Everyone Donald Trump has threatened since the Jeffrey Epstein scandal blew up in his face
US Attorney General Pam Bondi said she had the Epstein client list "sitting on her desk" on February 21. At a MAGA influencer event held at the White House on February 27, she and her team revealed a "Phase 1" binder for the release.
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Fast-forward to July 7, when the Department of Justice (DOJ) released a memo saying there was "no incriminating 'client list.'"
MAGA began collapsing immediately, and #PedoPresident started trending on X (and hasn't stopped.) Petitions demanding transparency circulated, and Republican House Representative Thomas Massie introduced the Epstein Files Transparency Act to enforce a vote among the House of Representatives to release the government's full files on the Epstein case, saying, 'We all deserve to know what's in the Epstein files, who's implicated, and how deep this corruption goes.'
Trump responded by calling Massie the 'worst Republican Congressman.'
Other outspoken Trump supporters like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Laura Loomer, Alex Jones, and Megyn Kelly started to criticize the president, with MTG echoing Massie's call for truth.
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Then, a bombshell Wall Street Journal scoop dropped on July 17, where investigators had found a bawdy 2003 birthday note, allegedly penned by Trump, in Epstein's personal files.
Five days later, the DOJ admitted the president's name appears 'multiple times' in federal evidence—but then insisted there were 'no further Epstein files' to release.
Instead of mollifying supporters, Trump has inserted himself into the conversation surrounding the pardon of Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's alleged co-conspirator. When asked if he would pardon her, he said he was "allowed to" if he wanted, but that "nobody's asked" him about it.
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This move detonated his online base, whose Q-adjacent lore casts Maxwell as queenpin of a global trafficking ring. Overnight, some of Trump's most die-hard supporters turned their backs on him.
His response has been to launch (or threaten) legal action in every direction as part classic countersuit strategy and part headline-scrambling fog machine.
Below is a who's-who list of his current targets, and what each feud is really about.
The Wall Street Journal
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On July 18, Trump lodged a $10 billion libel complaint in federal court, saying the Journal 'fabricated' the birthday letter and smeared him as Epstein's pal. Trump's lawyers immediately asked the judge to depose [owner Rupert] Murdoch 'within 15 days.'
'I hope Rupert and his 'friends' are looking forward to many hours of depositions and testimonies they will have to provide in this case,' Trump said in a Truth Social post.
Apart from Murdoch, the suit names the Journal's Publisher, Dow Jones & Company, alongside its parent, News Corporation. The Dow Jones CEO, Robert Thomson, is also on there, as are the two reporters on the Epstein story bylines, Joseph Palazzolo and Khadeeja Safdar.
Former President Barack Obama
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Growing tired of blaming everything on Biden, Trump turned back to his 2016 tactics of blaming everything on former President Barack Obama.
At a July 22 press talk, Trump urged the DOJ to 'go after' Obama, claiming he 'buried' evidence tying Bill Clinton to Epstein and engineered the original Russia probe to retaliate.
He later shared a photo across his social media channels depicting O.J. Simpson's car chase, with Obama in Simpson's driver's seat and Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance driving two cop cars behind him.
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In doing so, Trump also inadvertently trolled Vance by using the digitally fattened face photo that many people use to make fun of him.
Former President Bill Clinton
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The second former president Trump went after was Bill Clinton, who has long faced conspiracy theories from MAGA over his relationship with Epstein.
During a meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer while visiting Scotland, Trump said he'd never 'had the privilege' of going to Epstein Island and that it was one of his 'very good moments' turning down the invite.
However, he took it a step further, saying, 'Bill Clinton went there supposedly 28 times. I never went to the island, but [former Treasury Secretary] Larry Summers, I hear, went there, he was the head of Harvard. And many other people that are very big people, nobody ever talks about them.'
For the record, Clinton, like Trump, was also found on the Epstein flight logs.
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However, even Democrats and Clinton supporters are just as willing to hang him as they are Trump, but if he says his name being on there is a lie, who's to say the same isn't true for Clinton?
Former Vice President Kamala Harris
OogImages/Shutterstock
As if two former presidents weren't enough, Trump's also turning his gaze to former Vice President and 2024 challenger Kamala Harris, who he now says ran a campaign 'funded by illegal celebrity payments.'
He's hinted that the DOJ should indict her based on 'wire fraud.'
In another Truth Social rant, Trump said he was 'looking at the large amount of money owed by Democrats, after the Presidential Election,' saying they'd admitted to paying, 'probably illegally,' for celebrity endorsements. He later emphasized, 'YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO PAY FOR AN ENDORSEMENT. IT IS TOTALLY ILLEGAL TO DO SO. Can you imagine what would happen if politicians started paying for people to endorse them.'
Beyoncé, Al Sharpton, and Oprah
Photo by; Jaguar PS/Shutterstock; Ovidiu Hrubaru/Shutterstock
In the same Truth Social post targeting Harris, Trump also went after Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey, and Al Sharpton for various reasons.
As for Queen Bey, he (falsely) said she was paid $11 million for 'an ENDORSEMENT (she never sang, not one note, and left the stage to a booing and angry audience!)'
Oprah allegedly took $3 million for 'expenses,' while Sharpton, whom he called 'a total lightweight' and 'low rated TV 'anchor,'' allegedly took $600,000 for…something.
Sharpton refuted the claims on MSNBC, saying, 'This is the second or third time lawyers for National Action Network are looking at whether we can sue him for defamation because he had knowledge this time that there was no endorsement and that I didn't get any money. This went to the nonprofit I'm connected to.'
ABC News and NBC News
Creative Salim; bangoland/Shutterstock
Every news that doesn't worship the ground he walks on is Fake News in the Trump world, and neither ABC nor NBC is safe from his wrath.
Fresh off a $16 million settlement from Paramount, the owners of CBS, Trump called for the networks to lose their licenses for being 'political pawns for the Democratic Party.'
He first attacked their viewership and management, then doubled down on his stance that networks 'aren't allowed to be political pawns,' but only for the Democratic Party.
Shockingly, following the settlement with Paramount, Trump has done nothing to bring any legal action against South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone for that epic takedown of him on the most recent season premiere, showing him in bed with Satan and making fun of his small penis.
So, can the lawsuit blitz bury the Epstein story?
Photo byHopefully not.
The $10 billion WSJ case will crawl through discovery; Obama and Clinton enjoy presidential immunity from most civil claims; campaign-finance prosecutions would require evidence the FEC says it hasn't seen; and broadcast licenses can't be yanked just because he says so.
What this strategy does do however, is keep conservative media focused on Trump's counter-punches instead of the potential impending pardon and withholding of the actual files. You know, his usual 'distract and deflect' MO.
Whether the president's scatter-shot legal barrage can recapture these voters—or will simply keep Epstein in the headlines—is an open question. For now, the only certainty is that the defendant list keeps growing, and it's not likely to stop anytime soon.
And here we were, hoping they'd simply release the files.
This article originally appeared on Pride: Everyone Donald Trump has threatened since the Jeffrey Epstein scandal blew up in his face
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