6 Takeaways From the Story of How the Epstein Files Paralyzed the White House

6 Takeaways From the Story of How the Epstein Files Paralyzed the White House

Senior officials clashed in a series of meetings as they struggled to manage a crisis over the president’s refusal to release the documents.

By Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/10/magazine/epstein-files-trump-white-house-takeaways.html

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Trump made clear to his aides that he had no interest in releasing anything related to Epstein. He snapped at anyone who raised the issue, and his staff mostly learned to avoid the subject in front of him. They were left to worry and plan among themselves. The president’s refusal to acknowledge that a crisis existed, let alone that it was growing, complicated every path his team wanted to take.

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Vance pressed repeatedly for the administration to release everything — even unsubstantiated material about Trump — arguing that Congress would force the issue eventually and that getting ahead of it would earn the White House credit for transparency.

He floated the idea of enlisting Tucker Carlson to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime girlfriend and co-conspirator, in prison, and fretted to colleagues about how the crisis was alienating the young, low-propensity voters who had backed the Trump-Vance ticket in 2024. But the vice president’s suggestions were far from popular with the core Trump team, and most of them went unheeded.

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The day the Justice Department released a memo intended to put the Epstein matter to rest, Bongino marched into a daily meeting and erupted at Bondi. He and Patel told White House officials that Bondi should resign; at a later meeting, the two said they suspected that she had leaked damaging stories about them. When Wiles accused Bongino of a leak of his own, he stormed out of the Situation Room complex. Bongino privately warned associates that the Epstein crisis would become “President Trump’s Iran-contra.”

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Well worth the read.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/10/magazine/trump-epstein-files-white-house-vance-doj.html for the full details of the WH freakout over the Epstein files.







In that week of March 2026 a confidential memo from Trump’s pollster, revealed focus groups conducted with voters earlier that month, concluded the Epstein files was the sixth most important political issue, ahead of crime, the military and being pro-working class. The memo concluded Epstein as “a real negative with some of these voters.” The files are still damaging the president.