The backlash was swift. After leading figures in President Donald Trump's orbit spent years stoking expectations about what might be revealed in the government's records on Jeffrey Epstein, the second-term Republican's administration over the summer tried to close the book on the case. MAGA was furious.
“Why is Pam Bondi’s Justice Department covering up Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes and murder?” conservative commentator Tucker Carlson said of the U.S. attorney general on July 8, invoking a popular conspiracy theory about Epstein, the wealth manager who committed suicide in jail at the age of 66 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
A day earlier, DOJ officials had released a memo reaffirming Epstein killed himself in 2019 and declaring no more documents would be released in his case. It kicked off what has been one of the most remarkable episodes in Trump’s political career – six months of GOP recriminations, tawdry revelations and unusually staunch resistance from inside MAGA - that reaches another major milestone on Friday, Dec. 19, with the Justice Department's deadline to release the Epstein files.
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