Trump’s Epstein problem proves ‘Pedocon Theory’ is real and needs to be mainstreamed

(Trigger warning: This article includes mentions of sexual assault and child abuse.)

“Pedocon Theory” is real and it’s time Democrats not only acknowledge that, but start using it to win elections.

President Donald Trump’s second term has been effectively derailed by the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, which took the wind out of his sails just shortly after he signed a multitrillion-dollar tax cut that primarily benefits the super-rich—funded by the hollowing out of Medicaid, Medicare, and food stamps—into law. He’s gone from a planned victory lap to now furiously suing the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal over a report about him supposedly sending a lewd birthday message to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in 2003. 

This is just the latest example of Pedocon Theory—the theory that because conservatives are so fixated on calling their political opponents pedophiles, they are in fact projecting their guilt onto Democrats. The theory has become more mainstream with every new instance of a conservative figure being arrested and/or convicted of pedophilia. And Trump’s panicked deflections whenever he’s asked about Epstein—along with the efforts of his servants in Congress, like House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) attempting to bury it by declaring an early August recess—effectively serve as further validation of Pedocon Theory, as the cover-up underscores the shame of the perpetrators. 

According to an advanced search on X, the earliest mention of Pedocon Theory was by the account @monkey_reg on May 1, 2021 in response to an article about a Republican state representative in Missouri talking about sex and masturbation in front of high school students. That lawmaker—Rep. Mark Samsel (R)—was eventually arrested after getting into a physical altercation with students and banned from substitute teaching at that school. He later lost his seat in the 2022 Republican primary.

Pedocon Theory is not to minimize Democrats who have also been charged and/or convicted of preying on children, as there have been instances of that taking place across the country. A county-level Democratic Party official in Florida was arrested on child pornography charges in January; a member of Massachusetts Democratic State Committee was arrested for sexual assault of a child in April; Democratic lawmakers in both North Dakota and New Hampshire were arrested on similar charges in 2023. But the level and scale at which Republican elected officials and activists have been arrested, charged, and convicted of such crimes is objectively staggering and far dwarfs any other group (save for maybe the Catholic Church). 

The evidence of Pedocon Theory is difficult to ignore

According to the American Natural HIstory Museum (AMNH), the word “theory” in scientific parlance is “a well-substantiated explanation of an aspect of the natural world that can incorporate laws, hypotheses and facts.”

“A theory not only explains known facts; it also allows scientists to make predictions of what they should observe if a theory is true. Scientific theories are testable. New evidence should be compatible with a theory. If it isn’t, the theory is refined or rejected,” the AMNH website reads. “The longer the central elements of a theory hold—the more observations it predicts, the more tests it passes, the more facts it explains—the stronger the theory.”

The evidence and facts that back up Pedocon Theory are significant. Below is a list of some of the more high-profile instances of conservative leaders and officials engaging in pedophilia, but far more examples can be found with just a few minutes of research:

