WASHINGTON — President Trump’s top advisers gathered in the White House Situation Room last July to discuss how to tamp down the public outcry over a Justice Department-FBI memo claiming that “no further disclosure” of documents was warranted in the Jeffrey Epstein case.
The July 17 meeting featured Vice President JD Vance, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and senior communications officials — with FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi joining remotely, according to the forthcoming book “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump” by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.
The meeting came 11 days after the DOJ memo triggered an intense backlash, including among some prominent Trump supporters, and nine days after the president failed to tamp down interest in the files by scoffing at a cabinet meeting, “Are people still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable.”
Vance floated calming the waters by offering former Fox News host Tucker Carlson a jailhouse interview with Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell to gain her public attestation of Trump’s innocence.
The vice president called for full transparency to counter conspiracy theories speculating that Trump partook in Epstein’s predatory behavior with young women and girls during their friendship in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Vance’s arguments reportedly did not sway colleagues — though Blanche, Trump’s former defense attorney, ultimately traveled to Florida to interview Maxwell over two days about the case.
The president himself also dropped his opposition to transparency legislation, resulting in the Justice Department’s mass-release of files beginning in December, including some documents containing uncorroborated claims about Trump.
Multiple Trump aides denounced a suggestion by White House counsel David Warrington of granting clemency to Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
“Pardoning Maxwell, a trafficker of young girls, would create a huge PR problem,” said communications director Steven Cheung.
“We can’t offer Ghislaine Maxwell anything,” agreed deputy White House Chief of Staff James Blair.
“A, I don’t know why we would. And B, if we give Ghislaine Maxwell any sort of break whatsoever and then she turns around and says nice things about us, or says nice things about us and we give her a break, it will undermine the entire point of her saying good things. That will feed the conspiracy theory, period.”
The summit followed internal Trump administration tensions over the files, with Patel and his deputy Dan Bongino agitating for Bondi to lose her job for suggesting there would be major disclosures, including a possible client list. (Trump ultimately fired Bondi this past April).
“You f—ed this thing up from the start,” Bongino told Bondi the day the memo was released. “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.”
Bongino stormed out of a meeting with Wiles two days later, , according to Haberman and Swan, and had to be persuaded to delay his departure from the administration, which ultimately happened on Jan. 3, 2026.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said that the book excerpt offered further proof that Trump has “been totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein.”
“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,” Jackson said.
“Meanwhile, Democrats like Hakeem Jeffries and Stacey Plaskett have yet to explain why they were soliciting money and meetings from Epstein after he was a convicted sex offender.”
“Regime Change” hits bookstores June 23.
