Bulwark Takes - White House Spins Epstein Setback

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

Trump’s White House tried to spin the Epstein scandal by pushing for grand jury files they knew were safe, then blaming the judge when nothing came out. Tim Miller and Andrew Egger explain how the stunt worked, Maxwell’s cushy prison move, and whether we’ve really hit “peak Epstein.”

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey, everybody. It's Tim Miller from the bulwark here with my buddy, Andrew Eger. We had some news this morning that Eger wanted to chat about regarding Jelaine Maxwell. A judge, Judge Anklemeyer, denied the Trump administration's request to unseal the grand jury records. This was folks not remember the Trump administration's effort to kind of do a look over here on releasing the Epstein files,

which was like, oh, I'd ask a judge to release the grand jury reports instead, which is separate, which we can get into. Also, interestingly, Engelmeyer said he reviewed the grand jury material and confirmed there was basically nothing in there that wasn't already in the public, but since Maxwell, you know, had public trials. So, Eger, I wanted to get your reaction to the latest in the Epstein story. Yeah, it's interesting because there's kind of two different ways you can look at it. One is that, you know, in the real world, this is sort of an embarrassing face plant for the White

House, right? They get this pretty stern brushback from this judge. They had kind of pretty theatrically, I would say, tried to work up these grand jury materials as like a big possible reveal for the Epstein files in general and specifically for the Gleine Maxwell stuff where they were saying like, yeah, you know, you're all really mad at us for sitting on some of this stuff that we are declining to release from the Justice Department for reasons that we don't really want to talk about or get into. but don't think that we don't care, don't think that we don't want to get to the bottom of this story. Look, we're going to go to this, back to Florida,

back to these grand jury proceedings. We're going to try to get this stuff on sealed. So that'll be something, won't it? Would that be great? And then now the judge, instead of releasing it is saying, I'm not releasing this because there's nothing to release. I mean, he essentially said the government,

it was kind of funny. He said the only argument for releasing these files would be to demonstrate the sort of government's lack of a foot to stand on when it said there was a bunch more stuff in these files, but that he didn't think that that rose to the level, right? So that's one way of looking at is that it's kind of kind of embarrassing in that way. The other way of looking at it, though, and I think that this is probably the way the White House is happy to look at it, is that this is all kind of like along the lines of one way

the White House probably hoped this sort of thing would go, right? Which is that they, their whole problem with the whole Epstein story for how many, how many weeks we've been talking about this now, is that it's like a totally own goal, right? It's like they were the ones who promised to release this stuff, and then they were the ones who were just not doing it and for no good reason that they could articulate or describe. And that, of course,

the sort of Epstein obsessives in Trump's own coalition weren't happy about that. Weren't going to just like take his command to pay attention to other stories instead sitting down. And what this thing has done, and I guess we'll see how successful it is, but but but plainly what they've been trying to do is is put the onus of of uh of responsibility somewhere else right like have have epstein developments epstein developments have the

epstein story move in a direction where it's not the justice department that's just declining to to release this stuff it's somebody else who's doing that right it's it's this judge down in down in florida who's who's now the person who is in theory sitting on some stuff and that person might be completely correct i mean i think we have every reason to believe he's he's completely telling the truth about sure it just not being much there but but in this kind of like uh fun house mirror conspiracy world that stuff like the the content of why he's not releasing this stuff hardly matters right i mean what what matters is that the trump administration is asking them to make public some some files that are not

previously released and it's this judge who is declining to do that and so what does he have to hide and oh man i wonder what's going to happen next is the trump is the trump white house going to kind of really come down to this guy. And it just recacts, you know, the White House and the Justice Department back where they're comfortable being, which is, which is the people who are going after the truth, not the ones who are just to climb it to share it again. I guess the I agree with you that that's probably how they look at it the second way. But in the reality, in the non-spin world, it's like they kind of wanted this, right? Like they did not want to go after the truth. They wanted a judge to say, oh, sorry, you can't do it. You know, so then you can

blame the judge for doing this. The problem is they chose these things. things you would assume, I guess we don't have confirmed reporting on this, but it's sort of like the obvious Occam's raised a reason is because it's like, well, this is safe. Trump's not in here. It's like, whatever. They can really, you know, I mean, they had reason to believe, um, either informed knowledge or presumption based on what was public, uh, as part of what was testified to in the Maxwell trials, like it didn't overlap with Trump, like the crimes that she was being charged with them. The victims were not the same victims or the same women that had previously discussed meeting Donald Trump or whatever, right? And so that was kind of a safe thing to do.

