by Elwood Watson

It was more than just another manic Monday for the Trump administration last week, when the Department of Justice announced Jeffrey Epstein’s death in jail in 2019 was a suicide and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had no “incriminating client list.”

While such an ambiguous response resulted in seismic reverberations across all corners of the MAGAsphere, intense and fierce outrage toward the Justice Department and FBI has transcended partisan lines.

Alt-right podcaster Jack Posobiec skewered Attorney General Pam Bondi on his show for saying the Epstein case was closed, saying he felt “angry, upset, used . . . from having gone to the White House and receiving this binder full of baloney that was completely publicly available information already.”

“It’s some form of Shakespearean absurdist tragedy,” former FBI Chief Andrew McCabe, who served as head of the agency during the previous Trump presidency, commented in an CNN interview. “Anyone in the FBI, you’re watching this circus take place at the absolute highest levels of the organization, and you’re asking yourself, like, ‘These are our leaders?’”

It does not take a rocket scientist to realize the Trump administration’s handling of the so-called “Epstein Files” has been far from stellar. In response to a question from a host on an interview on Fox News earlier this year as to whether the Justice Department would release a “list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients,” Bondi stated the list was “sitting on my desk right now to review.” Several months later, she did a U-turn and claimed investigators had no access to any sort of list.

Understandably, such a political about face was never going to sit well among some skeptics, let alone supporters. People are hungry for answers.

Trump certainly did not do himself or his staff any favors by his dismissive reactions to the controversy: “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years. Are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable. Do you want to waste time?”

A few days later he defended Bondi and questioned his own supporters on Truth Social, going so far as to blame to former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden for the controversy. Talk about political theater of the obscene.

Perhaps the president fails to understand there are many across the political spectrum interested in this controversy. We are not talking about a group of adults who attended adult-themed events where hedonistic activity occurred solely with other adults’ consent. The Epstein case, as it was presented to the public by several administration officials, involved searing, sordid, and scurrilous allegations that underage young girls from marginalized backgrounds were being recruited to perform sexual favors for grown, adult men (in many cases, wealthy VIPs or prominent citizens). In essence, these girls were being sexually exploited.

The feds closely examined “over ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography” by influential pedophiles.

As many of us see it, this is an important issue to be “obsessed” with. Most people, regardless of their political persuasion, believe the individuals who participated in such a sadistic exploitation of minors need to be exposed and brought to justice. There is no such thing as “moving on” from such heinous criminal activity.

Whether such a badly handled scandal will end up becoming the administration’s Achilles heel is unclear at the moment. Nonetheless, one thing is certain: unlike Signalgate, this is a controversy that has enraged many members of the MAGA faithful and does not demonstrate any signs of abating in the near future.

As the old saying goes “what a tangled web we weave when we try to deceive.” President Trump, Pam Bondi and others in the administration are unsparingly learning such a truthful reality.

Copyright 2025 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.