“Conspiracy theories never go away, and each revelation feeds that. That’s pretty much it.”

— A longtime Republican operative, quoted by the Washington Post, on the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein fallout.

“Far-right influencers have been hinting in recent weeks that they have finally found a venue — Miami — and a federal prosecutor — Jason A. Reding Quiñones — to pursue long-promised charges of a ‘grand conspiracy’ against President Trump’s adversaries,” the New York Times reports.

“Their theory of the case, still unsupported by the evidence: A cabal of Democrats and ‘deep-state’ operatives, possibly led by former President Barack Obama, has worked to destroy Mr. Trump in a yearslong plot spanning the inquiry into his 2016 campaign to the charges he faced after leaving office.”

“But that narrative, which has been promoted in general terms by Mr. Trump and taken root online, has emerged in a nascent but widening federal investigation.”

“The Trump administration has ordered FBI employees to immediately search their workstations and digital media for any records pertaining to the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa,” CNN reports.

“A Florida federal judge has empaneled a grand jury for January that a close Donald Trump ally recently suggested is related to a criminal investigation into allegations of a long-running Democratic conspiracy against the president,” Bloomberg reports.

“Mike Davis, who has advocated for a criminal investigation into Trump’s political opponents, made the comments in a video he posted on social media.”

“The QAnon shaman has sued Donald Trump for $40 trillion in a rambling lawsuit that targets Elon Musk, T-Mobile, and Warner Bros,” The Independent reports.

“Jacob Chansley, infamous for wearing a horned warrior outfit while storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, has claimed that he is the rightful commander-in-chief.”

“In his 26-page complaint, he has claimed that an elite group has launched a conspiracy to violate the Constitution. The entire complaint, which is more akin to a manifesto than a formal legal document, is presented in a single paragraph.”

President Trump posted a video purporting to be a segment on Fox News (it wasn’t) in which an A.I.-generated, deep-faked version of himself sat in the White House and promised that “every American will soon receive their own MedBed card” that will grant them access to new “MedBed hospitals,” Politico reports.

If you’re unfamiliar with the “MedBed” conspiracy theory, it’s a belief that there are certain hospital beds “loaded with futuristic technology” that can “reverse any disease, regenerate limbs, and de-age people.”

The video has since been deleted.

Will Sommer: “I wrote last week about the rise of the conspiracy theories surrounding Kirk’s death, which began to circulate within hours of his assassination. But I didn’t anticipate that the director of the FBI would decide to acknowledge—and thereby elevate—them.”

“But in this modern, Trumpified era of the Justice Department, that’s what happens when major right-wing figures, including Jones and Owens get involved. It doesn’t help matters that Patel (at least according to his critics) seems utterly consumed with his social media clout and how his reputation is faring on the online right.”

“From here, it seems likely that the skepticism about the official narrative of the Kirk assassination will only grow.”

Wall Street Journal: “On the eve of Kirk’s funeral, this official version of events—presented by Utah’s governor and county attorney and the Federal Bureau of Investigation—has been met with a tsunami of disbelief by swaths of the public.”

“Without any basis in fact, Kirk’s killing has variously been attributed to Israel, the MAGA movement—of which Kirk was a part—transgender militants or the far-right Groypers. Robinson either acted alone, as the government has so far asserted, or as part of an organized cell, as the unfounded theories go.”

“In the months leading up to the January 6 Capitol riot, a now deleted Twitter account bearing the full name of E. J. Antoni, President Donald Trump’s pick to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics, betrayed a seeming obsession with promoting election denial conspiracy theories while talking about violent threats to those who stood in Trump’s way,” Wired reports.

New York Times: “No commander in chief in his lifetime has been as consumed by conspiracy theories as President Trump and now they seem to be consuming him. They have been the rocket fuel for his political career since the days when he spread the lie that Mr. Obama was secretly born overseas and therefore not eligible to be president. More than a decade later, Mr. Trump is coming full circle by trying to divert attention from the Epstein conspiracy theory with a new-and-improved one about Mr. Obama supposedly committing treason.”

“The harmonic convergence of competing conspiracies has overshadowed critical policy issues facing America’s leaders at the moment, whether it’s new tariffs that could dramatically reshape the global economy or the collapse of cease-fire talks meant to end the war in Gaza. The Epstein matter so spooked Speaker Mike Johnson that he abruptly recessed the House for the summer rather than confront it. The allegations lodged against Mr. Obama so outraged the former president that he emerged from political hibernation to express his indignation at even having to address them.”

Brian Stelter: “Here’s the thing about conspiracy theories. People liken them to fires — you’ll hear folks saying that MAGA media is ‘fanning the flames’ of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal — but that’s not quite right. Fires can be extinguished. Conspiracy theories are more like nuclear fallout. You can try to decontaminate the area, try to minimize exposure, but the radioactivity lingers for decades. It doesn’t go away.”

“And so it goes with the Epstein obsession among Trump’s media allies. While Fox News has taken his plea seriously to stop talking about the dead sex offender, many other MAGA media sources are pressing on, recognizing that the audiences they’ve built on conspiratorial thinking are simply demanding more, more, more.”

“As his supporters erupt over the Justice Department’s failure to release much-hyped records in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking investigation, President Donald Trump’s strategy has been to downplay the issue,” the AP reports.

“His problem? That nothing-to-see-here approach doesn’t work for those who have learned from him that they must not give up until the government’s deepest, darkest secrets are exposed.”

“Suspicion is rippling through the MAGA movement, clouding a historic run of conservative victories meant to lay the foundation for President Trump’s ‘Golden Age,’” Axios reports.

“Even at the apex of power, MAGA’s populist base remains convinced that shadowy forces are working to unravel its every gain. Trump’s recent actions — especially his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case — have only hardened those fears.”

New York Times: “The fallout is testing the power the president holds over his most loyal followers, the ones who have trusted him all along and who believed they would learn a whole lot more about the Epstein saga if they returned Mr. Trump to office.”

“It is entirely too soon to know what the revolt will mean or if and when it might sputter out, but the nature of it was stunning to behold. It was like a Möbius strip of paranoia and distrust: A political movement that galvanized and exploded around a conspiracy theory — lies about Barack Obama’s birthplace were central to Mr. Trump’s political rise — cannibalizing itself over the mother of all modern conspiracy theories.”

“And in a twist, Mr. Trump’s usual playbook for getting himself out of trouble seemed not to be working this time — in fact, it was only making his predicament worse.”

Axios: Trump administration faces GOP blowback in Congress over Jeffrey Epstein.

CNN: Trump flails as Epstein storm rages around his government.

Alex Jones broke down in tears in a video reacting to a new Trump administration memo about Jeffrey Epstein, asserting that there was no incriminating client list.

Said Jones: “I just really need the Trump administration to succeed, and to save this country, and they’re doing so much good. And then for them to do something like this, tears my guts out.”

He added: “I need to defend Trump, he’s being lied about. And then this type of shit happens, I don’t even know what to say.”

For members: A Conspiracy Theory That Won’t Die