Proponents of theories building for months over which rich and famous pals might appear on Jeffrey Epstein‘s alleged “client list” were met with an underwhelming fed announcement — and now a lawyer for the convicted sex offender is shaming the financier’s friends who he says initially ran for the hills.

Here’s the deal … the Department of Justice announced Monday there’s no evidence Epstein kept a “client list,” or was murdered in his jail cell — a shocking revelation to some who naturally, immediately, called BS.

David Schoen, one of Epstein’s lawyers, tells TMZ … he never expected some super secret list to be found … ’cause it made no sense.

Schoen says … “I think the right’s fascination with this and disappointment with the DOJ’s position is quite simply that they hoped to find damning evidence about President Clinton and perhaps Bill Gates and other non-conservative figures and hoped to use the information to take them down.”

Of course, the defense attorney totally buys that Epstein had a “Rolodex” filled with powerful contacts … “but that is a far cry from the idea that he regularly set up the rich and powerful with young girls.”

The attorney went one step further … blasting those same people who were friends with Epstein for years — that is, until he was charged with sex trafficking of minors, and the Hollywood-D.C.-linked conspiracy theories started spreading like wildfire.

It’s “shameful,” Schoen says, that those same people who spent meaningful time with him — on vacations, for example — “all turned on him and tried to deny or minimize ties with him once he began to be portrayed as a monster.”