White House chief of staff Susie Wiles harshly criticized Attorney General Pam Bondi for her initial response to calls to release information on the Jeffrey Epstein case, saying in an interview published Tuesday the head of the Justice Department “completely whiffed.”
On Feb. 27, the Trump administration gave binders labeled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” to a group of conservative influencers who had been invited to the White House and who subsequently paraded the folders in front of the watching White House press corps.
However, the binders contained no new information, but were merely extracts from the notorious pedophile’s phone book, including a list of contacts without further context and addresses redacted.
“I think she completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the very targeted group that cared about this,” Wiles told author Chris Whipple of Bondi in an interview published by Vanity Fair Tuesday. “First she gave them binders full of nothingness. And then she said that the witness list, or the client list, was on her desk. There is no client list, and it sure as hell wasn’t on her desk.”
Bondi had made the latter comment in a Feb. 21 interview with Fox News Channel. When asked whether a purported list of Epstein’s “clients” would be made public, the AG answered: “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review.”
According to Wiles, “the people that really appreciated what a big deal this is are” FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino.
“They lived in that world,” she said, “and the vice president [JD Vance], who’s been a conspiracy theorist for a decade…. For years, Kash has been saying, ‘Got to release the files, got to release the files.’ And he’s been saying that with a view of what he thought was in these files that turns out not to be right.”
Months later, on July 6, the FBI and DOJ released a joint memo concluding that Epstein did not keep a roster of rich and powerful friends who abused girls as young as 14 years old — contrary to public speculation.
Days later, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche traveled to Florida to meet with Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking conspiracy and other charges.
Wiles told Vanity Fair the sitdown with Maxwell was Blanche’s idea — and insisted that neither she nor President Trump was consulted about the subsequent transfer of Epstein’s madam to a medium-security Texas prison camp.
“The president was ticked,” she said. “The president was mighty unhappy. I don’t know why they moved her. Neither does the president.”
Wiles made the pointed comments to author Chris Whipple in one of 11 interviews throughout Trump’s first year of his second term.
Whipple is best known for his 2017 book “The Gatekeepers” about White House chiefs of staff. He has also authored “The Fight of His Life,” a biography of former President Joe Biden; and earlier this year published “Uncharted,” about the 2024 presidential campaign.
