White House staffers are under fire after the extraordinary lengths they went to in order to protect Donald Trump from the “Epstein files” were revealed.
A bombshell New York Times report on Wednesday revealed that the president’s inner circle convened a secret meeting just 10 days after the Justice Department and FBI released a memo last July declaring there was no Jeffrey Epstein client list. There, the group hatched a plan to make an empty gesture of transparency that would calm Trump’s base and convince supporters that the president was sympathetic to their concerns—even though he clearly wasn’t.
The secret meeting was held in a secure bunker in the West Wing typically used to respond to national security emergencies and was presided over by Vice President JD Vance, according to the report. Also in attendance were White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Communications Director Steven Cheung, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, as well as FBI Director Kash Patel and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, who joined by phone.
Now, those very staffers have landed in the hot seat.
“All of this effort to protect Trump... Because he’s guilty. He did it. Over and over again. With Epstein. It’s a conspiracy to cover up Trump’s sexual assault crimes against minor girls,” political commentator Tom Joseph wrote on X on Wednesday.
Bill Kristol, director of Defending Democracy, also weighed in, taking specific aim at Blanche, the president’s former personal attorney whom Trump recently promoted to attorney general.
“One point very much worth noting: Todd Blanche was a central participant in the Epstein coverup,” Kristol wrote on X, alongside a link to the Times story. “As Deputy Attorney general, he was acting in Trump’s interest--not in the interest of the survivors, not in the interest of the law or of the truth.”
Behind closed doors, the Epstein crisis—which ultimately led many MAGA devotees to turn on the administration—had left Trump’s inner circle in full-blown panic mode, according to the report, an excerpt from Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s forthcoming book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.
The excerpt also detailed infighting among former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, Bondi, Patel, and Wiles as the administration struggled to contain a frustrated Trump, whom Epstein once described as his “closest friend.”
“Try as they might, Republicans will not succeed at sweeping this scandal under the rug,” Occupy Democrats wrote on X in response to the report. “The Epstein child-trafficking operation is the defining element of Trump’s life. He can delay and obfuscate, but eventually Democrats will retake power and the floodgates will be opened wide.”
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson repeated Trump’s claims that he is innocent in all Epstein-related matters in a statement to the Times.
“By releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena request, signing the Epstein Files Transparency Act and calling for more investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends, President Trump has done more for Epstein’s victims than anyone before him,” she said.
Epstein died by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. Members of Trump’s own administration have long promoted conspiracy theories that he was murdered by powerful associates.
Among the officials who entertained such theories, according to the report, were Patel and, at times, Vance.
