Latest / The Vault: The Epstein Files / Inside the White House Fallout Over the Epstein Files (Part 2) (6/11/26)

Transcript

Inside the White House Fallout Over the Epstein Files (Part 2) (6/11/26) · The Vault: The Epstein Files

0:00
Speaker 1: What's up, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the
0:03
Epstein Chronicles. In this episode, we're going to get right
0:06
back to that New York Times article about Donald Trump
0:10
and the Epstein files. This article was authored by Maggie
0:15
Haberman and Jonathan Swan. At the start of last summer,
0:19
as far as outside observers could see, Trump appeared to
0:22
be at the pinnacle of his power. He had just
0:24
bombed nuclear sites in Iran, completed the blitz of executive
0:28
orders to reshape the immigration system, and ran through Congress
0:32
his signature piece of domestic legislation, the Big Beautiful Bill.
0:36
He was using the levers of the government to go
0:39
after his enemies, and out of fear and desperation, America's
0:43
corporate titans were falling over themselves to genuflect. Look a
0:47
lot of those people they wanted favorable deals, and they
0:50
knew that the Trump administration was gonna wheel and deal,
0:53
so they're going to do what's best for their companies.
0:56
My beef is with the administration and their nonsense. The
1:00
absolute greed and corruption that we see on a regular
1:03
basis is just unreal. But behind the scenes, the Epstein
1:09
crisis was paralyzing the Trump administration to a far greater
1:12
extent than the public knew. In their public statements, Trump's
1:16
advisors were full of bravado, dismissing the crisis. In reality,
1:21
it was consuming the highest ranks of the administration, As
1:24
no issue had for the President's team since the Russia
1:27
investigation in his first term. His aids were determined to
1:30
keep their rising sense of panic out of public view. Yo,
1:34
this should have been more than Russia. That Russia shit.
1:37
I hate to tell you a lot of it was contrived.
1:41
I know people don't want to hear it because it
1:43
doesn't fit in with their confirmation bias and shit, But
1:46
it's true and all the way back then that there
1:49
wasn't enough there there to send anybody to prison. Meanwhile,
1:53
the Epstein files were rife with all kinds of corruption,
1:57
and if people would have just focused back then when
1:59
this was all happening in real time, we could have
2:02
actually got something done. But unfortunately that never happened. The
2:09
Justice Department had struggled with just how to dispose of
2:12
the Epstein matter since the beginning of Trump's second term.
2:15
The issue was all consuming for the president's political base,
2:19
but also potentially compromising for the president himself in ways
2:23
that officials in the new administration didn't fully understand any
2:27
path forward would be fraud. Some of that complexity was
2:30
self inflicted. Yes, it was all of it. They created
2:34
this problem for themselves. Donald Trump created this problem for himself.
2:39
Here's an idea. Just live up to the promises you
2:42
made while you were on the campaign trail. Let the
2:46
chips fall where they will, let the American people decide.
2:50
But instead you got a gatekeep and said you got
2:52
to protect your people. Instead you have to bring Leon
2:56
black Sun into the administration. So, yeah, all your problems
3:02
self inflicted. Some of that complexity was self inflicted. In
3:07
the engine room of the MAGA movement, the Epstein files
3:09
were potent fuel. Elon Musk had used as social media
3:13
platform to repeatedly question why a client list had not
3:16
been released. Donald Trump Junior and JD. Vance had invoked
3:21
the Epstein files as a broader campaign message to argue
3:24
that powerful people were hiding the truth from Americans. Tucker
3:29
Carlson and the young Conservative leader Charlie Kirk had each
3:32
insisted that the government should release the documents, and each
3:35
floated the idea that there was an expansive cover up
3:38
and progress. Well, that's because there is. And you don't
3:42
have to agree with Charlie Kirk or agree with Tucker
3:44
Carlson to understand that just because you don't agree with
3:48
somebody doesn't mean they're not right. Look. I don't agree
3:51
with Maggie Haberman all the time she's writ in this article,
3:54
and I think that whole entire thing of having to
3:57
agree with everything somebody says is dumb as hell. I'm
4:02
not going to agree with everything somebody says. Ever, I
4:06
have my own opinions on a wide variety of things,
4:09
and I'm willing to listen to anybody whoever has the
4:12
best ideas. That's who I'm voting for. Trump himself had
4:17
been cagi on the Lex Freeman podcast in September of
4:20
twenty twenty four. When asked about releasing the client list,
4:23
Trump responded, I'd certainly take a look at it, adding
4:27
I'd have no problem with it. The list probably will
4:29
be made public, he said, but he sounded less than
4:32
enthusiastic in private. Trump later told Representative Marjorie Taylor Green
4:38
that a release of Epstein material could hurt some of
4:40
his friends. He repeatedly insisted that he had done nothing
4:43
wrong and that the whole saga was fake news designed
4:46
to harm them politically. And that's his go to move.
