A bombshell New York Times article, entitled “Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein Files,” repeatedly states that President Donald Trump and his closest White House staff have held numerous meetings discussing how best to delay any release of federal investigatory materials related to now-deceased millionaire child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and how best to protect Trump from any insinuations that he was at all involved in Epstein’s crimes.
The article makes clear that the administration has wanted to “dispose of” the scandal while ignoring substantial steps to actually shed light on Epstein’s crimes or achieve justice for his victims.
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Major members of the Trump administration have repeatedly gathered in the White House Situation Room (the same room where former President Barack Obama and his top-level officials watched the raid that ended with the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011) to discuss how to handle public relations and political maneuvering about the files, the Times wrote.
These meetings have included White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles; the White House counsel, David Warrington; the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt; the deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich; the communications director, Steven Cheung; the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche; the associate attorney general, Stanley Woodward Jr.; and the deputy chief of staff James Blair, as well as Attorney General Pam Bondi and the FBI director, Kash Patel, the Times wrote.
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Before becoming FBI director, Patel repeatedly accused the federal government of hiding Epstein’s client list to protect powerful people. He said a second Trump presidency would release “everything” to restore public trust. Before his own appointment, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino was a former Secret Service agent and podcaster who alleged that the withholding of the files was part of a massive government cover-up that would “rock the political world.”
In a February 21, 2025 Fox News interview, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi said the client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review.” She later gave binders of investigative files to numerous right-wing influencers, making them look like P.R. props after online sleuths eventually realized that the binders only contained previously released materials.
Four months later, when Bondi and then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche discussed releasing more of the files, their biggest concern was “to avoid putting out anything that could damage the president,” the Times wrote.
In private, Trump had told then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) that releasing the Epstein files could hurt some of his friends. He repeatedly called the entire demand for the files’ release a Democratic “hoax” and “fake news,” and insisted that he had done nothing wrong.
Then on July 7, 2025, Patel released a memo saying there was no Epstein client list, that Epstein had killed himself while in jail (addressing a long-believed rumor that he had been murdered), and that no additional files would be released.
A massive backlash occurred from both the MAGA base and left-wingers. MAGA conspiracy theorists were especially angered by Patel’s statement, and noted that a federal release of the video of Epstein’s cell on the night of his death excluded two minutes of missing footage (that were later restored); the missing minutes seemed like evidence of an ongoing cover-up.
Infighting among White House officials occurred about how to handle it — Bongino blamed Bondi for mishandling the files, others blamed Kash and Bongino for generating such intense public interest in the files, and Vance suggested a mass release of the files. Despite the disagreements, everyone agreed any future actions should foremost seek to protect the president.
The White House reportedly created a website with all the Epstein materials on it (excluding child pornography) — to “overwhelm the MAGAsphere with far-greater volumes of real information — in the form of a huge database,” the Times wrote — but one week before its intended launch date, the site was scrapped.
It didn’t help that Trump and White House officials had tried to kill an article by The Wall Street Journal over claims he once wrote a birthday letter to Epstein that included a doodle of a nude woman & an ode to the pair’s secrets.
In January 2024, Trump also declared that he had never been on Epstein’s private jet, though in a January 2020 email, a federal prosecutor said Trump had flown on it “far more than anyone knew.” Flight records in the files showed at least eight trips between 1993 and 1996.
Last August, Trump relocated Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell to a lower-security prison where she’s “much happier” and allegedly gets both personally delivered meals and playtime with a puppy. In return, she denied that the president had any involvement in Epstein’s misdeeds. She is also seeking Trump’s presidential pardon; something Trump’s advisors have suggested against for its seeming collusion.
Blanche suggested having Maxwell testify in front of Congress to give an air of transparency, but the idea was shot down. He eventually compelled Trump to issue a social media statement calling for judges to release Epstein-related grand jury testimonies — prosecutorial transcripts of legal presentations of witnesses and evidence to obtain indictments — knowing that judges rarely ever release such testimonies; these testimonies contained no damaging information about the president, and the administration could blame judges for withholding them.
The Times article says the administration has tried to keep its rising sense of panic over the files out of public view while trying to “dispose” of the matter as quickly as possible.
Trump’s Department of Justice, which has still refused to comply with a congressional 2025 law requiring the release of all government investigatory files on Epstein. Millions of pages remain unreleased, and the initial release of files withheld specific files mentioning Trump, leading to subsequent hearings to retrieve the missing information.
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