The Daily - Trump’s Top Aides Spread the Epstein Conspiracy. Now They Are Trying to Kill It.

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

For months, President Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested that they would expose the hidden, potentially sinister truth about Jeffrey Epstein’s death in 2019.But over the past few days, the Trump administrationWhite House decided to shut down has poured cold water on the conspiracy theories surrounding the financier.Glenn Thrush, who covers the Justice Department for The Times, explains what happened.Guest: Glenn Thrush, who reports on the Justice Department for The New York Times.Background reading: The Trump administration acknowledged a lack of evidence from Epstein documents.Confronted over the Epstein files, President Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi tell their supporters to move on.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Photo: Pete Marovich for The New York Times Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bobauro. This is The Daily. Today, the story of how the conspiracy theories surrounding Jeffrey Epstein made their way to the highest levels of the Trump administration, and why over the past few days, the White House finally decided it was time to shut them down. My colleague, Glenn Thrush, takes us inside the saga. It's Wednesday, July 9th. Hey there, Glenn.

Hello. Thank you for joining us. Seventeen minutes late? Well, you know, you're lucky it wasn't 20. I know you're on deadline, so thank you for making time for us. You're welcome. Glenn, we don't think of President Trump and those around him as people who declaratively and definitively kill off conspiracy theories, especially when those conspiracy theories

are popular with their supporters, quite the contrary. And yet, that's what has just happened. So tell us that story. Well, look, on Monday, they tried to slam the door on an investigation they themselves had opened. The Justice Department, in a pretty detailed memo, confirmed what a bunch of other investigations had already shown. There was no client list of shadowy Jeffrey Epstein clients that conspired to murder him, and they released a bunch of videotapes that showed what had already been revealed in other investigations, that he died by suicide. The problem with all this is that most of the people involved in running these investigations, the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, Cash Patel at the FBI, Dan Bongino, his deputy, had over

the years suggested that there was something nefarious that was being covered up by the Biden administration and that they were the ones who were going to get to the bottom of this. Right. Thus, that phrase you just invoked that this was the White House trying to slam a door that they themselves had kicked open, which is a very tricky piece of business. So, tell us that in fuller detail, really the birth, the life, and what is now the attempted death of this uniquely Trumpian conspiracy theory surrounding Jeffrey Epstein and how it ultimately enmeshes so many senior members of the Trump administration.

I mean, it's a really unlikely cause celeb for Donald Trump, who himself spent a fair amount of time hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein. Right. So this is all born out of a death. himself spent a fair amount of time hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein. So this is all born out of a death. Jeffrey Epstein is found in his cell hanging in 2019. The medical examiner determines that it was a suicide. The Bureau of Prison determines the same. The Department of Justice concurs.

The investigations, which took place under the Biden administration, found no evidence of anything nefarious in his death, but really almost from the start, it snowballs into something much bigger. Jeffrey Epstein is one of the most connected guys in the world. His death occurs under really weird circumstances in a totally dysfunctional prison. There are gaps in the narrative. It is very hard for people to accept that it was what it appeared to be, which is a distraught man who had been convicted and accused of monstrous crimes that had just taken his life. Right.

Sex trafficking. Sex trafficking with minors, possession of pornography, just the worst possible crimes in our society. What happens then over the next few years is these doubts begin to grow and grow and grow alongside the right-wing populist movement. I look at it as sort of the Swiss army knife of conspiracies. On one hand, it shows this cabal of incredibly powerful men who are hanging around a guy who was sex trafficking minors. Bill Clinton was on his plane. Members of the British royal

family were on his plane. Bill Gates hung out with Epstein. That really feeds the fever swamps of conspiracy theorists who form a good part of Trump's far-right coalition that there is this international cabal of people who are making decisions and covering up monstrous crimes. I want to see Epstein's list. I want to see the list of the sexual misconduct slush funds. Release the files! Release the files! Release the files! For once it would be nice to see the

federal government forced to tell the truth about something. And this became a central core of the argument made by many Trump supporters that the Justice Department and FBI were corrupt, engaged in covering up information to protect their allies and needed to be overhauled. So on one hand, it fed into sort of the emotional force of the Trump coalition, that they were overturning a corrupt establishment. On the flip side, it enabled people who have claimed that they needed to take radical steps to overhaul and root out deep state influences in federal law enforcement gave them a justification for doing so. So it has been an extraordinarily central element of the Trump coalition.

Hmm. So this becomes a totem of you cannot trust your justice system. People inside that system, presumably Democrats, liberal leaning people, they are using the justice system. People inside that system, presumably Democrats, liberal leaning people, they are using the justice system to protect their own. That's the distilled version of this theory. Remember, this is coming at roughly the same time he's being targeted by the Justice Department. And so this dovetails with this larger sense that Trump and his supporters have that the government, which is being controlled by Democrats, is coming after them. So by the time the 2024 campaign rolls around, the Epstein case is baked into the Trump base.

