Elon Musk and Donald Trump finally split up at the end of May 2025 with a shower of invective from one side and the shattered trust of a broken marriage. After a public meltdown about Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, Musk escalated with another vicious serve against the President on June 5. Trump, Musk posted on X, was one of the villains he had been warning his base about for years. “Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!” In a follow-up, Musk wrote: “Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.” A month later, on July 7, the Department of Justice and the FBI released an unsigned one-and-a-half-page memo stating that after an exhaustive search of “its databases, hard drives, and network drives as well as physical searches of squad areas, locked cabinets, desks, closets, and other areas where responsive material may have been stored” and a corresponding review of more than three hundred gigabytes of evidence, the DOJ had concluded there was no evidence the notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had maintained a “client list.” The memo also reaffirmed the original official finding that Epstein’s death in 2019 had been a suicide. And with that, the memo indicated, the Trump administration would not be releasing further information regarding the Epstein case, and no further investigation of uncharged third parties was warranted. The memo was accompanied by the release of video footage from the federal prison in Manhattan where Epstein had died, footage that officials said supported the conclusion of suicide. Less than five months after Attorney General Pam Bondi had referred to a secret “client list” of high-profile predators, the case was closed. Or so it seemed. If the administration expected the memo would be the last word on the Epstein case, and that the President’s most ardent supporters would accept the purported conclusions of the Department of Justice simply because the department and its investigative agencies were now controlled by Donald Trump, they were sorely mistaken. The memo was an earthquake, and it was received by a portion of the MAGA base as a betrayal. It amounted to an abrupt disavowal of the sinister conspiracy theories that some of Trump’s closest confidants had hyped during the Biden presidency and that they had promised to expose once Trump was returned to power. On the Lex Fridman Podcast in September 2024, when asked about the “client list,” Trump had responded, “I’d certainly take a look at it…. I’d have no problem with it.” The list “probably will be” made public, he said, but he sounded half-hearted. Trump’s campaign allies and surrogates were far less circumspect. Donald Trump Jr. and JD Vance had invoked the Epstein files as a broader campaign message to argue that “powerful people” in the government were hiding the truth from Americans. Just weeks before the election, Vance told the podcast host Theo Von, “Seriously, we need to release the Epstein list. That is an important thing.” In the engine room of the MAGA movement during the 2024 campaign, the Epstein files were potent fuel. An Epstein information ecosystem of right-wing “influencers” had manned the coal shovel. Elon Musk had used his social media platform to repeatedly question why a “client list” had not been released. His posts reached hundreds of millions of users. The far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones used his Infowars platform to aggressively promote theories about a global pedophile ring. Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk had both insisted the government should release the documents and floated the idea that there was a massive cover-up in progress. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who had seemingly never met a conspiracy theory she did not embrace, spent much of her political capital lobbying for the release of the files. There were so many more. Laura Loomer, conservative activist Scott Presler, Chaya Raichik from Libs of TikTok. The Hodgetwins. But when it came to propagating the Epstein files as evidence of a “deep state” capable of evil, two podcasters were not to be outdone. On his own show Kash’s Corner, and in appearances on programs like Benny Johnson’s The Benny Show, Kash Patel—a National Security Council director for counterterrorism and Pentagon chief of staff in the first Trump era—had repeatedly claimed that the government was hiding Epstein’s “black book” or “client list” of pedophiles. In a 2023 interview, he challenged officials to “put on your big-boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are,” and he frequently asserted that the FBI was deliberately withholding names to protect the powerful. Patel promised a second Trump administration would release “everything” to restore public trust. On The Dan Bongino Show, Bongino’s background as a Secret Service agent had lent authority to his claims of a cover-up. “What the hell are they hiding with Jeffrey Epstein?” he’d asked his large audience. The release of the files would “rock the political world,” he promised. The “Washington swamp” was “not telling you the truth.” Now he and Patel—whose appointments to run the FBI had been greeted with righteous enthusiasm by Epstein files obsessives—were tightly connected to a memo that stated, in black and white, that while information in the government’s possession showed ample evidence of Epstein’s own wrongdoing, there was no evidence of a wider conspiracy. Both men had been raising alarms internally that the Epstein crisis was gathering momentum with the base. Bongino hated the memo. He told Patel it would in no way align with their promises of transparency after taking over the FBI, and he objected to putting the FBI seal on the letterhead. He was overruled. Patel privately shared many of Bongino’s concerns. But in an internal email on Wednesday, July 2, the FBI director gave his support. “Thanks for the edits, and I still believe this is the correct vehicle forward,” Patel wrote to a small group of colleagues, including Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. “I’m happy to add any additional sentences to compete [sic] the short fall. But I do think we addressed specifically why more can’t be released as it relates to specific topics ie court order, csam [child sexual abuse material], victim protections etc.” Bondi rarely used her Justice Department email and was not on the chain where they workshopped the memo that set off the crisis. She was aware of both the planned memo and the prison video release, but was not involved in editing the document. Inside the White House, Trump had no interest in releasing anything. And senior officials—including Susie Wiles and her deputy, James Blair—were initially skeptical about the reach of the Epstein crisis. They told colleagues that Republican voters didn’t care, and they had Tony Fabrizio’s polling to prove it. The Epstein brouhaha, in their view, was driven by fringe conspiracy theorists and amplified by noisy online influencers who didn’t represent a meaningful bloc of voters. Bongino told anyone who would listen that this was a grave mistake. “It’s not an online story. You don’t understand,” he told several White House advisors. Wiles, Blair, and others thought at the time that engaging with the Epstein situation would only enlarge it—putting an official stamp on the matter. Besides, Trump had weathered every storm imaginable for years. Why would this be any different?"
Start reading this book for free: https://read.amazon.com/kp/kshare?asin=B0FH2K4T1C&ref_=kar_wh_ca
