The lie didn’t just crumble. It detonated, exploding across news cycles, social media feeds, and the private corridors of power where whispers had long been contained. For years, Democratic leaders seized on Jeffrey Epstein’s name as a weapon, convinced that the files, the allegations, and the lurid details would strike a mortal blow to Donald Trump’s reputation and political future. They wielded his infamy like a sword, broadcasting insinuations, leaking selective documents, and holding up fragments of evidence as proof of their moral crusade. Every headline seemed to affirm their strategy, every pundit’s analysis reinforced the belief that the scandal would be the undoing of their political opponent. They approached it with smug certainty, imagining the narrative as theirs to control, the outcome as predetermined.