President Donald Trump claimed Sunday that the “Epstein Files” were fabricated in a conspiracy by the deep state to undermine the MAGA movement. But when Attorney General Pam Bondi’s “Phase One” release of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein underwhelmed in February, Fox News personalities joined Bondi in arguing that she had been the victim of a conspiracy by the deep state to keep those files hidden. 

The MAGA movement is embroiled in chaos following the July 6 release of an unsigned memo from the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation which repudiated common right-wing claims about Epstein, including that he maintained a “client list” of prominent figures for whom he sexually trafficked underage girls. Former Fox host-turned-FBI deputy director Dan Bongino did not show up for work on Friday and reportedly threatened to resign over Bondi’s handling of the case, leading to MAGA calls for her to step down or be fired.

Trump attempted to tamp down the firestorm via a lengthy social media post in which he stood by Bondi and claimed the anti-MAGA deep state had “created” the “Epstein Files” (but for some reason neglected to include any incriminating information about him or any of his allies).

The president posted to Truth Social: 

Why are we giving publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration, who conned the World with the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, 51 “Intelligence” Agents, “THE LAPTOP FROM HELL,” and more? They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called “friends” are playing right into their hands. Why didn’t these Radical Left Lunatics release the Epstein Files? If there was ANYTHING in there that could have hurt the MAGA Movement, why didn’t they use it?

Trump’s claims put his right-wing supporters to the test because they had previously offered a diametrically opposed explanation for the deep state’s role in the Epstein saga.

Bondi oversaw the February 27 “Phase One” release of documents related to Epstein. She had raised expectations for that release by claiming that a list of Epstein’s clients was “sitting on my desk right now to review.” But the right-wing influencers who received the documents at a high-profile White House event quickly complained that they included little information that had not previously been made public.

In response, Bondi issued a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel later that day in which she claimed to have “learned from a source that the FBI Field Office in New York was in possession of thousands of pages of documents related to the investigation and indictment” of Epstein that had not been provided in response to her initial request for the bureau’s Epstein-related files. Bondi demanded that the FBI “deliver the full and complete Epstein files to my office” by 8 a.m. the following day with “no withholdings or limitations” and that Patel “conduct an immediate investigation into why my order to the FBI was not followed.”

Bondi’s Fox allies ate up this explanation and began arguing that nefarious forces within the Justice Department and FBI were hiding the truth about Epstein from the attorney general.

“The biggest story tonight is which documents are missing,” Trump operative Sean Hannity claimed on his Fox show that night. Epstein’s “rolodex,” Hannity added, is “not the story to me. The story is the New York field office — they knew that the attorney general of our country was asking for these documents. They didn't hand them over.”

“I've got a big problem with that,” Hannity told Fox’s Gregg Jarrett.

“Well, it could be criminal,” Jarrett replied, claiming that Bondi had been “sandbagged deliberately” by FBI officials “defying her order to hand everything order -- over and then lying about it.”

Jarrett went on to say that he expected Patel to “quickly identify and likely fire whomever committed this gross insubordination” and that the perpetrators may have illegally conspired to obstruct justice and should “lawyer up.”

Other Fox hosts joined Hannity in running with Bondi’s claims. Jesse Watters named specific individuals in New York’s FBI and Justice Department offices whom he baselessly blamed for “withholding Epstein docs from the attorney general,” and commented that he was “glad to hear that we're smoking out some of these saboteurs.” And Mark Levin suggested that the purported perpetrators were Democrats who were “trying to protect a lot of names and individuals.”

Bondi specifically criticized the Biden administration for not releasing the Epstein documents that the FBI had kept from her and suggested that Trump would make different choices during a March 3 interview with Hannity. 

“It's a new day, it's a new administration, and everything's going to come out to the public,” she said. “The public has a right to know. Americans have a right to know.”

Trump apparently disagrees. It will be interesting to watch whether and how his Fox propagandists contort themselves in response to his position.

Update (7/14/25): So far, Fox appears to be following Trump's marching orders. On Monday as of noon ET, the network had mentioned Epstein zero times, according to a search of the Kinetiq database of closed-captioning transcripts.