After Cayden McBride finishes class in Rome, Georgia, the 19-year-old goes home, opens his laptop, and starts searching. For the past few months, he has been spending hours at a time combing through the Jeffrey Epstein files on the US Department of Justice (DOJ) website, and following others online who are doing the same.

Flight logs. Transcripts. Images. Videos. The material released by the DOJ has given new insight into the crimes of Epstein, the late convicted sex offender, and into his high-profile connections.

McBride believes the Epstein files still matter, even if the headlines have moved on to the Iran war recently.

"As a Christian, I don't believe anybody should endure what these women have been through," he says. "There is so much bad stuff in these files."

McBride was a self-described "Trump guy" and "very anti-establishment". He said he would always defend the president in the belief that Trump's "Make America Great Again" (Maga) movement stood for exposing corruption. But the DOJ's delay in releasing all the files, and the perceived lack of accountability afterwards, has left him and many others disheartened with the movement, the president and especially with Pam Bondi, Trump's former attorney general.

Bondi was removed from her post just last week, to be replaced, in the interim, by her deputy Todd Blanche.

Trump has lauded Bondi for doing a "tremendous job", and Blanche denied reports that his predecessor's handling of the Epstein files had been a factor in her departure.

But McBride hailed the changing of the guard, expressing hope that there could now be renewed focus on the Epstein issue.

His wish was granted this week, from an unlikely quarter. The Epstein story came crashing back into the news when First Lady Melania Trump unexpectedly denied she had ever had a relationship with him and called for a congressional hearing for his victims.

It is unclear how much that will galvanise interest, but Bondi's removal has done little to quiet the discontent amongst Trump's supporters like McBride. He thinks she needed to go because she wasn't prosecuting "the people she needed to".

He thinks there might be some "high-status arrests", but after that then other things like Iran, ICE and the midterms will, in his words, sweep the Epstein story under the rug.

Maga fallout over Epstein

Many Epstein conspiracy theorists have long counted themselves amongst Trump's most ardent supporters. They believe that Epstein's death in prison was not a suicide, as the FBI has found. And for years they have insinuated that the government was involved with some sort of cover-up, protecting powerful people whom they believe participated in his crimes.

It's a belief that has been echoed by many of Trump's closest allies and former allies, such as Vice-President JD Vance, former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kash Patel, whom he tapped to lead the FBI.

As long ago as 2021, Vance tweeted: "What possible interest would the US government have in keeping Epstein's clients secret?"

During his 2024 campaign, President Trump himself told Fox News he would "go a long way" towards releasing the Epstein files.

But after returning to the White House, he changed his tone. That led to a very public fallout with Greene, who had been the representative in McBride's district, and some other members of the Republican Party.

Trump later dropped his opposition to releasing the files, after pushback from Epstein's victims and members of his own party, signing a law that compelled the DOJ to release thousands of files.

DOJ officials say they have now released all of their files other than certain items permitted to be exempt.

But many Epstein conspiracy theorists don't buy it.

In an interview with Vanity Fair last year - portions of which she later disputed - Chief of Staff Susie Wiles said that the Epstein files could cost the Republican Party some of its most important new voters, young men, who turned to President Trump in 2024. Particularly those drawn to promises of accountability and reform.

And while the vast majority of Republicans still back the president, there are signs that the Epstein fallout has chipped away at his diverse coalition of supporters, who range from middle-of-the road business owners who want to lower taxes to very online young men.

A poll conducted by the Economist/YouGov in February found that 16% of voters who backed Trump during the last election thought he was covering up Epstein's crimes. Of those that identify themselves as Maga, 11% thought the president was part of a cover-up.

Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein, but his own history with the disgraced financier continues to make headlines. The president appears to have been friends with Epstein for a number of years before falling out - in the early 2000s, according to Trump, two years before Epstein was first arrested.

The US president is mentioned thousands of times in the files released by the DOJ, including in emails and correspondence sent by Jeffrey Epstein himself to others.

Mona Charen, a columnist and policy expert at The Bulwark, a publication supportive of conservative principles but critical of the Maga movement, agrees that conspiracy theories around Epstein have been especially hard for the president to shake off.

"I have been one of those people who has always been very sceptical when people would say, 'well, this will hurt Trump, that will hurt Trump', and I would always say, 'dream on'.

"He's quite untouchable, but on this one? The whole concept that Maga and Trumpism was going to be a breath of fresh air that was going to reveal things that had been hidden, is gone."

Bondi attracted particular criticism within the Maga movement for promising to release an alleged client list associated with Epstein, only for her department to later say that no such list existed.

Will voters move on?

Epstein campaigners across the political spectrum have voiced their hopes that the change at the top of the DOJ could be a turning point in the Trump administration's handling of the Epstein saga.

Speaking to BBC Newsnight last week, Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna, who co-authored the act that forced the DOJ files release, said Republicans should make clear to the new attorney general that there could be "no confirmation (of their position) unless you commit to the release of the rest of the Epstein files".

Among Bondi's defenders on the Epstein issue are Mike Cernovich, a right-wing commentator. Cernovich was one of many online influencers who took part in a photo op at the Oval Office in February 2025, walking away with a binder labelled "The Epstein Files: Phase One". The binder turned out to contain nothing new and he along with others involved in the stunt were accused of betraying the movement.

Reacting to Bondi's firing, Cernovich wrote in a post on X: "Bondi was trying to do something good but didn't know the back story. I blame those who claim 'there are no more Epstein files' after the binder incident. There were A LOT of them. And there's more unreleased."

If anywhere is a test for how critical this issue is for Trump, it is the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an annual political conference for right-leaning activists and politicians.

For many who attended CPAC last month in Dallas, Texas, the Epstein files still mattered.

Robert Agee said he felt let down by Trump: "When President Trump said, 'are we still talking about the Epstein files?', that was the moment Maga died. That was when Maga took off its hat. He betrayed us. He ran on that."

"I think people who still align with Maga are just sort of brainwashed at this point," McBride says. "There has to be a certain point when you realise this was not the man promised to us."

He says some of his friends now question whether they will vote again.

As for him, his decision is clear. "It won't stop me voting, but I am definitely not voting for anybody implicated by the Epstein files," he says. "Or anybody that is sponsored by President Trump."