The Jeffrey Epstein saga has derailed President Trump’s news conferences and consumed the attention of the White House.
It has prompted an intense Justice Department review that has enlisted, according to one whistle-blower, 1,000 F.B.I. employees, some of them on 24-hour shifts.
And just this week, it caused the House of Representatives to shut down early, grinding the legislative business of Washington to a halt.
The Epstein case has dominated the Trump administration and Washington in a way few could have predicted, nearly six years after Mr. Epstein, a convicted sex offender, died in his jail cell in 2019. Officials determined that he died by suicide, but the case has fascinated conspiracy theorists, including many in Mr. Trump’s base.
Alongside all the major issues the Trump administration planned to tackle in the president’s second-term — a border crackdown, heavy tariffs imposed on countries across the world and the dismantling of entire government agencies — the release of the Epstein files could have been a minor matter, a small reward for some of Mr. Trump’s most vocal supporters in the MAGA movement.
But the minor matter quickly blew up into a major headache.
Attorney General Pam Bondi repeatedly overpromised and underdelivered what she would release to the MAGA faithful, who are eager to investigate the rash of theories about Mr. Epstein and his death. Among them: that Democrats had Epstein killed in jail; that he was blackmailing the rich and famous; and that he was an asset of a foreign intelligence agency, despite a lack of evidence supporting any of those claims.
When she released binders full of documents entitled “The Epstein Files, Part 1,” they were widely panned as a disappointment.
There was never a “Part 2.”
Instead, the Justice Department released an unsigned memo in July informing Mr. Trump’s base that its review of the files “revealed no incriminating ‘client list.’”
“There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions,” the memo stated. “We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”
The backlash was swift, and Mr. Trump was set on his heels politically. He began lashing out at his own supporters as “weaklings” for continuing to talk about Mr. Epstein’s case and accused them of falling for a “scam” perpetrated by Democrats.
Democrats were all too happy to get into the mix, and began moves in the House to force procedural votes that would call on the Justice Department to make the information about the Epstein case public.
Speaker Mike Johnson, an ally of Mr. Trump, announced on Tuesday that he was cutting short the week’s legislative business and sending the House home early for the summer on Wednesday to avoid having to hold votes on releasing files related to Mr. Epstein.
“We’re done being lectured on transparency,” Mr. Johnson said.
The speaker’s surprise move came after a whistle-blower came to Congress to report about the intense review of the files undertaken by the Justice Department.
Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, said the whistle-blower informed his office that about 1,000 F.B.I. agents had been instructed to “flag” any records in the files that mentioned Mr. Trump.
“Essentially, agents were pulled out of their field from their work combating narcotics and violent crime to review this mountain of documents,” Mr. Durbin said. “Other important F.B.I. work was effectively shut down, according to the whistle-blower.”
Mr. Epstein and Mr. Trump mingled publicly as friends for years, before a falling-out around 2004. Court records show that Mr. Trump was among those who rode on Mr. Epstein’s private jet.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, has said that Mr. Trump barred Mr. Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club “for being a creep.”
Michael Ricci, a former top communications aide to the Republican speakers Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin and John A. Boehner of Ohio, said no one could have predicted how the Epstein story would take over Washington. But he said past speakers had attempted to use the August recess to avoid dealing with tricky issues.
“The speaker’s calculus is that this gives the administration time and space,” Mr. Ricci said. “Usually these things will just fester, and the speaker and the leadership team will be back at a similar crossroads around Labor Day.”
The Trump administration has tried to deflect attention and blame elsewhere. It asked a judge in New York to release grand jury transcripts concerning Mr. Epstein, which the judge refused to do. If the controversy doesn’t go away, Mr. Trump might be forced to consider some additional steps, such as appointing a special counsel, Mr. Ricci said.
“If you can’t buy trust, you buy time,” he said. “If you’re not going to follow through on disclosures, you have to buy time and promise people that you’ll come back in six to eight months with something. They’ve just left it open-ended.”