Right-wing activist Laura Loomer warned that President Donald Trump’s handling of the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein threatens to “consume his presidency” in an interview on Wednesday, a dramatic rebuke from a presidential confidante that illustrates the growing rupture in the MAGA coalition.
She likened it to the intense media interest in ties between Trump’s first White House campaign and Russia, saying “I don’t want it to consume his presidency.”
“Obviously, this is not a complete hoax given the fact that Ghislaine Maxwell is currently serving 20 years in prison in Florida for her crimes and activities with Jeffrey Epstein, who we know is a convicted sexual predator,” Loomer told POLITICO. “This is why I said, and I’ll reiterate it again, the best thing that the president can do is appoint a special counsel to handle the Epstein files investigation.”
The debacle over a new government review of evidence relating to Epstein, the notorious sex offender, has blown up in recent days, causing a schism within Trump’s MAGA movement over his administration’s approach to the case.
Trump has sought to move on from the Epstein saga, defending Attorney General Pam Bondi as she faced attacks over the report and going so far as to blast his own “past supporters” on Wednesday, calling the entire thing a “hoax.”
Senior Trump administration officials had previously built up significant fanfare around the release of a supposed Epstein “client list,” which has long been a focal point for conspiracy theories as many right-wing media personalities posited that the billionaire convict was murdered in prison as part of a cover-up of a sprawling government conspiracy.
After hyping the promised release, a joint FBI and Department of Justice report last week said they had found no evidence of a list — or that Epstein, who died by suicide in his prison cell in 2019, had been murdered — prompting outcry from within MAGA circles.
Still, Loomer — the onetime Trump whisperer — wasn’t prepared to split entirely with the president over the case.
“I’m not going to dogpile the president,” she said, adding “he can’t allow for all of his focus and attention to be on the Jeffrey Epstein files. Do I think this has been handled poorly? Absolutely.”
As Bondi faces heightened scrutiny for her repeated attempts to dodge questions about the Epstein files, Loomer also teased that “there are people in the White House who agree with me that Pam [Bondi] spent too much time on Fox News and her statements were inconsistent and undermined what messaging is today about the Epstein files.”
Other prominent MAGA-aligned supporters of the president have also warned that Trump could see significant damage to his standing among his base if he does not change course.
The MAGA meltdown over Epstein “could be his Afghanistan going into the fall,” Mark Mitchell, head of polling and operations at Rasmussen Reports, told Steve Bannon Tuesday on his “War Room” podcast.
“People are trying to say this isn’t a big deal,” Mitchell said. “People are trying to say nobody wants this Epstein information out. It’s an absolute misdirection. This is horrifying. And if it isn’t corrected, it threatens derailing Trump’s agenda, getting rid of his political capital.”
“This is not about a guy who died in 2019, this is about a representation of two-tier justice and about unaccountable government,” Mitchell told Bannon.
