Despite public dismissals, why Trump and his team were privately obsessed with the Jeffrey Epstein scandal
Even if you’re sick of hearing about Jeffrey Epstein – and who among us hasn’t felt that way at times – President Donald Trump and his team have been far more fixated on the relentless controversy than they have ever acknowledged.
That (and plenty of other juicy revelations) is based on three years of reporting for a forthcoming book. "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump" is by New York Times correspondents Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan and slated to be published in two weeks.
Whether you’re a Trump supporter or detractor, the book is packed with facts that make clear that most or all of the major participants cooperated with them. The president also granted Haberman and Swan an hour-long interview in March.
One major takeaway: Even as Trump and White House officials repeatedly tried to dismiss the endless brawl, which stems from Trump’s long-ago friendship with the late pedophile and sex offender, as old or irrelevant news, they repeatedly met in the Situation Room to try to manage the crisis.
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In the initial meetings, Vice President JD Vance argued strenuously that more detailed allegations about Trump – some suspect or totally unconfirmed – were going to surface eventually, and they should get out ahead of the story.
Some argued that Vance "appeared panicked," according to the book, and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who led the meetings, told others he was a conspiracy theorist. But Vance said Congress would force the release of the complete Epstein files no matter what they did.
In my view, the vice president was proven right.
At another meeting, talk turned to whether Trump should pardon Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s enabler, who has defended Trump and is now serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking of a minor.
"Pardoning Maxwell, a trafficker of young girls, would create a huge P.R. problem," Communications Director Steven Cheung warned.
Trump posted that he had asked his attorney general, Pam Bondi, to seek release of grand jury testimony – which is almost never approved – "based on the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein."
At a session last summer, Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, who had demanded release of the files as a podcaster, started shouting at Bondi, according to the book.
"You f----- this thing up from the start," he declared. "The way you’ve been talking about this — that dumb f------ charade with the Epstein files, the ‘They’re on my desk’ nonsense, all the promises to the folks out there."
Bongino and FBI Director Kash Patel told a White House official that Bondi needed to resign.
At a meeting with Wiles meant to smooth things over, Bongino accused the White House of ignoring his warnings, in which he predicted what would happen, and burst out of the Situation Room.
Bongino resigned in December and returned to his podcasting business, where he felt he’d given up millions of dollars. Trump fired Bondi in April.
Separately, Trump scolded conservative activist Charlie Kirk for allowing one of his events to turn into a "grievance fest" over the Epstein files. Kirk was tragically murdered in September.
One other allegation is drawing media attention and is almost certainly untrue, given the accuser’s lack of credibility. It comes second-hand from a woman who had already made claims about sexual abuse and then retracted them.
This woman, who was named by the Times, had claimed in an email that she knew a second woman who alleged that Trump had a special focus on nipples. One official called these discussions "surreal."
Here’s my analysis:
Donald Trump did not want to do what his advisors wanted him to do. He resisted at every turn.
By last summer, the president started calling the Epstein matter a "SCAM" and a "hoax" by Democrats, and attacked some pro-release members of his own party as "weaklings" – while later helping to oust them in primaries.
His public stance was that the whole thing was a nuisance, even as his private frustrations kept growing.
Part of the behind-the-scenes friction focused on whether average voters cared about the mess.
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What Trump seemed to have difficulty grasping is that his MAGA base indeed cared deeply about the issue. There was something about it that touched a raw nerve. Some podcasters, such as Megyn Kelly, were criticizing the president for not releasing all the documents.
Trump aides debated putting it all on a website, but as acting Attorney General Todd Blanche pointed out, the files included child porn that obviously could not be made public.
A memo from Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, said "Epstein files" was the sixth most important issue named, and discussed negatively, by focus groups – behind such matters as inflation and foreign policy but ahead of such issues as crime and the military.
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The fiasco was back in the news yesterday when Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates testified on the Hill that he had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes but showed poor judgment in associating with him – and, according to Politico, said he was pressured by Epstein, who had discovered he had been unfaithful to his wife. They are now divorced.
What’s clear is that the publication of this book will add further fuel to the fire.