The NPR Politics Podcast - Justice Department releases missing Epstein files related to Trump

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

It was another busy week in Washington. We discuss Kristi Noem getting fired from her position as Secretary of Homeland Security and the new release of missing Epstein files related to President Trump. Note: This episode contains descriptions of sexual assault. This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, immigration policy correspondent Ximena Bustillo, political reporter Stephen Fowler and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and edited by Rachel Baye. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Hima Bustillo and I cover immigration. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And today on the show, an Epstein Files update. But first, a shake-up. President Trump has fired his Secretary of Homeland Security, Christy Knoem. Heman, she had been plagued by scandal and controversy for months. So why now? Right. Secretary Nome, or soon to be former, Secretary Nome has had one P. challenge after another, particularly to kick off the year. Christine Nome testified twice this week before Congress once for a House judiciary, a second time for Senate judiciary.

And, you know, we knew she was going to face a lot of tough questions, obviously, from Democrats, but she also faced a lot of tough questions from some Republicans, notably in the Senate, that raised questions about how she has handled disaster relief in their states or how she has spent money for her agency. There was one key exchange with Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, who is a solid Trump ally. And he pressed her on expensive ad campaigns that she ran last year that really profiled her and centered around immigration, calling on people to self-deport or come here, quote, the right way. The president approved ahead of time, you spending $220 million running TV ads across the country in which you are featured prominently.

Yes, sir, we went through the legal processes. Did it correct? Did the president know you were going to do this? Yes. He did? Yes. Okay. And one thing, Senator, I think, would be helpful to know is how effective that

communications has been. Well, they were, effective in your name recognition. Yeah, effective in your name recognition is quite the cutting comment. These ads featured her on horseback and very glammed up. And certainly they did get her name and face out there. You know, and the accusation is that she was doing this to run for president in 2028, that it was built to build her name identification, as Kennedy, again, a Republican, is noting there. And it's also notable the scandal for where that money went and who received it.

During the House hearing, Colorado Democrat Joe Noghous highlighted that the ad group, according to ProPublica's reporting, is a company that Noam used for ads when she ran for governor of South Dakota and that the company's CEO is married to former DHS spokesperson Trisha McLaughlin. We should note that NPR has not independently verified this reporting. In fact, the ad with her on horseback is very reminiscent of the similar ad that that group ran where she was just kind of galloping across the state in her reelection bid. Now, one thing that I'll note is everything Noam said is not necessarily new. She has been talking about these ads and has been saying that the president wants her to be the face, wants her to be the messenger, create an ad campaign to tell, you know, people abroad to not come here illegally, to tell everyone here that's illegally to leave. You know, she has attributed this to a goal and desire of the president. You know, in the context, though, is what happened in Minnesota, obviously. You know, the harsh tactics that ICE,

and other federal agencies have undertaken, where you had two American citizens killed at the hands of federal agents. That became such a big, you know, scandal that it became what the White House saw as a messaging problem. And because and a lot of Republicans on Capitol Hill, what they've said is that this was an issue that Republicans should have a 20 point advantage on when it comes to immigration. They feel Trump won on that issue. They think that immigration and border security is something that Trump should be able to tout and that the party should be able to benefit from, but instead they wind up on a negative from. But the issue wasn't just that two Americans were killed by federal officers while exercising their First Amendment rights. It's also that the Homeland Security Secretary then called them domestic terrorists created a narrative that was completely and rapidly disproven by video. evidence. Right. And this is something we have just seen age poorly and worse and worse and worse. Like as each

week went by, you know, I was at the press conference where Chris, you know, made those statements about particularly 37-year-old Alex Prettie, where she described his actions as acts as domestic terrorism, said that was the facts. That was the definition of domestic terrorism. And then you saw this kind of bubbling Republican backlash to those claims over time. We saw heads of the immigration agencies a few weeks ago get questioned and say, did you guys give information for Secretary Noem to, you know, make these claims? And they said on the record, no, that they did not, that no one under their command did not. And ICE director, ICE acting director Todd Lyons went as far as to concede that any messaging from, you know, the secretary or on social media or texts or posts

could bias an investigation, which, you know, the investigation into these shootings is already facing a lot of scrutiny and confusion. And again, this just got worse and worse for the secretary. She was asked about these claims again in the House, in the Senate. Who gave you this information? Why did you make those claims? Can you just admit that it was incorrect? And, you know, she kind of just doubled down and tried as hard as possible to walk it back. But, you know, the damage had been done at that point. The thing here is we have to remember, Noam has been the face of this. Like, Gnome was seen posing in front of the notorious prison, Sequot, that's in El Salvador, wearing, you know, luxury items like fancy watches.

She has been, you know, wearing tactical ice gear, going into people to... People's houses, going on raids and, you know, really trying to paint herself as on the front lines of, you know, this broad mass deportation, mass detention policy. I think an important thing to note here, though, is that her ouster isn't necessarily an indication of change in policy by the Trump administration. You know, it's really about the message that Trump doesn't like the optics of how his immigration policy has been played out in public and feels that this, at least moving her off, the scene as a public face of this, maybe we'll change the perception and maybe refocus on border policy. Correct. I mean, again, I agree with Domenico. The policies are not going anywhere. A lot of the people who are writing, signing the documents, doing all those things, they're still in place. And so what we're just seeing is maybe a change in how that message is publicly delivered

now that, you know, there were instances that really soured the base on, you know, how far immigration enforcement is going. the base and the broader public. It's the, the administration is just completely underwater when it comes to its handling of immigration, which, as Domenico said, should be one of their strong areas. I just want to note as a longtime White House correspondent that it is pretty wild that Christy Noem at this point, more than a year into the second Trump administration, is the first cabinet secretary to get the boot. Because in the first term, We were like doing an emergency podcast all the time. But, Tam, you could probably tell us why that is.

