I was watching the Benny Johnson show the other day, which I often do for my job, not my pleasure, when I caught an interview with Mike Benz, the former alt-right vlogger–turned–GOP conspiracy theory constructor. He’d been brought on the show to make sense of the bomb that had just been dropped on the MAGA base by Trump’s Justice Department: The long-promised Epstein files weren’t coming.
There was no client list, the DOJ had announced in a memo a day earlier. Further, it said, Epstein had not blackmailed anyone and there was nothing suspicious about his death, case closed.
There will never be enough information to satiate the need for more clues.”
Joan Donovan, conspiracy theory researcher
Benz, like the rest of his MAGA cohort, was livid.
“Where’s our WikiLeaks? Where’s our Twitter Files?” Benz demanded.
It was a telling admission — and offered a kind of warning about what might ultimately come from the release of thousands of pages of records, documents, and audio and video recordings related to the Epstein investigation and indictment. There’s currently a strange moment of agreement between MAGA influencers like Benz, Democratic lawmakers and much of the mainstream public over publishing the Epstein files, but what each faction wants from them — and what they’ll do next should they be published as a bipartisan group of lawmakers are calling for, on a “publicly accessible website” — will probably ignite a whole new wave of conspiracy-mongering.
For many on the far right and far left, it won’t matter what’s actually in those files. What will matter is what people want to find in them, and how fast they can spin it into content.
The most red-pilled in the MAGA base want proof of a secret world order: one run by powerful (and often, in these fever dreams, progressive, Jewish) elites who prey on — and in the internet’s worst corners, literally feed on — children. In this version, Epstein wasn’t just a predator, he was a secret agent in a global blackmail network controlled by billionaires, the media and the so-called deep state. At the Turning Point USA summit last week, after an earlier Q&A included MAGA activists openly criticizing Trump over the handling of the Epstein files, Steve Bannon appealed to these conspiracy theorists when he told an uncharacteristically riled-up crowd that the release would answer a “very simple” question: “Who governs this country? The American people or the deep state?”
Conspiracy theorists on the left, branded “BlueAnon” by critics, have their own false fixations. Among them, an allegation — stemming from a now-dismissed lawsuit against the president — that he raped a girl procured by Epstein. (There is no evidence to support such a claim, and the story behind that 2016 allegation is more complicated.)
This is the crowd of bipartisan conspiracy consumers that MAGA influencers like Benz are speaking to. And it’s an audience researchers say can never be satisfied.
Stephen Prochaska, a doctoral candidate who studies what’s known in academia as collective sensemaking at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, told me how it works: Conspiracy theories in the digital age thrive on a process where communities collaborate to interpret ambiguous evidence and create narratives. Sometimes known as participatory misinformation, the goal isn’t necessarily to uncover truths, but to create content that resonates with the community’s existing beliefs and to transform complex, sometimes totally unrelated information into pertinent, digestible and often misleading lines that can move the story along.
To gut-check my unease with a public repository of the Epstein files, I called Joan Donovan, a researcher at Boston University who researches conspiracy theories and media manipulation.
“There will never be enough information to satiate the need for more clues for the next episode of this online conspiracy theory,” Donovan said.
And we’ve seen how that ends.
Conspiracy theories in the digital age thrive on a process where communities collaborate to interpret ambiguous evidence and create narratives.
WikiLeaks published hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee in 2016 on a searchable website, which conspiracy consumers and opportunistic online creators mined to fuel a narrative that birthed “Pizzagate,” the false belief that a pedophile ring was being run out of a Washington, D.C., pizza joint, and ultimately led to QAnon, a mass delusion that posited that these pedophiles ruled the world and that Donald Trump would stop them — a theory linked to multiple murders, kidnappings and various attempts to overthrow the government.
With the Twitter Files, internal documents were selectively framed to stoke an irrational panic over censorship that sparked harassment campaigns against researchers and congressional show trials. In 2022, Elon Musk handed cherry-picked emails and records from his newly acquired company to ideologically aligned writers, who twisted internal debates over content moderation into claims of widespread censorship. As The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel noted, the result was “a drawn-out, continuously teased social-media spectacle framed as a series of smoking guns.” Ultimately, the Twitter Files led to the shuttering of academic institutions that tracked misinformation and to a flood of harassment and threats directed at researchers who studied the phenomenon.
