This article is about the realization that you are the thing you hate. US President Donald Trump’s supporters and many of his political underlings campaigned on promises to rid America of the “deep state”: an opaque network of overlapping and competing intelligence interests working beneath the surface of the US political system. The administration’s cover up of the Jeffrey Epstein files has, however, created a crisis of confidence in that it now denies the very narrative it once pushed. In doing so, Team Trump has forced its supporters to confront an uncomfortable reality: that their leader is part of — or is acting to protect — the deep state.
Starting with a timeline of the Epstein-Trump relationship and the decade-long protection of Epstein by federal officials, the article asks how pro- and anti-Trump propagandists have responded to the administration’s actions. Exploring psychological concepts, including gaslighting and shaming, it also examines the administration’s own efforts to spin its way out of the mire.
The Trump-Epstein Connection: Buried Bodies
Trump first met Epstein circa 1987: roughly the same time that the businessman Les Wexner hired Epstein as a financial manager. Journalist Michael Wolff claims to have audio of Epstein saying that he and Trump were close friends. (However, in this era of off-the-shelf deepfake software, the veracity of the recording can be questioned.) The two frequently partied together and allegedly swapped women. In the year 2000, the late trafficking victim Virginia Roberts’s father, Sky, worked in maintenance at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club where he landed Virginia a spa job. Epstein’s co-trafficker/abuser Ghislaine Maxwell recruited Virginia in Epstein’s network.
Wolff claims that Epstein asked him to write a biography, which is credible given Wolff’s high-profile and Epstein’s possible desire to whitewash his tarnished image. During a series of meetings in New York, Epstein allegedly showed Wolff photos of Trump with a trouser-stain surrounded by “four or five” apparent minors. Wolff believes that law enforcement agencies have those images, if they even exist. (When asked what he did with the hours of taped interviews, Wolff replied: “I don’t know. And it’s a good question.” Wolff added: “I cannot believe that people would not want [this story] told.” So, why did Wolff wait until 2025 to tell us?)
Proof of Epstein’s sexual abuse of children came in 2001. Local police monitored his activities for four years before acting. Why? In 2002, Trump dropped a hint that Epstein was an ephebophile: “…he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” Had the interviewer caught Trump off-guard? Was Trump making a veiled threat to expose Epstein? Or was Trump indirectly denying any involvement with minors by deflecting attention to Epstein’s proclivities?
Journalist Nick Bryant has claimed that the circles in Epstein’s 2004-era address book indicate that contacts were working (or “in cahoots”) with Epstein. This is a credible theory because Maxwell and the aforementioned Wexner are highlighted in the book. Trump’s contact details are also circled. The book was stolen in the mid-2000s, around the same time that Trump and Epstein fell out over a real estate purchase.
Federal Interference: The Cover-up Begins
In 2005, several minors reported to local law enforcement that they had been abused by Epstein. Detective Joseph Recarey of Palm Beach, Florida, believes that Epstein was tipped off because when police raided his property, computers were missing. Who tipped him off? One of the lead “prosecutors” who reportedly aided the cover-up, Marie Villafaña, reckoned that the missing machines contained child sex abuse material. It is possible that FBI agents had already seized, marked, and returned Epstein’s photo and video collection because, later, FBI agents assigned to the Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force noticed that the items had already been marked as evidence.
In addition to portraying the trafficking victims as willing prostitutes, State Attorney Barry Krischer (Democrat) of West Palm Beach, protected Epstein by limiting the evidence to the testimonies of three girls. He then brought the case before a grand jury where a single victim testified. “Epstein hired an army of legal superstars,” including Roy Black and Alan Dershowitz. The latter had visited Epstein’s private island where he received “massages.” The former had previously been accused of using an Israeli bank to launder drug money (which he denies). Dershowitz helped to negotiate a non-prosecution agreement. (Zionism is a common ideology binding Dershowitz—an infamous Israel-firster—and Krischer, who was later given The Jurisprudence Award by the Zionist organization, the Anti-Defamation League.)
