In a deeply reported piece for the New York Times, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reveal details of what the story calls the "White House freakout" over the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. They report that a team of top officials—VP JD Vance, chief of staff Susie Wiles, then-AG Pam Bondi, FBI chief Kash Patel, press chief Karoline Leavitt, and more—met in the Situation Room in July 2025 and bickered over strategy. President Trump himself was not there. One part of the story notes that Vance advocated for the quick release of every Epstein file in the possession of the Justice Department, figuring that Congress would mandate it anyway. He even suggested that Tucker Carlson interview Ghislaine Maxwell.
- "The vice president appeared panicked to others in the room about the way the subject of Epstein was already dividing the MAGA coalition. Some senior officials had the impression that Vance had bought into the darkest theories about Epstein and a cabal of predators hidden within the country's ruling class. Wiles would tell others that the vice president had proved himself to be a major conspiracy theorist."
The story tracks how missteps by Bondi, internal feuds with FBI deputy director Dan Bongino ("You f---ed this thing up from the start," he reportedly yelled at Bondi), and rising pressure from Congress culminated in the Epstein Files Transparency Act—and millions of pages that mentioned Trump tens of thousands of times. Read the full story, drawn from the reporters' book, Regime Change.
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