Last month, Elon Musk lobbed what he called a “really big bomb” at Donald Trump in the midst of their ongoing public feud. The world’s richest man claimed the President was “in the Epstein files” and that this was “the real reason they have not been made public”. Within 48 hours, Musk had deleted the posts and several others calling for Trump’s impeachment. But the damage was done — not to Trump, but to the conspiracy theories which have swirled since Jeffrey Epstein’s death in 2019.

Trump’s Justice Department has now published a two-page memo stating conclusively that Epstein died by suicide. The document also maintained the financier had no “client list”, ran no blackmail operation, and wasn’t murdered by shadowy forces protecting the powerful. The administration even released enhanced surveillance footage showing no one entered Epstein’s cell the night he died.

What makes this official debunking so compelling isn’t the findings themselves, but who’s delivering them. FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino spent years building their brands as MAGA media stars by discussing these exact theories. Now these same men sit in the J. Edgar Hoover Building insisting there’s nothing to see. “I have seen the whole file. He killed himself,” Bongino told Fox News in May.

The reversal warrants attention, given what we know about Trump’s own relationship with Epstein. In recordings made by author Michael Wolff, Epstein claimed he was “Donald Trump’s closest friend for 10 years” before their friendship ended over a Palm Beach property dispute. Trump himself called Epstein a “terrific guy” in 2002, and they partied together at Mar-a-Lago throughout the Nineties.

Before joining the administration, Bongino played clips on his January 2024 podcast of journalists claiming Epstein was “100%” murdered “because he made his whole living blackmailing people”, telling his millions of listeners these claims were “super important”. Last February he promised: “I’m not ever gonna let this story go.”

Patel, meanwhile, appeared on pro-Trump influencer Benny Johnson’s YouTube show in 2023, demanding the FBI “put on your big-boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are”. His books about “government gangsters” and appearances on Right-wing media circuits transformed him from an obscure National Security Council staffer into a MAGA celebrity earning substantial speaking fees and book advances.

Their sudden conversion has not gone unnoticed. InfoWars host Alex Jones fumed that they were “making fools out of themselves,” while Tucker Carlson wondered aloud: “What was that?!” Some popular far-Right figures now accuse Patel and Bongino of becoming “Deep State traitors”.

When Democrats demanded the Epstein files be released to prove or disprove Musk’s accusation about Trump, the administration responded with its definitive memo. Patel had promised Fox News in late May that he was “not going to withhold information from the American public, ever”. But he was also “not going to rush to get it out there in a format in which they can’t rely on it.” And there it was: we’ve reviewed the footage, and there’s nothing to see here.

This isn’t how Patel and Bongino talked when they were building their brands. As influencers, they understood that Epstein theories tied to Bill Clinton and other Left-leaning figures represented rocket fuel for audience engagement, much as tying Epstein to Right-wing figures had been for a “dirtbag Left” podcast such as TrueAnon. MAGA-aligned podcaster Tim Pool said the base feels “Dan and Kash aren’t doing the job, that they’re beholden to some unseen powers.”

The pair’s transformation from conspiracy promoters to institutional defenders reveals how thoroughly the system can digest even its fiercest critics. What served as political ammunition for outsiders became a liability once they stepped inside. Now, with official certainty from former conspiracy theorists themselves, the Trump administration can bring much of that inconvenient truth-seeking, along with criticism from the likes of Musk, to an end.

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Oliver Bateman is a historian and journalist based in Pittsburgh. He blogs, vlogs, and podcasts at his Substack, Oliver Bateman Does the Work

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