CNN
—
Half of Americans say they are dissatisfied with the amount of information the federal government has released about the Jeffrey Epstein case, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS in the days after the Justice Department released a memo saying there is no evidence the convicted sex offender kept a so-called client list or was murdered.
Almost no one is content with the amount the government has shared: Just 3% of Americans say they are satisfied with it. A sizable chunk of the public either says it doesn’t matter to them either way (29%) or that they haven’t heard enough about the case to say (17%).
Trump’s most ardent supporters online have been in revolt since the Justice Department memo’s release, even as the president has implored them to move on from Epstein and publicly backed Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The poll shows Republicans at large are less likely to say they are dissatisfied with the information shared than Democrats or independents. Overall, 56% of Democrats and 52% of independents say they are dissatisfied. Among Republicans, 40% are dissatisfied. Nearly as many Republicans say it doesn’t matter to them either way (38%), a larger group than the roughly one-quarter who felt that way among Democrats (27%) or independents (26%).
That follows a pattern going back to Trump’s first term: Polling has often found large shares of Republicans saying they don’t know or don’t care about a particular issue when a Trump position has proved broadly unpopular.
Epstein was a disgraced financier and convicted sex offender whose criminal case has long captured significant public attention in part because of his ties to wealthy and high-profile people. In August 2019, while he was awaiting trial in a federal criminal case, Epstein was found unresponsive in his New York City jail cell. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. His death was ruled a suicide.
The death was heavily scrutinized, and during his 2024 campaign, Trump said he would consider releasing additional government files on the case. Many of the president’s supporters hoped that release would implicate other high-profile figures or undercut the notion that Epstein killed himself. But FBI Director Kash Patel, who suggested before taking office that there was hidden evidence, has since said Epstein committed suicide. And Bondi denied the existence of an Epstein “client list” despite answering a question in an earlier interview about whether a list would be released by saying it was on her desk to review.
Men express deeper dissatisfaction with the information released than women (55% vs. 45%). Younger Americans are more likely to be dissatisfied than are older people (56% younger than 35 say they are dissatisfied vs. 47% among those age 35 or older).
There are divides within both parties that suggest dissatisfaction with what’s been released on Epstein links the far ideological ends on each side.
Very conservative Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are far more likely to be dissatisfied than are those who consider themselves somewhat conservative (48% vs. 40%). At the same time, Democratic-aligned liberals are also more likely than moderates or conservatives who at least lean toward the party to express dissatisfaction (70% vs. 52%).
And in both parties, independents who lean toward either party are more dissatisfied than are self-identified partisans: 68% of Democratic-leaning independents are dissatisfied and 53% of Republican-leaning independents are dissatisfied. In both cases, dissatisfaction among independents leaning toward a party outpaces dissatisfaction among self-identified partisans by double digits.
The CNN poll was conducted by SSRS from July 10-13 among a random national sample of 1,057 US adults drawn from a probability-based panel. Surveys were either conducted online or by telephone with a live interviewer. Results among all adults have a margin of sampling error of ±3.5 percentage points.