Within both WikiLeaks and the Twitter Files, there was newsworthy content. They revealed a real plot against then-presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and the messy inner workings of a social media platform grappling with how to govern in an age of misinformation. But the actual facts got lost in a flood of conspiracy theories, fermented by a group project of people digging through documents, finding crumbs and spinning them into whatever story they wanted. Real people were hurt by these conspiracy theories, which traveled further and have remained in the public consciousness longer than any of the factual reporting.
Similarly the Epstein files could address real questions in the public interest. About the source of Epstein’s wealth (Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has been investigating these financial records for the last three years). About the full scope of Epstein’s social circle — made somewhat public by Gawker’s 2015 publication of his little black book — and what they knew. About the “poor judgment” that led to a sweetheart deal by federal prosecutors that treated Epstein’s victims as an afterthought. About how, exactly, a man in federal custody managed to kill himself in a facility so plagued by security failures that it was eventually shut down.
For those late to the story: In 2008, Epstein struck a now-infamous nonprosecution agreement with then-U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta. With it, Epstein avoided federal charges and served just 13 months in a Florida jail on the charge of soliciting a minor for prostitution, with a work-release arrangement that allowed him to leave six days a week. More than a decade later, after dogged Miami Herald reporter Julie Brown renewed scrutiny in the case and fresh federal charges for sex trafficking and conspiracy followed, Epstein was arrested in New York. But before he could face trial, Epstein hanged himself in his Manhattan jail cell. It’s likely Epstein would have been convicted; prosecutors secured a 20-year sentence for Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime girlfriend and co-conspirator, on sex trafficking charges for her part in a kind of pyramid scheme in which Epstein allegedly paid minors to perform sexual massages and recruit ever-younger girls to do the same. (Maxwell’s petition to vacate her sentence is currently pending before the Supreme Court.) The facts of the case were already fertile ground for conspiracy theories, but Epstein’s death supercharged them. Over that weekend, Twitter lit up with claims that Epstein had become the latest entry on the infamous “Clinton Body Count” list — an evidence-free allegation amplified by Trump himself, who reposted speculation that Epstein was murdered because “he had information on Bill Clinton.” Now, six years later, we’re in another frenzy over Epstein, this time sparked by the DOJ and FBI’s “case closed” memo and the administration’s ham-fisted attempt to tamp things down. Trump has offered a dizzying set of reactions, including saying he didn’t want the kind of supporters who fixate on Epstein or the files, which he now calls “a big hoax that’s perpetrated by the Democrats, and some stupid Republicans and foolish Republicans fall into the net.” Whatever the Epstein files end up being, as a journalist, I want them. But I also know what happens when a big, messy cache of information gets dropped into the middle of a post-fact attention economy. After a report Thursday in the Wall Street Journal detailing a cryptic 2003 birthday card to Epstein bearing Trump’s name, the president is calling on the Justice Department to seek the unsealing of “all pertinent” grand jury testimony in Epstein’s sex trafficking case. (Earlier in the week, Trump had used the qualifier “all credible” to describe the kind of files he’d be OK with Attorney General Pam Bondi releasing.) But this won’t quiet anyone down. Democrats, joined by a few Republicans who’ve built followings off conspiratorial clout-chasing, are still demanding a vote to publish the Epstein files. And maybe, just maybe, the files contain disturbing, disqualifying or even criminal revelations about the people in Epstein’s orbit. Maybe, as some Democrats, Musk and a growing chorus of once-MAGA faithful suggest, the files contain details that would ensnare the president. Whatever the Epstein files end up being, as a journalist, I want them. But I also know what happens when a big, messy cache of information gets dropped into the middle of a post-fact attention economy. And I’m not excited. I’m nervous. The details of the Epstein case have always attracted conspiracy theorists: a rich man, powerful friends, real crimes, a sweetheart deal and a suicide. But the files aren’t just evidence, they’re ammunition. Depending on which citizen researcher mines them or which influencers frame what they find, the files will be used in equal measure to “prove” Trump’s innocence or guilt in all things, to confirm a liberal cabal and a conservative cover-up. Who gets caught up in the theories that follow — or the real threats those stories might inspire — is impossible to predict. If the past is any predictor, it’s not Epstein (he’s dead) or Trump (he’s Teflon) who will be caught up in the new round of conspiracy theories. It’s regular, innocent people. Prochaska, from the University of Washington, put it this way: “What we think we’re going to see may not be what we get.” There was no client list, the DOJ had announced in a memo a day earlier. Further, it said, Epstein had not blackmailed anyone and there was nothing suspicious about his death, case closed.
Brandy Zadrozny is a senior enterprise reporter for MS NOW. She was a previously a senior enterprise reporter for NBC News, based in New York. 
