The past few weeks of Epstein revelations — with more expected should the government’s trove of files open to the public — should be a dream for QAnon believers, and for a few of them, it is. Vincent Fusca, a man whose scruffy good looks and ever-present fedora have led some QAnon supporters to believe he is John F. Kennedy Jr., not-in-fact dead and in disguise, texted me that “of course” the latest batch of Epstein emails proved QAnon right.
“You are finally getting it!” Mr. Fusca wrote happily.
What was harder to explain, for many believers, was why Mr. Trump spent so long resisting the release of the key evidence that would confirm what they suspected was happening all along. Celebrants like Mr. Fusca are outliers; much of QAnon’s response to Washington’s Epstein excitement has been strangely muted, even dismayed. But with revelations about Mr. Trump’s relationship to Mr. Epstein mounting, the default QAnon position has become that Mr. Epstein just isn’t that interesting anymore.
That’s partly because QAnon believers no longer stand out so brightly in the conspiracy-minded Republican mainstream. And because Congress’s mostly sober, evidence-based Epstein investigation bears little relation to the grand fantasies of elite exposure that QAnon dreamed up at its height. But for QAnon, the real problem with the Epstein revelations is that Mr. Trump sits uncomfortably close to the center of them.
A day after the House passed a bill to order the Justice Department to release its Epstein files, Jon Herold, a QAnon promoter who broadcasts under the name Patel Patriot, seemed disappointed that more of Mr. Epstein’s crimes might be revealed. “All the awful things that people are saying, I hope it’s not true,” Mr. Herold said. “I don’t want to see any of it.”
Given that the conspiracy theory doubles as a cult of personality built around Mr. Trump, this sort of reaction isn’t particularly surprising. But the new emails do suggest the conspiracy theorists were right about Mr. Epstein’s significance — albeit not in the ways they thought.
Drawing from cryptic message board posts written by the anonymous clue-giver known as Q from 2017 to 2022, QAnon adherents posit a world in which institutions like the Democratic Party, Hollywood and Wall Street are secretly controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping elites. While interpretations of QAnon vary, believers generally think that these elites torture children in rituals and drink their “adrenochrome” — a sort of fountain-of-youth liquid generated by terrified children. Only Mr. Trump can stop this evil, they say, and as president, he is expected to initiate the “Storm,” an apocalyptic day when top Democrats will be arrested, diseases will be cured and the world will be at peace.
Mr. Epstein should matter to QAnon because he was a rare example of the supposed sex-trafficking cabal’s machinations coming out in the open. While Mr. Epstein was mentioned relatively rarely in QAnon before his 2019 indictment, his mysterious death propelled QAnon recruitment and provided endless alleys for its amateur internet sleuths to explore.
But Mr. Trump’s long friendship with Mr. Epstein has always been awkward for QAnon believers to explain. Why was Mr. Trump, supposedly the ultimate avenger of abused children, videotaped palling around with Mr. Epstein? Why was he calling a known sex trafficker who paid dozens of girls, some as young as 14, to have sex with him, a “terrific guy?” Why did he appoint Alex Acosta, the prosecutor in Florida who helped give Mr. Epstein a sweetheart plea deal in 2007, to his cabinet?
The traditional QAnon explanation for the pair’s closeness has been that Mr. Trump was getting close to Mr. Epstein just to bring more publicity to his crimes. It’s not the most compelling argument, even by QAnon standards, and it’s looked even shakier as more Epstein emails about Mr. Trump have come out.
But maybe the Epstein story provided them with something after all. Interviewing QAnon believers and attending their rallies over six years, I overwhelmingly heard that what drew them together was dispossession. Supporters could pinpoint their moments of radicalization with clarity, often pointing out a moment of personal crisis — a financially ruinous illness, or a child’s mental disability that went ignored at school.
QAnon believers’ responses to the knowledge that they were on their own in America were typically bizarre, if not dangerous. After being denied disability payments for a difficult skin condition, one man I interviewed moved into a desert compound led by a QAnon splinter leader named Baby Q. Deluded QAnon believers have murdered family members, blocked a highway, and fought (and, in some cases, died) in the Jan. 6 riot.
Even so, they sensed that something was wrong with how average people were treated in the United States and they correctly identified that many elites really didn’t care about their struggles. The Epstein emails suggest as much, showing how figures like Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard, were still close with Mr. Epstein even after his predatory behavior was exposed.
QAnon’s retreat from the Epstein story is striking because there remain real questions about Mr. Epstein that could make for a rich vein of new theorizing. How exactly did Mr. Epstein get so rich? Why were so many wealthy, powerful men friends with him? Why did he move so easily through the global financial system?
But for most QAnon believers the priority is protecting Mr. Trump at all costs. Even if it means no longer asking questions. Even if it means letting the moment they finally got something right pass them by. Even if it means continuing to thirst for a storm that will never come.
Perhaps surprisingly, the most prominent QAnon believer keeping the real faith might be Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. It seems no accident that Ms. Greene, once so ardent a conspiracy theorist that she would debate the veracity of different Q “drops” online, was one of only four Republicans who backed an effort to get the Epstein files bill to the House floor. While Ms. Greene claimed she was no longer “a victim” of “media lies” that led her to QAnon, she still seems motivated by the hunt for information about sex trafficking that QAnon claimed to pursue.
The conspiracy theory may be in the doldrums now. But I can’t help noticing similarities between QAnon’s start in 2017 and this moment. Back then, Mr. Trump was bogged down in the first year of his presidency by the Russia investigation and unable to deliver the life-changing economic policies his supporters expected. QAnon offered them an understanding of the world in which Mr. Trump wasn’t letting his voters down, he was just fighting forces far more powerful and evil than they could imagine.
Now, Mr. Trump is once again bogged down in the first year of a presidential term, this time by the Epstein investigation. Prices are rising. Trump supporters are growing restless.
Do you think Q has one more clue left in him?
Will Sommer is a senior reporter for The Bulwark, where he writes the False Flag newsletter, and the author of “Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America.”
Source photographs by Davidoff Studios Photography/Getty Images and House Oversight Committee Democrats handout, via Reuters.
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