Remember QAnon? The conspiracy theory, popular among President Donald Trump’s supporters for years, held that a furtive network of satanic pedophiles had infiltrated political institutions, the press, and other echelons of power and influence. According to Q lore, Trump was working to expose and punish these cretins—who included Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats—and to end the child suffering, sex trafficking, and hormone harvesting that these horrible globalists were engaging in.

QAnon—itself preceded by the perhaps even more zany Pizzagate conspiracy—was too out there for mainstream Republicans to explicitly endorse. But neither would they explicitly condemn the theory or its believers, and they often seemed happy to play along with the narrative, touting Trump’s alleged crackdown on child sex trafficking.

Republicans took a lot of flak for this, but of course, Democrats had been stoking sex trafficking panic for their own gain, too. QAnon didn’t start in a vacuum; it followed two decades of mainstream media and politicians, both left and right, using the flimsiest evidence and most distorted data to falsely claim that America was in the midst of a sex trafficking epidemic.

And then along came Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein Helped Bring the Promise of QAnon to Life 

The finance mogul’s well-documented crimes involving teenage girls, and his roster of rich and powerful friends, could be read by motivated audiences as backing up QAnon claims. Sure, there were no satanists or adrenochrome harvesting—or were there? Epstein’s seemingly lenient treatment during a mid-aughts prosecution in Florida, and his subsequent suicide in a federal jail cell in 2019, led to a lot of speculation that the “deep state” was working to cover things up.

Here was a sex-trafficking conspiracy theory that the mainstream right could embrace. After all, no one would dispute that Epstein had engaged in sleazy, abusive behavior with girls and young women, or that he had flown both his victims and some powerful people to his private island. It wasn’t that much of a stretch to suggest that Epstein’s “client list” was being covered up, nor too far-fetched to suggest that the reason for this cover-up had to do with protecting prominent Democrats and their supporters. (I’m not saying I believe either assertion, just that they aren’t beyond belief in the way that Clinton torturing children in the basement of a D.C. pizza joint should be).

Folks in Trump’s orbit began to actively encourage the idea that Epstein’s client list was being deliberately withheld by Democrats with something to hide.

And, on the campaign trail, Trump suggested that he would declassify the Epstein files if elected president.

Then, back in February, the Trump administration made a big show of giving influencers binders supposedly containing the so-called Epstein files. These binders turned out to be full of information already available.

Nothing To See Here? 

But last week, the FBI released a memo saying there was nothing left in the Epstein files that was worth releasing. There was “no incriminating ‘client list’ and “no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed” anyone. “No further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted,” it said.

“Teams of agents, analysts, attorneys, and privacy and civil liberties experts combed through the digital and documentary evidence with the aim of providing as much information as possible to the public while simultaneously protecting victims,” stated the memo. “Much of the material is subject to court-ordered sealing. Only a fraction of this material would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial, as the seal served only to protect victims and did not expose

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Article from Reason.com

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