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