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Conspiracy Theories Only Flourish With More Epstein Evidence

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Via:  John Russell  •  9 months ago  •  3 comments

By:   Tiffany Hsu and Steven Lee Myers (nytimes)

Conspiracy Theories Only Flourish With More Epstein Evidence
The dump of millions of documents has fueled a new wave of speculation, A.I.-generated hoaxes and foreign disinformation.

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The dump of millions of documents has fueled a new wave of speculation, A.I.-generated hoaxes and foreign disinformation.

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New emails and documents about Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who owned Little Saint James Island, above, have spawned a wave of new conspiracy theories and hoaxes.Credit...Gabriella N. Baez for The New York Times

By Tiffany Hsu and Steven Lee Myers

Feb. 13, 2026

The release of an enormous cache of files about the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein might have been expected to quell conspiracy theories about his crimes and the government's knowledge of them. Instead, it is spawning a generation of new ones.

Conspiracy theorists, foreign influence operatives and trolls armed with artificial intelligence are seizing on the millions of haphazardly redacted materials, released last month, to cobble together new, speculative stories.

One debunked claim, concocted using emails and receipts, suggested that Mr. Epstein was alive and playing video games in Israel. (He died by what the authorities said was suicide in 2019.)

A series of social media posts that emanated from China tried to connect the Dalai Lama with Mr. Epstein, based on emails in which Mr. Epstein discussed attempts to set up dinner with the exiled Buddhist leader. In a statement, the Dalai Lama's office said it was "unequivocally" untrue that the two had ever met or agreed to interact.

Others are duping people with hoaxes on social media, where reality is easily masked or mimicked. While the files contain photos and videos of Mr. Epstein with children, fake ones that were altered or generated using A.I. are also spreading. So are spoof emails, made to look like those in the cache.

Usually, conspiracy theories feed on an absence of information, not a glut. But the Justice Department's release of more than three million pages, 2,000 videos and 180,000 images has done little to smother baseless speculation or fabrication.


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JohnRussell
Professor Principal
1  seeder  JohnRussell    9 months ago
The trove — and the ease of access to it — has made Mr. Epstein even more of a target for both the tinfoil hat contingent and the armchair true-crime aficionados. The files lay out evidence of real abuses, which only drives online sleuths to search for more.

“These disclosures are being taken to be evidence that something even larger remains concealed,” said Jenny Rice, a digital studies professor at the University of Kentucky. “It’s like proof that there’s more proof somewhere else. It means there’s a gap that remains for the narratives to grow bigger and escalate.”

In the United States, new conspiracy theories are coming from across the political divide — continuing a cross-aisle fascination that intensified after President Trump’s attempts last year to  deflect interest  in the scandal.

On the right, high-profile accounts including former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s and Tucker Carlson’s shared a wide variety of unproven conspiracy theories, including speculation about code words for pedophilia and cannibalism, Mr. Epstein’s death and Mr. Trump’s purported role in “taking down” Mr. Epstein.

Left-leaning accounts circulated different theories, often accusing the Trump administration of having a hand in Mr. Epstein’s death or of covering up his misdeeds to protect the president. The left-leaning users who amplified conspiracy theories were generally less prominent than the right-leaning accounts that did the same. Ms. Greene and Mr. Carlson did not respond to requests for comment.

The cache itself is unreliable; the Justice Department noted that it “may include  fake or falsely submitted  images, documents or videos.”

Several conspiracy theories sprang from unconfirmed tips with dubious origins that were published in the government’s searchable database. Some of the documents include scanning errors and formatting quirks, such as  an email  that seemed to refer to a “sexy and cute, =9yo,” an abbreviation of “year old.” Three other copies of the email in the tranche identify the subject as “19yo.”

In an environment with bountiful data, conspiracy theories can thrive when believers are primed to see what they want to see, said Quassim Cassam, a philosophy professor at the University of Warwick in Britain and an author of a book about conspiracy theories.

“If you have already decided who the bad guys are or what is really happening, then informational overload makes your life easier because you have so much raw material to work with,” he said in an email.
 
 
 
Vic Eldred
Professor Principal
2  Vic Eldred    9 months ago

There are no excuses anymore. 3 million files to go through.

 
 
 
Ozzwald
Professor Quiet
2.1  Ozzwald  replied to  Vic Eldred @2    9 months ago
There are no excuses anymore.

There are lots of excuses as to why they are not releasing the rest of the files though.

 
 
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