From the New York Times, I'm Michael Babarro. This is the Daily.

Today, the story of how the conspiracy theory surrounding Jeffrey Epstein made their way to the highest levels of the

Trump administration, and why over the past few days, the White House finally decided it was time

to shut them down.

My colleague, Glenn Thrush, takes us inside the saga.

Music Colin Glenn Thrush takes us inside the saga. It's Wednesday, July 9th. Hey there, Glenn.

Hello.

Thank you for joining us.

17 minutes late?

Well, you know, you're lucky it wasn't 20.

I know you're on deadline, so thank you for making time for us.

You're welcome. Glenn, we don't think of President Trump and those around him as people who declaratively

and definitively kill off conspiracy theories, especially when those conspiracy theories are popular

with their supporters, quite the contrary.

And yet, that's what has just happened.

So tell us that story.

Well, look, on Monday, they tried to slam the door on an investigation they themselves had opened.

The Justice Department, in a pretty detailed memo,

confirmed what a bunch of other investigations had already shown.

There was no client list of shadowy Jeffrey Epstein clients that conspired to murder him,

and they released a bunch of videotapes that showed what had already been revealed in other investigations, that he died by suicide. The problem with all this is that

most of the people involved in running these investigations, the Attorney General, Pam Bondi,

...