Great news, everyone! We can all stop thinking about Jeffrey Epstein, who was charged with the sex trafficking of minors in 2019 and found dead in his Manhattan jail cell shortly after, apparently of suicide. Great minds have looked into the case and discovered there is nothing more to uncover. So don’t waste your time wondering which powerful people might have been part of Epstein’s alleged trafficking operation. There’s nothing to see here – nothing at all. Case officially closed.

That, in essence, was the message from the Trump administration over the weekend. On Sunday, Axios reported on a memo from Trump’s justice department and the FBI that concluded there is no evidence that Epstein was involved in blackmailing people, kept a “client list” or was murdered. Most importantly, the memo said there is no “evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties”.

This is a big deal because Trump and his lackeys have spent a lot of time and energy dangling Epstein-related conspiracy bait in front of their base, constantly insinuating that they’re on the verge of revealing the shocking truth about Epstein’s network of elite predators. When asked about an Epstein client list (the one that the new memo says is nonexistent) during a February appearance on Fox News, the US attorney general Pam Bondi said: “

© The Guardian