For Maga rebels, release of Epstein files trumps loyalty to Trump – The Times
When Elon Musk left his White House role in the spring, relations with Donald Trump quickly turned sour. Differences of opinion on visas, tariffs and personnel led to a war of words between the former friends. In a fit of pique, the X billionaire tried to inflict maximum damage. His method? Jeffrey Epstein.
In a tweet on his social media platform, Musk wrote: “@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.” He did not provide any evidence to support this claim and the tweet was later deleted. But the point had been made: for Trump’s critics, the president’s biggest political weakness is his historic relationship with the deceased disgraced financier.
Epstein may be long dead but he continues to haunt his associates in the living world, whether it’s Andrew losing his titles — and lodging — or the exit of Lord Mandelson as ambassador here in DC. Now the Epstein issue threatens to divide Trump’s base and raise awkward questions for the Democrats.
In June, the Maga provocateur, conspiracy theorist and Trump whisperer Laura Loomer warned that Epstein could “consume [Trump’s] presidency” in the way allegations of Russian collusion did during his first term. Several months later, Trump’s supporters fear her prediction is coming true. “The president now sees it as an existential fight,” says a figure close to the administration.
As lawmakers return to the House this week following the longest shutdown in history, Trump is walking into a fresh storm from which there is no easy way out. Following electoral losses to the Democrats in this month’s elections that have spooked his base (“it was really bad,” says one staffer), his least favourite story is once again dominating the news.
On Wednesday, Democrats and Republicans on the House oversight committee released new information on Epstein, while a petition in Congress calling for the release of all the Epstein files held by the Department of Justice now has enough backers to pass in the House. Across Washington, no one is quite sure how the next few weeks will turn out. But most, including the White House, are braced for turbulence.
After the Democrats on the oversight committee investigating Epstein put out a small selection of emails alleging that the US president had spent hours with one of Epstein’s victims (the White House say this refers to Virginia Giuffre), the Republicans released 20,000 files of their own. “It’s called flooding the zone,” says one DC insider, referring to the tactic perfected by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon of putting out so much information your opponents can’t focus.
There was certainly something for everyone. Disclosures included someone known as “the Duke” declaring in 2011 “I can’t take any more of this”. Then there was Epstein claiming he spent Thanksgiving in 2017 with Trump, and referring to Trump as “borderline insane” in a 2018 email to the former Treasury secretary Larry Summers. The Trump biographer Michael Wolff offered Epstein advice and counsel on how to handle his dealings with the president. The deceased financier’s network extended to the tech bro (and JD Vance backer) Peter Thiel as well as former Barack Obama appointees such as the former White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler.
That same day, a handful of Republicans joined forces with the Democrats to get the Epstein petition over the line, aimed at forcing the release of all the files. “The White House didn’t want this to happen,” explains a Capitol Hill staffer. So much so that there was a last-ditch effort to bring potential rebels to the White House situation room on Wednesday to try to dissuade Republicans from rebelling. “The White House message was essentially ‘take your name off it so that you don’t break the threshold’ and they were like, ‘no’,” says a figure privy to the discussions.
It’s not that these Republicans are purposely trying to make life tough for their leader. It’s simply that Trump is not their priority. For many in the Maga movement, the Epstein files are the prime example of a deep state cover-up which represents everything they stand against. “It’s proof there was a morally bankrupt New York global elite,” says one member of the movement. The issue is that a base made up of many Christian nationalists is led by a divorced New Yorker who was at the centre of the Manhattan social scene when all of this was allegedly going on.
During the election campaign, Trump said he would release the files. Then his attorney-general Pam Bondi said the Epstein “client list” was on her desk — only to later say there wasn’t one, thereby pouring petrol on the concerns within Maga about a conspiracy. For the rebel Republicans, transparency comes first.
Trump is now falling out with once loyal foot soldiers such as Marjorie Taylor Greene. On Friday, he went on Truth Social to call her a “ranting lunatic” after the Georgia congresswoman criticised the administration over Epstein, as well as the government shutdown and his recent defence of the H-1B foreign visa. Her reply: “Apparently this is what sent him over the edge. The Epstein files. And of course he’s coming after me hard to make an example to scare all the other Republicans before next week’s vote to release the Epstein files. It’s astonishing really how hard he’s fighting to stop the Epstein files from coming out that he actually goes to this level.”
