“The first possibility is that the most senior officials in the Trump administration — including President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel — exploited a terrible child sex trafficking tragedy for their personal political and financial gain. Some of these officials, perhaps all of them, knew that there was no elaborate government conspiracy or cover-up surrounding Epstein’s crimes or his death, but they intentionally misled millions of Americans for years to make money, get Trump back in the White House or both. And now that they’re in office, they’re dealing with the mess they made.
A second possibility is that the Justice Department’s review of the evidence in the Epstein case turned up references to Trump — on something akin to a “client list” or otherwise — and that the government is now engaged in a cover-up to protect the president. This cannot be ruled out given Trump’s social history with Epstein prior to Epstein’s arrest; Trump has previously been referenced in public documents released in court cases surrounding Epstein, though Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing in the matter. Also potentially notable is Trump’s hyper-defensive attempt to turn the page at a Cabinet meeting last week by claiming that the public needed to ignore the conspiracy theories and move on — a striking position for a man who is famous for his own conspiracy theories and never moving on from things.
Still a third possibility is that the administration has been telling the truth from the start — that officials believed the conspiracy theories they had fueled and are only now discovering there is no Epstein “client list” and no evidence that Epstein blackmailed anyone. In this scenario, Trump and everyone else were all just as surprised by these revelations as many of Trump’s supporters are, and now they’re struggling with the fallout.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/07/16/jeffrey-epstein-doj-pam-bondi-column-00454487