Alexander Acosta was US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Acosta has stated that he was bullied by Dershowitz et al. He claims to have facilitated the plea deal in order to keep the case at the state, not federal, level. Local police were allegedly unhappy with federal interference in the case, while local FBI were supposedly content that Acosta held his ground against the “army” of high-profile lawyers. In 2017, Trump picked Acosta as Secretary of Labor. Republicans were concerned that Acosta’s involvement in Epstein’s plea deal might be problem. Acosta reportedly reassured them: “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.” In 2019, Trump praised Acosta’s handling of the case, but this was not enough to prevent his resignation.
Evidence Goes Missing: The Accused Dies
Having protected Epstein for over a decade, the question remains as to why federal authorities allowed the predator/intelligence asset to be arrested in 2019. New York prosecutors argued that the Acosta-era non-prosecution agreement did not apply in their jurisdiction. However, Epstein was eventually indicted in a federal Manhattan court. As part of an undercover operation, FBI and New York Police Department officials nabbed Epstein at a New Jersey airport on his return from France. The Republican Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, was instrumental in prosecuting Epstein. Berman had a reputation for pursuing high-profile cases of alleged fraud and corruption. Did Berman simply want to do the right thing, further his career, punish Trump for not nominating him, or follow top-down orders to prosecute Epstein?
On July 8th 2019, the Department of Justice announced that Epstein had been charged with the sex-trafficking of minors. Curiously, the charges related strictly to the 2002-05 period. The charges did not include any of Epstein’s so-called clients. FBI Special Agent, Kelly Maguire, testified in court that her team opened Epstein’s New York safe, in which they found binders, CDs, and hard drives. Maguire’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force had taken photos of the evidence. The Task Force sought a warrant to seize the items but, astonishingly, discovered that the entire tranche had gone “missing.”
It was later claimed that an unnamed Epstein “assistant” had taken the evidence. How was it possible for anyone outside of law enforcement to have entered the crime scene? Why aren’t law enforcement pursuing the thief? Then-President Trump could have launched an investigation and fired FBI Director Christopher Wray for incompetence, but chose not to. In doing so, Trump enabled the cover-up.
Denied bail, Epstein awaited trial at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York. He was found dead in his cell on August 10th. Two security cameras outside the cell were “broken” and sent to the FBI Laboratory where it was reportedly determined that at least one set of footage was usable. Relevant federal agencies declined to comment. It is likely that the footage released by the Department of Justice in 2025 was the same recovered from the forensic Laboratory, though this has not been confirmed.
Denial: List, What List?
From 2017, a significant percentage of Trump voters had been primed for the arrest of Epstein via a professed anti-child abuse movement called QAnon. The online cult convinced followers that the Democratic establishment was a network of satanic pedophiles. The effectiveness of the psychological operationi was such that even Trump supporters who did not believe in QAnon hoped that the President would put a stop to elite child sex abuse. The arrest of Epstein was confirmation bias. Trump loyalists ignored the President’s prior ties to Epstein, believing that Trump was “trolling” Epstein by telling reporters that he liked women “on the younger side.” Some also took as trolling Trump’s well-wishes to Ghislaine Maxwell.
It is easy to prove the existence of Epstein’s flight logs, address books, blackmail material, and related law enforcement records. “Client list” appears to suggest a roster of individuals who used his illegal trafficking services. It is unclear whether the purported roster was written by Epstein or compiled by law enforcement. In 2023, future FBI Director, Kash Patel, stated that there is an Epstein client list and that the Biden administration was concealing it “because of who’s on that list.” In September 2024, future Deputy FBI Director, Dan Bongino, said of the list: “[there are] a lot of names on that … It’s going to rock the political world. There’s a reason they’re hiding it.” In February 2025, Trump’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi, said of the purported client list: “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review … That’s been a directive by President Trump.”
It therefore came as a shock to Trump supporters when, in July 2025, the President’s FBI and DoJ released a memo, stating that the organizations would not unseal the original court documents because no third-party perpetrators are named in those filings. Interestingly, the memo does not deny the existence of a client list, rather the existence of an “incriminating ‘client list’.” The memo also claims that federal authorities found “no credible evidence” of a blackmail operation. As stated earlier, many Epstein documents went missing in 2019. In addition, the FBI-DoJ whitewash relied upon sealed court documents. In a final blow to the Trump faithful, the administration stated that Epstein had killed himself after all.
