Gift Horse
You wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. And if you did, you'd know it wasn't right.
I didn’t want to write this. The Epstein stuff is genuinely frustrating, for a whole host of reasons. People are dug-in to their beliefs about what did or did not take place. Some folks have launched “independent media” careers on the backs of the Epstein conspiracy (looking at you, Tara Palmeri). Cable news coverage keeps coming back to this story with each new revelation, regardless of the credibility of the new bits of information. It’s something that generates enormous amounts of attention.
But it’s not just “independent media” or cable news that keeps this story alive. It’s also our own elected representatives. For years, MAGA Republicans have all been in lockstep about the need to “release the files.” In fact, some of the most high level people in the Trump administration have been at the forefront of pushing the Epstein conspiracy, and yes, I’m going to refer to it as a conspiracy from now on. Kash Patel (FBI Director), JD Vance (Vice President), Dan Bongino (FBI Deputy Director, who resigned recently), and many others all can be found on various podcasts or making public statements declaring that something is being hidden from the people. Eventually, this trickled down to non-MAGA Republicans, like Congressman Thomas Massie, and Democrat Congressman Ro Khanna, who co-sponsored a bill in Congress to force the Department of Justice to release everything it had on Epstein.
Keep in mind, the Epstein conspiracy was initially beneficial to MAGA, and the Trump movement. It intertwined neatly with QAnon believers, and other conspiracy-addled people who would support Donald Trump even if he was seen on video murdering a puppy. Those names I mentioned, Kash Patel, JD Vance, Dan Bongino, all gained something from pushing this conspiracy theory. For Patel and Bongino, it was fame in MAGA media. For JD Vance, it was credibility with Trump’s base. But then Trump won the election in 2024, and suddenly, the dog had caught the car.
After spending years convincing their audience that something was being covered up, the people who pushed that conspiracy were now in a position to reveal everything. And you know who really wanted them to reveal everything? All the fucking people whose brains were rotted by listening to these very same influencers and politicians. Initially, Attorney General Pam Bondi tried a media stunt, handing out binders with “Phase 1” information on the Epstein conspiracy to various MAGA influencers, in an attempt to give the base what it wanted. It quickly backfired on Bondi, and eventually, on the entire administration.
Democrats saw this as an opportunity to drive a wedge between Trump and the Republican Party. As I briefly mentioned earlier, there was this thing called a “discharge petition,” which effectively forced the House Speaker, Mike Johnson, to allow a floor vote on a bill that would demand the Department of Justice releases everything it has on the Epstein conspiracy. The Democrats were in lock step on this petition, which needed 218 signatures. In order to get to that number, some Republicans would need to sign on, too. In fact, there ended up being just 4 Republicans who signed that petition, angering Donald Trump in the process: Thomas Massie, Lauren Boebert, Nancy Mace, and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Despite being more than a month past the deadline to release the files, according to the bill that passed Congress (and was ultimately signed by President Trump), the DOJ finally released millions of files to the public. Yes, they are heavily redacted—and in some cases, not redacted properly to protect the names of victims—but so far, what has been revealed is a bunch of correspondence between Jeffrey Epstein and other high profile people. Names like: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Howard Lutnick, Steve Bannon, Sir Richard Branson, Larry Summers, and Bill Clinton can be found in this document dump.
But having their name appear in these files is not the same thing as being implicated in a crime. In fact, both Kash Patel and Dan Bongino admitted that there was no “client list” or blackmail targets, nor was Epstein murdered in his prison cell. There was no evidence of a vast conspiracy, and the people who were revealing this information, were the same people who were pushing the conspiracy in the first place! Again, the dog caught the car…
But it’s not just about these MAGA influencers turned FBI leaders.
You know who else has helped to prop up this conspiracy? Democrats, and members of the legacy media. They saw an opportunity to hurt Trump, and they’ve taken full advantage of it. But in the process of doing so, they’ve also enabled this conspiracy to continue to take on a life of its own. Social media accounts are taking what is effectively known as “raw intelligence” and posting it for everyone to see, as if it were legitimate or credible information.
