He Voted for Trump. Now He Can’t Stop Reading the Epstein Files.
He used to trust the system. Now he’s questioning everything.
Meet the growing wave of disillusioned Trump voters who aren’t just disappointed they’re digging. Late nights. Rabbit holes. Court documents, flight logs, redacted names. For hours at a time, this voter searches the Epstein files looking for something the headlines haven’t given him: the truth.
And the deeper he goes, the more questions he finds
After Cayden McBride finishes class in Rome, Georgia, the 19-year-old goes home, opens his laptop, and starts searching.
For the past few months, he has been spending hours at a time combing through the Jeffrey Epstein files on the US Department of Justice (DOJ) website and following others online who are doing the same.
Flight logs. Transcripts. Images. Videos. The material released by the DOJ has given new insight into the crimes of the late convicted sex offender and into his high-profile connections.
McBride believes the Epstein files still matter, even if the headlines have moved on to the Iran war recently.
“As a Christian, I don’t believe anybody should endure what these women have been through,” he says. “There is so much bad stuff in these files.”
McBride was a self-described “Trump guy” and “very anti-establishment”. He said he would always defend the US president in the belief that Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (Maga) movement stood for exposing corruption.
But the DOJ’s delay in releasing all the files, and the perceived lack of accountability afterwards, has left him and many others disheartened with the movement, the president and especially with Pam Bondi, Trump’s former attorney general.
Bondi was removed from her post just last week, to be replaced, in the interim, by her deputy Todd Blanche.
Trump has lauded Bondi for doing a “tremendous job” and Blanche denied reports that his predecessor’s handling of the Epstein files had been a factor in her departure.
But McBride hailed the changing of the guard, expressing hope that there could now be renewed focus on the Epstein issue.
His wish was granted this week, from an unlikely quarter. The Epstein story came crashing back into the news when First Lady Melania Trump unexpectedly denied associating with him and called for a congressional hearing for his victims.
It is unclear how much that will galvanise interest, but Bondi’s removal has done little to quiet the discontent amongst Trump’s supporters like McBride. He thinks she needed to go because she wasn’t prosecuting “the people she needed to”.
He thinks there might be some “high-status arrests”, but after that, other things like Iran, immigration raids and the midterms will, in his words, sweep the Epstein story under the rug.
Maga fallout over Epstein
Many Epstein conspiracy theorists have long counted themselves amongst Trump’s most ardent supporters.
They believe that Epstein’s death in prison was not a suicide, as the FBI concluded, and for years have insinuated that the government was involved with some sort of cover-up, protecting powerful people whom they believe participated in his crimes.
In an interview with Vanity Fair last year – portions of which she later disputed – Chief of Staff Susie Wiles said that the Epstein files could cost the Republican Party some of its most important new voters – young men, who turned to Trump in 2024, particularly those who had been drawn to promises of accountability and reform.
And while the vast majority of Republicans still back the president, there are signs that the Epstein fallout has chipped away at his diverse coalition of supporters, who range from middle-of-the-road business owners who want to lower taxes to very online young men.
A poll conducted by the Economist/YouGov in February found that 16% of voters who backed Trump during the last election thought he was covering up Epstein’s crimes. Of those who identify themselves as Maga, 11% thought the president was part of a cover-up.
Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein, but his own history with the disgraced financier continues to make headlines. The president appears to have been friends with Epstein for a number of years before falling out – in the early 2000s, according to Trump, two years before Epstein was first arrested.
The US president is mentioned thousands of times in the files released by the DOJ, including in emails and correspondence sent by Epstein himself to others.
“He’s quite untouchable, but on this one? The whole concept that Maga and Trumpism was going to be a breath of fresh air that was going to reveal things that had been hidden is gone.”
Bondi attracted particular criticism within the Maga movement for promising to release an alleged client list associated with Epstein, only for her department to later say that no such list existed.
Will voters move on?
Epstein campaigners across the political spectrum have voiced their hopes that the change at the top of the DOJ could be a turning point in the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein saga.
Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna, who co-authored the act that forced the DOJ files release, Newsnight last week that Republicans should make clear to the new attorney general that there could be “no confirmation [of their position] unless you commit to the release of the rest of the Epstein files“.
acting to Bondi’s firing, Cernovich wrote in a post on X: “Bondi was trying to do something good but didn’t know the back story. I blame those who claim ‘there are no more Epstein files’ after the binder incident. There were A LOT of them. And there’s more unreleased.”
If anywhere is a test for how critical this issue is for Trump, it is the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an annual political conference for right-leaning activists and politicians.
For many who attended CPAC last month in Dallas, Texas, the Epstein files still mattered.
Robert Agee said he felt let down by Trump: “When President Trump said ‘are we still talking about the Epstein files?’, that was the moment Maga died. That was when Maga took off its hat. He betrayed us. He ran on that.”
McBride agrees.
“I think people who still align with Maga are just sort of brainwashed at this point,” he says. “There has to be a certain point when you realise this was not the man promised to us.”
McBride says some of his friends now question whether they will vote again.
As for him, his decision is clear. “It won’t stop me voting, but I am definitely not voting for anybody implicated by the Epstein files,” he says. “Or anybody that is sponsored by President Trump.”