The DoJ released video of the outside of Epstein’s Manhattan jail cell, stating: “anyone entering or attempting to enter the tier where Epstein’s cell was located from the SHU [special housing units] common area would have been captured by this footage.” However, media immediately noticed over 60 seconds of missing footage. Further analysis suggests that up to three minutes had been removed. In addition, there are several versions of the video, including an “FBI enhanced” version. Analysts have argued that certain versions of the video have been modified using commercial linear editing software.
Fallout: Flailing
First, the Trump administration tried to gaslight its supporters by claiming that Epstein killed himself and blackmailed no one. Second, the President himself tried to shame his supporters into silence, posting a long Truth Social message asking why his “boys” and “gals” (literally) continue to fixate on Epstein when the “perfect administration” has been achieving so many other things. Third, the administration doubled-down on its gaslighting/question-shaming tactics by continuing to support Bondi and Patel, issuing statements to the effect that supporters should hold their tongues.
Fourth, Trump resulted to insults, calling his supporters “weaklings.” Anti-Trump liberal mass media (e.g., CNN, MSNBC) have largely ignored the pain of victims and survivors, as well as the broader ramifications of a deep state network that traffics children in order to gain blackmail material on people for political influence. Instead, they have focused on the fracture within the Trump administration caused by its handling of the case. Pro-Democratic Party corporate media, for instance, have tended to hold Trump responsible for stoking “conspiracy theories” about Epstein and then complaining when the evidence fails to turn up. Other, more left-of-center media (e.g., Democracy Now!) continue to suggest a cover-up but use the fallout as a political weapon against Trump.
Pro-Trump propagandists have had a difficult time spinning their President’s handling of the case. Alex Jones’s reaction (real or not) appears to have taken a schizophrenic turn, with the commentator literally crying over Trump’s betrayal while simultaneously blaming the supposedly pro-Democratic Party deep state for putting Trump in this position. The commentator Charlie Kirk was infantilized. Just as QAnon told Americans to “trust the plan,” Kirk stated that Trump supporters must be ready to trust their leader, no matter what. Most right-wing YouTube influencers like Tucker Carlson have found Trump’s handling of the events insupportable. Trump has seen a decline in his approval-rating among Republican voters.
Conclusion: Harsh Reflection
The weight of circumstantial and witness-statement evidence strongly suggests that Jeffrey Epstein was an intelligence asset running a political blackmail operation at the expense of children and young women. These kind of networks constitute part of the so-called deep state: a permanent, unelected, secretive, unofficial arm of the state, which in many instances is above government in terms of its power and influence. For reasons unclear, Epstein was re-arrested and this time, would stand in a major trial. Before that trial could take place, however, he was murdered to silence him and the evidence stolen and/or tampered with. Epstein’s client list likely includes Donald Trump (which he denies) and/or those in Trump’s circle. For that reason, the administration is perpetuating the cover up.
It has slowly dawned on former outsiders like Patel and Bongino that, despite promising to rid America of the “deep state,” they are the deep state; that it is impossible to make change from a high position of power in the United States because beneath them are multitudes of hidden networks moving in synchrony to protect their own interests. This nebulous mass is the deep state. It cannot be easily defined or second-guessed. Millions of Trump voters have also come to realize that unless compromised or vetted by deep state actors, any Presidential candidate will have a difficult time getting into Office let alone affecting change. Their god has failed.
i Many of the high-profile people behind/involved with QAnon are or were ex-military, ex-intelligence, or former contractors: Ashli Babbitt (Army Psyops), Bill Binney (NSA), Jake Chansley (US Navy), Michael Flynn (US Army), Michael Scheuer (CIA), Thomas Schoenberger (CIA contractor), Robert David Steele (CIA), and James Watkins (US Army).
(Featured Image: “Donald Trump” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.)