If Tuesday’s vote passes as expected, the petition will move to the Senate, where Trump has a majority, so there’s scepticism about a breakthrough. “Even if it happens, it will probably just be a bunch of redacted messages,” adds a Republican Hill staffer.
“I don’t think that the files will actually be released because I can’t imagine that President Trump would do it,” says Tara Palmeri, a journalist and author of the Red Letter newsletter. “It will just apply a political pressure that is almost impossible to get out of. It comes at a really perilous time in his presidency. They had really bruising losses in these special elections. The party is breaking ranks. You may see as many as 50 Republicans voting to release the files because they know that if they don’t, they’re going to be facing intense scrutiny from their constituents.”
Polling shows that Epstein is a sore point with Trump’s base. While an Ipsos poll last month found that nine out of ten Republicans approved of the president’s performance in the White House overall, only four out of ten approved of his handling of the Epstein files. However, few think this is the issue most Americans will vote on. Instead, it’s the economy — but that’s not much better news for the president. Trump is facing calls from his base to do more on the cost of living, as his supporters criticise an idea he floated last week of 50-year mortgages.
Across Washington, gatherings and cocktail parties are abuzz with what is really going on behind the scenes. “For a long time we have all worked on the basis that there can’t be a smoking gun against Donald Trump [in the Epstein files] because the Biden administration had access to most of this information and did not act,” says one DC old-timer. “But the way Trump and the White House is acting suggests there is something they don’t want out there.”
The thinking goes that, given all the Democrat efforts to put Trump behind bars before his White House return, surely they would have seized on anything they could. Allies of Trump speculate that he may be trying to spare the blushes of others — whether friends or colleagues — by blocking the release.
Whatever it is, Trump and his team have come to the conclusion that his old approach of dismissing or trying to contain the issue won’t hold. So on Friday, he changed tack, ordering Bondi to appoint a prosecutor to look at Epstein’s links to prominent Democrats and institutions, including former president Bill Clinton. “We’re heading into circular firing squad territory,” says a Maga figure. “Trump sees this as a full-blown fight now.”
Matthew Boyle of the right-wing Breitbart News website, who has close links to the administration, says: “It looks to me like Donald Trump’s been telling the truth about this guy [Epstein] for his entire life. So first off, Trump kicked him out of his club, Mar-a-Lago, before anyone else even figured out that he was a bad dude. Now what these emails show is all of a sudden Epstein comes off like an obsessive, crazy person trying to get back at Trump, right? He’s literally colluding with all of these worst-of-the-worst type elitist people, from Larry Summers to Michael Wolff. It literally reads like ‘Never Trump’ fan fiction.”
Not that those implicated agree with this narrative. Wolff received plenty of criticism last week for his cosy correspondence with Epstein. “I think it’s bullshit. People don’t understand how this works,” he tells me. “I’m sitting there. I’m the guy who got this story. Nobody else was getting this story. Nobody else was paying attention to this story. So, you know, this is how you get into the room, and I got into the room. You’re sucking up so in the end, you can spit it out.”
He believes the story will keep running. “Trump will try to distract from this and he will, I’m sure, successfully distract from this in many ways as things go forward, but the unique thing about the Epstein scandal is that it is the one that doesn’t go away. It keeps coming back.”
What’s more, Trump’s efforts to increase the pressure on the Democrats are unlikely to stop his opponents. Palmeri says: “There are a number of other prominent Democrats that were associated with Jeffrey Epstein. I think that Democrats like Ro Khanna [a congressman pushing for the files’ release], who are this new age, are aware that it may expose some of the old warts in the party, but they want to be the future and they’re OK with that. Democrats know that the baggage is just not helpful. Maybe the Biden era felt more protective of these people, but the new era of Democrats — the 2028 contenders — have very little loyalty to the Clintons and others.”
Few anticipate a conclusive end to the saga anytime soon. But if Trump has to spend the next three years talking about Epstein, he’ll sure as hell make sure he’s not the only one.
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