Inside the White House struggle to tame the Epstein crisis

It was mid-July, and some of his longtime allies were whipping up the audience at a conference in Tampa by complaining that his administration wasn’t delivering the real story on Jeffrey Epstein, as his aides had promised.

“How many of you are satisfied—you can clap—with the results of the Epstein investigation?" Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked on the first day of the event organized by Turning Point USA, the group co-founded by Charlie Kirk. The crowd erupted in boos and shouts of “not satisfied."

Trump, who had socialized with Epstein in New York and Florida and has said he fell out with him before his first arrest in 2006, told aides he couldn’t understand why people were so obsessed with the deceased financier and sex offender, according to people familiar with his comments. People don’t understand that Palm Beach in the 90s was a different time, he groused.

On the second day of the Tampa conference, he called influential allies. Why is everyone so fixated on the issue? he wanted to know. What would make it die down?

For much of the summer, the president has battled a crisis of his and his allies’ own making. He and his advisers, including the top two officials he appointed at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had previously stoked conspiracy theories about Epstein’s 2019 jail-cell death and his ties to prominent Democrats.

Trump was used to having absolute control over his base. The Epstein issue was an anomaly: a negative story on which many of his supporters didn’t seem inclined to follow his lead.

White House officials said they underestimated how sticky the issue would prove to be, believing it would blow over and people would move on. Instead, it spurred White House Situation Room meetings and months of strategizing by senior administration officials.

Disagreements, finger-pointing, disorganization and unforced errors by Trump advisers made the problem worse. Attorney General Pam Bondi complained to other officials that FBI leadership was “trying to destroy her" by leaking information about internal discord, according to people familiar with the disputes. Other administration officials who tried to repair the ties concluded the issue had spiraled largely because the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation had mishandled it.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, left, and FBI Director Kash Patel, shown at a news conference in July, both have been in the spotlight over the administration’s handling of the Epstein matter.

“This may be the worst managed PR event in history," said Ty Cobb, who led the Trump White House’s response to a special counsel probe into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia in 2017. “You’ve got multiple mouthpieces, and they’re all covering their own ass now."

In a written statement, Bondi said: “Our only priority is to continue working together with the FBI to make America safer by ensuring murderers and violent criminals face the most severe justice." She said FBI Director Kash Patel and the bureau have “worked tirelessly with my agencies and state partners."

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Bondi, Patel, his deputy and others have been “working together to advance the Trump administration’s goals, mainly putting bad people behind bars." Steven Cheung, a White House spokesman, said Cobb had a “debilitating diagnosis of Trump Derangement Syndrome."

Trump has told aides he was worried some of his friends might be mentioned in the files, and has complained that people should be talking about the administration’s wins, not about Epstein, according to people familiar with the comments. At other times, he worried aloud that the files might have been doctored to hurt him.

Trump and his allies made calls to MAGA influencers trying to calm the waters. Vice President JD Vance spoke to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who had pushed for the administration to release files.

Another White House official called Laura Loomer, who had taken to belittling the blonde Bondi as “Blondi" and criticizing her for what Loomer said were missteps on the Epstein files. Loomer recalled that the official told her that Bondi needed to be more careful, but that Trump had no intention of firing her.

The outreach didn’t make much of a difference. In fiery congressional hearings last week, Patel faced pressure from lawmakers in both parties over the administration’s handling of the Epstein investigation. “This issue is not going to go away," Sen. John Kennedy (R., La.) told Patel.

In early September, lawyers for Epstein’s estate gave Congress a copy of the birthday book put together for the financier’s 50th birthday in 2003, which includes a letter bearing Trump’s name that he has said doesn’t exist. Lawmakers appear on the cusp of forcing the Justice Department to disclose all of the Epstein files.

‘The truth will come out’

Trump and the allies who he has since named to top law-enforcement roles spent years talking about Epstein’s ties to prominent politicians and the circumstances around his death. In 2023, Trump said it was possible Epstein had been murdered, though he had “probably" died by suicide, as the New York City medical examiner concluded.

That same year, referring to the Epstein case, Patel, then a podcast host, called for Republicans to “put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are." Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, a former political commentator and radio host, had long questioned whether Epstein actually killed himself.

When Trump began his second term, however, dealing with the Epstein investigation wasn’t on his mind, and White House officials were largely uninterested in pursuing the topic, some of the officials said.