I want to give a brief shout out to Matthew Schmitz, who writes for “FirstThings.” Back in September, he wrote a fantastic article, one that I hadn’t seen until earlier today. It’s called “The Epstein Myth,” and you can read it all here. This article was the final straw for me when it comes to the Epstein conspiracy. Everything clicked into place after reading it. Ordinarily, I’m highly skeptical of any conspiracy theories. From the moon landing, to JFK, to 9/11, chem trails, and whatever other shit people want to throw at the wall, there are conspiracy theories out there to appeal to anyone and everyone. And in college days, I would have believed in many of them. No longer.
So how did Epstein slip one past the goalie here?
Easy. I didn’t particularly care. And honestly, if it was going to hurt Trump in some way, or fracture his “base” then I was all for it. I had no reason to think otherwise. But this is lazy on my part, and I should have listened to my own instincts much sooner.
Generally speaking, when conducting an investigation, law enforcement is well served by observing patterns. For example, if multiple people are alleged to have been involved in a crime, you keep them separated, and ask them to tell their side of the story. If the stories match, that could be a sign that they’re telling the truth. If their stories dont match, then one of them is probably lying. The same can be said of the initial investigation into Epstein.
Back in 2005, investigators began to hear from victims about their experiences with Epstein. He was paying these, often times under age, girls to give him a massage, and then he would masturbate in their presence. It wasn’t just one or two victims. It was over a dozen. And their stories all had similar aspects.
But as time went on, the accusations against Epstein started to border on absurd, and venture into full blown conspiracy theory territory. Keep in mind, that in 2021, Epstein’s close friend, Ghislaine Maxwell, was convicted of sex trafficking. But she was convicted of sex trafficking to one person: Epstein. There was no indication of any sort of blackmail scheme, or international pedophile ring, or anything of the sort. Surely if those things were true, they’d have come out in the trial for Maxwell.
So where did all of those theories come from? Matthew Schmitz writes:
The person most responsible for promoting the idea that Epstein engaged in blackmail is Virginia Giuffre. In a 2015 affidavit, Giuffre claimed that Epstein had trafficked her “for sexual purposes to many other powerful men”—including Prince Andrew of the British royal family and the attorney Alan Dershowitz. Epstein did this, Giuffre claimed, to ensure that his targets would be “in his pocket.” She also later suggested that he had done it on behalf of Israeli intelligence. It isn’t entirely clear why Israeli intelligence would need to blackmail Alan Dershowitz, a lifelong defender of the Jewish state. And faced with legal action from Dershowitz, Giuffre later admitted that she “may have made a mistake” in identifying him.
Giuffre had a history of making claims that failed to withstand scrutiny. In 1998, at age fourteen, she swore that two male acquaintances, aged eighteen and seventeen, had sexually assaulted her. Following a months-long investigation, prosecutors declined to pursue the case, “due to the victim’s lack of credibility and no substantial likelihood of success at trial.” This incident is omitted from Giuffre’s memoir, which instead describes her being kidnapped in a stretch limousine by a man named Ron Eppinger, then freed by a team of FBI agents. (The FBI has no record of this incident.)
Giuffre’s first uncredited allegation is mirrored by her last. On March 30, 2025, shortly before she committed suicide, Giuffre accused a bus driver with sixteen years’ experience of hitting her car while going 110 kilometers (68 miles) per hour. Giuffre posted a photo of herself with a black eye, supposedly sustained in the crash, and the caption: “They’ve given me four days to live . . . I’m ready to go, just not until I see my babies one last time.” Her claims may have been an attempt to make contact with her children, whom she had been barred from seeing under a restraining order. In any case, the driver refuted her allegations, explaining that his bus was factory-designed never to go more than 100 kilometers (62 miles) per hour.
I’m not in the business of speaking ill of the dead, and Virginia Giuffre’s life is certainly one that was marred by tragedy. However, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And considering Giuffre’s history, it’s entirely fair to question the validity of her claims. In her book, which was released months after her death, she reveals that her own father (allegedly) abused her starting around age 7. Her father denies those allegations. Then, she claims her husband of 20 years was abusive to her as well. He also denies those allegations.
Again, this is not an attempt to attack Giuffre. It’s about putting things into proper context. But it wasn’t just Giuffre who was making wild claims about powerful men linked to Epstein and Maxwell.
