President Donald Trump’s advisers have been frantically at work trying to diffuse the carnage that has followed the latest Justice Department (DOJ) and FBI findings on the Jeffrey Epstein case.
MAGA has been in a tailspin after the DOJ and FBI found that no “client list” of powerful associates exists for the disgraced financier and that he died by suicide, rather than being murdered, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019—both the subject of whirling conspiracy theories among Trump’s base. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the rumored client list was “sitting on my desk right now” awaiting review in February, which has now put her in the crosshairs as the president’s supporters demand blood and allege a cover-up.
To quell the rising tide of outrage, White House aides have hit on four different ways the Trump administration might attempt to quell the chaos, inside sources told both Politico and Axios on Monday.
As a first option, which has received fervent backing from far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer and MAGA OG Steve Bannon, who served as the president’s chief strategist during his first term, Trump could appoint either a bespoke investigative team or special counsel to review all prior DOJ and FBI findings on Epstein’s crimes, compiling a full report to then be released to the public.
Under a second proposal, the DOJ would release unredacted versions of documents already in the pubic domain under the supervision of a task force or special counsel.
As it pertains to records related to Epstein’s crimes that have been sealed by the courts, White House aides might also seek to petition federal judges in an effort to have those documents unsealed and made available for public review.
Yet a fourth course of action has been proposed by an unnamed MAGA ally who has lobbied for Bondi and her deputy, Todd Blanche, to stage a no-holds-barred press conference, presumably in the dim hope it’ll exhaust press and public interest in the case.
The wider problem at all play here, according to a Sunday X post from Trump legal adviser Mike Davis, is that a good portion of the Epstein files is “largely unreleasable, for many reasons,” including the fact that rules on criminal procedure generally make it “illegal for government attorneys to disclose grand-jury materials” given these are usually kept “secret to protect victims, encourage witnesses to testify, and protect the falsely accused.”
Whatever option the White House chooses to pursue, it would want to move fast if Politico’s interview with Democratic Rep. Marc Veasey is anything to go by.
“I think [Trump is] trying to protect some billionaire friend of his. That’s what he lives for more than anything else in the world: protecting billionaires,” the Texas congressman, who is set to introduce legislation calling for the full release of the ‘Epstein Files’ later Monday, told the outlet.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
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