Note: Most Thursdays, I take readers on a deep dive into a topic I hope you'll find interesting, important, or at least amusing in its absurdity. But like Christmas in July, this week's Thursday Essay arrived a bit early. These essays are made possible by — and are exclusive to — our VIP supporters. If you'd like to join us, take advantage of our 60% off promotion.
This week’s Epstein files non-reveal was a painful self-own from a White House that’s been on a roll — from Supreme Court wins to the One Big Beautiful Law to a decisive blow against Iran’s nuclear program.
As a supporter, I must admit to you that this one hurt. As Bill Whittle put it to me on a special Right Angle segment due out this week, the White House needed to do much more than dismiss concerns about a rumored global sex-trafficking ring — it had to dismantle those concerns, step by meticulous step.
Instead, we got a lot of not much this week.
After Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed in February that the Epstein client list is "sitting on my desk right now," her office admitted on Monday that there was no such list.
That was the first big disappointment. President Donald Trump delivered the second — not just by downplaying the issue, but by doing so after weeks of build-up from his own administration.
When asked about the missing client list during Tuesday’s cabinet meeting, Trump dismissed it: "Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?"
"This guy has been talked about for years," he continued. "We have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things. Are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable."
Trump's frustration might be understandable, but the questions aren't exactly unbelievable after the White House put on a big show with those silly binders back in February.
Remember this scene?
On Feb 27th Pam Bondi invited all of these influencers to the W.H and personally handed them each a binder titled
— @Chicago1Ray 🇺🇸 (@Chicago1Ray) July 9, 2025
~ " The Epstein files, Phase 1 "
Now she says there was no files and she closed the case.... this cannot stand
(RP) & reply
if you want Pam Bondi to step down pic.twitter.com/4nh9QFitCF
Many longtime MAGA Land residents like Chicago Ray are justifiably furious, feeling betrayed after years of promises that all would be revealed.
While I think Elon Musk is a fool to try launching a third party over his current tiff with Trump, he might not have been too far off the mark when he asked what many frustrated supporters are now asking: "How can people be expected to have faith in Trump if he won’t release the Epstein files?"
"I think the administration is probably just now coming to the realization of how much goodwill this whole debacle has cost them with their voters," MAGA influencer Liz Wheeler told Glenn Beck on Monday. "And Pam Bondi is not worth it. She’s a liability. It’s time to move on."
Right here at PJ Media, our own Benjamin Bartee lamented that "Trump was the only chance we had to ever get to the bottom of the Epstein ring," and "the intra-MAGA split" the White House triggered.
You don't have to follow Bartee all the way down the cover-up rabbit hole to fully share his frustration, or to appreciate how the administration took an axe to part of its base.
Even Dana Loesch — hardly a NeverTrumper but a fair-minded critic when the need arises — was left wondering which one of these unpleasant choices must be true:
- We were lied to from the beginning to be manipulated by people running for office.
- We are being lied to now to protect people in office.
Or — less sinister but still dangerously unsatisfying — the Trump administration didn’t just fail to make its case. They didn’t even try. But stick a pin in that thought because I'll come back to it a bit further down.
Granted, some folks won’t be satisfied until Bondi releases video of Hillary Clinton strangling Epstein in his cell while snarling, "This is for Bill!" — and even they might ask for a second angle.
Remember one of my VodkaPundit Rules for Happier Living™: "When you have a group of people who can’t or won’t be pleased, don’t try to please them." But the administration's blithe dismissal of virtually every concern about the mysteries surrounding the Epstein case pleases no one, including those with genuine concerns — following months of promises to reveal all.
While I doubt there's a single Epstein client list — any more than George Soros has a binder labeled "My Big Book of Evil" hidden in a filing cabinet — questions remain about who, exactly, shared his illegal proclivities and about his death in 2019.
I love a good “Epstein didn’t kill himself” meme as much as anyone, but from the beginning, I’ve suspected the truth is messier: Epstein likely did take his own life — after someone quietly provided an unmistakable opportunity. With a nod to "The Godfather, Part II," I've previously called this kind of facilitation the Frankie Five Angels Treatment.
