WASHINGTON, July 9 \u2014 Donald Trump’s MAGA base is up in arms after his administration effectively shut down conspiracy theories related to notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that have become an obsession for the US president’s diehard supporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump’s Department of Justice and the FBI said in a memo made public Sunday there is no evidence that the disgraced financier kept a \u201cclient list\u201d or was blackmailing powerful figures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They also dismissed the claim that Epstein was murdered in jail, confirming his death by suicide, and said they would not be releasing any more information on the probe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It marked the first time Trump\u2019s officials had publicly scotched the stories \u2014 pushed by numerous right-wing figures, notably including the FBI\u2019s top two officials, before Trump hired them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The backlash was swift and brutal from his \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d movement \u2014 who have long held as an article of faith that \u201cDeep State\u201d elites were protecting Epstein\u2019s most powerful associates in the Democratic Party and Hollywood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNext the DOJ will say \u2018Actually, Jeffrey Epstein never even existed,\u2019\u201d furious pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Alex Jones tweeted. \u201cThis is over the top sickening.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump has managed to avoid much of the direct blame over the fiasco, with ire instead being directed at FBI director Kash Patel and his deputy Dan Bongino.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the lion\u2019s share of the fury has been reserved for Attorney General Pam Bondi, who assured Fox News she had the Epstein client list on her desk and would get to the truth \u2014 in remarks endorsed by the White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bondi was already on thin ice with MAGA after distributing binders labelled \u201cThe Epstein Files\u201d to influencers at the White House that turned out to contain largely already public information and no new revelations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPresident Trump should fire (Bondi) for lying to his base and creating a liability for his administration,\u201d far right influencer Laura Loomer posted on X.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cShe is an embarrassment and she doesn\u2019t do anything to help Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump riled<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was pressed about the controversy and said that Bondi was actually talking about Epstein-related paperwork as a whole \u2014 sparking even more MAGA fury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is what happens when the dog catches the car. Or, to put a finer point on it, when you and the people around you become the very \u2018Deep State\u2019 you have spent years attacking,\u201d CNN analyst Chris Cillizza wrote on his Substack newsletter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Epstein died by suicide in a New York prison in 2019 after being charged with sex trafficking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump \u2014 who has denied visiting the US Virgin Islands home where prosecutors say Epstein sex trafficked underage girls \u2014 said ahead of his election he would have \u201cno problem\u201d releasing files related to the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The president appeared exasperated when he was asked by a reporter about Epstein at a cabinet meeting yesterday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAre you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?… Are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is one of a number of schisms that have opened in the MAGA movement in recent days, with supporters angry over Trump\u2019s announcement that weapons supply to Ukraine would resume.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump\u2019s fiercely isolationist base was already upset at the president\u2019s bombing of Iran nuclear sites and his statements calling for an easing of immigration raids on farms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond its insights into the power dynamics that animate Trump\u2019s supporters, the affair has raised concerns that MAGA disillusionment will damage Republican prospects in the next election cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The row comes with Trump under pressure from the launch of a new political party by his estranged former close aide Elon Musk, who had a bitter public split with the president over federal spending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the Trump-Musk feud blew up last month, Musk alleged that Trump was named in the Epstein files.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow can people be expected to have faith in Trump if he won\u2019t release the Epstein files?\u201d Musk asked on his social media platform X, after Trump\u2019s cabinet meeting. \u2014 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WASHINGTON, July 9 \u2014 Donald Trump’s MAGA base is up in arms after his administration effectively shut down conspiracy theories related to notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that have become an obsession for the US president’s diehard supporters. Trump’s Department of Justice and the FBI said in a memo made public Sunday there is no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1623,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1622"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1624,"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1622\/revisions\/1624"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}