As we've reported President Trump's allies in Congress are hoping that files tied to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation will shift attention or raise new questions about figures beyond Donald Trump.

William Brangham reports now on how the president's promotion of fringe theories has helped keep the Epstein case in the public eye.

On the campaign trail and in office, President Trump has a habit of courting unfounded

conspiracies. That includes QAnon, the belief that some hidden figure in the government,

Q, is explaining how Donald Trump is waging a secret battle against dark, nefarious forces,

including a cabal of child sex traffickers.

This belief evolved from online obscurity to now, where you regularly see Q&ONONN signs at Trump rallies,

and the president reposted a Q&N meme on social media as recently as last week.

So to understand how President Trump's amplification

of QAnon fuels speculation about Jeffrey Epstein, we are joined by Will Summer. He's a writer

at The Bullwork and author of Trust the Plan, The Rise of Q&ONON and the Conspiracy that Unhinged America.

Will Summer, so good to have you on the program. There is clearly an ideological connection between Jeffrey Epstein and Q&N. And we can talk about that.

But first, remind us, how did Q&N move from the fringe into this more prominent place in our politics?

Sure. So Q&NOND started in October 2017 with these anonymous posts on an internet message

board from a figure calling themselves Q. And they said that the world was run by a cabal of

pedophiles and the Democratic Party in Hollywood and banking, and that Donald Trump

would someday send all those people to Guantanamo Bay and sort of reign as a sort of a dictator

in a utopia. And so this QAnon believers sort of teamed up with Q and started reading

through all the clues. And that's the origins of QAnon. But it was really on the

fringe until 2019, 2020, when things like Jeffrey Epstein's death and the pandemic really drove a lot

more people into conspiracy theories. And a lot of that, too, was people like were Donald Trump

and his allies embracing conspiracy theories. Trump spoke very positively about Q&Non believers during the 2020 campaign.

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