4:49
Right anytime that Trump is truly in jeopardy, he calls
4:53
it a hoax, and he gets purchased with that because
4:55
of what happened with Russia. I mean, the American people
4:58
heard Russia, Russia, Russia for or how many years, how
5:01
many hearings, and then what came of it. So when
5:05
people hear this, they're like, oh, just another routine move,
5:09
another hoax to try and get Trump. That's what his
5:11
base thinks. And you can say what you want about
5:13
Trump and the administration, but they're effective communicators when it
5:17
comes to their own party, their own people, very effective.
5:21
They know exactly what buttons to push. And he has
5:25
carefully built this whole entire persona of him being some
5:28
kind of martyr, and he knew that it was going
5:30
to be effective. He knew that if he used that
5:32
strategy and said that that it would protect him. And
5:36
it sure has hasn't it. All the people out here
5:39
that were running their yap for all these years about
5:41
Epstein who now say it's a hoax? What a bunch
5:45
of morons, Like, why would anyone believe anything they have
5:49
to say? Now, It's one thing if the evidence would
5:52
have pointed you in a different direction after you had
5:55
one belief, right, Like if somebody was to show up
5:58
tomorrow with all all of the evidence of what happened
6:01
in that Geil cell and it turned out that it
6:03
was one hundred percent suicide, I'd be the first one
6:07
to get on here and tell you, Look, I've been
6:08
wrong the whole time. It was obviously suicide. Because for me, anyway,
6:15
the only thing that matters is getting as close to
6:17
the truth as we possibly can, and anybody standing in
6:21
the way of that, well, I have questions. But his
6:28
posture was overtaken by the growing frenzy among his supporters
6:32
throughout twenty twenty four. Green had made it he remission
6:34
to force the release of the files, and there were
6:37
so many others, the far right influencer Laura Lumer, the
6:41
conservative activist Scott Presler, Chaia Raychik from Libs of TikTok.
6:45
But when it came to propagating the Epstein files as
6:48
evidence of the deep state capable of evil, two podcasters
6:52
were not to be outdone. Cash Betel and Dan Bongino. Well,
6:57
there's no doubt that those two were the loudest voices
7:00
talking about the Epstein files. And then they get access
7:02
to them and we get nothing. We get told that
7:06
there's nothing there and that it was all just a
7:08
big mistake. And they really thought people were going to
7:12
buy it. They really thought that they were going to
7:15
get Joe and Jane America to buy into that nonsense. Well,
7:19
how's it working out for him? Patel, a National Security
7:23
Council Director for counter Terrorism and Defense Department Chief of
7:27
Staff in the first Trump administration, had repeatedly claimed in
7:31
podcast interviews that the government was hiding Epstein's black book
7:35
or a client list, and he frequently asserted that the
7:37
FBI was deliberately withholding names to protect the powerful they were.
7:43
That's true, but so is Cash Pattel. It's all one
7:47
big ass club, folks, and none of us are invited.
7:52
Battell promised that the second Trump administration would release everything
7:56
to restore public trust, and they've made it worse, promises
8:01
on a Boulevard of Broken Dreams on the Dan Bongino Show.
8:06
Bongino's background as a Secret Service agent had lent authority
8:09
to his claims of a cover up. What the hell
8:12
are they hiding with Jeffrey Epstein, He'd ask his large
8:15
audience of magadavotees. The release of the client list would
8:19
rock the political world, he predicted, though Washington Swamp was
8:22
not telling you the truth. Well, that's true too, they're not,
8:26
and neither did Dan Bongino. Just another useless son of
8:31
a bitch. Another person who promised that he was going
8:34
to do the right thing, going to expose people, bring transparency,
8:38
didn't do any of it. In fact, tucked his tail
8:41
between his legs and dipped right back to the podcasting world.
