Donald Trump’s chief of staff has confirmed the president is in the Jeffrey Epstein files and travelled on the sex offender’s plane when they were young “playboys.”
Despite Trump insisting for months that the Epstein firestorm is a Democratic hoax, Susie Wiles, one of his most trusted aides, has revealed that she has read the material and that the president is in them—but “he’s not in the file doing anything awful.”
“They were, you know, sort of young, single, whatever—I know it’s a passé word but sort of young, single playboys together,” she told Vanity Fair.
Wiles’s comments were part of a bombshell interview published on Tuesday that provided a rare, often unflattering insight into the Trump administration.
In the article, which Wiles has since sought to walk back, she also claimed Trump had not been consulted about Epstein’s convicted associate Ghislaine Maxwell being moved to a cushy jail after her unusual interview with deputy attorney general Todd Blanche earlier this year.
“The president was ticked,” according to Wiles. “The president was mighty unhappy. I don’t know why they moved her. Neither does the president.”
The 68-year-old also revealed that it was Blanche, Trump’s former personal attorney, who suggested traveling to Florida to interview Maxwell, a move many branded at the time as an attempt to negate the political firestorm Trump faced.
Wiles also criticized Attorney General Pam Bondi over the handling of the Epstein saga, taking particular aim at her botched decision to hand MAGA influencers parts of the file that turned out to be “binders full of nothingness.”
And she singled out FBI director Kash Patel, deputy director Dan Bongino, and Vice President JD Vance, “who’s been a conspiracy theorist for a decade,” as the three main people in the administration who realized what a big deal the Epstein files would be for Trump supporters.
Wiles’s comments about the president’s ties to the convicted sex trafficker are likely to prove sensitive in a week when the administration has until Friday to release the full files.
The Daily Beast has asked the DOJ if it will do so, as mandated by the newly signed Epstein Transparency Act, but the department refused to comment.
In her interview, Wiles confirmed what many have known for years: that not only is Trump in the files, but “is on the manifest” for Epstein’s private plane.
The plane was known as the Lolita Express because it was used to transport girls he and Maxwell trafficked to his private estate in the Virgin Islands.
There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Trump, with flight logs reviewed by the Daily Beast showing that Trump hitched a ride multiple times in the 1990s when he and Epstein were party pals.
In August 1995, for instance, Trump’s then 11-year-old son Eric joined him on the plane alongside Epstein and Maxwell.
The group also flew from Palm Beach International to Teterboro, the private airport closest to Manhattan, where many years later Epstein was arrested.
On another occasion, in March 1993, Trump flew on Epstein’s jet from Palm Beach to Washington D.C., and then on to New York, with his then-wife, Marla Maples, and their infant daughter Tiffany.
Wiles also revealed in the interview that “there is no evidence” to back Trump’s longstanding claim that former president Bill Clinton travelled to Epstein’s island multiple times.
She also suggested there was nothing incriminating about Clinton in the files, undercutting the order Trump gave to Bondi to investigate him and other Democrats for their ties to Epstein.
As the candid interview sent shockwaves across Washington, Wiles sought to walk it back, writing on X: “The article published early this morning is a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.
Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has helped President Trump achieve the most successful first 11 months in office of any President in American history.
President Trump has no greater or more loyal advisor than Susie.
The entire Administration is grateful for her steady leadership and… https://t.co/Y3NEXI6a1E— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) December 16, 2025
“Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story.
“I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team.”
Almost every member of the cabinet also posted statements accusing Vanity Fair of fake news, even though the White House coordinated with the publication for months on the piece and offered on the record and off the record comments.
Top officials and aides, including Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also posed with Wiles for photographs for the two part series.
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