The Trump administration had promised a bombshell. Americans, many of whom had spent years wondering over the unknowns in the Jeffrey Epstein case, would finally get their hands on the secret files that would explain it all. What really happened when the accused sex trafficker died in jail back in 2019? And who was on his “client list”—a rumored collection of famous and powerful people who participated in Epstein’s crimes?

In a September 2024 interview on the Lex Fridman Podcast, Donald Trump suggested that he would release the list if reelected. “Yeah, I’d be inclined to do the Epstein; I’d have no problem with it,” Trump said. He indulged speculation about Epstein after his reelection as well. In February, the White House hosted a collection of MAGA-world influencers and gave them binders full of heavily redacted Epstein-related documents labeled phase 1, suggesting more to come …

On Monday, the FBI released a memo saying that it had reviewed all of its files on Epstein and that it does not plan to release more after all; there will be no Phase 2.