Wall Street Journal sends brutal message to Trump officials: ‘Welcome to the rotten establishment’

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board sent a scathing message to top officials of President Donald Trump’s administration on Monday regarding its latest memo about Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking case.

The Justice Department released a two-page memo that sent MAGA loyalists and far-right conspiracy theorists spiraling earlier this week. The memo stated that the Justice Department and the FBI concluded that Epstein had no “client list” and that he died of suicide in his jail cell—undermining many unproven conspiracy theories about Epstein’s case and cause of death.

Conspiracy theorists and far-right influencers were outraged at the Justice Department’s memo, criticizing Attorney General Pam Bondi for refusing to release the documents related to the Epstein case. The memo also comes after FBI director Kash Patel and Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino previously questioned whether Epstein died of suicide.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board mocked far-right influencers, including Patel and Bongino, over the release of the memo earlier this week. The editorial board wrote that conspiracy theorists are “never satisfied” as the Trump administration grapples with intense blowback from some of the president’s most loyal supporters.

“These are boom times for conspiracy theorists, and one problem is they’re never satisfied. There’s always another coverup to unravel, or another hidden file somewhere that the evil establishment is hiding. That’s what Trump Justice Department officials are learning to their dismay now that they’re trying to close the books on the prosecution and death of Jeffrey Epstein,” the Wall Street Journal wrote in a Monday piece.

The editorial board went on to recap the Justice Department’s memo before sending a clever message to Patel and Bongino.

“Laura Loomer, Alex Jones and other conspiracy theorists think Messrs. Patel and Bongino, as well as Attorney General Pam Bondi, must be lying, or have been co-opted, or who knows what. Ms. Bondi ‘needs to resign,’ said Ms. Loomer, who is a pal of President Trump,” the editorial board wrote.

“There’s a lesson here for partisans who think they can ride conspiracies to power. They can easily boomerang on you once you’re in a position to see the real evidence and then have to convince a public that doesn’t trust anyone in power,” the board continued.

“Welcome to the rotten establishment, Mr. Patel and Mr. Bongino,” the board concluded.

The Trump administration has faced intense backlash over the memo released earlier this week, with some far-right mouthpieces accusing officials in engaging in a “cover up.” Trump lashed out at a reporter on Tuesday after asking a question about the controversial memo during a Cabinet meeting.

The reporter said that the memo left some “lingering mysteries,” and asked Bondi whether Epstein worked for an intelligence agency and why there was a minute missing from released footage of Epstein’s jail cell. Before Bondi could answer, Trump interjected.

“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years. You’re asking, we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things. And are people still talking about this guy, this creep, that is unbelievable,” Trump said during the Cabinet meeting.

A New York financier with ties to politicians and other famous and powerful people, Epstein was arrested in 2019 as he arrived in the U.S. from Paris aboard his private jet and charged with sexually abusing dozens of teenage girls during the early 2000s.

The case was brought more than a decade after a secret plea deal with federal prosecutors in Florida disposed of nearly identical allegations.

Weeks after his arrest, Epstein took his own life inside a high-security unit at a New York jail. Since then, Epstein’s crimes, high-profile connections and death have made him a subject of public fascination, intense media scrutiny and conspiracy theories.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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