For ten years, Donald Trump was the “closest friend” of pedophilic billionaire and serial predator Jeffrey Epstein. That’s according to Epstein himself. Indeed, there are plenty of photos of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein socializing together. “They knew each other for a long time,” said a Trump aide. They were “really, really good friends and spent a lot of time together,” according to Stacey Williams, a model who says she was assaulted by Trump in his penthouse, after Epstein brought her there. There was eventually a rupture in their friendship—Trump wouldn’t say why—but it’s clear that when Trump said “I was not a fan of [Epstein],” he was omitting the long period in which he was a big fan, calling Epstein a “terrific” guy who liked women “on the younger side.” In fact, that was a euphemism, because Epstein preyed on hundreds of, possibly even 1,000, victims, and may have abused girls as young as 11. 

It’s not clear, then, why Elon Musk considered it a bombshell to reveal that the reason Trump had not made the full files on the Epstein case public is that Trump “is in the Epstein files.” Of course Trump is in the Epstein files. He was a close associate of Epstein’s. If he isn’t in the files, the investigators didn’t do much of an investigation, i.e. they forgot to so much as google “Jeffrey Epstein and ___” to find all the people Epstein publicly hung out with.

In fact, the only surprise so far in the Epstein case has been that MAGA supporters feel betrayed by Trump, whose officials have reneged on their commitments to release the full Epstein files including a list of Epstein’s clients. The backpedaling has been ludicrous. Attorney General Pam Bondi, after saying that Epstein’s client list was on her desk for review, released a memo saying that there was no client list at all. FBI director Kash Patel promised the public that “we’re going to give you every single thing we have and can” but the FBI then co-signed a brief memo saying that “we found no basis to revisit the disclosure of those materials” and implying that most of the unreleased Epstein files consisted of child pornography. Trump himself has waved away the case, saying we should “not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about” and claiming that Democrats created the Epstein files. 

A lot of people in MAGA-world are disappointed, and with good reason. The Trump administration’s claims make no sense. Even if Epstein did not have a piece of paper he called his client list, surely investigators can put together a list of his associates and what is known about the relationships he had with them. Do we have Epstein’s emails? His phone records? His texts? The administration is arguing that while Epstein had many high-profile contacts, he kept his sex trafficking entirely between himself and partner Ghislaine Maxwell. In other words, he did not procure girls for other wealthy elites, as he’s alleged to have done. But what leads the FBI to that conclusion? The aforementioned 2-page memo doesn’t explain how it reached the conclusions it does. 

Trump is right that Epstein is long dead and the case may seem moot. But if Epstein was indeed providing underage girls to others beyond himself, there are unconvicted predators roaming freely. The original Epstein sweetheart plea deal was an outrage—despite abusing hundreds of young girls, the billionaire was given an 18-month sentence, mostly on work release, during which he was allowed to work in the offices of a foundation he created. It exemplified the two-tiered justice system in the United States whereby billionaires are allowed to get away with whatever they like—even child sexual abuse—while the poor get lengthy prison terms for far lesser crimes.

Democrats have started to hammer the Trump administration over the Epstein files, and I think this is politically smart. Ro Khanna has rather cleverly called for a vote on the full release of the files, to force every legislator to put themselves on the record. The files put Trump in a no-win position, as can be seen by his desperate floundering on social media and pleas for his supporters to move on. He can’t release the files (because he’s in them), but he can’t not release the files (because it looks like an obvious cover-up). All he can do is hope people move on, which is why it’s a good idea for Democrats to try to keep the issue alive. 

But the Epstein situation also conveniently exposes the fraudulence at the heart of Trumpism itself. Here we have a classic demonstration of how MAGA followers have been tricked into thinking Trump is anti-elite, when he is actually a core part of the American elite. This contradiction has always been difficult for MAGA supporters to defend; witness how flummoxed Steve Bannon got when a reporter asked him how Trump could possibly be a representative of the people against the rich elites when he’s a billionaire with a cabinet full of fellow billionaires. Bannon had no good answers. Trump promises working people that he cares about them, but then he takes away their Medicaid and their disaster response agencies so he can give his rich friends a tax break! It’s all a big lie, a lie illustrated vividly by the Epstein case. You think the world is run by a cabal of billionaires who get away with sex crimes? Well, you’re right, but your guy is one of them. Perhaps the Epstein case will be a moment of revelation for some of the MAGA followers who thought Trump was their ally against people like Epstein, when he was Epstein’s ally against people like them. 

At Compact magazine, Michael Tracey attempts to throw cold water on what he calls the “Epstein mythology,” the idea that Jeffrey Epstein “orchestrated a sprawling child sex-trafficking operation in which the powerful individuals across government, business, entertainment, and academia with whom Epstein consorted were systematically entrapped into compromising sexual encounters, surreptitiously filmed, and then blackmailed into silence or complicity—likely with the assistance of some unknown intelligence agencies.” For Tracey, figures like Patel, Bongino, Bondi, and Trump are essentially reaping what they sowed: they hyped up the Epstein files when it seemed like something Democrats weren’t disclosing, then got into power, found there was nothing there, and are now stuck, because they promised their base something they couldn’t deliver.

Tracey could be right: the maximalist version of this story (an organized child sex-trafficking operation) may be false. But then why wouldn't the administration be fully transparent, to defuse public curiosity? I'm myself not too persuaded by some of the conspiracy theories. Personally I’ve never found it difficult to believe that Epstein committed suicide—after all, he was a billionaire who was finally facing the loss of his whole empire, a life in prison, and the stigma of being one of the country’s best-known sex offenders. Wouldn’t suicide seem like a pretty likely course of action? But even if I agree with Tracey that the right is always conjuring fantastical “elite pedophilia networks” that do not exist, we still don’t have answers on the core question: did Epstein ever furnish women and girls to other powerful men? If so, who and when? Was Donald Trump himself involved, during his period of close friendship with Epstein? What did he know? When did he know it? The administration has not answered these questions, and makes it clear that it has no intention of answering them. Until they do, we are justified in assuming there is something to hide.