Bulwark Takes - BOMBSHELL: WSJ Confirms Trump in Epstein Files "Multiple Times"

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

The Wall Street Journal just confirmed it: Donald Trump’s name appears multiple times in the Epstein files. Sarah Longwell and Will Sommer take on the explosive revelations—and why Trump fought so hard to hide them. Get 10% off your first month of therapy with BetterHelp at https://BetterHelp.com/BULWARKTAKES. #sponsored

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Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Ben MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hello everybody, I'm Sarah Longwell with the Bull Work and we have got breaking news. Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. The Wall Street Journal has just dropped the story. They've got Josh Dawsey as the top byline,

although there's five people on the byline. So pretty big story, clearly been some reporting that's been in the works. I got my guy Will Sommer with me who has been the point guy on the Epstein controversy. He follows the tin foil, MAGA hat set. And so, Will, I just have to ask you from the jump. Is this like how big a deal is this? The journal having this news? I think it's really big deal. I think it's a really big deal. I mean, I, I think, you know, the MAGA up until a few weeks ago,

they thought this was going to be like, they thought like Hillary Clinton was going to be in these files or like Tom Hanks. They thought all these people they hated so much were going to be in here. And who's in it instead? Donald Trump. Yeah. I mean, I guess there's part of me like like on one hand, I was like, OK, the Wall Street Journal's got it. And let me just read you really quickly one of the opening graphs in the story. When Justice Department officials reviewed what it reviewed, what Attorney General Pam Bondi called a truckload of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein earlier this year, they discovered

that Donald Trump's name appeared multiple times, according to senior administration officials, officials meaning multiple sources they've got. So his name appears multiple times. Now I guess that doesn't surprise me at all, right? Like anybody who's been watching this story unfold and knows about the close relationship that Donald Trump had with Epstein

doesn't seem crazy at all that Trump's name is in there. I guess the question is, there's two questions. One is, okay, and it's along with hundreds of other names is one of the other things. There's lots of names in here. Donald Trump's is among them. We don't know what context, right? We don't know what it's saying. What we do know is that Donald Trump did not want to release these files. And so what else jumped out at you from the story that you said, oh, wow, like they got this on the record? Yeah, I mean, I think the other aspect later on in the story, we have Cash Patel apparently has been telling people as the FBI director, he's been telling people, oh yeah, Trump's in the files.

So apparently this idea has been floating out there. I mean, this is sort of the other shoe we've been waiting to drop. Clearly, we all knew something happened between Epstein binders mania, oh my gosh, the flight logs are about to come out. Every one of the administration was getting in on it. And suddenly, what are you talking about? Who's Jeffrey Epstein?

You know, we gotta move on. So clearly something happened. And I think a lot of us suspected that it's because Trump's name came up in the files and they said, oh, gosh, this is awkward. And I think, you know, this is confirmation of that. All right. So let me just read you a couple other excerpts here that stood out to us. In May, Bondi and her deputy informed the president at a meeting in the White House that his name was in the Epstein files, the officials said. Many other high profile figures were also named, Trump was told.

Being mentioned in the records isn't a sign of wrongdoing. Right? So it's not, we don't know why he's in there. They told the president at the meeting that the files contained what officials felt was unverified hearsay about many people, including Trump. Now, this part is interesting to me because this is Trump's DOJ folks. I guess we don't know who, in addition to Bondi, was briefing the president on this and whether or not they're the kind of people who are there to be like, sir, your name appears

in the files, but there's lots of stuff in there. Lots of lots of wild stuff. And we have not verified this information. And so, you know, we're not accusing you of anything. But if they're going to out out of their way to say that there is a lot of stuff in there, and trumps in it, it probably sounds like his name did not appear in only innocuous ways. Would you read it that way? I think that's right. I mean, certainly, I think at minimum, I think we would expect the information in there to be

embarrassing. I mean, the for example, the earlier Wall Street Journal story about the the letter Trump supposedly wrote to Epstein about their secrets. You know, I think if it's that kind of stuff, you could see why Trump even even that even something that is not really criminal, but suggests a closer relationship with Epstein than he would like people to know about. You know, one would imagine that that would set him off. You know, the New York Times had reporting about earlier complaints to the FBI that an

Epstein employee had made regarding Trump and Epstein. And so perhaps it's this kind of thing where it's just a report they received and didn't follow up on or didn't think it was actionable. But, you know, I think you could easily imagine Trump, and in particular, after Elon started saying, hey, you know, Trump's in the files, you could imagine that that is why just so abruptly they decided to close the case. Because, well, here's my, I mean, if Trump was in the Epstein files in a way that was relatively innocuous, then who cares? Like, put it out.