It's kind of like either way you do it, this is fine. Like the problem is for people that actually follow the story and for the number of people who care, it's like, well, that was the grand jury was never going to be sufficient anyway. Like there's a lot of other material they have that's not in these random grand jury, you know, not random, but not in this particular grand jury that was kind of then subsequently adjudicated in public in the trials. So I don't know. And I think that That's kind of like the strategic element of this. I don't know. What do you make of that?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think you're absolutely right. And there's a weird element too here of just sort of like the conspiracy lunatic world and all of the kind of different incentives and stuff that go into like dealing with that and trying to triangulate for that bumping into just the regular real world, right? Because you could make the argument that like, well, I mean, why wouldn't this judge just essentially do what he suggested he could have done in that ruling and kind of call their bluff and just release it, open it up and show there's no there there. And from the

point of view of people who are just trying to kind of, again, deal with the conspiracy-brained people and figure out how to how to coexist alongside of them and, you know, address their questions and concerns, maybe there is, there is an argument of that that he should have done that. But from the point of view of sort of just a judge who is trying to operate in the realm of like normality and basically say uh no i mean i'm not going to i'm not going to grant your spurious motion because it was a spurious motion there's just to help your spin yeah there's no compelling reason you are the other big uh galane maxwell news happened while you were gone we're on a little vacation well on summer vacation with your many children um do you want to cook for a second on going

do you have any hot takes or thoughts on maxville getting moved uh to club fed in texas no uh i really don't I'm sure you guys did great on the on the pod for all of that. And that was one of those things where I was like, you know what? You're not outraged. I mean, it's all so, I mean, what, twist my arm, right? I mean, of course. It's horrible. It's ridiculous.

Like, I mean, it's just one of these things. The whole Galane angle, this entire story has been one of those after another, right? Where it's like her, her, really going to, we're really going to, like, give her all these little new, like, perks and stick up her. I mean, like, we're talking about the same Galane. I'm like that guy who, you know, Conan was talking to, you know, like Jeffrey Epstein, the New York financier. I keep feeling like, are we talking about the same Galane Maxwell here? But, but yeah, no, I mean, it's all, I'm sure you guys did great on that particular one while I was out. Yeah, I mean, it's bad.

Sometimes I just have to twist your arm a little bit to get you mad, Edgar, you know. But it's not great that's like, you know, somebody that put girls into sex slavery now is getting treated like they did a paperwork error on their taxes. Let me ask you, you one thing, which is that I, I might be kind of skewed on this because I was out and I wasn't paying such close attention. Like, coming back to it now, it almost feels like, do you think we're kind of like through Peak Epstein? Do you think like Galane's window for having gotten a pardon may have, may have, may have sailed that ship has sailed? And this night, she might have already gotten her win, I think, getting moved to this, like, type of prison where there's literally no other examples of sex criminals in a prison like this in the entire Department of Prisons. So I always thought that a partner was going to be really tough. I mean, you don't put it past Trump on these sorts of things, but like that there'd be a lot of internal pushback, even in Trump world for that. Are we past week? I don't know.

And I think that they would like to be, you know, they would like to talk about Russia and other stuff. And there's some discussion of Todd Blanche going on Rogan. It's kind of like, can you imagine that happening now? that feels like that would be an own goal of massive proportion. So I don't, I think that there, we, I think we're probably past peak, but, but not fully in the valley. Yeah. And I mean, you can always, you can always count on Donald Trump to scare up some, some new angle

to the story here. That's Andrew Hager. We got a lot, we got much more coming for you guys. Subscribe to the feed. I'll give you guys a little tip, a little hint. If you made to the end of this pod, there's a treat. I just debated Dean Kane of Superman who just joined ICE. And so he will, some highlights that will be on this feed soon.

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