusiasm for the Epstein theories, had through his second presidential campaign vowed to release Epstein documents. On Thursday, through the orders of Attorney General Pam Bondi, he was finally making good. Bondi had promised as much the night before, pledging radical transparency during a Fox appearance.
Almost immediately, though, everyone realized that it was a dud.
Virtually all the information in the binders, it turned out, either was redacted to protect victim privacy or had already been made openly available through the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, civil litigation, and Freedom of Information Act requests. When the DOJ released the information publicly, conservatives on social media expressed frustration that they had been duped.
“I nor the task force were given or reviewed the Epstein documents being released today,” Florida Rep. Paulina Luna wrote on social media, referring to the House “Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets.” She added, “THIS IS NOT WHAT WE OR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ASKED FOR and a complete disappointment.”
The radio host Glenn Beck called the files a “total joke” and wondered aloud, “Who is subverting POTUS?” The conservative pundit Tony Kinnett blasted the “fun little photo shoots” as “cringe” and “childish.” The conservative commentator Robby Soave called it a “disaster.” Some noted that the influencers’ enthusiasm had made it worse; some had hyped up the release with identical language praising the administration’s transparency. It was hard not to see it as humiliating for everyone involved, a PR stunt gone completely awry.
At first, conservative anger over the episode was directed at Bondi. The far-right author Raheem Kassam reported that the AG had rolled out the information recklessly, springing the binders on the influencers, who were at the White House for policy briefings, he wrote. Steve Bannon chastised Bondi for “overselling” the files and called the whole thing a fiasco. The conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer went further, calling on Bondi to resign. Bondi had either lied, Loomer said, or failed to read the materials in the binders before she handed them out to the influencers. “This is absurd,” Loomer wrote on X. “Everyone is laughing at the admin today.”
But other influencers came to Bondi’s aid, pivoting quickly to blame the FBI. Liz Wheeler, one of those given a binder, claimed without proof that the attorneys at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York had hidden the actual juicy files. “These swamp creatures at SDNY deceived Bondi, Kash, and YOU,” she wrote. “Be outraged that the binder is boring. You should be. Because the evil deep state LIED TO YOUR FACE.”
Bondi quickly seized on this narrative herself, making public a letter she sent to FBI Director Kash Patel Thursday, demanding to know where the real documents were and why she had received less than 200 pages. “I repeatedly questioned whether this was the full set of documents responsive to my request and was repeatedly assured by the FBI that we had received the full set of documents,” she wrote.
In the letter, in which she also demanded an internal investigation, she claimed that “a source” had told her the FBI field office in New York had withheld thousands of pages of documents related to the investigation. “When you and I spoke yesterday, you were just as surprised as I was to learn this new information,” she wrote.
By Thursday evening, Patel was expressing similar levels of outrage—directed toward his own agency. “There will be no cover-ups, no missing documents, and no stone left unturned—and anyone from the prior or current Bureau who undermines this will be swiftly pursued,” he wrote on social media. “If there are gaps, we will find them. If records have been hidden, we will uncover them.”
By Saturday, a new narrative had solidified on the right: Corrupt Democrats acting within the FBI and New York courts had clearly hidden certain files because, as Fox host Mark Levin put it, “they don’t like the names on the list”—referring to the alleged client list. (Bondi, appearing on Levin’s show, nodded when he said this and made a small affirmative noise.)
As Fox News’ Jesse Watters would explain to his viewers, James Comey had been the one to originally suppress the client list; now, in a new Trump era, it was his daughter doing the dirty work. Maurene Ryan Comey, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, had been one of the lead prosecutors against Epstein’s associate Maxwell. (She has also joined the team prosecuting Sean “Diddy” Combs.) If anyone needed further proof of the corruption in New York, there was also James E. Dennehy, the top agent at the FBI field office there, who in January wrote an email defending the FBI employees involved in the Jan. 6 criminal cases, urging his staff to “dig in” and resist the administration’s assaults on the agency’s independence.
In this way, the conspiracy theory that has motivated many right-wing actors, as well as Bondi and Patel, was duplicated: “They” were still hiding the files, but now “they” were hiding within Bondi’s and Patel’s own agencies. Bondi made herself out as a victim of this conspiracy, despite being one of the most powerful people in government and the person who had literally released the files herself. “I kept saying, there has to be more. There has to be more,” Bondi told Levin Saturday.
But as Jacob Shamsian at Business Insider noted, Bondi was doing more than just playing the victim: She was using the incident as a political tool for firings at the FBI in New York. And sure enough, on Monday, Dennehy, the head of the FBI’s New York office, was forced out.
In the end, one of the administration’s silliest controversies had serious repercussions—but only for the FBI official who had overseen nonpartisan work to investigate legitimate cases of corruption. It was a classic ending to a Trumpian news cycle that hinged on a conspiracy theory without any evidence. And it showed this administration’s reliance on partisan lies, even when it has complete and total access to the truth.
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