8:46
So as they took office in twenty twenty five, Trump's
8:49
advisors were subject to intense pressure of their own making.
8:53
Attorney General Pam Bondi quickly made things much worse. First,
8:56
in a Fox News interview on February twenty, first appeared
9:00
to confirm the existence of an Epstein client list, something
9:03
that the Mega base had believed was sitting in the
9:06
files hidden, and hinted that its release was imminent. Asked
9:10
whether the Justice Department might release the names, she responded,
9:14
it's sitting on my desk right now to review. But
9:17
many viewed what came six days later as even more
9:21
of an egregious misstep. The whole entire thing was poorly planned,
9:25
poorly managed, and poorly carried out. And if we can't
9:29
prove a cover up here, it's not because there's no evidence,
9:34
it's because the willpower isn't there. On February twenty seventh,
9:40
the White House Communications Office scheduled a lineup of cabinet
9:43
officials to brief popular right wing influencers in the Roosevelt Room.
9:48
The session began with Vice President Vance, followed by Secretary
9:51
of State Marco Rubio walking the influencers through the administration's agenda.
9:56
In attendance was a who's who of online Maga, Mike Cernovich,
10:01
Liz Wheeler, Colin rugg d C. Draino. The President himself
10:05
brought them to the Oval Office and gave them custom
10:08
design Challenge coins as a token of his appreciation. Before
10:13
everything went wrong, one of them would a remark, it
10:16
was the best day of my life. What a bunch
10:18
of clowns. Those people are. All those people with the
10:21
white binders, all part of the sciot, all part of
10:24
the cover up. Imagine sacrificing your morality to have a
10:29
few minutes at the White House when the Attorney General
10:33
and her team walked into the Roosevelt Room carrying boxes.
10:36
Bondi had brought binders as handouts for the influencers. Her
10:40
ades would later tell colleagues that the FBI had prepared
10:43
them with the assurance that they contained revelatory details. Someone
10:48
on her staff said, watch this, this is cool. This
10:51
is going to be epic yet an epic disaster, epically ridiculous.
10:58
But as Bondie staffsart distributing the binders, the blood pressure
11:02
of other officials in the room skyrocketed. They had no
11:05
idea what was in the handouts. The Attorney General was
11:08
distributing something she was calling the Epstein Files that had
11:12
not been vetted by anyone in the White House. One
11:15
official opening the binder began flipping through the pages to
11:18
see if Trump's name was mentioned anywhere. A few pages in,
11:21
right in the middle of the page, there it was. Boy,
11:24
I bet they were happy to find the other what
11:26
thirty eight thousand mentions Cure Starmer, the British Prime Minister,
11:30
was at the White House that day. If news broke
11:33
that the Epstein files had been released before the President
11:36
was to meet the press with the Prime Minister. That
11:38
would be all the journalists would want to talk about,
11:41
and Trump would be blindsided. Oh, poor Trump, gonna get blindsided,
11:47
Gonna have to talk about his buddy Jeffrey Epstein again. Well,
11:50
guess what, it's not going anywhere time to meet that
11:53
shit had on. One of Trump's aids hastily steered the
11:57
influencers out of the White House, telling them that the
11:59
content of the binders was embargoed until after the President's
12:03
news conference with Starmer, but the Communications Office would be
12:07
more than happy to talk about the files afterward. As
12:11
the influencers left, they snapped selfies in front of the
12:14
White House holding the binders, quickly posting the pictures on
12:17
social media. They had now created a new shock wave
12:20
of anticipation of what might be in them. And I
12:23
remember when it happened. I knew for a fact that
12:27
we were getting dog walked. I knew that we were
12:29
going to get nothing. And guess what we got nothing?
12:33
Not a zilch ounngts. Like some others in the White House,
12:37
BONDI had either grossly underestimated or simply been blind to
12:41
the voracious appetite of the MAGA base for information about Epstein.
12:45
Her binders contained information about him and his activities, flight logs,
12:49
contact lists, some rease of items taken from the residents
12:53
after his twenty nineteen arrests, and other material, but nearly
12:57
all of it had been previously released. Bondie had somehow
13:01
simultaneously over sold and trivialized the Epstein files, and now
13:06
the influencers made to feel like dupes. Well they are.
13:10
They're just a bunch of grifters. Do you think any
13:12
of those people care about Jeffrey Epstein or the survivors
13:16
or any of the story. It's about engagement to them. Oh,
13:20
they cared about it when they thought they were going
13:21
to use it politically. That's when they cared, you know,
13:25
just like the other side cares. Now, Oh we got
13:28
a political inroad here, we all of a sudden care. Well,
13:31
I hate to break the news to you, but if
13:33
you would have cared when it mattered the most, when
13:35
this was all happening, maybe, just maybe we wouldn't be
13:39
here today. And it was people like Maggie Haberman, the
13:43
author of this article, who was calling people like me
13:47
conspiracy theorists. Meanwhile, we've been over the target for seven years,
13:51
and all you had to do was listen. Just listen
13:53
to what the survivors were saying. Listen to Virginia, Listen
13:56
to what Maria had to say, Listen to all these
13:59
women who actually lived it. And then you go when
14:02
you look at all the core documents, you look at
14:04
everything that came out, and the picture that it paints
14:08
is not very hard to recognize. In the Roosevelt Room,
14:11
Bondi told the influencers that this was just the first
14:13
tranch of files. There would be more coming, she assured them,
14:16
But that story would change too. Yeah, everything they told
14:20
us changed the campaign. It was Oh, we're gonna have
14:23
everything out, then it was oh, no, there's nothing coming out.
14:27
And then after the discharge petition, well, we're the most
14:31
transparent administration in the history of transparency, so we're going
14:35
to get everything out for you. Nothing comes out, nothing
14:39
of substance, and they fight tooth andel the whole entire time.
14:42
If Donald Trump wanted to be transparent, he could be
14:46
him and his Justice Department could have been as transparent
14:49
as they wanted to be. But instead we had to
14:52
jump through hoops and it became a circus. And for
14:54
what so Trump could protect his donors, protect a few
14:58
of Jeffrey Epstein's best friends, or is there something more
15:01
sinister that he's trying to protect. The Justice Department officials
15:07
were reviewing the Epstein material, but months would pass before
15:10
the Department or any of Trump's closest advisers knew just
15:14
how many documents. There were more than three million pages
15:17
of files related to Epstein, and potentially as many as
15:20
six million. In the early months, officials were focused on
15:24
going through the trove of what are known as three
15:26
O two forms, records of FBI agents interview notes with witnesses,
15:31
some of whom were victims of Epstein. These were raw records,
15:35
often containing unverified information. Trump was mentioned numerous times, as
15:40
were other prominent men. Look, the three or two reports
15:43
are telling. These are the words of the people who
15:47
are interviewed, who the investigators think have knowledge of what's
15:51
going on. So I would suggest that you take the
15:54
three O two profers seriously. Now, does that mean that
15:57
people won't lie? Of course not. You have to be guarded,
16:02
and I would suggest that you're very cautious with what's
16:05
sort of slop you're put into your brain when it
16:07
comes to this topic. There's a lot of people out
16:09
there just serving up a bunch of nonsense. In June,
16:12
four months after the circus, in the Roosevelt Room with
16:15
the influencers, Bondie and Blanche brief the President on the
16:18
status of the Epstein review. We've gone through the files,
16:22
blanched old Trump. There's not a lot there a lot
16:24
of child pornography. Obviously, we can't put any of that out.
16:29
There are some mentions of you, but nothing substantative. Most
16:32
of Trump's advisors had rejected out of hand the idea
16:35
of releasing the fbis raw interview notes. More important, they
16:40
wanted to avoid putting out anything that could damage the president.
16:44
Cover up, folks, That's what this is. This is a
16:47
cover up emotion. Everything's being done to protect Donald Trump.
16:51
It has nothing to do with justice, it has nothing
16:53
to do with thrill transparency. It's about protecting Donald Trump
16:58
on Donald Trump's orders. If that's not a cover up,
17:01
I don't know what is. With full transparency a non starter,
17:06
a small group of White House and Justice Department officials
17:09
decided to draft a memo that would explain why the
17:11
department was not releasing any further information about Epstein, but
17:16
even the process of composing the memo was fraud in
17:19
part because no one wanted their name on it, and
17:22
in part because of a deep concern within the leadership
17:25
of the FBI. You know what we need here, a whistleblower.
17:29
We need somebody that was working on this behind the
17:31
scenes to come out and drip all that tea. You
17:34
know that there were people that weren't down with what
17:36
was going on. You know that there were people that
17:38
wanted to go a different way. But all of this
17:42
was done at the behest of Donald Trump. And it
17:45
seems like every time we get new information, it just
17:47
reaffirms that. For weeks, Ptel and Bongino, the deputy FBI director,
17:54
had grown more infuriated as they realized the scale of
17:57
the mess for which they were now being blamed. They
18:00
repeatedly raised alarms internally that the Epstein crisis was gathering
18:04
momentum with Trump supporters. Bongino wanted to convey something definitive
18:09
to the MAGA base, and he and Patel pushed for
18:12
the immediate release of the surveillance footage from the federal
18:15
facility where Epstein was found dead in his cell that
18:18
proved to be a disaster as well. What an absolute
18:22
and utter disaster, missing minute, nothing adding up, couldn't see anything.
18:28
And then of course there's the orange blob that nobody's explained.
18:31
Oh it's Toevin o weel, Well, no it's not. She
18:34
says it's not her, So who is it? Bongino hated
18:41
the Justice departments nothing to see here memo being drawn
18:44
up for public release. He told Patel this would in
18:48
no way a line with their promises of transparency after
18:51
taking over the FBI, and he objected to putting the
18:54
FBI seal on the letterhead, but he was overruled. Patel
18:59
privately shared many of Bongino's concerns, but in an internal
19:03
email on July second, the FBI director gave his support
19:07
for the memo. Well, what's he gonna do? Donald Trump
19:10
wants the memo out, They're gonna put it out. These
19:13
people aren't courageous. They're not willing to stand up to
19:17
somebody like Donald Trump if that means their career is
19:19
going to be over. Thanks for the edits. I still
19:22
believe that this is the correct vehicle forward. Petel wrote
19:25
with the occasional typo to a small group of colleagues,
19:28
including Blanche. I'm happy to add any additional sentences to
19:33
compete the shortfall, but I do think we address specifically
19:37
why Mora can't be released, as it relates to specific topics,
19:40
i e. Coord Order see sam victims protections, et cetera.
19:46
Bondi rarely used her Justice Department email and was not
19:49
on the chain where the group worked on the memo.
19:52
She was aware of both the memo and the release
19:54
of the prison video, but was not involved in editing
19:56
the document. So what was she doing just to figurehead?
20:02
I think that Blanche has been the boss this whole
20:04
entire time. That's what I believe, and I think that
20:07
he was put there by Donald Trump for this exact reason.
20:11
If Chic goes south, Blanche takes the reins and he
20:14
guides the ship home. And that's exactly what's happening right
20:17
now as we speak. But Blanche needs to understand that
20:22
Trump's not going to be president forever, and at some
20:25
point this bill is going to come due. Inside the
20:30
White House, Trump had no interest in releasing anything, and
20:33
senior officials, including Wiles and Blair, were initially unconvinced about
20:37
the reach of the Epstein crisis. They told colleagues that
20:41
Republican voters didn't care, and they had early data from
20:44
Trump's chief polster Tony Fabrizio to demonstrate it. The Epstein Brwaha,
20:50
in their view, was driven by fringe conspiracy theorists and
20:53
amplified by noisy online influencers who didn't represent a meaningful
20:57
block of voters. If the White House engay, it would
21:00
only pump it up, putting the official stamp on the matter. Wiles,
21:05
Blair and others around Trump had seen weather, every storm
21:08
imaginable for years, and in their view, this wasn't a storm.
21:12
It was a passing cloud at most. I wonder if
21:15
he feels that way now. Bongino told anyone who would
21:19
listen that this was a grave miscalculation. It's not an
21:23
online story. He told White House advisors. You don't understand.
21:27
All right, folks, We're gonna wrap up right here and
21:29
in the next episode we'll finish this bad boy off.
21:33
All the information that goes with this episode can be
21:35
found in the description box.