Like, it's me in there saying that this guy's a creep and I kicked him out of my Mar-a-Lago club and it's somehow related to that. But Trump is trying very hard to bury this. I mean, here's the thing. This is, actually, I don't think this is conspiratorial at all. This is to me, just an observation. Tulsi Gabbard held a press conference today. In fact, just a little bit ago.

Now the Trump administration is there on the record in this. You got Steve Chung denying all the this is fake stuff, blah, blah, blah. Just like the other fake story in the Wall Street Journal. But don't you think Tulsi Gabbard holding a press conference to say we've got a smoking gun on Obama today, the same day the Wall Street Journal is dropping the story? That feels like not a coincidence, would you say? I think that I think you might be onto something here.

I mean, given how much political capital the administration has expended over this, I mean, they've taken so much incoming from MAGA, they had to shut down the house early to avoid these files getting out or even the house calling for the files to get out. They kind of, there was sort of a break glass in case of emergency thing with this Obama situation where they're dredging up these old files,

which by the way, they already had access to in the first administration to say, you know, Oh my gosh Obama tried to steal the 2016 election Clearly, I think there's like a huge smokescreen effort happening And as you said if it was Trump, oh, yeah I invited this guy to my wedding and then I found out he's a pedophile and I didn't want anything to do with them That was in there Why not just put it out there?

Because presumably a lot of other people as I said a lot lot of other people are implicated or mentioned in these files. And so I think if there was something innocuous, they'd probably just move on. But I mean, this is like the biggest, you know, the biggest effort from the White House to hide this information. It makes you wonder what's in it. It does make you wonder what's in it. And now we know of the things that are in it is Donald Trump's name name clearly more than once and according to multiple officials. I'll say there's a couple other things that happened today.

Just before this story broke, it also broke that one of the things Trump had been throwing out there as trying to hold off the pitchfork wielding magas who wanted their Epstein files was to say, well, we're going to release the grand jury testimony around the Ghislaine Maxwell indictment. We all knew, well, that's BS because that's not the stuff people are looking for and that was another kind of smokescreen on his part to make it look like they were putting something out. But what happened today was that the judge in Florida said, we cannot unseal those documents.

Like that's just not a thing we can do. Our hands are tied on that. And then I was like, oh, well, he probably knew that, right? He probably knew that they couldn't unseal them as a matter of legal, whatever. And so now he has, he was looking to have that as cover. And so it mentioned in here, the grand jury testimony makes up only a portion of the more than 300 gigabytes of Epstein-related material the FBI compiled as part of the recent review. Among other material, the FBI confiscated digital and documentary evidence from Epstein's properties

in the U.S. Virgin Islands and New York in 2019 when he was arrested. One of the other reasons they say in here and elsewhere that they can't release the files, well, I guess I don't let me forget the grand jury thing because I want you to comment on that, but they're saying they can't release the senior administration files who are talking to Dawsey in the story, they're saying it's because there's so many victims' names in the story and that's why they can't release it as well as child pornography, right? Because these girls, they were girls, they were underage, Epstein is sexually assaulting them in it.

So they're like, we're not going to release it. That makes sense. I mean, I don't this like the weird part of this is there, the idea that I'm like, okay, no, nobody wants you to release the victims names. I don't think anybody's asking for that. But they are using that part as the cover for why the rest of this stuff couldn't come out. Do you think that's going to hold up? You know, we're seeing the same thing with the house resolution

where Mike Johnson saying, well, like, Whoa, whoa, you want to put out all this child porn, all these victims up? You know, we're seeing the same thing with the House resolution where Mike Johnson saying, well, like, whoa, whoa, you wanna put out all this child porn, all these victims' names, you know, we can't do that. And I mean, look, the government redacts things all the time. They know how to do this. They know what to segregate and what not to. And so that definitely is the excuse we're seeing, I think, but I don't think that's gonna hold up.

