Clarence Page: Is the Jeffrey Epstein scandal finally behind us? Don't bet on it.

Chicago Tribune

2 days ago

When a reporter asked Attorney General Pam Bondi about the Jeffrey Epstein investigation on Tuesday, President Donald Trump could not contain himself a moment longer.
'Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?' he said, pushing back against the question. 'This guy's been talked about for years. … Are people still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable.'
It was a day after the Justice Department concluded the convicted sex offender died by an unassisted suicide — not by foul play, as countless rumor-mongers and conspiracy theorists had alleged.
Sorry, conspiracy junkies. The DOJ uncovered none of the rumored 'client list' of powerful friends from both parties who in the world of paranoid politics were widely speculated to have reasons to silence Epstein.
Jeffrey Epstein was accused of trafficking and sexually abusing dozens of underage girls. In 2008, he pleaded guilty in a Florida state court to two charges: procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and solicitation of prostitution. This was part of a controversial plea deal with federal prosecutors that allowed him to avoid federal charges. In 2019, Epstein was arrested again — this time by federal authorities in New York — and charged with sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking. He died by suicide in a Manhattan jail a month later while awaiting trial.
Yet this case, like any other 'heater,' as prosecutors often call an attention-grabbing case, is not about to slip far out of the rumor mills and conspiracy theorists across party lines.
Whether they exist or not, 'the Epstein files' became a story in themselves, unfettered by anything as mundane as a lack of evidence, and easily available to be weaponized by various factions.
The files found their way into the news more recently as Trump's feud with his former ally Elon Musk heated up. The billionaire entrepreneur claimed that the Trump administration had withheld the 'files' because the president was named in them.
Well, who wasn't named in the 'files,' if you believe the rumors? I don't believe them, but in the age of social media, the never-ending cascade of information and misinformation at least offers some entertainment value if you don't take it too seriously.
Yet it's ironic that the reporter's question about Epstein provoked the president of the United States into an on-camera hissy fit. I also detect a measure of cosmic justice. After all, it was Trump who made a campaign promise to open the 'Epstein files' in what he implied would be a day of comeuppance for his political enemies.
In the annals of American politics, you would strain to find a figure who made more effective use of innuendo than Trump, who first became a darling of right-wing conspiratorialists around 2010 by promoting lies about Barack Obama's birth in the United States.
Since the salad days of 'birtherism,' we have witnessed a flowering of outlandishly paranoid politics as social media platforms prioritized audience engagement over such antiquated notions as accuracy in the design of their algorithms. This era saw the launch of a new generation of media stars liberated from any editorial authority that might submit their assertions to a fact check.
Unsurprisingly, the rising conspiracy media elite loved Donald Trump, and he loved them right back. As a candidate in the 2016 election, and as president, he made frequent reference in support of any number of conspiracies, and he counted luminaries such as Alex Jones (of InfoWars, retailer of the Sandy Hook 'hoax' slander) and Jack Posobiec (a promoter of the 'Pizzagate' conspiracy) among his most fervent loyalists.
Trump depended on their loyalty when he promoted the Big Lie of the stolen election in 2020, which in turn led to an insurrection at the Capitol and the gravest threat to constitutional rule in the United States since the Civil War.
More recently, another leading light of conspiracy, Laura Loomer, gained notoriety for her weirdly intimate influence over Trump before he took office in his second term, prompting him to fire a list of aides whom she found objectionable. This interlude itself launched numerous conspiracy theories.
Oddly enough, now Loomer finds herself at the center of the 'Epstein files' brouhaha, feuding with Bondi, whom she derisively calls 'Blondi,' over the attorney general's supposed lack of diligence in the Epstein case.
And so it goes for a political movement that has become increasingly contemptuous of the truth — and that has dragged one of our nation's two parties with it.
Historian Richard Hofstadter was a pioneer observer of what he called 'The Paranoid Style in American Politics,' which he described in a 1964 Harper's Magazine analysis of the use of loose facts and pseudo-facts to build an alternative reality for political ends.
He was inspired partly by conservative Republican Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign that year. Goldwater lost the campaign against President Lyndon B. Johnson, who led a landslide in a nation still shaken by President John F. Kennedy's assassination, but history shows that loss led to the conservative ascendancy and Republican recovery that continues today.
The DOJ memo says no one else involved in the Epstein case will be charged. Epstein's associate Ghislaine Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking and related offenses.
Is this a significant turn in the political firmament, or is it merely an indication that Trump's tactical use of conspiracy theories is having unintended consequences? It's hard to say, but it may not bode well that his administration is stuffed with conspiracy theorists, including two — FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino — who have pushed the 'Epstein files' narrative.
I don't expect much in the way of reliable revelations, but news is a business that tries to prepare for the unexpected — with healthy skepticism. More likely, we might find out who are the grifters, the shills and the suckers in this con game.
As an old-school journo, I still rely on the advice of the old Chicago City News Bureau slogan: If your mother says she loves you, check it out — especially if it arrives in a tweet.