Everybody associated with Trump, working around him, who wants to come back to power with him, really needs to embrace this cause. And the focal point becomes this mythical client list, this roster of the rich and powerful who were somehow in on the Epstein conspiracy. Just to say, by client list, clients of what exactly? In general, it's the group of rich and powerful older men who are on the sex trafficking list.

But it's also been expressed as people who've flown on the plane with Epstein. Really the belief that there is a spreadsheet or a list in a book that enumerates this club of people who are both morally bankrupt and enormously powerful and are overseeing a coverup. That's the claim. The theory is that such a list exists and it's really the holy grail of the Epstein conspiracy. So two people who become really vocal about that theory are Cash Patel, a first term Trump official

who goes on to become one of his loudest campaign surrogates and Dan Bongino, a former secret service agent from Long Island who hosts a popular podcast. Welcome to the Bongino Brief. I'm Dan Bongino. What the hell are they hiding with Jeffrey Epstein? What do Clinton, Obama officials, big money leftists, a former prime minister of Israel, why do they want to make this Jeffrey Epstein story go away so bad? So Bongino speaking on his own podcast suggested that there were a lot of these people on the

list who had stories to tell about how this conspiracy was formed. And there may be some stories to tell about the activities of those rich, famous, and powerful people and some underaged women that they should not have been around at all and definitely not around in the manner that some of my sources tell me. You getting what I'm saying? And Cash Patel pushes it even further by singling out Bill Gates. You don't think that Bill Gates is lobbying Congress night and day to prevent the disclosure of that list?

What the hell are the House Republicans doing? They have the majority. You can't get the list? Put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are. And of course, when Donald Trump becomes President Trump once again, wins the 2024 election. He puts both Bongino and Patel in positions of pretty extraordinary authority inside the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Exactly, Michael.

And he makes Patel director and he inserts Bongino as Patel's number two. And what's extraordinary about this is they have less experience in those jobs than anyone else who has ever occupied them. And the justification for putting them in despite their lack of experience is that there are all these conspiracies and cover-ups going on and only an outsider untainted by the bureaucracy has the guts and power To rip everything apart. That's kind of fascinating in other words Only the kind of people who would embrace and promulgate Conspiracy theories are qualified to get inside the government and get to the bottom of them bingo

Well, so what happens once these people the Bungie knows the Patels Having embraced this conspiracy theory, end up in these positions of power in which they can actually investigate them? What do they do? Patel and Bongino jumped into the FBI at a time of crisis when there were mass firings and huge instability. So they really had to focus on stabilizing.

Right. Trump was busy firing all his perceived enemies inside that bureau. Yeah. So Pam Bondi, the attorney general, who remember was an emergency second pick when Matt Gaetz went down in flames. Right. Eager to please President Trump, raises her hand and says, I'm gonna take care of this. So she goes on Fox. The DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients.

Will that really happen? And when she's asked about the Epstein client list, she says, it's sitting on my desk right now to review. That's been a directive by President Trump. I'm reviewing. She says, I have all these files on my desk. A lot of flight logs, a lot of names, a lot of information. And the very next day.

I'm here at the White House. I just met with Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bondi shows up at this meeting of MAGA influencers. A lot of them were Epstein conspiracy theorists and hands out these big, thick white binders. It says on the front, the Epstein files phase one by order of attorney general, Pamela Bondi and FBI director, Cash Patel. See that right there? That's the Epstein files.

And for a moment, all of these people sitting around this room think we finally got it. There's so much to tell you. All I can say is, promise is made, promise is kept. We're finally gonna get the truth about Jeffrey Epstein. So then they flipped open the binders and man were they disappointed. We'll be right back.

So Glenn, what ends up being inside of those thick, white binders that Attorney General Bondi has handed out to these MAGA influencers. Not much. It's mostly procedural jargon, heavily, heavily redacted. It was a big dud. No client list, not even a manifest necessarily from the Plains. It was a lot of stuff that had already been in the public domain.

So there was this huge backlash against Bondi in particular for having over-promised. We're all waiting for bombshells, we're all waiting for juicy stuff, and that's not what's in this binder. That's not what's in this binder at all. It is the biggest disappointment I think that you'll find. So she first responds by blaming the FBI.

