How MAGA influencers put pressure on Trump, Bondi over Epstein

When conservative podcaster Liz Wheeler visited the White House along with other MAGA influencers on Feb. 27, Attorney General Pam Bondi handed her a binder labeled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1.” Wheeler hoped the contents might be the first step toward finally getting to the bottom of the deceased sex offender’s elite inner circle and who else might have been involved in wrongdoing.

But much to her frustration, the binders mainly contained previously released material. Recently, as a heated national debate over the Epstein files erupted, Wheeler’s phone was blowing up with associates asking her why the administration brought the group to the White House in the first place. This month, Wheeler has been using her platform on “The Liz Wheeler Show” to lambaste Bondi and accuse her of misrepresenting the Epstein files to gain fame on Fox News.

“I am speaking for the base here, and that the base associates the Epstein files now with justice,” Wheeler said in a recent interview with The Washington Post. “People feel like there’s been something hidden from them, which triggers people and rightfully so.”

Wheeler, 36, is one of many MAGA-aligned influencers who have collectively voiced outrage over the administration’s handling of the Epstein files, after Donald Trump and his allies for years nurtured theories that elites had helped cover up an extensive child-sex trafficking ring. The same army of new media personalities and podcasters who helped return Trump to the White House — and has been rewarded with access — turned sharply in recent weeks against his administration’s strategy, putting the president into a political thicket with his own base.

“Trump likes to validate unfounded theories of his base and build them up for a big reveal,” said Joe Uscinski, a political science professor at the University of Miami who studies political beliefs and conspiracy theories. “They’re upset now because they’ve been told that there’s no evidence for you.”

Trump has responded to the uproar in shifting ways, from initially defending his administration, including Bondi, to eventually instructing her to release more information.

As pressure mounted Friday, the Justice Department asked a federal court to release grand jury transcripts related to Epstein. The previous day, after the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had contributed a drawing of a naked woman to Epstein’s 50th birthday album in 2003, Trump directed Bondi to seek the release of “all pertinent” grand jury testimony in the Epstein case. Trump denied that the drawing was his and later sued the publication and its controlling shareholder, the billionaire Rupert Murdoch.

Those two developments rallied some MAGA influencers behind Trump, including those who had been vocal skeptics of his administration’s strategy on the Epstein files. “The base is completely unified because now we’re on offense,” said Stephen K. Bannon, a former senior White House aide and host of the influential “War Room” podcast.

But it was unclear how long that unity would last.

The administration’s shift followed days of outrage on the right after the Justice Department and FBI said earlier this month that files related Epstein’s case do not contain an incriminating “client list.” Bondi suggested on Feb. 21 that she had that list “sitting on [her] desk right now to review.” (She later sought to clarify that she was referring to case files more generally.)

Wheeler, who like many on the right has been careful not to blame Trump, praised the administration’s latest moves as an important “first step” but added that there were other key documents that she and others would want to see.

On her podcast in the days before the announcements, Wheeler had been sharply critical of Bondi.

Her “inexcusable mishandling of the Epstein files” is the “reason why President Trump should fire her,” Wheeler told her audience. “When someone’s mishandling starts impacting President Trump’s and the Republican Party’s chances at reelection next year during the midterms, it’s time to cut that person loose.”

“More damning Pam Bondi lies,” Wheeler recently posted on X to promote her latest episode, responding to a Trump social media post defending Bondi.

Bondi sought to clarify her position on Epstein and shut down conversation about him during a Cabinet meeting this past week. She described “tens of thousands of videos” — which she had said were being hidden from her by the Southern District of New York — that “turned out to be child porn” downloaded by Epstein, and that wouldn’t be released. She said that the evidence in her possession showed that he died by suicide, despite theories that his political enemies killed him. “That’s it on Epstein,” she concluded.

Wheeler, who launched her career at 23 when she joined with other young conservatives to self-publish a book, “Young, Conservative and Why It Is Smart to Be Like Us,” operates under the umbrella of BlazeTV, alongside other conservative personalities such as Glenn Beck and Mark Levin. A former host of a prime-time show on the pro-Trump One America News, she has a combined social media following of 3.5 million people and estimates she reaches far more through podcasts, email lists and other appearances throughout the year.

The past week, she sought to explain on her podcast why the Epstein story is so important to Trump’s supporters.

“We voted for President Trump because we want justice. We want justice for everything,” she said. “We want justice for censorship. We want justice for January 6th. We want justice for COVID.”

After Epstein’s death, Trump expressed doubt about whether he had died by suicide in jail, as the authorities concluded. And he suggested last fall that he would like to make public the list of the financier’s clients.

Such promises raised demand for results — which Wheeler and others did not see the administration producing.

On Wednesday, Trump lashed out in a lengthy post and portrayed the anger over documents related to Epstein, who was first arrested during the George W. Bush administration and then died in 2019 following charges of sex trafficking of minors during Trump’s first term, as a scandal ginned up by Democrats. He also berated some Republicans as “stupid” for focusing on the matter.

While Wheeler called for Bondi to resign over her handling of the Epstein case, she says she is doing so in the spirit of a “true friend” to the “America First” agenda: “When you are a true friend, you tell the truth even when the truth hurts,” Wheeler said, “even when the truth has consequences, even when it’s uncomfortable to tell the truth.”

The day she visited the White House in February, Wheeler recalled, press secretary Karoline Leavitt explained to the invited influencers that they were getting privileged access to the administration “because the Trump administration said, listen, we are not going to reward the mainstream media — the corporate media, the media that hates us and lies about us and smears us and serves the propaganda for the other side.”

The other invitees that day included far-right activist Jack Posobiec, election denier Scott Presler, right-wing political commentator Rogan O’Handley, who runs the social media account @DC_Draino, and Chaya Raichik, of @LibsofTikTok, an account known for its anti-LGBTQ+ commentary.

Asked for comment on the White House’s handling of the Epstein documents, the White House referred to Trump’s social media posts.

Wheeler left the White House that day and recorded an episode of her show from the airport. Bondi “hands us those binders, and she says that’s the story. That the deep state thought they could pull off this binder of nothing on us,” Wheeler said on her program.

The podcaster says she would much rather focus on what she sees as the government’s wrongs perpetrated during the pandemic, the 2020 election, and the prosecutions related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, among other things. But when Bondi “began to promise things about Epstein and then not deliver them, the base was stung by this because we have been wounded by politicians lying and covering up and obfuscating for the past decade,” she said.

“This is one of those moments when President Trump should listen to why his base cares about the Epstein files, why it resonates so viscerally with his base,” Wheeler told her audience in a recent episode. She said Trump was right to point out that Epstein is dead and that other things are more important.

But that misses the point, in her view.

“We care about it because of what it represents, because it represents justice,” Wheeler said.