In Rome, Georgia, 19-year-old Cayden McBride spends hours each day combing through the Jeffrey Epstein files on the US Department of Justice (DOJ) website. The files, which contain flight logs, transcripts, images, and videos, have offered new insight into Epstein’s crimes and his high-profile connections, but McBride believes the matter still holds significance despite the recent focus on the Iran war.

The Epstein Files and Disillusionment with the Movement

McBride was once a self-described “Trump guy” and “very anti-establishment.” He believed in the “Make America Great Again” (Maga) movement as a means of exposing corruption. However, the DOJ’s delay in releasing all the files and the perceived lack of accountability afterward have left him and others disheartened with the movement, the president, and especially with Pam Bondi, Trump’s former attorney general.

Bondi was removed from her post last week, to be replaced by her deputy, Todd Blanche. Trump has praised Bondi for her work, and Blanche denied that her handling of the Epstein files had been a factor in her departure. However, McBride welcomed the change, hoping it would bring renewed focus to the Epstein issue.

Epstein Fallout and Trump’s Changing Stance

The Epstein story resurfaced this week when First Lady Melania Trump unexpectedly denied having a relationship with Epstein and called for a congressional hearing for his victims. It remains unclear how much this will galvanize interest, but Bondi’s removal has not quieted the discontent among Trump’s supporters like McBride. He believes she needed to go because she wasn’t prosecuting “the people she needed to.”

McBride thinks there might be some “high-status arrests” but after that, other issues like Iran, ICE, and the midterms will, in his words, sweep the Epstein story under the rug.

Conspiracy Theories and Political Fallout

Many Epstein conspiracy theorists have long counted themselves among Trump’s most ardent supporters. They believe Epstein’s death in prison was not a suicide, as the FBI has found, and that the government was involved in a cover-up. This belief has been echoed by many of Trump’s closest allies and former allies, such as Vice-President JD Vance, former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Kash Patel, whom Trump tapped to lead the FBI.

Vance once tweeted: “What possible interest would the US government have in keeping Epstein’s clients secret?” During his 2024 campaign, Trump told Fox News he would “go a long way” towards releasing the Epstein files. However, after returning to the White House, he changed his tone, leading to a public fallout with Greene and some other members of the Republican Party.

Trump later dropped his opposition to releasing the files after pushback from Epstein’s victims and members of his own party, signing a law that compelled the DOJ to release thousands of files. DOJ officials say they have now released all of their files other than certain items permitted to be exempt.

Despite this, many Epstein conspiracy theorists remain unconvinced. Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, in an interview with Vanity Fair, said the Epstein files could cost the Republican Party some of its most important new voters, young men who turned to Trump in 2024. However, the vast majority of Republicans still back the president, though there are signs the Epstein fallout has chipped away at his diverse coalition of supporters.

A poll conducted by the Economist/YouGov in February found that 16% of voters who backed Trump during the last election thought he was covering up Epstein’s crimes. Of those that identify themselves as Maga, 11% thought the president was part of a cover-up.

Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein, but his own history with the disgraced financier continues to make headlines. The president appears to have been friends with Epstein for a number of years before falling out—in the early 2000s, according to Trump, two years before Epstein was first arrested.

The US president is mentioned thousands of times in the files released by the DOJ, including in emails and correspondence sent by Jeffrey Epstein himself to others.

Mona Charen, a columnist and policy expert at The Bulwark, agrees that conspiracy theories around Epstein have been especially hard for the president to shake off. She says the concept that Maga and Trumpism would be a breath of fresh air that would reveal things that had been hidden is now gone.

Bondi attracted particular criticism within the Maga movement for promising to release an alleged client list associated with Epstein, only for her department to later say that no such list existed.

Epstein campaigners across the political spectrum have voiced their hopes that the change at the top of the DOJ could be a turning point in the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein saga. Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna, who co-authored the act that forced the DOJ files release, said Republicans should make clear to the new attorney general that there could be “no confirmation (of their position) unless you commit to the release of the rest of the Epstein files.”

Among Bondi’s defenders on the Epstein issue are Mike Cernovich, a right-wing commentator. Cernovich was one of many online influencers who took part in a photo op at the Oval Office in February 2025, walking away with a binder labelled “The Epstein Files: Phase One.” The binder turned out to contain nothing new and he along with others involved in the stunt were accused of betraying the movement.

Reacting to Bondi’s firing, Cernovich wrote in a post on X: “Bondi was trying to do something good but didn’t know the back story. I blame those who claim ‘there are no more Epstein files’ after the binder incident. There were A LOT of them. And there’s more unreleased.”

If anywhere is a test for how critical this issue is for Trump, it is the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an annual political conference for right-leaning activists and politicians. For many who attended CPAC last month in Dallas, Texas, the Epstein files still mattered.

Robert Agee said he felt let down by Trump: “When President Trump said, ‘are we still talking about the Epstein files?’, that was the moment Maga died. That was when Maga took off its hat. He betrayed us. He ran on that.”

McBride agrees. “I think people who still align with Maga are just sort of brainwashed at this point,” McBride says. “There has to be a certain point when you realise this was not the man promised to us.”

He says some of his friends now question whether they will vote again. As for him, his decision is clear. “It won’t stop me from searching.”