After Cayden McBride finishes class in Rome, Georgia, the 19-year-old goes home, opens his laptop, and starts searching. For the past few months, he has been spending hours at a time combing through the Jeffrey Epstein files on the US Department of Justice (DOJ) website, and following others online who are doing the same.
Flight logs. Transcripts. Images. Videos. The material released by the DOJ has given new insight into the crimes of Epstein, the late convicted sex offender, and into his high-profile connections.
McBride believes the Epstein files still matter, even if the headlines have moved on to the Iran war recently.
As a Christian, I don't believe anybody should endure what these women have been through, he says. There is so much bad stuff in these files.
McBride was a self-described Trump guy and very anti-establishment. He said he would always defend the president in the belief that Trump's Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement stood for exposing corruption. But the DOJ's delay in releasing all the files, and the perceived lack of accountability afterwards, has left him and many others disheartened with the movement, the president and especially with Pam Bondi, Trump's former attorney general.
Bondi was removed from her post just last week, to be replaced, in the interim, by her deputy Todd Blanche.
Trump has lauded Bondi for doing a tremendous job, and Blanche denied reports that his predecessor's handling of the Epstein files had been a factor in her departure.
But McBride hailed the changing of the guard, expressing hope that there could now be renewed focus on the Epstein issue.
His wish was granted this week, from an unlikely quarter. The Epstein story came crashing back into the news when First Lady Melania Trump unexpectedly denied she had ever had a relationship with him and called for a congressional hearing for his victims.
It is unclear how much that will galvanise interest, but Bondi's removal has done little to quiet the discontent amongst Trump's supporters like McBride. He thinks she needed to go because she wasn't prosecuting the people she needed to.
He thinks there might be some high-status arrests, but after that then other things like Iran, ICE, and the midterms will, in his words, sweep the Epstein story under the rug.
Many Epstein conspiracy theorists have long counted themselves amongst Trump's most ardent supporters. They believe that Epstein's death in prison was not a suicide, as the FBI has found. And for years they have insinuated that the government was involved with some sort of cover-up, protecting powerful people whom they believe participated in his crimes.
During his 2024 campaign, President Trump himself told Fox News he would go a long way towards releasing the Epstein files. But after returning to the White House, he changed his tone. That led to a very public fallout with Greene, who had been the representative in McBride's district, and some other members of the Republican Party.
Trump later dropped his opposition to releasing the files, after pushback from Epstein's victims and members of his own party, signing a law that compelled the DOJ to release thousands of files.
DOJ officials say they have now released all of their files other than certain items permitted to be exempt. But many Epstein conspiracy theorists don't buy it.
Epstein campaigners across the political spectrum have voiced their hopes that the change at the top of the DOJ could be a turning point in the Trump administration's handling of the Epstein saga.
Speaking to BBC Newsnight last week, Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna, who co-authored the act that forced the DOJ files release, said Republicans should make clear to the new attorney general that there could be no confirmation (of their position) unless you commit to the release of the rest of the Epstein files.
Many who attended CPAC last month in Dallas, Texas, the Epstein files still mattered. Robert Agee said he felt let down by Trump: When President Trump said, 'are we still talking about the Epstein files?', that was the moment MAGA died. That was when MAGA took off its hat. He betrayed us. He ran on that.
McBride agrees. I think people who still align with MAGA are just sort of brainwashed at this point, McBride says. There has to be a certain point when you realise this was not the man promised to us.
As for him, his decision is clear. It won't stop me voting, but I am definitely not voting for anybody implicated by the Epstein files, he says. Or anybody that is sponsored by President Trump.
