Donald Trump appears to enjoy spreading conspiracy theories – he has certainly benefited from them politically.
His entry into politics dates to 2011 when he was considering a White House run and gave interviews urging then-president Barack Obama to release his birth certificate. He questioned if Obama was born in the United States.
“There is something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t like,” he claimed to ABC News.
Along the way, Trump has alleged the founder of a militant group known as the Weather Underground wrote Obama’s memoir, and that Ted Cruz’s father was connected to the 1963 Kennedy assassination.
He even retweeted a claim Bill Clinton had Jeffrey Epstein murdered while the disgraced financier was in jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
The false claims, including his allegation that the 2020 election was rigged, appear to have helped Trump rather than hurt him, especially among his Maga base.
But now he’s facing a backlash from many of those same supporters. With no small irony it relates to Epstein, 66, who was found dead in a New York prison cell in 2019.
Ever since the death of Epstein, who once associated with everyone from Prince Andrew to Bill Gates and Trump himself, there have been demands from those on the right to release details of his purported “client list”. They hoped it would deliver damning evidence against Democrats and other powerful people.
Trump speaking at the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally before the January 6 storming of the Capitol in Washington, DC, where he repeated the conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was rigged (Photo: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty)In February 2022, when Prince Andrew made a million-dollar financial settlement with Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, there was anticipation of similar moves. The British royal has always denied wrongdoing. In April of this year, Giuffre took her own life in Australia.
In February, Trump’s top law enforcement official, Attorney General Pam Bondi stoked the fire when she appeared on Fox News and was asked when the list would be released.
“It’s sitting on my desk right now to review,” she said.
After the first “tranche” of documents released in February included no major revelations, the pressure had been mounting to deliver something dramatic in the second tranche.
Now the administration is claiming there is no bombshell, despite what had been suggested. On Monday, Bondi said there had been no client list and decided no “further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted”.
The Department of Justice (DoJ) said most of the remaining material was being sealed in order to protect victims.
The reaction from some of Trump’s most usually loyal supporters has been nothing less than splenetic. “This is the swamp winning,” seethed veteran conspiracist Alex Jones, who once claimed the fatal 2012 shooting of 26 primary schoolchildren and their teachers was “staged”.
He added: “The question is, is Trump’s DOJ actually using this to control the deep state, or are they just so overwhelmed by it they are tapping out?”
Media network LindellTV, established by Trump loyalist Mike Lindell, said figures such as Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel had chosen to “align with the official story”.
A post on its X page said: “Many are asking: Who’s still willing to demand real answers,” said “Why are so many high-profile names never mentioned. The DOJ says the case is closed. But for millions of Americans, it’s anything but.”
Laura Loomer, another figure who is influential among the conspiracist wing of Trump supporters, called on Bondi to resign. “The American people and Maga base will not tolerate being lied to,” she said on social media.
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Rogan O’Handley, aka DC Draino, had been among the loudest voices calling for the files to be released. On Monday he said “this is a shameful cover-up to protect the most heinous elites”.
On X, Elon Musk, another spreader of conspiracies, wrote: “What’s the time? Oh look, it’s no-one-has-been-arrested-o’clock again.”
Another irony is that some of the people who had been pushing the conspiracy are now trying to insist there’s nothing to see. FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said the evidence was clear Epstein had killed himself.
Two years ago, when he was merely a much-listened to podcast host and not Trump’s appointee to the FBI, Bongino sounded much more sceptical. “Jeffrey Epstein story is a big deal, please do not let that story go,” he told listeners in 2023.
The White House has been punching back over the accusations of a cover-up. “They committed to an exhaustive investigation,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters “That’s what they did.”
For Trump, who once described Epstein as a “lot of fun to be with”, the episode ought to be a wake-up call.
When conspiracies are set in motion they can take on power out of anyone’s control. And sometimes – as in this case – they come back and bite you.
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