A bombshell excerpt from an upcoming book details how President Donald Trump’s team miscommunicated, clashed with one another and fumbled over how best to respond to the Jeffrey Epstein case “to a far greater extent than the public knew.”
MAGA uproar over the late sex offender peaked last summer after the Justice Department and FBI released a memo effectively drawing a line under the matter. They stated there was no evidence that the disgraced financier had a “client list” containing the names of rich, famous and powerful figures involved in his trafficking ring and attempted to pour cold water on conspiracy theories around his death by confirming he died by suicide in a New York prison cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.
An extract from an upcoming book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, titled Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, sheds new light on how the president’s most senior officials responded behind closed doors to the crisis that plagued the administration for the best part of a year.
In it, the authors claim how then-Attorney General Pam Bondi’s “egregious misstep” to hand out Epstein files binders to MAGA influencers sent the blood pressure of White House aides “skyrocketing;” how a high-stakes crisis meeting in the Situation Room saw Vice President JD Vance “panicked” over the scandal’s potential to divide the MAGA base; and how the bunker was also the setting of a furious blow up between Bondi and then-FBI deputy director Dan Bongino.
“Just as President Trump has said, he’s been totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement to The Independent. “And 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.”
MAGA has long been consumed by the Epstein case and many officials now high up within the Trump administration were the loudest voices pressing for the files to be released before the president re-entered office in January 2025. Trump pledged to release the files on the 2024 presidential campaign trail.
Bondi, who was fired by Trump in April, breathed new life into the Epstein case when she appeared on Fox News on Feb. 21, 2025, and appeared to confirm the existence of the late sex offender’s client list.
When asked when the Justice Department could release the names, she said: “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review.”
Six days later came Bondi’s “egregious misstep,” Haberman and Swan write in the book, when right-wing influencers were invited to the White House’s Roosevelt Room to hear about the Trump administration’s agenda. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were in attendance, while Trump thrilled attendees by making a brief appearance, according to the authors.
Then walked in Bondi and her team with boxes. “Bondi had brought binders as handouts for the influencers. Someone on her staff said: ‘Watch this. This is cool. This is going to be epic,’” according to the extract.
“But as Bondi’s staff started distributing the binders, the blood pressure of other officials in the room skyrocketed. They had no idea what was in the handouts,” the authors write, adding that the binders had not been vetted by the White House.
“One official, opening the binder, began flipping through pages to see if Trump’s name was mentioned anywhere,” Haberman and Swan write. “A few pages in, right in the middle of the page, there it was.”
A Trump aide reportedly rushed the influencers out of the White House and said the content of the binders was under an embargo until after Trump’s press conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, also taking place that same day.
But the damage was done, and MAGA influencers were photographed outside the White House, proudly waving the binders with what largely contained information already in the public domain.
While Trump “had no interest in releasing anything” relating to Epstein, and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and her deputy, James Blair, “were initially unconvinced about the reach of the Epstein crisis,” Bongino was growing frustrated with their underestimation of the situation, the authors claim.
Bongino stepped down from the Trump administration in January, leaving his role at the FBI and returning to his MAGA podcast. Before joining the administration, he was a prominent voice in the right-wing movement peddling the conspiracy theory that Epstein was killed.
He later backed down on that claim once he reviewed surveillance footage of Epstein’s prison cell and said of the files, “What we thought was going to be in there wasn’t in there.”
Still, he was one of the few people who understood how important the case was to the MAGA base and reportedly “hated the Justice Department’s nothing-to-see-here memo.”
“Wiles, Blair and others around Trump had seen him weather every storm imaginable for years,” the authors write. “And in their view, this wasn’t a storm — it was passing clouds at most.”
Bongino said that was “a grave miscalculation.” His mood on July 7, the day the memo was released, was described as “volcanic,” and he unleashed on Bondi at a meeting.
“You f***ed this thing up from the start,” Bongino reportedly yelled at her. “The way you’ve been talking about this — that dumb f***ing charade with the Epstein files, the ‘They’re on my desk’ nonsense, all the promises to the folks out there.”
Two days later, Bongino and FBI director Kash Patel were summoned to the Situation Room for a meeting with Wiles and Bondi.
“Bongino’s aggressive response to Wiles startled the others; she was the White House chief of staff, essentially a stand-in for the president,” the authors said of Bongino’s demeanor in the Situation Room.
Wiles reportedly asked Bongino, “We’re all going to agree to move forward. Are you in or not?”
“No, I’m not,” Bongino reportedly replied. “This is not my plan. I’m not part of this going forward. Forget it. I’m out of here.”
More details here...