The Epstein files: Trump is trapped by the conspiracy theory he once gloried in

The US president's closest aides loved to accuse Democrats in the Biden team of covering the child sex-trafficker's tracks. Yet in power, they now call the client list a hoax. The Maga movement is not buying it, report Xavier Greenwood and Fred Harter

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In the run-up to last year's US presidential election, Dan Bongino, a prominent right-wing influencer with a wildly popular podcast, could not have been clearer.

"Folks, the Epstein client list is a huge deal because it speaks to an enormous problem we have in this country", he told his listeners. "It is that there is a connected class of insiders that feel that they can get away with anything because they can."

The failure of the Biden administration to release files relating to the death of the wealthy financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has become one of the key grievances of the Maga movement.

There are two main claims: that Epstein kept a client list that he used to blackmail co-conspirators and that he did not commit suicide, but was murdered in his jail cell so that he wouldn't release compromising material on prominent associates.

Kash Patel, a Trump aide turned influencer, went on another right-wing podcast in 2023 to urge Republicans in Congress to force the White House to reveal all. "What the hell are the House Republicans doing? They have the majority," he said. "You can't get the list? Put on your big boy pants and let us know who the paedophiles are."

This was no fringe view. Trump's runnng mate, JD Vance, was also a believer. "We need to release the Epstein list," he said last October.

Vance is now vice-president, Patel is the director of the FBI and Bongino is his deputy. But instead of releasing the files, earlier this month the Trump administration released a memo insisting that there is no "incriminating list" of clients, "no credible evidence" that Epstein blackmailed anyone, and that Epstein definitely took his own life.