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