I mean, I think, you know, there are the flight logs. There are all these things that presumably wouldn't reveal victims' names if you just take a black marker to them. And I think, like, you know, going back to the grand jury testimony, I think what's going on here is this Wall Street Journal article also suggests why the administration has been sending us down these specific alleys of exploration. Initially, it was all the Epstein files are coming out. And then it becomes, OK, well, we can do the grand jury testimony, which probably we can't get anyway. But presumably, they know that Trump's not mentioned in that. We know from the Dick Durbin has claimed to hear

from the FBI they were flagging the files in the Epstein review that mentioned Trump. So let's do the grand jury testimony. And then also let's send it to Galen. And I think that this this claim that that Trump has been making that Obama and Comey cooked the files has been part of an effort to really sour at least Republicans on the idea of the files as trustworthy. I just saw the either Charlie Kirk or Benny Johnson was saying yesterday, well, you know, unfortunately, the whole files, we can't trust them, because who knows knows what Comey put in them.

Like that letter to Epstein, that's just a great example of how we can't trust the files. So really, Galain is our last option. This is an ad by BetterHelp. Workplace stress is now one of the top causes of declining mental health with 61% of the global workforce experiencing higher than normal levels of stress. To battle stress, most of us can't just wave goodbye to work

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That's betterH-E-L-P dot com slash bulwarktakes. Yeah. And I've, I mean, obviously for those of us who are interested now in the truth about all this, the, Galane, is Galane is exactly how you pronounce it. I think that's right. Okay. Not the easiest name. It's not. But also, I'm not giving a lot of due deference to a sex trafficker. So if I mispronounce her name, she can live with it. But the idea of that they are throwing her out there as like, well, she could testify in front of

Congress. But like a couple things about this feel weird to me. And maybe you could just help me with the timeline. Number one, it feels weird that they would close the files anyway and say nothing to see here when they hadn't talked to her, right? If they were so interested in getting to the truth. So it feels like that's something they could have done. So like now they're and also also everybody knows that there could be some kind of exchange of a pardon for a certain kind of testimony. Like I don't know that we're all sitting here thinking we're going to trust Ghislaine to come out and tell us the truth about anything.

Like right now she's just trying to get herself out of jail because she's got a pretty hefty prison sentence. Like she's going to be in prison for a very long time. She got 20 years? Yes, 20 years. Yeah, 20 years. That's one thing that I don't understand. The other thing that I don't understand is they agitated for these files the entire four

years that Biden was president. When would the DOJ have had these files though at first? Because Epstein killed himself in 2019 while Trump was president. Could they not have found this out before? Right. So presumably, I mean, these files really stretch over a, you know, at least like a 13-year period, possibly longer, possibly even into the 90s. I mean, if this is just like, if we assume this is like the kind of file they would hand over after someone dies and you can file a FOIA request. Presumably, it's just sort of every FBI interaction and presumably maybe even some intelligence agency interactions with Epstein. Who knows what's in it? But I do think that it is interesting how suddenly they who knows, like when they there was such a rush, maybe there was so much material that it was only when, you know, reportedly they basically had everyone in the SDNY office

looking through these files and only then did it become clear that all this Trump stuff was in there. I mean, it is really striking how quickly they turned around on it. Yeah. I mean, I guess like, what, back in 2020 when they were in there, they didn't go through them. He didn't want to check because back, I mean, right after the whole Epstein thing went down, there was still like the Maxwell hearing.

There was everybody saying like, Epstein didn't kill himself. That all started. But I guess it wasn't until Trump was not in office any longer that all of his people started acting like, well, we didn't get into the Epstein files or we need to know what was in there. And I just have always wondered like, okay, but what about the year that you the year and a half you had them while you guys were in charge? And even for Trump, if Trump was like, oh, I might really be in there, you'd think he would go have somebody he trusted go look and be like, what does it say about me in

there? And then tamp down, Cash Patel and Bondi and everybody else who are setting expectations about this. I don't know. It just all seems very strange to me. And clearly, even some of the footage that's resurfacing about that Fox News edited interview that kind of belatedly came to light where the Department of Transportation's wife, Sean Duffy's wife also on the real world, Rachel Campos Duffy is asking him, will you

release the JFK files? Yes. Will you release the... I forget what it, you know, what the other conspiracy ones are. And then she says, what about the Epstein files? And he goes, yes. Well, actually, maybe not. That one's different. That one, whatever. And they'd edited it to just say yes. And they took out the part where then he really equivocates hard about like all the fake stuff that's in there. So I guess I just don't know what to make of Trump's like, maybe he has known for a long time that he's in there in ways that are unflattering or bad or he's concerned about