In the film, Corleone family capo-turned-witness Frank Pentangeli receives a visit in prison from consigliere Tom Hagen. Hagen doesn’t tell Pentangeli to kill himself — he simply implies that it would be best for everyone if he did, and that his family would be taken care of.
Epstein didn’t need a Hagen figure whispering in his ear. He’d already tried to kill himself once, just two weeks prior. Maybe all he needed was a second chance — and a signal that no one would stop him.
How else to explain:
- Why officials removed Epstein from suicide watch, despite the previous suicide attempt
- Why his cellmate was suddenly reassigned to new quarters, giving Epstein plenty of privacy
- How two guards on duty “slept through checks and falsified records” on the night of his death, when they were supposed to check on him every 30 minutes
- Why not one but two security cameras outside his cell happened to fail
You set a fancy table like that and light all the candles, someone expects a steak dinner.
If we can't see the (probably mythical) client list, how about we at least get some official acknowledgement that what we've been told so far about Epstein's death is less than satisfactory?
It’s frustrating enough that the administration seems content to let all that lie — but worse was their failure to even attempt a proper case, as NRO’s A.G. Hamilton laid out on X. While Hamilton didn't set up his post with "This is what the administration should have said," it certainly reads like it.
Hamilton broke it down cleanly. Here’s the gist:
- Ghislaine Maxwell was his ex and was central to recruiting the girls. She has been convicted and has an appeal pending. Because of the appeal, the government can’t release a lot of the files related to the case. Even if they wanted to.
- The government also has a rule against releasing the names of others involved unless they are being charged with a crime. Because the trafficking was mostly Maxwell (on appeal) and Epstein (dead), they were the focus of the criminal investigation. The people looking for other targets want to make it seem like it was part of a larger plot, but these two were the main forces behind it.
- It is obviously possible that there is some evidence that some of the friends he brought to the island also engaged in sexual acts with the young girls, but it’s very difficult to bring about charges unless they were 1) on video or 2) the victims testify to their involvement.
- Everything else is circumstantial. The flight logs were released years ago. So we know a lot of the people who traveled with Epstein to the island. But that’s not enough to charge them.
"The victims have said they had sex with other friends of his so we know he didn’t keep it to himself," Hamilton added, "but he and Maxwell did the trafficking." So, although Hamilton doesn't dismiss the possibility that Epstein used underage sex tapes to blackmail visitors to Lolita Island, he doubts that "the victims of those schemes will ever come forward for obvious reasons."
Do such blackmail videos exist? Even stipulating that they do — and we have no evidence — either they've been destroyed, are buried too deep for even Trump's deputy FBI director Dan Bongino to find, or (let's whisper this part) they're conveniently tucked away in the administration's back pocket. Bongino would be the man to find them, too — he often talked about the existence of the "client list" and other so-called conspiracies on his old radio show.
Occam's razor doesn't always slice, but if, in this case, it does, the likelihood is that there never were such videos.
No tapes. No witnesses. What's the DOJ supposed to do?
Legally, nothing. Politically, the administration needed to do exactly what it failed to do.
A.G. is an attorney and a politically savvy guy, and it was generous of him to present such a complete case on X. But it isn't enough for a pseudonymous NRO writer to make the case. Someone high up in the administration with credibility on All Things Epstein — someone like Bongino, perhaps — needed to lay out these facts like a defense attorney in front of a jury, meticulously picking apart the prosecution's case.
Bongino would also have been the perfect Trump official to take on the role of our virtual defense attorney. He spent years building trust with his radio audience on the various Epstein mysteries.
So while I don't expect readers to necessarily agree with every point Hamilton made — or that I've made today — it's nearly impossible to argue that the White House would have been much better off politically if they'd made an actual case instead of acting so abruptly dismissive.
Practically, it looks like the administration may well have exhausted its legal avenues. Politically, the last few days have not served the White House well.
At all.
The administration has got to acknowledge how unsatisfying this week's non-event was and promise that while their legal remedies are exhausted for the time being, they're leaving the door open to proceed at a later date should the opportunity arise.
At least.
In one short week, the Trump administration went from blowing up Iran’s nuclear program to blowing it on the Epstein files. That’s a huge self-own — but one it can recover from, if it shows more humility and a lot more forthrightness than it has so far.
Last Thursday: What the Hell Is Going on in China?
