MAGA World’s Mega Meltdown Over Latest Epstein Flop
The online right wants the attorney general fired after being told that the disgraced sex trafficker did not, in fact, have a client list.

The Epstein Client List Blowup
IN FEBRUARY, ATTORNEY GENERAL Pam Bondi boasted in a Fox News appearance that she had the much-anticipated client list of the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein literally on her desk. Soon, she implied, she would be given the clearance to release it.
“The DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients? Will that really happen?” Fox anchor John Roberts asked.
“It’s sitting on my desk right now to review,” Bondi replied. “That’s been a directive by President Trump.”
An official White House account on X posted the clip, which gave Bondi’s remarks the administration’s public imprimatur. The Epstein conspiracist community was thrilled.
But nearly five months later, all that excitement has come crashing down. On Sunday evening, Bondi’s Justice Department said in an undated, unaddressed, and unsigned memo—provided to Axios—that the Epstein client list wouldn’t be released. Why? Because it apparently never existed at all.
“This systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list,’” the two-page document reads.
The memo also says that Epstein killed himself in jail, rather than being a victim of a murder, and that no further Epstein documents would be released. Maybe most injurious to pro-Trump conspiracy theorists, the memo also claims that Epstein wasn’t blackmailing anyone and that the 300 gigabytes of Epstein-related material in the bureau’s possession did not implicate any third parties, puncturing the very idea—held up as an article of faith by some on the MAGA right—that the disgraced New York financier was running a CIA or Mossad honeypot.
All of that has infuriated some of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters, who are alternatively calling for Bondi to be fired, or accusing CIA Director John Ratcliffe of orchestrating a larger coverup, or wondering if the tentacles of the Deep State reach far deeper than they previously believed.
But the Epstein memo fiasco also shows something bigger: the serious bind the administration finds itself in after promising to uncover evidence of conspiracy theories that, apparently, just don’t exist.
The memo has also left a more immediate question for the White House: What did Bondi mean when she said Epstein’s client list was on her desk?
On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Bondi was using “client list” as a kind of shorthand for all Epstein-related documentation.
“She was saying the entirety of all the paperwork, all of the paper,” Leavitt told Fox’s Peter Doocy.
Somehow, that hasn’t cleared up the confusion or washed away the anger.
“Trump has to fire Pam Bondi!” right-wing media influencers “The Hodge Twins” posted on X. “She went on camera and told the world she has the Epstein client list on her desk. Now they say there is no list??”
“Next the DOJ will say ‘Actually, Jeffrey Epstein never even existed,’” Alex Jones tweeted. “This is over the top sickening.”
THAT’S JUST A SMALL SAMPLING of the aggrievement. Perhaps no one has been more sore about this than the right-wing influencers whom Bondi roped into the Epstein binders debacle.
To recap: On February 27, an assortment of right-wing internet figures—Mike Cernovich, Jack Posobiec, Scott Presler—visited the White House for meetings with administration officials. Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel surprised them with binders touting “Phase 1” of the Epstein files, which some of them then triumphantly waved in front of photographers.
The stunt fizzled almost immediately: It turned out that the binders primarily contained already-public information about Epstein. Now with their reputations inadvertently tied to Bondi’s Epstein investigation, some of those conservative influencers have become her harshest critics.
Liz Wheeler, a right-wing commentator who was at the binder release, called on Bondi to be fired on Monday. Rogan O’Handley, a conservative memester known as “DC Draino” who also got a binder, said on X that he’ll continue to press for justice against the “pedo elites.”
This wouldn’t be the only time that the administration’s reliance on right-wing media has posed unexpected challenges in the area of Epstein disclosures. In one of the stranger subplots of this saga, Bondi—apparently not realizing she was on camera—told an agent for undercover-video impresario James O’Keefe that the release of the Epstein files was being held up by “tens of thousands” of videos of Epstein abusing “little kids.”
On May 7, after O’Keefe approached the Justice Department for comment on the video but before he went live with the story, Bondi reiterated the same claim she’d made privately—but this time in front of TV cameras on the White House lawn. O’Keefe took this as an attempt to front-run his video. Then, last week, the Associated Press reported that lawyers and officials who had worked on Epstein cases had no idea why Bondi was using the figure of “tens of thousands,” suggesting the attorney general had made yet another baseless claim about the investigation.
With future Epstein developments unlikely for now, right-wing media figures are left to look for scapegoats. Bondi is at the top of the list. But so is Ratcliffe, with conservative commentator Mike Benz appearing on Benny Johnson’s show on Monday to suggest the CIA hasn’t been open enough about its own Epstein information.
One theory for the Epstein-files flameout that has been circulating on right-wing social media is that the truth is being suppressed because of Trump’s own prominent role in the files. Variations on “Elon was right” circulated widely on Monday—referring to former Trump ally Elon Musk’s June 5 tweet, since deleted, saying “Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.”
Still others are pivoting to the idea that perhaps the pedophile cabal is just too powerful, and it’s time to move on. Popular MAGA X account “Insurrection Barbie” argued the Epstein investigation shouldn’t be the “end all and be all defining moment of the Trump presidency,” and that anyone saying otherwise was a grifter looking to get rich off of Epstein theories.
Cernovich, the Pizzagate conspiracy theorist who has been one of the right’s premier Epsteinologists, decided that Trump was just not big enough to take on the pedos. Oh well!
“There is a chain of command on this planet, and elite pedophiles are at the very top,” Cernovich wrote on X. “Even above Trump. Way above him.”
I'd bet almost anything that trump is on the client list. Bondi and Patel know it and that is what they are covering up -- and I bet lots of other people we know are also on the list.
How did a dunce like Blondie Bondi pass the Bar Exam? She acts and talks like she has an IQ of 75, well, maybe 73.