But then like why does he let all these guys go out there and hammer this during the election? Any thoughts on that? I can't make heads or tails of that. Yeah, I mean, maybe this is something that was bubbling along for a while and Trump sort of knew this contradiction was going to come to a head at some point. Or maybe he thought, you know, we'll just string these people along forever and then, oh no, but they've been making too many promises. And you know, Pam Bondi said the list is on her desk and things like that. At the direction of Donald Trump.

Yes. I mean, it is crazy. I mean, they're also, you know, Steve Bannon's claim, Trump didn't realize what a big big deal this was for the Republican base. I mean it is There are so many weird things. He said, you know when he said well, I hope I wish going well and sort of along this track you point out they made a lot of Todd Blanch the deputy attorney general and Pam Bondi have both claimed that DOJ never tried to interview Galane before. But that's sort of beggars belief. I mean, she's clearly like the smaller fish compared to Jeffrey Epstein.

So why wouldn't you try to roll her up? Why would you just launch a massive criminal trial against her without trying to speak to her? And as you said, I mean, Epstein died when Trump and was indicted when Trump was president the first time. So the idea that like, I guess the Bill Barr's DOJ never tried to speak to Ghislaine and they're only trying to speak to her now after five months in office. Really, none of it makes sense.

None of it makes sense. All right. I want to throw one last, there's one last, uh, fun little bit in this particular, uh, Wall Street Journal piece. They've got a little section on Bondi versus Bondino. Uh, and it said Bondino and Bondi clashed in a meeting in which Bondi alleged that Bongino secretly provided information to the media to damage her reputation. People familiar with the meeting said, Bongino in turn exploded about Bondi, his face red, and called her a liar, a senior administration official said. There was a little bit of color here, the color I guess being Bongino's red face, around this fight between Bongino and Bondi, which we all knew there was some tension around.

What do you think is going on? A bunch of weird things have been happening where Bondi recently said, or maybe it was Trump, I can't remember, said, well, this is with the FBI now. They're going to have to figure, oh, Trump said it. Because I remember taking it kind of like, is he throwing cash and Bongino under the bus in favor of Bondi? Because I do think he thinks of Bondi as somebody who is lying on a grenade for him, presumably

because she knows exactly what is being said about him in these files. So what do you make about that sort of weird dynamic? I think there's a lot of buck passing going on. I think a lot of these people are saying, you know, Bondi saying, well, you know, who knows what the FBI or maybe it's up to Trump and then the FBI, they kind of keep rolling it around. And I mean, the reality is, I think, Bon Gino, you know, we're to understand him and cash and and Todd Blanch all signed off on this original memo that caused so much trouble. And suddenly now they're pivoting. I mean, this is cracking me up this whole like, the journey it's

like out of john grisham novel with Todd Blanch is going to journey to the prison and interview galane and cash tweets, you know, get it and it's like three weeks ago, you guys were the one saying it was over. And now you're acting like we're just we're gonna get to the bottom of this, the powers that be don't want us to know. Yeah, man, I this is, it gets weirder all the time. But now that people have finally decided to look hard at this, we've got

the Wall Street Journal doing some excellent reporting. And I guess as far as they're concerned, if Trump's going to sue them for the first thing, he can sue them for the next thing, but they got sources from inside the Department of Justice, multiple sources it looks like from this piece, who say something that we've long suspected but nobody had the smoking gun on and it sounds like it is true. Donald Trump's name is all over the Epstein files or is in multiple places in the Epstein files. And it must not be in there in a way that is benign. Otherwise they would put them out.

Will Summer, any last thoughts as we wrap this up? I want to get this out so people have our thoughts as the news breaks here. It just keeps going. I just feel like every news break, everything they try to do to close it up, it's just so weird. I mean, it just leaves you with more questions.

I got more questions, more questions. All right. Thank you, Will Summer. And thanks to all of you. Go hit subscribe, go over and subscribe on Substack, become a free subscriber, whatever, come ride with us. We'll see you guys again soon and keep you posted on the story.