By Ella Anderson/Cronkite News
WASHINGTON – The week after financier Jeffrey Epstein died in jail six years ago as he awaited trial for sex trafficking, Arizona congressman Andy Biggs went on Fox News and, like many Republicans, then and now, demanded answers.
“We want to get to the bottom of it,” the Gilbert Republican said. “There’s no one who believes it was a suicide.”
Three months later, Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Bullhead City, posted a series of 23 tweets during President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial that turned out to be a morbid acrostic.
The first letter of each post spelled out “Epstein didn’t kill himself.”
Biggs and Gosar are among the many Republicans who stoked the Epstein conspiracy theory who have gone silent since July 7, when the Justice Department released a memo dismissing speculation about foul play in his death or the existence of a so-called “client list.”
Trump stoked that conspiracy but now says it’s time to move on – advice that much of his MAGA base has refused to take.
Sen. Ruben Gallego and other Democrats are enthusiastically exploiting the GOP fracture.
“They ran on this,’” he told Cronkite News on Thursday before pushing a resolution demanding release of flight logs and other documents from FBI files. “And now, look away. Don’t ask any more questions. Nothing to see here.”
“If the Department of Justice has these files and there’s nothing to hide, then release them and prove it,” Gallego said on the Senate floor.
On X, he accused Trump of “hiding the Epstein list.”
Republicans blocked his resolution, following the lead of Trump, who has insisted the case is nothing but a “scam” and a “hoax” orchestrated by Democrats, even though he had long accused Democrats of quashing embarrassing secrets in the files.
This week, Trump lashed out at members of his party who refuse to accept the Justice Department findings. In a Truth Social post, he called them “weaklings” who had “bought into this bull–hook, line, and sinker.”
“I don’t want their support anymore!” he wrote.
Biggs, running for governor with Trump’s endorsement, has stayed in line. Other Arizona Republicans have not.
Rep. Eli Crane, R-Oro Valley, co-sponsored a resolution to force a House vote on releasing the complete Epstein files. The effort attracted support from Democrats and hard-right Republicans.
“Add me,” Crane replied on X to a post by Rep. Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican who started a petition that would force the vote. “Transparency matters.”
Massie launched the effort with Rep. Ro Khanna, a liberal Democrat from California.
“If you’re not hiding anything, prove that to the American people,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-New York, told reporters. “And if you are trying to hide something, as many of Donald Trump’s MAGA supporters apparently believe, then Congress should work hard to uncover the truth for the American people.”
Crane declined to speak about the uproar with Cronkite News on Thursday at the Capitol.
At the White House, press secretary Karoline Leavitt called it “asinine” to believe that Democrats sincerely want transparency.
Epstein was charged in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges involving underage girls. His ties to powerful figures fueled suspicion that the case would reveal damaging information about presidents, royalty, and billionaires.
MAGA loyalists already believed the government was hiding an Epstein “client list” when Attorney General Pam Bondi seemed to affirm their suspicions.
“It’s sitting on my desk right now to review,” she told Fox News a month after Trump returned to the White House.
Bondi now says that no such document exists and that the July 7 memo “speaks for itself.”
Washington correspondent Emma Lucille Bradford contributed reporting.
