Conspiracy theories, particularly those that involve and seem to implicate the rich and powerful, are hard — maybe impossible — to contain. They are predicated on the assumption that elites are orchestrating cover-ups to manipulate the great unwashed or to mask wrongdoing. No amount of disclosure fully stems the suspicions that fuel conspiracy theories because those theories, by their very nature, assume that ruses are designed to be perpetual. The truth may never be known. Something will always be hidden. The man is out to get you.

So we’ve had generations of speculation and conspiracies about the Kennedy assassination and Area 51. So we now have the Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy.

There are enough uncomfortable or unsettled aspects of this trio of examples to give them conspiratorial lift. It didn’t make sense that Jack Ruby got that close to Lee Harvey Oswald or that Oswald managed to shoot Kennedy all by himself. If there were no aliens or UFOs at Area 51, why was the military conducting expensive UFO studies, and what explained the odd goings-on in Nevada? How did it come to pass that Epstein was found hanging in his Manhattan jail cell in 2019, and what about the “secret list” of powerful enablers who may have helped the sexual predator and trafficker roam freely for so long?

President Donald Trump is a veteran shape-shifter who has deployed conspiracy theories with so much enthusiasm and for so long that he might as well swap his red Maga cap for a tinfoil hat. Yet insulating himself and his political prospects from his relationship with Epstein and the fallout arising from federal investigations of the disgraced financier has become an acute and intractable problem. He finds himself on the downward, slippery slope of a conspiracy theory he helped set in motion with no obvious barriers emerging to break his fall.

It has always been thus when scandal and Washington intersect, but this moment is vividly wacky, thoroughly Trumpy, quite ungovernable and oozing with karma.

Trump and his supporters made ample hay over the years out of right-wing conspiracy yarns that placed Democrats at the centre of paedophilia and trafficking rings. Hillary Clinton and Pizzagate evolved into QAnon peddling the notion that a Democratic deep state supported child sex trafficking. Trump encouraged the notion among his most fervent supporters that he was here to bust up this stuff, so when Epstein died while being prosecuted on charges of sex trafficking minors, Trump — an old pal of Epstein — jumped into action.

“I know it’s under investigation by Attorney-General Barr, and I’m sure he’s going to be handling it,” Trump promised in the wake of Epstein’s death in 2019. “I want a full investigation, and that’s what I absolutely am demanding.” (Barr eventually agreed with initial findings that Epstein’s death was a suicide.)

When Tucker Carlson accused Barr of covering up Epstein’s death in a 2023 interview with Trump, the former president didn’t push back. Instead, he used the moment to blame Barr further for not supporting another conspiracy theory — that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. While campaigning for president in 2024, he said he would release a supposed Epstein “client list” if one existed. After Trump was elected, he put Pam Bondi, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, three avid purveyors of Epstein flotsam, atop the nation’s law enforcement apparatus. Surely they would be dedicated to getting the truth out.

Dreams don’t always come true. After the FBI and the Justice Department issued a memorandum saying that Epstein died by his own hand and that no secret “client list” existed, the Magasphere melted down. Now Trump’s own supporters are calling on him to disgorge all known thought about Epstein, and Democrats are happily stoking the flames. Odd bedfellows, as my colleagues Nia-Malika Henderson and Matt Yglesias have pointed out, but there you have it.

Trump now finds himself in the unusual position of trying to stuff the Epstein genie back into a bottle that he helped uncork. He has labelled the onslaught a hoax initiated by Democrats. It wasn’t. He also said the media were to blame for his travails. They are not. Yet rather than backing down from listless excuses or weak lines of attack, Trump is upping the ante.

After the Wall Street Journal reported recently about a risqué birthday note bearing Trump’s name that was part of a gift compilation given to Epstein in 2003, the President sued the publication’s reporters and its corporate parents, Dow Jones & Co and News Corp, for libel. To win that case, he will have to demonstrate that a cautious and methodical media outlet published the information knowing it to be false or with reckless disregard for the truth. He will also have to endure reams of potentially embarrassing discovery about his relationship with Epstein if he stays the course. (In 2011, Trump lost a libel lawsuit he filed against me for a biography I wrote, TrumpNation.)

To make his burden heavier, Trump also promised to haul the Journal’s most prominent owner, Rupert Murdoch, on to the witness stand to testify about his “pile of garbage” newspaper. Murdoch, of course, also controls Fox, the broadcasting network Trump has traditionally relied on as a megaphone to a political base stoked for conspiracy theories. It’s all quite messy.

The Journal isn’t pursuing these stories alone, and Trump is likely to continue to have his hands full while the Epstein spotlight shines brightly. The New York Times reported on Sunday that a woman who provided information to the FBI about Epstein and Trump and her encounters with them may offer an example of some of the material lodged in unreleased federal investigative files.

Trump has directed Bondi, his attorney-general, to release grand jury testimony taken during the federal investigation of Epstein that was going on when he hung himself. It could be years before that is released, and chunks of it are likely to be redacted. Lots of other investigative material, akin possibly to what the Times reported, may remain under wraps.

Redacted grand jury testimony unveiled to the public years from now will not satisfy Trump’s most loyal followers. They are calling into right-wing podcasts and other shows voicing their outrage. Hosts of those shows know why.

“I am speaking for the base here, and that the base associates the Epstein files now with justice,” Liz Wheeler, a conservative podcaster, told The Washington Post. “People feel like there’s been something hidden from them, which triggers people and rightfully so.”

Trump, the conspiracy theorist nonpareil, also knows something: whatever he releases won’t end the bleeding. “Nothing will be good enough for the troublemakers and radical Left lunatics making the request,” he observed in a Truth Social post on Saturday. “It will always be more, more, more. Maga!"

The President is navigating a politically perilous path. And it’s entirely of his own making.

• Timothy L. O'Brien is senior executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion. A former editor and reporter for The New York Times, he is author of TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald