Maggie Haberman and Jonathon Swan of the New York Times published a report on the frantic “freakout” the White House top officials suffered over the release of the Epstein Files and the attempt to coverup and control the public’s exposure to Donald Trump’s involvement revealed in the massive tranche of documents.
The article comes from reporting done for the two authors’ upcoming book being released on June 23, “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.”
In July 2025, Trump advisors gathered in the Situation Room, a secure bunker for top secret discussions and missions, this time to figure a way to contain the fallout of the Epstein files from threatening the Trump presidency. It was preceded by the Wall Street Journal’s preparation of a damaging article revealing the Epstein/Trump relationship.
At the head of the table was VP Vance, who was surrounded by Susie Wiles, White House counsel David Warrington, Karoline Leavitt, deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich, Steven Cheung, Todd Blanche, associate AG Stanley Woodward Jr., deputy chief of staff James Blair, while Pam Bondi and Kash Patel joined the group on speakerphone. Donald Trump was absent.
Vance was freaking out about the divisions already happening in the MAGA faithful base. He was pushing for the administration to release everything in the files, in DOJ records, and also wanted a congressional investigation. Susie Wiles and others saw him as a conspiracy theorist. Vance wanted to rip the band-aid off, instead of watching a steady months-long drip-drip of information surrounding the files.
Vance was suggesting an interview with Ghislaine Maxwell conducted by Tucker Carlson, with hopes that Maxwell would exonerate Trump.
At this point, Blanche inserted himself in the conversation, suggesting to petition the Florida and New York courts to release transcripts of Epstein cases, which he argued would contain no new information. If the judges refused, they could shift any blame to the judges (who had been appointed by Democratic presidents).
Another option would be to have the DOJ interview Maxwell, and suggested himself for the task, and knew that Maxwell could ask for something in return. WH counsel discussed a pardon or reduction in her sentencing, but Steven Cheung and others shot down the idea as a PR nightmare.
They decided to have Susie Wiles ask the president if he would call for the release of the files in a social media post. Before they could leave the room, the Wall Street Journal published their story that included the birthday card drawn and signed by Trump, referring to “a wonderful secret.” This led Wiles to prepare a public denial by the president in the Situation Room.
Throughout 2024, there were a number of those within the MAGA circle who were adamant about a full release, including Marjorie Taylor Green, Laura Loomer, Scott Presler, Chaya Raichik from Libs of TikTok, but none had been more vocal than Dan Bongino and Kash Patel, former podcasters.
As the two took appointed office in 2025, Pam Bondi made things much worse for the FBI leaders who were under pressure to stand by their president.
Bondi revealed she had Epstein files on her desk, and she passed out teaser material to right wing influencers that she promised would be revelatory information. But what she handed out had not been vetted by the White House, and sure enough Trump’s name was right in the middle of the binder of materials. There were also flight logs, contact lists, summaries of items taken from Epstein’s residences after his 2019 arrest and other material — but nearly all of it had been previously released.
The DOJ continued to comb through files to realize there may be as many as three million, up to six million, which they needed to trivialize. Eventually Blanche told Trump, “There’s not a lot there. A lot of child pornography — obviously we can’t put any of that out. There are some mentions of you, but nothing substantive.”
Meanwhile, Patel and Bongino became more infuriated because they were being blamed for the level of the crisis.
They advocated for the release of the surveillance videos at the federal facility where Epstein hanged himself, while the rest of the White House group was preparing a memo explaining why the DOJ would not be releasing any further Epstein information.
Patel agreed to the memo, which supported the conclusion of Epstein’s suicide, and stated there would be no further investigation.
The memo was an earthquake, and it was received by a part of the MAGA base as an outright betrayal. It amounted to an abrupt disavowal of the sinister conspiracy theories that some of Trump’s closest confidants had hyped during the Biden presidency and that they had promised to expose once Trump was returned to power.
Bongino exploded.
The day the memo was released, Bongino confronted Bondi, erupting like a volcano. Bongino and Patel both called for Bondi’s resignation.
“You fucked this thing up from the start,” Bongino yelled. “The way you’ve been talking about this — that dumb fucking charade with the Epstein files, the ‘They’re on my desk’ nonsense, all the promises to the folks out there.”
Two days later, the pair were summoned back to the Situation Room, where Susie Wiles was with Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche, and a Wiles deputy. Bongino was accused of leaking a story to ABC News about Trump and Epstein. Bongino offered Wiles $100,000 to put the reporter on the phone and admit what he was being accused of.
Wiles snapped back, “Well, we all got ourselves into this…” Bongino said we did not. Bongino said no one heeded his warnings.
“Going forward,” Wiles said, “we’re all in. We’re all going to agree to move forward. Are you in or not?”
“No, I’m not,” Bongino said. “This is not my plan. I’m not part of this going forward. Forget it. I’m out of here.”
But Bongino wasn’t the only one in hot water with Trump’s team.
Trump told aides he was very unhappy with some of his most influential supporters, including Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, all of whom were publicly urging the administration to come clean.
Charlie Kirk got a call from a scolding Trump following a Turning Point event that had turned into a grievance fest about Bondi’s handling of the Epstein files. Don Jr. and Vance even tried to convince the White House to release more files, as both were worried about the “manosphere” voters turning on Trump.
This pressure led to Trump declaring the matter a “Democrat hoax,” disavowing his voters he now called “weaklings” who had “bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker.”
Enter the coming Epstein Files Transparency Act and a subpoena from the House Oversight Committee headed by James Comer, which eventually compelled the release of the Epstein files by the DOJ.
The same group met again in the Situation Room.
The meeting headed by Blair committed to cooperating with the House subpoena, but the focus would be on releasing information that would not implicate the president in Epstein crimes.
There was an agreement to form a website full of information, by design overwhelming to the MAGAsphere with massive amounts of material.
Vance agreed to appear on Joe Rogan’s podcast to convince voters that the administration had been transparent with the files. Vance said he could control the conversation and highlight the legislation passed by the administration that would help working families.
But there was worry about embarrassing information that would be discovered in the released files.
At that point, one of the officials raised the subject of a disturbing but uncorroborated accusation against Trump that had come to light in unsealed filings from a 2015 defamation case brought by Virginia Giuffre against Maxwell.
That old case contained the emails sent to a journalist by another Epstein accuser, Sarah Ransome.
In the emails, Ransome claimed that she knew a girl in Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring named Jen, who said she had sex with Trump. Ransome also claimed that Jen had told her that Trump had a predilection for nipples and that he had aggressively flicked and sucked hers. Ransome wrote that she had seen evidence when she shared a bathroom with Jen. “They looked incredibly painful as they were red and swollen and I remember wincing when I looked at them,” she wrote.
Ransome had made another claim that she had videos of powerful men having sex with Epstein victims. She later retracted her claims, stating she was in fear for herself and her family if proceeding.
The document that connected Trump to the claim about abused nipples was among the material that came out when a federal judge ordered the unsealing of Giuffre/Maxwell files in 2023. It became an unconfirmed allegation in the midst of election year noise.
The nipple story was in the DOJ released files. Blanche argued that other allegations retracted by Ransome would invalidate any credibility to the story. Vance thought the president would be okay with the story coming out, saying he had been accused of worse. Wiles told Vance he was wrong.
One of the officials would later describe it as a “surreal” experience to be discussing nipples in the White House Situation Room.
This was, in miniature, the entire problem the White House had with the Epstein files: Piles of accusations were impossible to disprove and equally impossible to make go away. Every door they opened led to another room, and in every room were more claims from more women.
On November 19, Trump signed into law the Epstein Transparency Act. The new law sought a broader tranche of files and contained a warning to the administration that “no record shall be withheld, delayed or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure or foreign dignitary.” It sought everything that Trump had spent the better part of the year trying to suppress.
It ended up containing millions of pages of information, and Trump, his family, and the Mar-a-Lago estate would be mentioned more than 38,000 times.
Trump, though, created again his own reality: “There are a lot of questions about it,” he told reporters at the White House in February 2026. “But nothing on me.”
In March 2026, Trump’s pollster Fabrizio reported that the Epstein files were the sixth most important issue raised in recent focus groups, behind inflation, the economy, foreign policy, immigration and health care — but ahead of data centers, military issues, crime and safety, and being “pro-working class.”
The Epstein files were a very real negative with some voters.
Trump could break institutions, redirect the federal government against his enemies and bring the world’s richest men into the Oval Office bearing tribute. But he could not, it turned out, make Jeffrey Epstein disappear.
From the New York Times
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