1. In June, South Carolina Republican state representative Robert John RJ May was arrested for allegedly distributing child sexual abuse material (CSAM). May is accused of using the app Kik—which is popular with kids—to post the videos under the username “joebidennnn69.”
2. In May, Texas state representative Nate Schatzline voted against closing a loophole that would allow 16 year-olds to get married if they were emancipated from their parents. Schatzline, a pastor, is also the author of a bill that would allow people to sue booksellers for selling material that someone might find “harmful to minors.”
3. In April, former New York City councillor Dan Halloran—a Republican—was arrested at the Miami International Airport after authorities found hundreds of CSAM videos on his phone. Halloran reportedly bought the videos on the app Telegram, which is the favored social media app of neo-Nazi and white supremacists (Telegram founder Pavel Durov is currently being prosecuted in France for his app being used to spread CSAM.)
4. In March, Minnesota Republican state senator Justin Eichorn was arrested for allegedly soliciting a minor for sex. Just days before his arrest, Eichorn sponsored a bill that attempted to add “Trump Derangement Syndrome” as a state-recognized mental health condition.
5. In February, former Idaho Republican state legislative candidate Ryan D. Jenks was arrested on three felony counts of sexually abusing a child under the age of 16. Jenks is the co-owner of a clinic that provides mental health services to children and teens.
6. Also in February, far-right writer Aaron Craig Gleason was arrested for molestation of a child under the age of 12. In a review of the film “Sound of Freedom,” (a film about child sex trafficking which was celebrated by adherents of the extremist QAnon conspiracy) Gleason praised it as a “heartbreaking and hopeful call to action.” In a 2023 social media post, he also accused drag queens of “coming for our children.”
7. In 2024, Colorado Republicans blocked legislation that would have let victims of child sex abuse sue for damages after the statute of limitations expired. Democratic state senator Rhonda Fields asked Republicans why they were united against “justice for someone who was abused as a child.”
8. Also in 2024, Rolling Stone reported on how Republican state lawmakers in Missouri, New Hampshire, West Virginia, and Wyoming all consistently voted against banning child marriages by raising the minimum age for marriage to 18. GOP lawmakers in Missouri, New Hampshire, and Wyoming argued that marriage was a preferable alternative to abortion of a fetus conceived out of wedlock. One West Virginia Republican state senator who opposed his state’s child marriage ban said his mother married at age 16 and gave birth to him six months later, calling himself “the luckiest guy in the world.”
9. In 2022, former Seminole County, Florida tax collector Joel Greenberg—an associate of former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida)—was sentenced to 11 years in prison for underage sex trafficking, wire fraud, and other crimes. Multiple women said Greenberg sent them Venmo payments in exchange for sex, with the knowledge that they were underage at the time. In 2024, a House Ethics Committee report found that Gaetz paid a 17 year-old girl for sex.
10. In 2020, Lebanese businessman George Nader was sentenced to 10 years in prison for trafficking a 14 year-old boy into the United States for sex and for possessing child pornography. In 2017, Nader set up a meeting between Trump associate Erik Prince (the founder of Blackwater and brother of former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos) and a Russian official.
11. Also in 2020, former Republican congressional candidate Ben Gibson was arrested on four counts of possession of pornography involving juveniles. Gibson ran for the Republican nomination against Speaker Johnson three years before he became speaker. 
12. In 2018, former Oklahoma state senator Ralph Shortey (R) was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for child sex trafficking. Shortey—a married father of three—was Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman in Oklahoma.
13. Also in 2018, former Campbell County, Kentucky Republican district judge Timothy Nolan pleaded guilty to charges of child sex trafficking and human trafficking in exchange for a 20-year sentence. Nolan was an official representative of Trump’s 2016 Republican primary campaign in Kentucky.
14. In 2017, a woman accused then-Alabama U.S. Senate Republican candidate Roy Moore (who was also the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court) of sexually assaulting her when she was 14 years old. At the time, Moore was a 32 year-old prosecutor in Etowah County.  
15. In 2016, former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois) was sentenced to 15 months in prison for bank fraud linked to hush money payments he made in regard to his years-long abuse of teenage boys. The judge who sentenced him called him a “serial child molester.” Hastert was the longest-serving Republican House speaker in US history.
16. In 2006, Rep. Mark Foley (R-Florida), who was the deputy House majority whip, resigned in disgrace after five terms in Congress amid a sexting scandal in which he sent inappropriate message to underaged House pages. Foley was also the chairman of the House caucus on missing and exploited children.

Again, this is just a sampling of the mountain of evidence backing up Pedocon Theory. What separates the few instances of Democrats being arrested for preying on children and the far more numerous examples of Republicans being charged with child sex crimes is that Democrats haven’t made a habit of accusing their political opponents of being serial pedophiles. 

Aside from these examples, Trump’s behavior over his second term also lends credence to Pedocon Theory. This is not just in regard to his handling of the Epstein controversy, but other actions dating back to the first day of his second presidency. 

How Trump’s Epstein problem further validates Pedocon Theory

On the same day he was sworn in, Trump signed an executive order immediately pardoning the approximately 1,500 people charged and/or convicted in connection to the January 6, 2021 siege of the US Capitol. Anti-corruption group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) pointed out on Bluesky last week that four of the insurrectionists Trump pardoned also faced charges relating to child sex abuse.

