As we wait for the release of the Epstein files, a question arises as to how and why these particular files became so important. We have to set some context for all of this. Epstein wasn’t the first and won’t be the last powerful rich white guy to take advantage of women.

Pizzagate

For context, let’s go back to the “Pizzagate” conspiracy in which Qanon followers and other MAGA types came to believe that Democrats were running a child prostitution ring out of a pizza shop in Washington D.C. 

Huh?

How did they come to believe this?

Well, that turns out to be a long story, and involves John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chair, whose personal Gmail was hacked and published by WikiLeaks. In those emails there were a bunch of references to people ordering pizza at a D.C. restaurant called Comet Ping Pong (which has ping pong tables inside). For some reason a lot of right wing types decided that the references to pizza were actually references to child abuse, and that the restaurant was the center of a child prostitution ring.

Why did they decide this?

Who the hell knows.

It’s what happens when you become more and more detached from reality.

Eventually, on December 4, 2016, 28-year old Edgar Maddison Welch drove to Washington D.C. from North Carolina, armed with an AR-15-style rifle and a .38-caliber handgun, to “save the children.” Miraculously, he didn’t kill anyone. 

That really should have been the end of it.

But, of course it wasn’t.

Epstein’s Island

MAGA conspiracy theorists were still convinced that Democrats were somehow promoting child sex rings and child pornography, and switched their inquiry to their involvement with Jeffrey Epstein. In particular, Qanon followers believe that a cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic child molesters in league with the “deep state” is operating a global child sex trafficking ring, and that Donald Trump is secretly leading the fight against them.

As if!

Epstein — although largely non-denominational — has (of course) been a long-time close friend of Donald Trump. There are many photos of Epstein and his “girlfriend” Ghislane Maxwell hanging out with Donald and Melania Trump. At some point, in the mid 2000’s, Trump and Epstein had a falling out. It’s not clear why. Competing theories include (1) that Epstein “took” spa staff from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, and (2) that it was the result of a real-estate conflict when Trump and Epstein both bid for the same Palm Beach property (Maison de L’Amitie) and fell out over it.

Who knows.

Their relationship had clearly soured by the time Trump became President.

Bill Clinton and Other Democrats

Now, why do so many MAGA types believe so ardently that Epstein was intimately involved with Democrats?

Again, who knows for sure. Some of it seems to have to do with their animus against Bill Clinton, who did have contact with Jeffrey Epstein — although never as much as President Trump — and their general belief that Democrats are somehow sordid and immoral.

Whatever.

For his part, Bill Clinton had limited contact with Jeffrey Epstein. What is verified is that Clinton took several flights on Epstein’s private jet in the period around 2002–2003, in connection with the work of the Clinton Foundation. Epstein also visited the White House during Clinton’s presidency. Records show Epstein made multiple visits between 1993–1995 when Clinton was President. But that was well before his June 30, 2008 guilty plea to “Solicitation of prostitution” and “Solicitation of prostitution with a minor” charges in Florida state court.

Having more contact and viewing him as a personal friend was Larry Summers, the former President of Harvard and United States Secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton. But even with Summers there is no evidence that Summers knew of Epstein’s sex trafficking, or did anything illegal. 

Then there is Ehud Barak, the former Prime Minister of Israel. The former leader of the Labor Party, Barak is neither American nor a Democrat. But he’s a “progressive.” Again, there is no evidence that Barak knew of or participated in Epstein’s illegal activities.

Scientific Funding

Like a lot of bad people, Epstein was a complicated guy. On the plus side, he contributed enormously to the funding of scientific research. For example:

• Epstein was a significant private donor to MIT’s Media Lab, and is known to have contributed $525,000 personally, another $250,000 from his foundation, and another $125,000 from other donors he “solicited.”
• Epstein donated approximately $6.5 million to Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics.
• Epstein donated somewhere between $250k–$500k to The Santa Fe Institute, which focuses on complexity science.
• Epstein donated approximately $500,000 to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.
• Epstein donated to various individual scientists, including Stephen Hawking, Lawrence Krauss (Arizona State University), Marvin Minsky (MIT), and George Church (Harvard geneticist)
• Epstein funded or hosted private scientific gatherings in the Virgin Islands and New Mexico, and including on his own island.

At the time that all of these luminaries were seeking funding from Epstein, he had only been convicted of two solicitation offenses. Should they all have refused to do business with him at the time?

Now we know, in light of the 2019 investigation into his sex trafficking of minors and related charges that Epstein had engaged in very bad things. But that is a post-hoc realization, after his “suicide” while waiting for the charges to be resolved.

Trump’s Pledges

During the 2024 campaign Trump promised several times to “release” the Epstein “files” as part of an overall pledge of transparency and open government. He apparently thought, at the time, that there would be material embarrassing to the Democrats in those releases. But, as is typical of Trump, they were not clear promises, just vague assertions. In June 2024, on Fox & Friends, when asked “Would you declassify the Epstein files?” Trump said “Yeah, yeah, I would.” In September 2024, on the Lex Fridman podcast, he said he would “certainly take a look at it,” and that he’d “have no problem” releasing additional Epstein-related documents. Still, this is what his MAGA supporters determined he would do.

By the time he was in office and Pam Bondi had had a chance to look at what was in the “files” — and it’s not exactly clear what the files encompass — they must have had a change of heart. 

But by then everybody, including his supporters, really wanted to know what’s in those files.

For example, people want to know what it meant when Mark Epstein wrote to his brother “Ask him if Putin has the photos of Trump blowing Bubba?” (That email appears in a set of documents released in November 2025 from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein to the House of Representatives in response to a subpoena.)

Now that the Epstein Transparency Bill has been signed into law, I guess we’ll find out the answer to some of these questions. The materials are more likely to be embarrassing  to Trump than to Democrats, and having made such a show of refusing to release them — including having his boy, Speaker Mike Johnson refuse to swear in Adelita Grijalva for 50 days after her special election victory on September 23, 2025 — people really want to see what the hell is in these files.