They are spreading this nonsense in part in order to hide from the fact that they refuse to release the Epstein files, something that seems to include a rather lot of high profile/high importance official potentially doing really bad things.

It's called flooding the zone, and it is a current Republican strategy to misinform, to sow defeatism in their political opposition, default/break all of the existing systems for handling politics, with the final outcome to manipulate the next election. And they publicized this yet people like you claim to think it's non issue.