My immediate thought is that those names were written by someone who didn’t like those names.

If someone found a book on the street, claiming it to be one of Epstein’s, and all the names in it you found were from Trump’s circle, would you consider it worthy of deeper investigation? Or would you rightfully laugh at the provided origin story of the book as well as the timing of its discovery and assume someone probably put this into the news cycle to fuck you?

Maybe it’s real, maybe it’s not. But there’s nothing provided here to suggest against the simplest explanation, which is that someone faked this thing to make people look bad. There’s no evidence so far that makes that a dumb theory.

Also, no, it’s not “trust but verify.” Verification takes time and effort, trust does not. It’s, “verify, THEN trust.”