What happened
AlterNet reports that President Donald Trump’s refusal to fully release the Jeffrey Epstein files has helped revive Pizzagate, the discredited conspiracy theory falsely accusing Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign of operating a child-trafficking ring through Washington’s Comet Ping Pong pizzeria. The article relies chiefly on journalist Anna Merlan’s argument that documented elite associations with Epstein give conspiracists real abuses and relationships to distort into a fabricated narrative.
Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution under a deal that avoided federal prosecution. He later maintained relationships with prominent figures across politics, business, academia, and entertainment. AlterNet also cites Republican Sen. Mike Lee’s December repost of a video from Ian Carroll, whom HuffPost journalist Yashar Ali described as a conspiracy theorist who regularly spreads neo-Nazi propaganda. Lee said Carroll raised “legitimate questions.”
The excerpt, however, does not identify which Epstein records Trump withheld, what disclosure decision he made, or what authority governed their release. Its central causal claim—that Trump’s handling revived Pizzagate—is Merlan’s analysis, not a result established by evidence presented here.
Power is not a pizza parlor
The proven institutional failure in this story did not occur at Comet Ping Pong. It occurred when Epstein received unusually favorable treatment in 2008 and then retained access to wealthy, famous, and politically connected people despite his conviction and mounting allegations.
That is where scrutiny belongs: prosecutors, political officials, influential associates, and institutions capable of granting access, protection, or leniency. Pizzagate redirects attention from identifiable decisions by powerful people toward an invented criminal enterprise attached to a restaurant and partisan enemies. A gunman eventually attacked that restaurant. No one was injured, but the episode demonstrated that fictional accusations can produce physical danger for people with no institutional control over the abuses being invoked.
Secrecy supplies the propagandists
If Trump controlled records that could lawfully be released and declined to release them, that decision belongs to him. But AlterNet’s framing outruns its own evidence by calling the episode a “blunder” without explaining what was withheld or why. The omission matters because “bungling” converts an exercise of presidential power into mere incompetence before the article has established either the underlying decision or its rationale.
Opacity nevertheless has a predictable consequence: it creates room for political entrepreneurs to replace missing facts with insinuation. That does not validate Pizzagate. It shows why officials cannot exploit Epstein-related suspicion and then act surprised when conspiracists use unresolved questions as raw material.
A senator launders insinuation
Lee did more than encounter fringe material. According to the reporting, he distributed Carroll’s video and bestowed senatorial legitimacy on it by calling its questions legitimate. His disclaimer that he did not know Carroll did not neutralize that choice. A United States senator has greater reach, authority, and responsibility than the online personality whose content he amplifies.
Carroll’s rhetorical move was simple: because Epstein trafficked in elite access and was convicted of a sex offense involving a minor, perhaps Pizzagate was directionally correct. It was not. Evidence that powerful people associated with Epstein does not prove that Clinton’s campaign ran a trafficking operation from a Washington restaurant. Collapsing those claims is not investigation. It is guilt by atmosphere.
The convenient collapse of distinctions
The flight logs and social contacts listed by Merlan establish association, not identical conduct. The article names Bill Clinton, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., then-Prince Andrew, Kevin Spacey, Trump, and Bill Gates in connection with Epstein’s planes or social orbit. Those facts may justify scrutiny, but they do not by themselves establish participation in Epstein’s crimes.
Conspiracy politics thrives by erasing that distinction. It mixes convictions, allegations, travel records, friendships, rumors, and partisan targets into one suggestive cloud. The result protects power more often than it exposes it: documented prosecutorial favoritism and specific institutional failures disappear beneath an unlimited theory in which everyone is implicated and nothing must be proved.
The system behind the spectacle
The larger pattern is not that Pizzagate was secretly vindicated. It is that elite impunity creates justified distrust, while politicians and propagandists redirect that distrust into claims too indiscriminate to impose accountability on anyone.
Officials possess the power to disclose records lawfully, investigate specific conduct, explain prosecutorial decisions, and distinguish evidence from insinuation. When they substitute opacity or amplification, weaker actors absorb the danger while powerful institutions escape precise examination. Conspiracy theory is useful to that arrangement: it turns a traceable failure of law and political power into an endless carnival of suspicion.