Conservatives had long clamored for a list they believed existed of Epstein’s clients. In February, less than three weeks after Bondi was confirmed as attorney general, she told a Fox News host that such a list was on her desk awaiting her review. Officials in the West Wing were flummoxed. What document was Bondi talking about?

A few days after Bondi’s Fox News interview, a team at the bureau pulled an all-nighter to assemble some Epstein materials into thick binders stamped with the Justice Department seal and titled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1." FBI officials said the Justice Department had asked the FBI to assemble the binders but didn’t say what they would be used for.

On Feb. 27, Bondi brought the binders to a meeting at the White House with conservative influencers. Justice Department officials gave Trump’s top communications aides only a few minutes’ notice that she would distribute them to the group. They didn’t know she planned to talk about Epstein in the meeting.

After the meeting, the White House aides complained to DOJ officials that drawing such attention to the matter wasn’t helpful, and instructed Bondi’s team to coordinate TV appearances with the White House. Top White House officials pulled Bondi aside, telling her she needed to tamp down the issue with the right, not draw attention to it.

On Feb. 27, Attorney General Bondi distributed binders of Epstein materials at a White House meeting with conservative influencers.

It turned out that most of what was in the binders had already been made public. Elon Musk, at that time near the peak of his influence in the administration, mocked the episode. “There is a mountain of evidence. So where is that mountain?" Musk asked in an interview with podcast host Joe Rogan.

In May, after a Justice Department review of the case files, Bondi and her deputy updated the president. They told him, according to senior administration officials, that his name was in the files, along with many others—itself no sign of wrongdoing. They told him there were no criminal cases to be made against anyone else, and they didn’t plan to release any more of the documents because the material contained child pornography and victims’ personal information. White House spokesman Cheung called The Wall Street Journal’s subsequent reporting on the meeting “fake news."

Later in May, Patel and Bongino told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo they believed that Epstein had, in fact, died by suicide. When she told them viewers might not believe them, Bongino said: “I have seen the whole file. He killed himself."

Trump had been telling administration officials for weeks that he wanted all the attention on Epstein to end, and White House aides encouraged all the officials not to play up any of the Epstein findings.

But on June 5, Musk—then on his way out of the White House—accused the administration in a post on X of withholding Epstein documents because Trump was in the files. “The truth will come out," Musk wrote.

Patel was recording an interview with Rogan at the time. “Jesus Christ," Rogan said after reading Musk’s post. Patel put up his hands. “I’m just staying out of the Trump-Elon thing," he said.

Bondi, for her part, complained to the White House and Trump about a stream of criticism about her and the FBI’s handling of the Epstein matter. Trump encouraged her to buck up, and others told her to stop looking at social media and lashing out at those posting, according to people with knowledge of the conversations. She told White House officials that FBI leaders, including Patel, were out to get her, those people said.

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, pictured with Patel in September, grew angry in meetings about the Epstein matter.

Patel and others at the FBI wanted to release a statement explaining why they were dropping the matter, according to administration officials, and repeatedly pushed White House officials to release it over the long July 4 weekend. DOJ officials joined the discussions. Patel discussed it with Trump, who approved a plan to release the statement. Axios published the statement that Sunday night.

The unsigned statement said the Justice Department review had found “no incriminating ‘client list,’" and no evidence that would predicate an investigation into uncharged third parties. “It is the determination of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted," it said.

“It was like a bomb went off after that statement went out," recalled one senior White House official. Inside the FBI, some officials viewed the Justice Department’s decision to label the statement an “FBI memo" as an effort to foist blame on the agency, an FBI official said.

Trump aides were flooded with calls from conservative allies saying they had made a mistake. Some called for Bondi’s ouster.

Vance encouraged Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and other White House staffers to focus more on the problem, saying the president’s political supporters were upset. Wiles told others the FBI statement had been a mistake.

Bongino threatened to quit, telling White House officials he was losing his credibility among conservatives. He grew angry in several meetings, including one in Wiles’s office, White House officials said.

Two days after the statement went out, Trump berated a reporter in a cabinet meeting for asking about Epstein. “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years," he said. “That is unbelievable."

At a cabinet meeting on July 8, Trump berated a reporter for asking about Epstein. Bondi and Secretary of State Marco Rubio also attended.

In that meeting, Bondi said that when she had referred to having the Epstein client list on her desk, what she really meant was that files related to Epstein and to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy were all awaiting her review.

