President Donald Trump speaks to the media, Sunday, July 13, 2025, on arrival to Joint Base Andrews, Md., en route to Washington, after attending the Club World Cup final soccer match in New Jersey. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) | AP
By Adam Wren
President Donald Trump faces a fast-metastasizing MAGA rebellion amid fallout over his administration’s handling of the files from the criminal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
And some of his closest allies are cautioning the situation for the president will get worse before it gets better — even as it threatens to derail his megabill victory lap and continues to divide parts of his administration and, more broadly, his supporters.
Trump has tried twice in as many days to tamp down his base’s anger, posting to Truth Social Saturday that he didn’t “like what’s happening” among his own supporters. He also threw his support behind Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has taken the brunt of much of the right’s ire over the Epstein files. Several news organizations have also reported that Bondi clashed with Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino over the files.
After disembarking Air Force One Sunday at Joint Base Andrews, Trump faced a question about Bongino, who skipped work Friday. Trump insisted that he’s “a very good guy. … He sounded terrific, actually. No, I think he’s in good shape.”
Mike Davis, the MAGA legal brawler and occasional Oval Office visitor, has taken up defending Trump’s DOJ, said in an interview that “the Trump Justice Department wanted to be fully transparent, but can’t.” He added: “This is a case of no good deed going unpunished.”
Davis argues DOJ can’t release more, including that there is grand jury material involved, court records under seal, child pornography involved, the need to protect victims of “heinous crimes,” and “unsubstantiated, bogus claims, like we saw during the Kavanaugh proceedings, where you had double and even triple hearsay.”
A spokesperson for the White House declined to comment.
The split over Epstein represents one of the biggest rifts within Trump’s supporters since the president took office for his second term. On one side are MAGA supporters who push claims that Epstein was murdered in his jail cell and that the disgraced financier had kept a list of high-profile clients. But Trump’s DOJ and FBI have concluded that there’s no evidence for either.
On Monday morning, the conservative influencer Benny Johnson outlined a four-pronged approach for Trump to fix what he called “the Epstein memo crisis,” including calling for a press conference and bringing in former President Bill Clinton for “questioning.”
Laura Loomer, the MAGA activist who is influential in Trump’s inner circle and visits everyone from Vice President JD Vance to Trump himself, isn’t convinced that the president has sufficiently quelled MAGA’s frustrations.
“I don’t think that just putting out a Truth Social post is going to make this issue go away. It’s kind of had a Streisand effect, actually, where people are focusing on this topic a lot more than they were before he posted a Truth Social,” Loomer told POLITICO. “I think that it would be wise for the White House to develop some type of a strategy in addressing the base’s concerns, so that we can mitigate any fallout or damage done to the Trump administration.
Loomer is also calling for a special counsel appointed to do an independent investigation of the handling of the Epstein files so that people can feel like this issue is being investigated, and perhaps take it out of [Bondi’s] hands, because I don’t think that she has been transparent or done a good job handling this issue.”
Several online influencers are urging the administration to confront the issue head on — before it becomes even more of a looming distraction.
“We have the midterm elections coming up, and I agree that we can’t allow for one issue to dominate the entire news cycle and take up everybody’s energy,” said Loomer. “We have to focus on the economy, we have to focus on immigration, we have to focus on a lot of issues. A lot of people need to learn how to walk and chew gum at the same time. President Trump, as the leader of the free world and the most powerful man in the world, can’t allow for his entire administration to be fully consumed with a single issue.”
The Justice Department released what it called the “first phase” of documents related to the Epstein investigation in February. Trump as well as prominent figures like Clinton are referenced in documents released in court cases surrounding Epstein but the president is not accused of any wrongdoing linked to Epstein.
But last week, Axios reported that the Justice Department and FBI concluded that there’s no evidence Epstein kept a “client list” or was murdered in his jail cell, marking the first time Trump’s administration pushed back on unsubstantiated theories about Epstein that Bongino, FBI Director Kash Patel and others have touted previously.
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Via https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/14/trump-maga-epstein-bondi-bongino
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Author: stuartbramhall
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