In a vacuum, that could be chalked up to mere coincidence. But the second Trump administration has demonstrated a pattern of covering for child sex abusers over the past six months. This includes the administration’s intervention on behalf of Catholic priests in Washington state in a federal case. Thanks in part to the administration’s efforts, the judge in the case ruled that a law requiring priests to report evidence of child abuse that they heard in confession couldn’t be enforced as it would impede on the free exercise of religion.

Additionally, the Trump administration abruptly fired DOJ career prosecutor Maurene Comey (the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey), who had been prosecuting cases in the Southern District of New York for roughly a decade. Comey notably prosecuted Jeffrey Epstein in 2019, before he died in federal prison. She also prosecuted Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for conspiracy to commit sex trafficking. 

If that weren’t enough, the Trump administration also hollowed out the State Department office that was established to monitor and combat human trafficking, even though it’s responsible for more than 18,000 prosecutions involving 133,000 victims. And the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security is also now pulling agents off of human trafficking investigations and reassigning them to meet Trump’s deportation quotas.

Pedocon Theory can also be applied to the Trump administration’s ongoing rift with Trump’s MAGA base over the White House’s refusal to release the full Epstein file. In the last month, Trump has contradicted himself repeatedly over Epstein and talked himself into a corner.

First, he claimed that Democrats were behind the suggestion that Trump was in the Epstein files, and that the only reason former President Joe Biden’s administration didn’t publish the Epstein files while he was in office was because he knew they would exonerate Trump. He then argued that after FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino supposedly found nothing of note in the DOJ’s Epstein evidence, Democrats supposedly manipulated MAGA influencers into taking the bait and hyping a nothingburger of a story.

But this doesn’t hold up on its face, because if MAGA-aligned pundits who continue to demand full transparency on the Epstein files—like Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara, Candace Owens, Joe Rogan, Matt Walsh, and others—are unwitting participants in a Democratic-run disinformation campaign, Republicans in Congress wouldn’t repeatedly vote against releasing the Epstein files. Especially if they exonerate Trump!

To be clear, the FBI has a significant amount of evidence on Epstein that has yet to see the light of day – including the famed list. ABC News reported earlier this month that a public index of Epstein-related material that the bureau categorized includes “40 computers and electronic devices, 26 storage drives, more than 70 CDs and six recording devices” which hold “more than 300 gigabytes of data.” And the network further reported that a “document with names” is also among the significant trove of unreleased Epstein material:

“The evidence also includes approximately 60 pieces of physical evidence, including photographs, travel logs, employee lists, more than $17,000 in cash, five massage tables, blueprints of Epstein’s island and Manhattan home, four busts of female body parts, a pair of women’s cowboy boots and one stuffed dog, according to the list.

“The unreleased evidence notably includes multiple documents related to two islands Epstein owned in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Little Saint James—where his compound was located—and Greater Saint James. According to the index, the files include a folder containing Island blueprints, photographs and other documents.

“Some of the documents could shed light on who visited the island. According to the index, the files also include a Little Saint James logbook as well as multiple logs of boat trips to and from the island.

“The evidence also includes multiple lists, one vaguely described as a ‘document with names’ and an employee contact list. Investigators also recovered pages of handwritten notes, multiple photo albums, an Austrian passport with Epstein’s photograph and more than a dozen financial documents.”

Trump has since called for the release of Epstein’s grand jury transcripts, with Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche filing a motion to unseal the material. But Politico legal correspondent Kyle Cheney reported that the motion comes with the “huge caveat” of not only victims’ names being redacted, but also any other “personal identifying information.” 

This almost certainly means that the names of Epstein’s co-conspirators, accomplices, and associates will remain secret. If the Trump administration is so committed to transparency, why the continued secrecy over the names of those who aided and abetted Epstein’s crimes? Once again, the cover-up of evidence lends credibility to Pedocon Theory—they’re seemingly aware that full public disclosure would be more damning than keeping the files locked away.

All of this should prove that Pedocon Theory needs to be a mainstream line of attack for Democrats ahead of the 2026 midterm elections and 2028 presidential election. Anyone who covers for those who abuse and exploit children should be held fully accountable, and this administration and its enablers shouldn’t be let off the hook.