In July, Patel tried to persuade Trump supporters to move on, writing: “The conspiracy theories just aren’t true, never have been."

Prison interview

The only other person ever charged in connection with Epstein’s crimes was his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who prosecutors said had managed Epstein’s employees, helped him find the girls he would subsequently abuse, and lied about it in a deposition for a civil case. She had never testified in the 2021 trial that resulted in her conviction and 20-year prison sentence.

As the fallout over Epstein stretched on for the administration, her current lawyer, David Oscar Markus, called Bondi’s deputy, Todd Blanche, with an unusual offer: Would the Justice Department want to interview Maxwell and see what she now had to say? Markus didn’t request a pardon or preferential treatment for Maxwell, and Blanche didn’t offer anything in return.

Markus had met Blanche years earlier at a legal conference. More recently, he had hosted Blanche, twice, on his podcast to talk about Blanche’s work representing Trump.

On July 15, as Trump left the White House for Pennsylvania, a reporter asked him whether Bondi had told him that his name appeared in the files—which she had, months earlier. “No, no," he replied. “She’s given us just a very quick briefing."

Soon after, aides told the president the Journal was preparing to report that in 2003, a letter bearing Trump’s name—containing typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman—had been included in a book of letters prepared for Epstein’s birthday.

Traveling back to Washington aboard Air Force One, Trump told his communications aides that such a letter didn’t exist, that he would never write such a letter, and that he would try to kill the story himself.

From the plane, he called Rupert Murdoch, chair emeritus of News Corp, the parent company of the Journal’s publisher, and told him the story wasn’t true and that he should handle it, according to a person familiar with the brief call. After the article’s publication, Trump sued Journal publisher Dow Jones, parent company News Corp and several individuals including Murdoch for defamation, calling the letter “nonexistent." (This week the defendants moved to dismiss Trump’s lawsuit.) A spokesman for News Corp declined to comment.

As backlash mounted to the Justice Department’s announcement that it was dropping the Epstein matter, Wiles convened a series of meetings in the Situation Room to chart an Epstein strategy. Vance, Bondi and Patel and others were invited, but Bongino wasn’t. Vance led the push for more disclosure, according to officials familiar with the discussions. Wiles and others argued that they would never be able to pacify the most rabid Epstein conspiracy theorists.

Officials who attended discussed hypothetical scenarios for releasing or not releasing certain information, trying to determine how they would affect Trump’s political vulnerabilities, according to people familiar with the discussions. They focused on a key question: How could the administration better manage the Epstein saga?

Eventually, the officials decided to seek a court order to release grand jury testimony from the investigation. (A judge later denied that request.) They also decided to take up Maxwell’s interview offer, and that Blanche would do the interview himself.

Markus asked that the questioning not take place in prison. In late July, federal agents brought Maxwell to the U.S. courthouse in Tallahassee. Maxwell told Blanche she never saw Trump doing anything inappropriate or illegal.

The second day of questioning began with breakfast from Chick-fil-A. When the session ended, Blanche told Maxwell: “So I do appreciate you being willing to meet with us. And I expect that we’ll be in touch soon."

The minimum-security federal prison facility in Bryan, Texas, where Ghislaine Maxwell was transferred after she was interviewed by Justice Department official Todd Blanche.

Blanche reported back to the White House that he believed Maxwell had been truthful and that she didn’t implicate Trump, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. The next week, Maxwell, who had raised concerns about her safety in the Florida prison, was moved to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas.

Some White House aides wanted to release the transcript and audio immediately, believing it could help put an end to the drama. After further discussion, the administration released both on Aug. 22.

Top White House officials, convinced that the scandal would soon blow over, told Republican lawmakers in late August and early September that voting to release the Epstein files would be viewed as an unfriendly move, and they wouldn’t forget those who did, according to two officials on Capitol Hill with knowledge of the calls. Still, Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican leading the charge, has said he has nearly enough support to force the vote.

Trump now dismisses questions about the Epstein files as irrelevant. In the Oval Office this month, the president said there was nothing more he could do.

“Really," he said, “I think it’s enough."

Write to Josh Dawsey at Joshua.Dawsey@WSJ.com, Rebecca Ballhaus at rebecca.ballhaus@wsj.com and C. Ryan Barber at ryan.barber@wsj.com