Elon Musk has thrust MAGA firebrand Steve Bannon into the heart of the Jeffrey Epstein files scandal.
The world’s richest man has been fanning the flames of a MAGA revolt sparked by an FBI and Justice Department memo disputing earlier claims from Trump officials that the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein maintained a “client list.”
“Bannon is in the Epstein files,” Musk wrote Tuesday, in response to a post by Trump ally Roger Stone, who noted that Bannon—a White House chief strategist during Trump’s first term—regularly spent time with Epstein even after the financier’s 2019 arrest on sex-trafficking charges.
Bannon was revealed in 2021 by the New York Post to have conducted interviews with Epstein at his homes in Paris and New York over several months before Epstein went to jail in July 2019. While Bannon claimed he was shooting a documentary about the financier’s “depravity,” Epstein’s brother Mark Epstein told Business Insider in 2021 that Bannon was trying to help his brother “rehabilitate his reputation.”
Author Michael Wolff has also said that Bannon coached Epstein during this time on how to handle the media in his book Too Famous: The Rich, the Powerful, the Wishful, the Notorious, the Damned. The former Breitbart News executive reportedly encouraged Epstein with words like: “You’re engaging, you’re not threatening, you’re natural, you’re friendly, you don’t look at all creepy, you’re a sympathetic figure.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Bannon’s lawyer for comment.
Musk also accused Trump of being in the Epstein files during their explosive breakup in May. Trump had a longstanding relationship with Epstein starting in the late 1980s, but he says their relationship ended in the early 2000s and that he had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes. Musk later retracted the comment, saying he had gone too far.
But the Tesla CEO went on the offensive again Tuesday, tapping into the frustration of Trump supporters who had hoped his return to office would expose bombshell secrets about Jeffrey Epstein and other elites.
“How can people be expected to have faith in Trump if he won’t release the Epstein files?” Musk asked on X.
Trump, in turn, angrily shut down Epstein questions during a cabinet meeting that proved humiliating for both him and Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was forced to walk back her February claim that an Epstein client list was “sitting” on her desk.