Director Patel is going to get us a detailed report as to why the FBI withheld all of those documents. And blaming prosecutors in other offices for slow-locking this, which turned out not necessarily to be true. And a source had told me where the documents were being kept. Southern District of New York's shop. Then what happens is Bondi dispatches a bunch of prosecutors from the National Security

Division of the Justice Department who are otherwise involved in high-level international investigations out to this facility in Virginia to go through videotape and files to see if there's anything in them. The FBI, they're reviewing, there are tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children or child porn. People who are supposed to be looking at terrorism investigations, foreign influence, are looking into a case of a guy who had died more than half a decade prior. And do you suspect, Glenn, that she's doing this

because she actually thinks they're going to find something or because she thinks, I need to say that I did this? In baseball, it's called running out the ground ball. She needs to show that she's making a maximum effort. And so does Patel, who's also dispatching dozens and dozens of FBI agents, some of them pulled off of other cases, to do the same thing. So a sizable portion of the United States federal law enforcement apparatus is devoting itself to what the federal government itself has already said is a nothing burger.

Absolutely. Meanwhile, on the outside, the pressure just keeps building and building and building. And because folks in Trump's MAGA base can't blame him for doing a bait and switch, they focus on federal law enforcement, particularly Pam Bondi. Laura Loomer, who's never liked Bondi, thought that she was too liberal to be in her job,

starts calling for her resignation. So Patel and Bongino, who are both wise in the ways of Trump politics, are seeing this happening in real time, and they want to minimize the damage. So they go on Fox. You said Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide. People don't believe it. And they give a very uncomfortable interview.

Well, I mean, listen, they have a right to their opinion. But as someone who has worked as a public defender, as a prosecutor who's been in that prison system, who's been in the Metropolitan Detention Center, who's been in segregated housing, you know a suicide when you see one. And that's what that was. Bongino says, with a very stern countenance... He killed himself.

Again, you want me to... I've seen the whole file. He killed himself. Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. Nothing to see here. Hmm. And they're now doing a 180 from where they were before, because there was once a moment where fanning this conspiracy theory was to their benefit, to Trump's benefit, suddenly now it's not. It had become a liability because they couldn't meet the expectations they themselves had stoked. And so, Glenn, I think that brings us to this week when the administration sends out this memo where we started our conversation saying, officially, there's nothing to see here.

There is no conspiracy. There's no evidence of a conspiracy. Move on. From everything you're saying, the White House does this because this conspiracy theory is starting to threaten to eat its own leaders, Bondi, Bungie, and O'Pattel. And so the answer to a question that has in many ways loomed over the Trump world for a really long time, which is when will the president and those around him kill off a conspiracy?

The answer to that is when it undermines their own authority and their ability to do their jobs. Donald Trump views his political positions as changeable. And he uses this kind of conspiracy theory to provide energy, almost rocket fuel for his own movement. And when it no longer suits his purposes, he's willing to move on. There was a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, and he was asked about the closing of the Epstein investigation. Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for years. You're asking we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things. And are people still talking

about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable. And he basically said, why is anyone still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? And Bondi essentially said the same thing. So the word from the top now is that the Epstein case is closed and people need to move on. I'm curious what you think the lesson here will be for these three top Trump officials who really did get burned by this experience, Bondi, Bongino, Patel. It's one thing to be on the outside when you can say whatever you want, there's no responsibility

for proving anything. It's another when you have to actually run the organizations. You've spent years and years beating up and accusing of cover-ups. It only takes an instant for the outsiders to then turn on you. And I think that's what Pam Bondi is learning. That's what Cash Patel is learning. And that's what Dan Bongino is learning. Right, when you write a conspiracy theory about basically the deep state to power, you very much run

the risk, and this seems to be what happened here, of becoming in the eyes of those who believe in the conspiracy theory, the deep state itself. That's right. In a sense, this is what happens when outsiders become insiders. They have the responsibility for running the institution. Even an institution that they've attacked and have claimed as corrupt. The day-to-day responsibilities that these people are bearing forces them to accept realities that folks outside the wall don't have to.

So the whole thing is kind of an interesting paradox. On one hand, they may have done the right thing institutionally. They may have ultimately stood on the path of truth here, but they've weakened their own position in the movement that elevated them. By contradicting these conspiracy theories, they've incurred the wrath of the people who put them in power. Trump's base. Well, Glenn, thank you in power. Trump's base.

Well, Glenn, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. The Supreme Court said that President Trump can move ahead with plans to slash the federal workforce and dismantle federal agencies without input from Congress. The ruling could result in job losses for tens of thousands of workers. The ruling is Trump's latest victory before the Supreme Court as he tries to expand his

power and reshape the federal government. And on Tuesday, President Trump issued some of his harshest criticism to date of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, implying that Putin could not be trusted in negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, for you want to know the truth. It's very nice all the time,

but it turns out to be meaningless. The remarks came a day after Trump reversed course and said that he would supply Ukraine with more U.S. weapons to fend off Russia, something that Putin has sought to prevent. Today's episode was produced by Ricky Nowetzki, Rochelle Banja, and Carlos Prieto. It was edited by Rachel Quester and Patricia Willens, contains original music by Alicia Baetube and Rui Nymesto,

and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansbrook of Wunderly. That's it for the Daily. I'm Michael Boulogne. See you tomorrow.