Again, from Matthew Schmitz:
Sarah Ransome, another Epstein accuser, also claimed that he ran a blackmail ring. In 2016, she told a reporter at the New York Post that she possessed sex tapes featuring figures such as Donald Trump and Bill Clinton. She also told the reporter that she was involved in an international cat-and-mouse game: “My emails have been hacked. I have reached out to the Russians for help and they are coming to my aid. Thank goodness for Anonymous!!!!” (Ransome later told the New Yorker that she had invented the tapes.)
Perhaps the most substantial support for the belief that Epstein ran a blackmail ring comes from a 2019 article in the Daily Beast. The article contains a second- or third-hand claim from an unnamed source, to the effect that Epstein received a light sentence in Florida because he “belonged to intelligence.” According to the unnamed source, Alex Acosta, the federal prosecutor in the case, gave this explanation to Trump administration officials while he was being vetted as secretary of labor.
There are several reasons to doubt this report, aside from the thin sourcing. Vicky Ward, the author of the story, has a history of dealing loosely with facts (as her former colleagues at Vanity Fair recently told the New Yorker). And Acosta later denied—on the record and under oath—that he had any knowledge of Epstein’s being involved with intelligence.
Do you see a pattern emerging here?
The article by Matthew Schmitz goes on to detail how these allegations that claim Epstein was leading some sort of international pedophilia ring, closely mirror conspiracy theories like QAnon, or the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Fundamentally, these conspiracy theories rely on paranoia and speculation. And in the case of Epstein, given the complications with his initial “sweetheart deal,” and then years later, his death in prison, it’s left people with a lot of questions.
But that doesn’t excuse going down a conspiratorial rabbit hole, either. In fact, if someone is curious about that “sweetheart deal,” they can read about it in the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility report. The long and short of it is that state prosecutors at the time, did not feel confident they could get a conviction. Epstein was extremely wealthy, and well-connected. He hired the best legal defense team imaginable. Eventually the case reached federal prosecutor, Alex Acosta. Rather than risk losing in court, and watching Epstein get away with his crimes, Acosta negotiated with Epstein’s defense, ultimately securing a “non-prosecution agreement,” in which Epstein agreed to serve some jail time, register as a sex offender, and pay damages to the victims. All of those things would not have happened if Epstein beat the charges at trial.
A follower of mine on Twitter/X pointed out something that I thought was really relevant to all of this:
This is not to say that Epstein wasn’t a monster. He obviously was, and none of this is an attempt to excuse his behavior, or downplay it. Not in the slightest.
What I am trying to do here in writing this, is to explain how and why I’ve come to the conclusion that these allegations of Epstein running an international pedophile ring, or a shadowy cabal of “elites” abusing women via their connections to Epstein, are in fact, bullshit conspiracies. And honestly, these conspiracy theories do absolutely nothing to help the women who were actually abused by Epstein and Maxwell.
The conspiracy theory angle is now supported fully by all sides of this shit sandwich. The MAGA Republicans suspect that their hero Trump is covering his own ass, or the asses of his friends, the Democrats think similarly, but also extend their suspicions out to other powerful and wealthy men. And then you have all the normies in the middle who dont know what to think, who are being pelted with social media posts by influencers and irresponsible media outlets looking for clicks and engagement.
That is how this blew up into a giant conspiracy theory. It served everyone’s interests in one way or another. You can believe in Epstein conspiracies as a way to hurt Trump. You can also believe in them to hurt Democrats by asking why they didn’t pursue this issue when they were in power. And if you’re a social media influencer, what better content to generate engagement than speculation about rich elites abusing vulnerable young women?
Or, you can also believe, as I do, that the truth still matters. But for most people these days, they just want someone to blame. The truth exists only to serve their purposes. After all, you wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
PS: The song I’m linking to here was written about the inventor of the polygraph, John Larson, who would later in life come to regret creating the device, because of how it was abused to incriminate the innocent.
“Beyond my expectation, through uncontrollable factors, this scientific investigation became for practical purposes, a Frankenstein’s monster, which I have spent over 40 years in combating." - John Larson