SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
At President Trump’s direction, the Justice Department last night asked a federal judge to unseal more records related to Jeffrey Epstein, who died in custody while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges nearly six years ago. And this follows new reporting from The Wall Street Journal that has renewed scrutiny on longtime friendship between Trump and Epstein.
The president dismisses the Journal’s report as fake and is now suing it and its owners, which, of course, includes Rupert Murdoch, for at least $10 billion. The Epstein case has long been a focus of conspiracy theories. NPR’s Lisa Hagen has covered them and joins us now. Lisa, thanks for being with us.
LISA HAGEN, BYLINE: Hey there.
SIMON: The president says he wants grand jury evidence related to Epstein released. Setting aside whether a judge will agree to that or not, how much would that satisfy the people’s desire for information on this case?
HAGEN: I think the answer to that depends on what gets released, obviously, but it also really depends on who you are. So how about we go through a few different categories of people, like folks with ties to Trump, people with stronger ties to conspiracy communities and maybe everybody else?
SIMON: Let’s begin with people who are tied to Donald Trump. Will they be satisfied?
HAGEN: If you’re a media figure or a politician who’s risen to prominence supporting Trump and that’s your audience, you’re probably fairly desperate at this moment for any evidence to hold up and say, see, Trump is keeping his promises to be transparent. As long as it’s not forget about Epstein already, you’re likely to frame what the administration offers in a flattering light, including reasonable-sounding ways to kick the can down the road. Not all of your audience will buy that, but by now, we have more than a decade of Trump-style politics that shows us plenty of people will continue supporting this president. So people who watch and trust pro-Trump media are waiting on cues that it’s OK to ignore all the nothingburger hubbub right now, and that it’s all coming from people who are out to get Trump.
SIMON: What about people who’ve bought more seriously into conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein?
HAGEN: So we’ve got people whose livelihoods and communities have come together by searching out, like, cryptic details or internet message boards to interpret future government policy. Let’s be clear, there’s overlap between these two first categories, which has made the last few weeks pretty uncomfortable for some people. What I’ve seen in some of the conspiracy theorist spaces is begrudging coverage of some of these Epstein headlines, like, OK, we have to talk about this, but here are a bunch of other things we’d rather be talking about.
If you’re one of the many people who believe in QAnon-style demonic pedophile cabals running the world, the satisfaction you’ve been waiting on, like, for years, is arresting and executing that cabal, not a grand jury report. But paradoxically, the narratives that have helped them wait this long for justice are also likely to continue to hold. So you’re also looking for signs, like a pregnant pause or a look or a phrase that confirms, OK, we just have to trust Trump knows what he’s doing.
SIMON: Where does this leave people who aren’t in any of these groups and everybody else?
HAGEN: Right. Like people who don’t like Trump or people who don’t mind him either way, or, like, anyone else who’s followed the Epstein story. The details of the story are awful, but I look around and I see plenty of people deriving a kind of enjoyment from spinning theories, founded or unfounded. And some people are currently remembering or learning for the first time that, oh, yeah, Donald Trump did have a for-real friendship with Jeffrey Epstein in the 1980s and ’90s. And you know what? It does seem weird that the president just told everyone to forget about it.
There have always been details about Epstein that raise doubts for people. Having doubts doesn’t make you a conspiracy theorist. Tying those doubts to rigid narratives about good and evil and rejecting reasonable evidence that contradicts what you want to believe, that’s conspiracism. And I think in this hurricane of politics and speculation, we also have to remember that Epstein hurt real people. One of the survivors of his abuse died by suicide just this April.
SIMON: NPR’s Lisa Hagen. Thanks so much.
HAGEN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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