The Justice Division asked a federal court on July 18, 2025, to unseal grand jury transcripts in Jeffrey Epstein’s case. The course from President Donald Trump got here after weeks of frustration amongst some far-right teams over his administration’s refusal to release the complete and unredacted “Epstein files.”
Epstein, a rich financier with high-profile connections, was arrested in 2019 on sex trafficking charges and later died by suicide in a Manhattan jail awaiting trial.
In early 2025, a federal court docket unsealed parts of the court docket paperwork. Whereas names of among the alleged shoppers and victims have been launched, many have been redacted or withheld.
Epstein’s arrest and loss of life turned a central focus for QAnon followers, who noticed them as proof of a hidden world elite engaged in baby trafficking and guarded by highly effective establishments. The discharge – or withholding – of the Epstein information is usually cited inside QAnon motion circles as proof of a broader cover-up by the so-called “deep state.”
Some followers of the MAGA – Make America Great Again – movement and the Republican Social gathering imagine within the false declare that the USA is secretly managed by a cabal of elites who’re pedophiles, intercourse traffickers and satanists.
Over time, what began as a baseless conspiracy on obscure platforms has migrated into the mainstream. It has influenced rhetoric and coverage debates, and even reshaped the American political panorama. The foundational perception of lots of the QAnon followers is that Trump is a heroic determine preventing the elite pedophile ring.
Trump’s makes an attempt at downplaying or obstructing the very disclosures they imagine would validate their worldview has led to confusion. To some, the delay within the launch of the information feels like a betrayal, and even the opportunity of his wrongdoing. Others try to reinterpret Trump’s actions by more and more baseless conspiracy logic.
Trump has publicly dismissed calls for for the full release of the Epstein Files as a “hoax.” He has additionally made false claims. On July 15, 2025, Trump said: “And I might say that, you understand, these information have been made up by Comey. They have been made up by Obama.”
As a scholar who studies extremism, I do know that the motion views Trump as a mythological determine and it interprets Trump’s actions to suit this overarching narrative – an elasticity which makes the motion each sturdy and harmful.
From Pizzagate to QAnon
The QAnon motion started with the Pizzagate conspiracy theory in 2016, which falsely claimed that high-ranking Democrats have been working a toddler intercourse trafficking ring out of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria. The baseless idea gained sufficient on-line momentum {that a} man armed with an assault rifle stormed the restaurant, seeking to “free the children.”
In 2017, an nameless determine known as “Q” started posting cryptic messages on message boards like 4chan and 8kun. The baseless accusations of a world community of elites concerned in controlling world establishments, including governments, businesses, and the media, in addition to working a child trafficking and ritual abuse, have been central to the QAnon motion’s narrative.
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The motion has recruited followers by language like “Save the Children,” to mobilize round points of kid trafficking.
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Many QAnon adherents, significantly girls, have been drawn to the motion through such appeals to child protection. In response to psychologists Sophia Moskalenko and Mia Bloom, this sort of attraction faucets into highly effective emotional instincts, making conspiracy theories like QAnon extra persuasive and more durable to dislodge, even in the face of contradictory evidence.
QAnon motion’s rise
QAnon followers perceived Trump as a messianic determine working to reveal this cabal in a climactic reckoning often called “The Storm” – a second when mass arrests would lastly convey justice.
They claimed that this second would ultimately convey a few “Nice Awakening,” a reference to the non secular revivalist actions of the 18th and nineteenth centuries. On this context the phrase described the supposed political and spiritual enlightenment that may comply with “The Storm” – a second of mass realization when individuals would “get up” to the reality in regards to the “deep state.”
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In 2019, the FBI recognized QAnon as a home terrorism risk, and main social media platforms began banning related content, however by then, QAnon had bled into mainstream conservative politics. Q-endorsing candidates, similar to Marjorie Taylor Greene, ran for and won elected office a yr later.
Trump and QAnon
Throughout Trump’s first administration – from 2017 to 2021 – the QAnon movement flourished. The posts from Q claimed to disclose insider data of a secret struggle being waged by the president, typically in coordination with the army, in opposition to the highly effective elite.
Trump by no means explicitly endorsed the motion, however he did little to distance himself from it.
His administration additionally included figures, like former Nationwide Safety Adviser Michael Flynn, who openly interacted with Q content online.
Trump’s rhetoric, particularly throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election, gave new life to QAnon narratives. When he questioned the integrity of the electoral process, QAnon followers interpreted it as affirmation of the deep state’s meddling.
Nevertheless, after Trump’s loss to Joe Biden within the 2020 presidential race, QAnon followers revised their unique prophecy to keep up perception in “The Storm” and “The Nice Awakening.” Some claimed the defeat was half of a bigger secret plan, with Biden’s presidency serving as a cover for exposing the deep state. Some believed Trump remained the true president behind the scenes, whereas others reframed the awakening as a spiritual rather than political event.
Certainly, by 2020, several congressional candidates openly embraced or confirmed sympathy for the QAnon motion.
At varied marketing campaign rallies in 2022 and after Trump used the movement’s symbolism. On Fact Social, his social media platform, he retweeted Q-affiliated accounts, and praised QAnon supporters as “people who love our country.” That very same yr he reposted a picture of himself carrying a Q lapel pin overlaid with the phrases “The Storm is Coming.”
After the 2020 elections
Trump’s departure from the White Home in January 2021 created an existential crisis for the QAnon movement. Predictions that he would declare martial regulation or arrest Joe Biden and different Democrats on Inauguration Day failed to materialize. Q’s posts additionally stopped, leaving many followers adrift.
Some deserted the speculation. Others rationalized the failed predictions or embraced new conspiracy narratives, similar to the idea that Trump was nonetheless secretly in cost or that the army would quickly act to reinstate him.
Some QAnon communities merged with or have been absorbed into broader anti-vaccine, anti-globalist, and Christian nationalist actions.
How huge is the motion?
Estimating the variety of QAnon believers is troublesome as a result of many people don’t brazenly establish with the motion, and people who do typically maintain a variety of loosely linked or partial beliefs moderately than adhering to a constant or uniform ideology. Not everybody who shares a Q meme or echoes a Q speaking level identifies as being a part of the motion.
That mentioned, surveys by teams just like the 2024 Public Faith Analysis Institute and the Related Press have discovered that 15–20% of Individuals imagine in a few of QAnon’s core claims, such because the existence of a secret group of Satan-worshipping elites controlling the government.
Amongst Republican voters, the number is often higher.
This doesn’t imply all these individuals are hardcore QAnon adherents, nevertheless it does present how far the narrative, or components of it, has seeped into mainstream pondering.
Epstein as proof of ‘the cabal’
The Trump administration’s failure to reveal the data in Epstein information has fueled inner confusion, disillusionment and even radicalization inside the motion.
For some QAnon believers, this failure was a turning level: if Trump – once seen as the hero within the conspiracy narrative – wouldn’t or couldn’t reveal the reality, then the “deep state” should be extra entrenched than imagined.
On the similar time, frustrations have grown inside MAGA and the QAnon motion’s areas. Some see it as a failure to satisfy considered one of his most necessary guarantees: exposing elite pedophiles. Others imagine the delay is strategic, one other instance of “the plan” requiring more patience.
The QAnon motion continues to evolve, whilst its central determine hedges and hesitates, displaying how potent myths will be in instances of uncertainty. For my part, understanding why this perception continues to achieve traction is important for understanding the present state of American democracy.
