The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday and other news outlets confirmed what many had already suspected given Donald Trump’s apparent uneasiness about the unrelenting focus on his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein since his Administration tried to close the case on the alleged sex trafficker and unsuccessfully urge people to move on earlier this month.
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The Justice Department in May “informed the President at a meeting in the White House that his name was in the Epstein files,” the Journal reported, citing senior officials. Sources also told the same thing to the New York Times and CNN, among other media.
After years of allies, including officials that would join Trump’s second-term Administration, promoting conspiracy theories that past governments had suppressed incriminating Epstein-related evidence, including a supposed “client list,” Trump’s Justice Department announced in early July that it “did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties” and that “no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.”
The announcement rocked MAGA world, infuriating many of Trump’s own supporters and frustrating Trump, who has called the matter a “hoax” and “witch hunt” and tried to distract attention from it, including by baselessly accusing former President Barack Obama of treason.
Even before Wednesday’s news, Democrats had openly questioned “whether the White House has moved to prevent the declassification and public release of the full Epstein files because they implicate President Trump, and whether these massive redaction efforts and the withholding of the files were intended to shield your boss from embarrassing revelations within those files.”
And Trump’s former ally turned critic Elon Musk had raised eyebrows when he said shortly after leaving the Administration in late May that Trump “is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public,” in a since-deleted post on X.
“This is nothing more than a continuation of the fake news stories concocted by the Democrats and the liberal media,” White House communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement after the Journal’s latest report. Trump is currently suing the Journal over a report last week that Epstein received a lewd birthday drawing from Trump in 2003, which Trump denies.
That Trump’s name appears in Epstein files the government has not yet publicized has stirred a variety of reactions among his supporters.
Being in the files isn’t necessarily bad
“Being in the Epstein Files does not mean you’re a pedophile,” pro-Trump influencer Joey Mannarino posted on X. “Epstein was a member of Mar-A-Lago for years until Trump threw him out. Of course there will be incidental mentions of Trump.”
It’s an argument that even some more objective observers, like longtime Epstein reporter Julie K. Brown, have espoused. “Trumps name (along with many other names) was on Epstein’s plane logs, his name is in his ‘black book’ phone directory — and his name was on phone message pads seized by police from Epstein’s Palm Beach home in 2005,” Brown posted. “All these have long been part of the federal investigation into Epstein. So the idea that Trump’s name would be in the files isn’t new — and having your name in the files in of itself doesn’t implicate him in any wrongdoing.”
But some have pointed out the hypocrisy from Trump supporters, including Mannarino, who previously anticipated that the release of Epstein-related files would reveal high-profile Democrats linked to Epstein. Earlier this year, ahead of what turned out to be a widely disappointing document disclosure, Mannarino had posted: “The Epstein Files come tomorrow. Any living people on that list should immediately be jailed.”
And, of course, others have noted, being named in the Epstein files may not be incriminating, but it’s certainly not exculpatory either.
“We’ve seen this before”
Right-wing media personality and commentator Mike Cernovich, who was among a group of MAGA personalities who received a binder of supposed Epstein files from the White House in February, posted on X: “Epstein kept a book of phone numbers, as many of his era did, which included Trump family members and other randoms. That’s what this is in reference too. We reported this back in February.”
YouTuber Matt Christiansen similarly downplayed the revelation of Trump’s existence in the Epstein files as a “necessary conclusion” from knowledge of their already public relationship, especially after the Journal released its report on Trump’s birthday letter. “If you buy that story as true, then the Wall Street Journal said that letter is in the book that is in possession of the DOJ and the Wall Street Journal has reviewed it… then yes, Trump is in the Epstein files and his boob drawing is in there.”
Democratic deflection
Some conspiracy theorists suggested that the news of Trump’s name in the Epstein files is part of a Democratic-led conspiracy to distract from the Trump Administration’s efforts to prosecute Obama and his former officials.
Trump himself previously said as much in a post on Truth Social earlier this month, when he decried that people are “giving publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration.” Trump said “they created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me.”
Infowars founder Alex Jones claimed in a video on X on Wednesday that “the Democrats control” the FBI’s files related to Epstein and “of course there’s going to be mentions of Donald Trump.” He said: “I’ve been predicting this, so it’s true, the Democrats have been in control of those files.” Jones said he was “pissed at Trump for the Streisand effect thing,” referring to the phenomenon whereby trying to suppress something only draws more attention to it, but he said “it’s going to be more nothingburgers.”
“What we know,” Jones said, seemingly unrelated to yet part of his “analysis” of the Journal report about Trump being named in the Epstein files, “well that Obama ordered the entire Russiagate thing and tried to take down Trump. That is treason.”
Jacob Creech, a QAnon figure who uses the X handle @WarClandestine, replied to the Journal’s thread of its report, saying: “Your panic is delicious. You all will do anything to deflect from the fact that your messiah Obama is guilty of treason.”
“Why wasn’t it released before?”
Others expressed disbelief in the seriousness of Trump’s name by claiming that if the implications were more damning, then it would have come out before Trump returned to office.
Actress Angela Belcamino, who posted earlier this month that “if Republicans are on the Epstein list, lock them up and throw away the key,” said after the report came out: “If Trump is in the Epstein files… why didn’t the Biden administration do the right thing and release them during his administration?”
It’s been a refrain among Trump supporters for some time.
Last month, conservative commentator Benny Johnson posted: “First off, ask yourself this: If there was incriminating evidence against Trump in the Epstein files, would the Deep State have just kept it a secret and just watched Trump take office — TWICE?!” He described the reasoning as “proof that Trump is *Not* in the Epstein Files.”
Daily Wire podcaster Matt Walsh posted on X last month: “It is totally inconceivable that there would be something incriminating about Trump in the Epstein files and yet the Democrats kept that information to themselves for all these years. Sure, you can say that they are also incriminated in the files. But so what? They would have just released the part that incriminated Trump.”
And right-wing activist Jack Posobiec repeated earlier this month on X: “If Trump was in the Epstein files, why wouldn’t Biden and [former U.S. Attorney General Merrick] Garland just have released it?”
Maybe Trump isn’t so good after all
Still, to some former MAGA diehards disappointed by the recent Epstein saga, the Journal’s report was the nail in the coffin to make them turn their backs on Trump.
Livestreamer Nick Fuentes, who has been described as a white nationalist and Holocaust denier and once dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022 though he did not endorse Trump in 2024, posted on X: “The Wall Street Journal just confirmed that Trump has been engaged in a deliberate coverup of the Epstein Files ever since he learned he was named in them in May. Then he spent the last week gaslighting & guilting-tripping his supporters for not believing his lies. DESPICABLE.”
Trump’s handling of the Epstein files and responses thus far to the controversy has been a bitter pill for many of his supporters to swallow, especially as it becomes harder and harder to deny that he may have something to hide about his closeness to Epstein.
Recently a video of the late convicted sex offender has gone viral on social media. Asked during a 2010 deposition whether he had socialized with Trump, who was not yet even talked about as a future White House contender, “in the presence of females under the age of 18,” Epstein responded: “Though l’d like to answer that question, at least today l’m going to have to assert my Fifth, Sixth, and 14th Amendment rights, sir.”
Critics have cited Trump’s own words from the campaign trail in 2016 against him now about invoking the constitutional right to not self-incriminate: “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”