Pro-Trump influencers have always had a lot to say about the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Several called for their release before President Trump was re-elected, certain that the files would expose a cabal of Democrats who had palled around with Mr. Epstein even though he had been exposed as a convicted sex offender.
And several criticized Mr. Trump himself this year after he repeatedly sought to block the files’ release, referring to them as a “Democratic hoax.”
But many of them were conspicuously quiet on Tuesday, when the Justice Department released a batch of materials that contained hundreds of mentions of Mr. Trump. Their silence contrasted with the uproar made over the weekend when the department’s first release focused on former President Bill Clinton, including an image, stripped of context, showing him reclining in a hot tub. (Mr. Clinton has never been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Mr. Epstein.)
“It’s pretty rich how the Democrats falsely accused President Trump of being a pedophile, only for the Trump DOJ to release Epstein files that show Bill Clinton skinny dipping with a pedophile in the pedo’s pool,” Laura Loomer, the arch Trump ally and conservative commentator, wrote on social media on Saturday. “Maybe now the media will stop obsessing over these files.”
On Tuesday, however, Ms. Loomer said nothing about the newly released materials, which showed, among other things, that federal prosecutors had determined that Mr. Trump had flown on Mr. Epstein’s private plane more times than they originally knew.
Instead, Ms. Loomer seemed to post about everything except the Epstein files: immigrant work visas; “anti-white racism”; next year’s midterm elections; and Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York.
A similar pattern appeared in the X account of Rogan O’Handley, a lawyer and conservative influencer who posts under the handle DC Draino.
On Friday, Mr. O’Handley assailed Mr. Clinton, writing that the Epstein files had depicted him “shirtless in a hot tub with a female that is not his wife.”
But on Tuesday, Mr. O’Handley had nothing at all to say about the files.
Benny Johnson, a popular pro-Trump podcaster and host of “The Benny Show,” also avoided mentioning the Epstein files on Tuesday. He focused on other issues, including a transgender instructor who was fired from the University of Oklahoma and a bus driver from Pennsylvania who lost her job after asking students she was driving to speak English.
One Trump-friendly account did, however, post about the newly released files: the one run by the Justice Department. The department released a statement on Tuesday, seeking to give context to the material, some of which contained unverified or unsubstantiated accusations against Mr. Trump.
“Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the F.B.I. right before the 2020 election,” the department’s statement said.
The claims, it added, were “unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.”
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
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