The worst political error is the unforced kind that reveals cynical dishonesty. Team Trump has just created such an error on a grand scale. They’ve created a scandal that will never go away.

During his four years in the political wilderness, few issues dominated the attention of President Donald Trump‘s MAGA base more than the sordid case of Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex criminal and pedophile who died in federal custody on Aug. 10, 2019. The Epstein saga, with its strong hints of deep state cover-up amid major crimes, was something Trump’s superfans expected him to expose.

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Indeed, Trump hinted more than once that he would release the government’s classified Epstein files. Attorney General Pam Bondi months ago told the media that she was reviewing those files, which were “sitting on my desk right now,” claiming the Justice Department had a “truckload of evidence” pertaining to Epstein’s crimes, of which “nothing can be withheld” due to public interest. FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, similarly assured the public that the Epstein files would be released imminently. There was even a badly orchestrated photo op at the White House in late February, with prominent MAGA influencers posing with binders titled, “The Epstein Files: Phase I”. One problem? There turned out to be no new information included therein.

That should have been a warning of where this was headed.

This week, the Trump administration’s public relations effort in the Epstein case fell apart. It began with a brief new report from the Department of Justice, which asserted that there are, in fact, no Epstein files, certainly nothing like the ugly proof of the dead financier’s sex crimes which MAGA faithful were expecting to see. The much-anticipated “client list,” which included VIPs who partied with Epstein, and worse, doesn’t exist, according to the DOJ. Moreover, Epstein killed himself in his Manhattan jail cell.

DOJ’s proof that Epstein’s death was a suicide included a video that the FBI claimed established that Epstein took his own life. But skeptics were quick to note apparent discrepancies with the video, which appeared to have been edited. Patel and Bongino, who as Trump-boosting podcasters frequently speculated that Epstein was murdered, now assert he absolutely took his own life.

Then, on Monday, Trump jumped to Bondi’s defense. He insisted that DOJ’s conduct in the Epstein affair was perfectly normal, while pooh-poohing further discussion of the subject. “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years,” Trump chided a journalist: “I can’t believe you’re asking a question on Epstein at a time like this, where we’re having some of the greatest success.”

As far as Team Trump is concerned, this unpleasant subject is now closed. Many MAGA faithful have reacted with shock, even horror, witnessing the White House and top Justice officials blatantly reverse course in the Epstein affair. Elon Musk, the former first buddy turned Trump nemesis, who has insisted that the president can be found in the Epstein files, doubled down, asserting that Trump has a personal motive for continuing the cover-up.

There’s little evidence for that. Trump and Epstein were chummy for years, peaking in the 1990s, but they had a falling out, for unexplained reasons, before Epstein was convicted by the DOJ on sex crime charges in 2008. Whatever exposure Trump may have in this unpleasant case, it’s less than many other VIPs, especially former President Bill Clinton, who remained friendly with Epstein for years after he became a convicted pedophile.

Instead, the Epstein scandal boils down to two questions: First, where did Epstein get his money? Second, who was he working for?

Although Epstein lived the lavish life of a billionaire for many years, with palatial homes in several places, he seemed to have no job. Certainly, he wasn’t known on Wall Street, where he left no footprint. Epstein allowed his broker’s license to lapse back in the 1980s. Moreover, he had apparently unlimited free time to hang out, discuss science and politics, and molest young women. His only known client was the fashion magnate Les Wexner, Epstein’s close friend, but that seems insufficient to explain Epstein’s vast wealth.

But Epstein’s connections to the clandestine world of espionage are a matter of hush-hush record. In 2019, Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, the federal prosecutor who put Epstein away in 2008 with a remarkably lenient plea agreement, admitted that he went easy on Epstein because he was told by DOJ higher-ups in Washington that the sex criminal “belonged to intelligence.”

Whose intelligence service was that? The answer has never been explained by anyone in any government, and clearly, the Trump administration has no desire to shed light here. On Monday, Bondi stated about Epstein’s reputed intelligence connections, “I have no knowledge about that. We can get back to you on that.” She won’t. I’ve reported on the Epstein story for years, and it was obvious in 2019 that the suspect list of which spy agencies Epstein “belonged to” was short.

One possibility is that Epstein was running a VIP blackmail operation, to include videotaping of sex acts between elites and women, including underage women, whom Epstein was sex trafficking. I’ve suggested that the main suspect behind Epstein’s sexspionage network is Israel, although other countries may also have been involved. For one, Russia is commonly suggested in Western counterspy circles as having a connection with Epstein. In addition, U.S. intelligence services were clearly aware of Epstein’s illegal activities on American soil, as indicated by Acosta’s 2019 admission (which caused him to be promptly fired as Labor Secretary).

Veterans of real-world intelligence operations understand it’s likely that Epstein was sharing at least some information with U.S. intelligence, which helped him get that 2008 sweetheart deal with the DOJ. Beyond that is the vast realm of variably informed speculation.

Still, it seems clear that top members of the Trump administration foolishly overpromised shocking revelations about the Epstein scandal, then got caught flat-footed by what they learned: ugly truths that put the U.S. government and one of our close allies in a terrible light. They then decided to keep covering up what happened. This all could have been avoided in the first place had the Trump administration not grandly promised truth-telling, which it lacked the stomach to execute. As is, the White House appears both dishonest and foolish.

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The public shouldn’t expect to learn much more about Jeffrey Epstein and his decades of crimes involving global elites and young women, at least not from Washington. Who Epstein was actually serving, and why, remains unknown, or at least unsayable, as far as the U.S. government is concerned.

The official story is that Epstein was working for nobody but himself, and he took his own life. Which means that Ghislaine Maxwell, his longtime girlfriend, factotum, and partner in sex crime, got a 20-year federal sentence in 2021 for trafficking underage girls to nobody in particular.

John R. Schindler served with the National Security Agency as a senior intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer.