Latest / The Vault: The Epstein Files / Inside the White House Fallout Over the Epstein Files (Part 3) (6/11/26)

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Inside the White House Fallout Over the Epstein Files (Part 3) (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 pick up
0:06
where we left off with the New York Times article
0:09
that was authored by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. On
0:14
July seventh, the Department of Justice in the FBI released
0:17
a memo. It was brief, an unsigned, one and a
0:20
half page statement explaining that after an exhaustive search of
0:23
its database, hard drives, and network drives, as well as
0:27
physical searches a squad areas, lock cabinets, desks, closets, and
0:31
other areas where responsive material may have been stored, and
0:35
a corresponding review of more than three hundred gigabytes of evidence,
0:39
the department concluded that there was no evidence Epstein had
0:41
maintained a client list. The memo also reaffirmed the official
0:46
finding that Epstein's death in twenty nineteen had been a suicide.
0:51
The memo was accompanied by the release of video footage
0:53
from the federal jail in Manhattan where Epstein died, footage
0:57
that official said supported the conclusion of suicide, and with that,
1:02
the memo indicated the Trump administration would not be releasing
1:06
further information regarding the Epstein case, and no further investigation
1:10
of uncharged third parties was warranted. Imagine, after all that hubbub,
1:15
after all the carrying on, after telling us this time
1:18
is going to be different, to send out that memo
1:22
and just spit in everybody's face. Less than five months
1:24
after Bondi had referred to a secret client list of
1:27
high profile predators, the case was closed, or so it seemed.
1:32
If the administration expected that the memo would be the
1:35
last word on the Epstein case and that the president's
1:38
most ardent supporters would accept the purported conclusions of the
1:42
Department of Justice simply because the Department and its investigative
1:46
agencies were now controlled by Donald Trump, they were sorely mistaken.
1:50
The memo was an earthquake, and it was received by
1:54
a part of the magabase as an outright betrayal. It
1:57
amounted to an abrupt disavowal of the sinister conspiracy theories
2:03
that some of Trump's closest confidants had hyped during the
2:06
Biden presidency and that they had promised to expose once
2:09
Trump returned to power. The release of the surveillance video,
2:14
which Bongino and Patel had intended as a gesture of
2:17
transparency further fueled the fire. The Department of Justice ended
2:21
up releasing roughly eleven hours of prison video intended to
2:25
show that nothing the farius occurred, but the footage was
2:28
missing a minute, a visible timestamp jump from eleven fifty
2:32
eight fifty eight pm to midnight. Bondi initially attributed this
2:36
to a nightly system reset, and the footage was later
2:39
restored and released to many a Trump's followers. However, this
2:44
was yet more evidence of a cover up. White House
2:47
officials complained privately that they hadn't been told about the
2:50
gap before the release. Social media lit up will blame
2:54
not just for Bondi, but for Patel and Bongino two.
2:58
None of the three had ever experiencest anger at this
3:00
volume from Trump's conservative base. It was disorienting, especially for
3:05
Patel and Bongino, whose power and influence had been built online.
3:10
And you know, it was a shock for them. Haven't
3:12
everybody come after them like that? That must not have
3:16
been very much fun. But guess what they should have done?
3:19
The right thing. If you say you're going to release something,
3:22
release it, and if not, you better have a good
3:25
explanation as to why and unfortunately for them, no explanation came.
3:35
The movement that had treated them as heroes was suddenly
3:37
turning on them. The two men were now tightly connected
3:40
to a memo that stated in black and white that
3:43
while information in the government's possession showed ample evidence of
3:47
Epstein's own wrongdoing, there's no evidence of a wider conspiracy.
3:52
The day the memo was released, Bongino showed up to
3:54
a daily Justice Department meeting with the FBI staff and
3:58
the Attorney General. He was in a volcanic mood. As
4:01
soon as he entered the room. He erupted at Bondi,
4:04
shouting at her, you fucked this thing up from the start,
4:07
Bongino yelled, the way you've been talking about this, that dumb,
4:10
fucking charad with the Epstein files. They're on my desk. Nonsense,
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all the promises to folks out there. Look, he's not
4:18
wrong about that, and when somebody's right, they're right. Not
4:24
exactly what I would call the biggest fan of Dan Bongino,
4:26
but he's not wrong here, and he had every reason
4:31
to be fired up. This dude basically staked his career
4:33
on this bullshit ptelling. Bongino both subsequently told the White
4:39
House official that Bondi needed to resign. Two days later,
4:43
on July ninth, the two men were summoned to a
4:46
meeting with Wiles and Bondie in the Situation Room. They
4:50
were the last to enter the small wood paneled room,
4:53
seated around the table where Bondy, Wiles, Blanche, and Taylor Budowitch,
4:58
one of Wiles's deputies. The moment Bongino sat down, Wiles
5:02
told him that she had been informed that he leaked
5:04
a sensitive story about Epstein and Trump to ABC News.
5:08
I'll tell you what, Bongino replied, I'll give you one
5:10
hundred thousand dollars cash right now. I'm not kidding. Walk
5:14
out to West exec, put that reporter on speaker and
5:17
get him to admit that I leaked it one hundred
5:19
thousand dollars. Wiles snap back, well, we got ourselves into this,
5:23
Bongino cut her off. No, no, no, no, we didn't
5:25
get ourselves into anything. I warned you guys about this
5:29
the whole time, and you ignored me, and exactly what
5:32
I said was going to happen happened. And now you're
5:35
pretending I was in on this. I was never in
5:37
on this. It's always nice to see the rats try
5:39
and flee the sinking shit. Huh. Bongino's aggressive response to
5:43
Wiles startled the others. She was the White House chief
5:47
of Staff, essentially a stand in for the president. Wiles
5:51
put Bongino on the spot going forward. She said, we're
5:54
all in. We're all going to agree to move forward.
5:57
Are you in or not? No, I'm not, Bonge said,
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this is not my plan. I'm not part of this
6:03
going forward. Forget it. I'm out of here. He stormed
6:06
out of the situation room and on to West Executive Avenue,
6:09
where he climbed into the back of Attel's armored suv
6:13
and directed the driver to take him to FBI headquarters.
6:17
Some of Bongino's close friends hoped that he would resign
6:20
right then and there, an act of protest that would
6:22
have made him a Maga martyr and only increased his following. Look,
6:26
I would have had a lot less to say if
6:28
he did that. At least he would have shown some
6:30
integrity and some backbone. But no, he stuck around and
6:34
ran cover, but the White House advisors intervened, urging him
6:39
to stay. If he quit, over Epstein and went public
6:41
it could severely damage the president. Bongino told associates he
6:46
would remain for Trump's sake and keep pushing for more
6:49
Epstein information to be released, but privately he seethed. In
6:55
conversations with confidants, he lamented what the job had cost
6:58
him millions of dollars and podcast revenue, family time, his audience.
7:03
He was getting torn apart over a strategy he had
7:06
opposed from the start. The relationships at the top of
7:10
the Justice Department were by now beyond dysfunctional. In another
7:14
July meeting in Will's office, Bongino and Patel told the
7:17
chief of staff they suspected that Bondi had leaked negative
7:20
stories about them. Yo, this is a shit show. No
7:25
wonder everything was so screwed up, folks, What an absolute
7:28
clown show. Blondie fucked this whole thing up, Bongino later
7:34
told a confidant, echoing Lomer's derisive nickname for the Attorney General.
7:39
She was the one on TV saying over and over
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they had all this stuff. There was never anything. We
7:44
were always clear about that, but now everyone thinks we
7:47
did something wrong, and I gave up everything. Bongino complained
7:51
that he'd given up his high rated show and millions
7:54
of dollars, and now it's all disappeared because people think
7:58
we screwed something up with Epstein. You did, You're a
8:02
coward and a chump. Dan Bongino, A real man would
8:07
have been a whistleblower, A real man would have stood up.
8:12
Bongino paused, this is going to be President Trump's Iran contra.
8:17
While he's not wrong about that, it sure is. On
8:21
July twelfth, the President took the Truth social to defend
8:24
Bondi against criticism, to urge his boys and gals to
8:27
stop wasting time and energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that
8:31
nobody cares about. And that's hilarious considering that Trump himself
8:35
and the administration couldn't shut up about Epstein for so long.
8:42
Trump told aides he was very unhappy with some of
8:45
his most influential supporters, including Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson, and
8:50
Megan Kelly, all of whom were publicly urging the administration
8:53
to come clean. Kirk had held the Turning Point USA
8:56
event the previous day that turned into an Epstein grievance fest,
9:01
with one speaker after another bashing Bondie over the handling
9:05
of the situation. Trump had called Kirk and scolded him.
9:09
Trump is so thin skinned that he's willing to go
9:13
after his most ardent supporters, even if they just step
9:16
out of line once. If they don't agree with everything,
9:20
then you're a trader. I just can't get down with
9:22
the whole absolutism. Sometimes I'll agree, sometimes I won't. And
9:27
if that's a problem, well I don't give a shit.
9:30
It's not my problem, it's yours. Nobody in Trump's orbit
9:34
had a better feel for the younger part of the
9:36
MAGA base than Kirk, who saw that the Epstein cover up,
9:39
as it was now viewed, was capturing attention to an
9:43
alarming extent. Donald Trump Junior and JD. Vance, both of
9:47
whom spent considerable time on X, were tapped into the
9:51
same younger and hyper online portion of the base, were
9:55
also worried. They urged the White House to change course
9:58
and force the Justice Department to release more of the files.
10:01
So basically, we had a MAGA civil war, and like usual,
10:05
the Trump faction won. Vance made it clear to colleagues
10:09
that he feared losing some of the so called low
10:11
propensity voters, the young men who were not traditional Republicans
10:15
but who had voted for the Trump Vance ticket in
10:18
twenty twenty four. Bingo, almost to a person, those people
10:22
are out. They're not voting for Trump. They're not going
10:25
to vote for this bullshit. So either they're sitting out
10:28
the midterms or they're going to vote against Trump's candidates.
10:32
And I've heard that from numerous people. This was the
10:36
audience that tuned into the manisphere of podcasters like Joe Rogan,
10:39
and it was worrisome that the podcast hosts themselves were
10:42
now rebelling. But there was one major obstacle in the
10:46
path of a solution. The President himself still had no
10:50
interest in transparency. He wanted the whole Epstein issue buried,
10:55
and he was snapping at anyone who mentioned it. His
10:58
staff largely avoided the subject their conversations with them, forced
11:02
to worry among themselves. Finally, on July sixteenth, in an
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exasperated truth social post, seemingly desperate to make the case
11:09
in a language that might resonate with his base, Trump
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somewhat nonsensically called the Epstein case a hoax by Democrats,
11:17
and then proceeded to heap abuse on members of his
11:20
party and his base, disavowing their support, calling them past
11:23
supporters and weaklings who had bought into this bullshit hook
11:28
line and sinker, and look, the line was drawn at
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that point. The line was drawn. And anybody that's still
11:34
trying to place Trump as some kind of hero here
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is crazy. Donald Trump is the one single biggest impediment
11:41
to transparency right now. And that's just the truth. Whether
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you want to believe it or not, I don't care.
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But if this man wanted this stuff to be out there,
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it would be out there. As the President was trying
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to redirect everyone away from the Epstein on social media,
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members of both parties began to push the other way.
12:00
Many Democrats embrace the growing Epstein scandal as a top
12:03
focus in their messaging and as a weapon against Trump.
12:08
That's a big problem too. All these same Democrats, or
12:11
a lot of them, they were nowhere to be found
12:13
in twenty twenty, twenty nineteen. Well, all of a sudden,
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they feel like they can use it politically, so now
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they care. So look, I'm not under any impression that
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they're some kind of great crusaders. They're just a vehicle
12:28
that we're using to get to where we want to go.
12:31
Same thing with Massy right. They were joined by a
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few Renegador Republicans, which added to the political pressure on
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the president's team. Representative Thomas Massey, a Republican, and Rocana
12:44
a Democrat, filed HR forty four h five the Epstein
12:48
Files Transparency Act in the House, and although they did
12:51
not yet have the votes for the bill, it would
12:53
become the next battleground as the President dug in against
12:56
releasing information, which is hilarious considering they're the most transparent
13:00
administration of all time, you would think that it would
13:03
have to be a battle that Trump would be the
13:06
one saying, you know what, it's time for full transparency.
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They were joined by a few renegad Republicans, which added
13:12
to the political pressure on the president's team. Representative Thomas Massey,
13:17
a Republican, and Rocanna a Democrat, filed HR forty four
13:21
oh five the Epstein File Transparency Act in the House,
13:25
and although they did not yet have the votes for
13:27
the bill, it would become the next battleground as the
13:30
President dug in against releasing information. Word reached the White
13:35
House in late July. Meanwhile, that a subpoena would soon
13:38
be coming from the House Oversight Committee, led by James Comer,
13:41
a Republican from Kentucky. It had been pushed by Committee
13:44
Democrats with the help of some Republicans, and it compelled
13:48
the release of files the Justice Department had on Epstein.
13:52
On the day that the Trump team learned about the
13:54
looming subpoena, another Epstein crisis meeting was convened in the
13:58
Situation Room to discuss the pressure coming from Congress. It
14:02
included most of the same people, Wiles and Vance, Blanche, Warrington, Patel,
14:08
Bondie Blair, Chung Buddha Witch, and Levitt. Blair told the
14:12
group that they would try to make sure that they
14:14
were cooperating fully with the White House subpoena, but that
14:17
the priority was to release information that demonstrated Trump was
14:21
not involved in Epstein's crimes. That's the priority. Huh, disgusting folks. Look,
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this is a damning article and if it's true, there
14:31
is no doubt that there's a cover up. Blanche gave
14:37
an assessment of the Epstein material that he personally reviewed
14:40
or been briefed on, including a volume of child pornography.
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The conversation turned to how these files should be released
14:46
to the public. The idea already in the works was
14:49
to put all Epstein related material on a website. That way,
14:53
they could overwhelm the magosphere with far greater volume of
14:56
real information in the form of a huge database. That's
15:00
called flooding the zone, and it's what they do when
15:03
they're trying to confuse people. Put out a bunch of
15:07
shit and hope some of it sticks. The website had
15:11
been easy to build, and they were looking at potentially
15:14
going live within a week. They had already accumulated a
15:17
mountain of material that Blanche had been scrolling through and
15:20
that it included piles of documents from both civil and criminal cases.
15:25
They planned to release it all. Blanche could then appear
15:28
on Rogan's podcast to promote the transparency from the White House.
15:32
But as it turned out, this searchable website would not
15:35
go live on their initial timetable, and the version of
15:38
the site they originally conceived would never be released to
15:41
the public. The whole last thing has been nothing but
15:44
a scam from the very beginning. They never had any
15:46
desire to tell the truth. Never By late summer, it
15:52
was plainly apparent to the president's top aids that the
15:55
Epstein saga was not the same as the countless other
15:58
crisis they had weathered during their service to Trump. To
16:01
their great surprise and growing disquiet, Trump's old tricks of
16:05
deflection and denial weren't working. In late July, the Trump
16:09
team had discussed in their crisis meetings it was Blanche
16:11
who interviewed Maxwell over two days. She told them she
16:15
had witnessed no troubling behavior by Trump and didn't recall
16:19
him sending the birthday car drawn in the shape of
16:21
a nude woman. Soon after, she was quietly moved to
16:24
a minimum security federal prison in Texas, a transfer left
16:28
unexplained at first, which only deepened the public outrage. Blanche
16:33
sat nearly five months later that Maxwell had faced numerous
16:36
threats against her life. Lies all lies. So anybody who
16:43
gets threatened gets moved, that's news to me, and I'm
16:47
sure that's news to everybody that's locked up. As the
16:50
calls for transparency grew louder, the top ranks of the
16:52
Trump administration spent even more time in the bunker. By now,
16:56
the situation room itself had become inseparable from the crisis
17:00
up guarded space, where Trump's inner circle worked to steer
17:03
the president around the scandal that would soon tank or
17:06
consume careers at the highest levels of business, science, and politics. Yeah,
17:12
only about ten years too late, but I guess welcome
17:15
to the party. On August thirteenth, Trump's team at again
17:19
in the secure complex at six pm for two hours
17:22
to refine the Epstein defense strategy. Again. The group included Wiles, Bondie, Blanche, Patel, Blair, Budowitch, Chung,
17:30
and Levitt. Vance phoned in from Britain. The Vice President
17:34
once again pushed to release as much of the Epstein
17:37
files as possible, and with an eye on the public messaging,
17:41
he proposed that he should be the one to appear
17:44
on Rogan's influential podcast. Vance had just gotten off the
17:48
phone with Rogan, and he later told the others that
17:50
Rogan said he wouldn't have Blanch on his show, but
17:53
he'd take Vance. Vance argued that if he were the
17:56
one to appear on Rogan's show, then only a part
18:00
of the conversation would be about Epstein. The rest of
18:02
the interview, he told the group, could be about the
18:05
president's recently pass legislation and what it would do for
18:08
working families. But the larger conversation before them was how
18:12
to handle the crisis and the public relations risk for
18:15
the administration. The challenge would be any embarrassing or damaging
18:20
allegations about the president, even if they were unsubstantiated. If
18:24
everything was publicly available on the website they had planned,
18:28
it could include all kinds of potentially humiliating material. Well,
18:32
here's an idea. Don't hang out with Jeffrey Epstein and
18:35
there won't be humiliating material. Thanks for coming to my
18:39
ted talk. Suddenly, one of the officials in the situation
18:43
room raised the subject of a disturbing but uncorroborated accusation
18:47
against Trump that had come to light in unsealed filings
18:50
from a twenty fifteen defamation case brought by Virginia Roberts
18:55
against Maxwell, which had been settled two years later. The
18:58
second hand accusation alleging a specific type of sexual abuse
19:02
was a perfect example of something that would show up
19:05
on the public website and put the spotlight on Trump,
19:08
whether it was true or not. Roberts, who had met
19:11
Epstein when she was a teenage SPA attendant at Trump's
19:14
club mar A Lago and Palm Beach became one of
19:17
the sex offenders most outspoken victims. Roberts stated in late
19:21
twenty sixteen that, to her knowledge, Trump had done nothing improper.
19:25
She died by suicide, allegedly in April of twenty twenty five,
19:29
three months after Trump returned to power. The old Roberts
19:32
case file included emails sent to a journalist by another
19:35
Epstein victim, Sarah Ransom, who later sued Epstein and Maxwell.
19:40
Epstein had also settled that case. In the emails, Ransom
19:44
claimed that she knew a girl in Epstein's sex trafficking
19:47
ring named Jen, who said she had sex with Trump.
19:50
Ransom also claimed that Jen had told her that Trump
19:54
had a predilection for nipples and that he had aggressively
19:57
flicked and sucked hers. Ransom wrote that she had s
20:00
evidence when she shared a bathroom with Jen. They looked
20:03
incredibly painful, and they were red and swollen, and I
20:06
remember wincing when looking at them. Ransom's credibility was not uncomplicated.
20:12
She had made another claim that she possessed video footage
20:15
of prominent men having sex with the young girls in
20:17
Epstein's entourage. She later attracted the claims, saying she feared
20:22
for herself and her family if she proceeded. But after
20:25
a federal judge ordered the unsealing of some of Robert's
20:28
case files in twenty twenty three, the document that connected
20:31
Trump to the claim about abused nipples was among the
20:35
material that came out. It was an unconfirmed allegation and
20:39
had not been made publicly, but the disclosure led to
20:42
some articles that were quickly lost in the swirl of
20:45
election year news. Some of Trump's advisors in the situation
20:49
room had never heard of the nipple claim, those who had,
20:53
and the ones who had were only passingly familiar with it.
20:57
Many in the room thought this was just discredited nonsense.
21:00
But it might not matter. Though. Ransom emails could get
21:03
new attention if they were included in a public facing
21:06
and searchable Epstein library that carried the branding of the
21:10
Justice Department. An administration official had already searched for Trump
21:14
related material on the still private test version of the website,
21:18
and the nipple material was among the first items to
21:20
show up. None of the credibility issues would come into
21:24
consideration if a government endorsed database gave Ransom's claims about Trump,
21:29
a stamp a validity. This is out there, One of
21:32
the officials told the group in the situation room, They're
21:35
going to make a huge scene of this, even though
21:37
it's not true and everybody knows it. Blanche argued that
21:39
in context, the Ransom document and Ransom's disavowal of some
21:43
of her other claims would make clear why the allegations
21:46
related to Trump had never been pursued for a prosecution. Besides,
21:50
these allegations were already available online because of what had
21:54
been unsealed, so there was no reason to leave them
21:56
off the Justice Department's website. The Vice President said that
22:00
he thought the President would be okay with releasing the
22:03
nipple related documents, arguing that Trump had been accused of worse.
22:06
I think we should put it out, he said. It
22:09
would cause people to say, we're going further then we
22:11
need to. Wiles quickly responded that the President would not,
22:14
in fact be okay with it. It was a point
22:17
no one wanted to continue debating. One official would later
22:21
describe it as surreal experience to be discussing nipples in
22:24
the White House situation room. Yeah, I would say so.
22:28
Talk about embarrassing as if we have nothing else going
22:32
on in the world, in the country, but these people
22:35
are busy with their cover up. This was, in miniature
22:40
the entire problem the White House had with the Epstein files.
22:44
Pyle's accusations were impossible to disprove and equally impossible to
22:49
make go away. Every door they opened led to another room,
22:52
and in every room there were more claims for more women.
22:56
For a few weeks, they thought that they had found
22:58
a way out. The subpoena from Homer's committee had specifically
23:02
requested Justice Department documents, communications with the White House, and
23:06
material from the Epstein and Maxwell criminal case, non material
23:10
from civil litigation such as Loransom emails. They could comply
23:14
with the letter of subpoena, post the Justice Department material
23:17
to a stripped down version of the planned website and
23:20
leave the rest aside. Civil cases were separate matters outside
23:24
of the remit of the Justice Department, and the subpoena
23:27
allowed for another escape patch. The Justice Department could withhold
23:31
certain documents as long as it explained to the House
23:34
lawmakers what they were and why they were held back,
23:38
but that strategy collapsed quickly. More Republican lawmakers would press
23:43
for additional disclosures, including former Trump allies like Green and
23:47
Lauren Bobert, and the Trump administration was slow to comply
23:50
with even the initial limited set of documents required by
23:54
the House subpoena, all by design trying to gum it up.
23:59
The slower it goes, the better off for them. By
24:03
mid November, the partisan coalition the Trump team had worried
24:06
about since the summer finally had the votes to force
24:09
the administration's hand. The Epstein File Transparency Act passed the
24:13
House and Senate in quick succession, and on November nineteenth, Trump,
24:17
yielding to the inevitable, signed it into law. The new
24:21
law went further than the House of poena. It sought
24:23
a broader tranch of files and contained a warning to
24:26
the administration that no record shall be withheld, delayed, or
24:29
redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity,
24:35
including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.
24:39
It sought everything that Trump had spent the better part
24:41
of a year trying to suppress. The legislators who passed
24:45
the bill had no idea how many files they had
24:47
mandated to be released within a month. The pages would
24:51
end up numbering in the millions, and the President and
24:55
his family and places like mar A Lago estate would
24:58
be referred to more than third eight thousand times, according
25:01
to a New York Times analysis. The Trump Justice Department
25:06
said that there was no client list, but the entire
25:08
episode was another flashing light in an era where belief
25:12
in the American system of justice had corroded to the
25:14
point of collapse. Well, this isn't just a making of
25:18
the Trump administration. All the administrations leading up to it too.
25:22
They bear some of the burden. They should have stepped up.
25:25
They should have stoped Epstein. They should have been the
25:27
ones to release all this, but nobody has. And that's
25:31
the biggest problem. Both sides are in on it, and
25:34
that's why everybody has to be held accountable. Raw witness
25:42
accounts and evidence from incomplete criminal investigations were never meant
25:45
to be seen by the public. There were long standing
25:49
systems in place to protect both the accused and the accuser.
25:53
The files amounted to a public dump of any Justice
25:56
Department document that mentioned Epstein's name, no matter whether the
25:59
information confirmed as accurate or not. The release pages did
26:04
not name many powerful men, among them was Epstein's former
26:07
close friend now the president of the United States. In
26:12
a January twenty twenty email, a federal prosecutor told a
26:15
colleague that Trump had flown on Epstein's private jet far
26:18
more than anyone knew. Flight records in the files showed
26:22
at least eight trips between ninety three and ninety six,
26:25
sometimes with the second wife, Marlon Maples, sometimes with his children.
26:29
That's nice, huh, bring your kids on Jeffrey Epstein's plane,
26:33
Come one, come all. In January twenty twenty four, Trump
26:37
declared that he would never have been on the plane.
26:39
Just another lie. Everything this man says about Epstein is
26:43
a lie, So why would that be any different? What
26:47
else remained undisclosed? The question would only sharpen his people
26:50
comb through what was redacted or missing. The Justice Department,
26:55
after more than three and a half million documents were
26:57
made public, said no others needed to be released. Trump
27:01
characteristically was creating his own reality. He had long claim
27:05
that everyone else was corrupt, especially his critics. These files,
27:09
he would say, despite the avalanche of references to himself,
27:12
were the proof. There are a lot of questions about it,
27:15
he told reporters at the White House in February of
27:17
twenty twenty six. But nothing on me. Imagine having that
27:21
kind of worldview and having that kind of you know,
27:25
tunnel vision. Nothing on you, buddy. There's a whole shit
27:28
ton on you. Trump had declared Epstein a dead issue
27:31
during the summer, but as he began the second year
27:33
of his presidency, his own team could see the voter
27:36
concerns about Epstein were still breaking through at an alarming extent,
27:41
and an eternal memo circulated to roughly a dozen Trump
27:43
advisors in late March of twenty twenty six, the president's
27:47
polster for Breezio summarized findings from two nights of focused
27:51
groups conducted that month. Fabrizio's memo listed the Epstein files
27:56
as the sixth most important issue raised in the focus groups,
27:59
beyond inflation, the economy, foreign policy, immigration, and healthcare, but
28:05
ahead of data centers, military issues, crime and safety, and
28:09
being pro working class. In this section on key takeaways
28:12
of the focus group for Breezio's memo stated, there is
28:16
a consistent mention of the Epstein files which come up
28:19
in every group and is a real negative with some
28:22
of these voters. Yeah, I'd say so. The way it's
28:26
been handled is completely unacceptable. And anybody who's not in
28:30
the cup for Donald Trump knows there's a cover up
28:33
going on, and it's infuriating to the regular person. They
28:37
see it, they know it's happening, but there's nothing they
28:41
can do about it. The Epstein crisis had exposed something
28:45
that some of Trump's closest advisors spent months refusing to see.
28:50
The President could break institutions, redirect the federal government against
28:54
his enemies, and bring the world's richest men into the
28:57
Oval Office bearing tribute, but he could not, it turned out,
29:01
make Jeffrey Epstein disappear. And look, that's because of you,
29:05
not me, not any of the people talking about it
29:08
behind a microphone, but because all of you. You deciding
29:11
you're not gonna move on, you deciding you want accountability,
29:15
and you deciding that the administration is talking a bunch
29:18
of bullshit. And no matter what they do, no matter
29:21
how hard they try to sweep this under the rug
29:23
and make it all go away, it's not going to happen.
29:26
I think that we've come too far at this point,
29:28
and there's nothing that the Trump administration or anyone can
29:33
do to get people not interested in what's going on.
29:37
And I think the more they dig in and the
29:39
more they try and hide things, and the more they're
29:42
being secretive, And all it does is confirm what all
29:46
of us already think that Donald Trump and the White
29:50
House is engaging in an ongoing cover up. And if
29:54
they think we're gonna move on, they got a whole
29:57
less other thing coming. All right, folks, that's gonna do
30:00
do it for this one. All the information that goes
30:02
with this episode can be found in the description box