I mean, the fact is it's not because Trump is suddenly, you know, more loyal to his cabinet members. It's maybe partially because he understands the job of the presidency and the type of people he's brought in, right? Yes. So the people who he has surrounded himself with are not people who see themselves as guardrails on his impulses. They are people who are there to say yes, to help him. execute on what he wants to execute on. And, you know, gone are are the people who would ring their hands and see themselves as containing him. And as a result, he hasn't fired them, even though someone like Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, certainly had a lot of controversy early on.

Trump stood by him. Trump is standing by these people in part because they're standing by him. President Trump now says that Christy Noam is going to be the special envoy for the shield of the Americas. That keeps her close, but doesn't allow her to kind of be a former who's out there speaking to anybody. Giving people brand new jobs or ambassadorships or, you know, the first example, the president's former national security advisor, Mike Walts, he then became the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. What's happening with Kristy Noam is definitely not as much of a real thing until the president announced it. And there is a summit of the Shield of the Americas for about an hour and a half or two hours this weekend in Florida.

Very quickly, Hima, President Trump announced that Senator Mark Wayne Mullen from Oklahoma is going to be his pick. He's planning to nominate Senator Mullen. What do we need to know about him? You know, Senator Mullen has been a strong ally of the president. He was out there campaigning for him in 2024, mostly among the Native American and tribal communities. You know, Mullen is an interesting switch because he's not someone that I think you would have seen as an obvious pick for DHS particularly. But at the same time, I'm not surprised that he ended up on the cabinet. Now, Mullen does not sit on the Judiciary Committee. He also does not sit on Senate homeland. And so it will be interesting to see kind of how his confirmation goes through. But I think the challenge here is he's inheriting, you know, a little bit of a mess. You know, his agency that he's going to take on is currently not being funded. You know, DHS is still in a single agency government shutdown going, it. We're in the third week of that. Hundreds of thousands of employees are furloughed or working without pay, including a third of cybersecurity staff. Many people that deal with disaster relief, not to mention administrative people and folks across all the other agencies. He is looking at a lot of legal challenges to his agency, particularly. He is looking at a lot of internal fractures and fissures, you know, varying, struggling power dynamics.

The inspector general of DHS sent a letter to lawmakers also this week saying that DHS was obstructing his investigations, his internal investigations into the agency. So he's taking on, you know, kind of a lot of muddied waters inside when it comes to dealings with Congress, when it comes to dealings with the judiciary branch. And he's going to have to try and turn the public sentiment around. That's a lie. But one thing that he has going for him is that he is actually very very. skilled at going on television and defending the president and his policies, which is probably what got him on the president's radar as much as he was. Well, I was going to say as a senator, you know, he's inherently disciplined when it comes

to messaging because his politician's had to win statewide. He's a former businessman and owned a plumbing company where he became pretty wealthy through that. But he's also seen as a tough guy by the president because he has a black belt in jujitsu. He's a former MMA fighter. And we know this president loves UFC and WWE and all the rest of those acronyms for for wrestling and fighting and all that tough stuff. All right, Hemanah, thank you so much for bringing your reporting and enjoy your weekend. Thank you. When we come back, the latest on the Epstein Files. And we're back. And NPR political reporter Stephen Fowler is here with us. Hey, Stephen. Hello. There were a number of developments in the long-running Epstein Files story this week. And Stephen, I want to start with your latest

reporting on files that were missing or redacted from the original public release. Some of those files have now been posted by the Justice Department. What do they have in them? Just to recap, we found that there were 53 pages that appear to be missing from that public Epstein files database. They all related to an allegation that President Trump sexually abused a minor in the early 1980s. There was a mention of this explicit allegation found in a Justice Department

and PowerPoint from last year that was in the files and also an FBI email kind of recapping all of the claims made about Trump. But we couldn't find it anywhere else in these files. Looking at some of the other documents, we were able to find that the FBI interviewed this woman as an adult in 2019, four separate times. Only one of those interviews was initially published in the Epstein files, and it didn't mention Trump at all. Now, we do have some of those files. 16 pages, covering three other interviews plus a two-page sheet detailing the initial tip that was called in These interviews do go into more explicit detail about what Trump was alleged to have done to her when she was a teenager forcing her head down onto his penis she allegedly bit it he said foul words and hit her head

There's also an interview which was the final one in 2019 and this woman was asked whether she quote felt comfortable detailing her contacts with Trump and she reportedly asked, quote, what the point would be of providing this information at this point in her life when there was a strong possibility nothing could be done about it. Remember, these interviews took place during Trump's first term in office. Stephen, how is the White House responding to this? We should also note here that Trump denies any wrongdoing related to Epstein and has not been charged with the crime. The White House has repeatedly said that Trump is, quote, totally exonerated by the Epstein files.

The latest statement from White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt says that these are completely baseless accusations, backed by zero credible evidence. They also point on background to two different articles that claim to discredit the woman's accusations, but we haven't verified those things. In fact, Tam, looking at the release of these documents, it doesn't actually shine any more light on how credible federal investigators viewed these claims or how they were resolved, Or why these allegations were included in the Justice Department slide presentation, summarizing the cases against Epstein and his accomplice Galane Maxwell.

But there are still records that haven't been released. What is the government said about the delays in the release? It's been a shifting story. I mean, back when the Epstein files were released on January 30th, the Justice Department said they were all done in accordance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act Law Congress passed. when we asked specifically about these documents, the Justice Department would not comment on them directly and said anything that might have been withheld was because of privilege or they were duplicates or they were part of an ongoing federal investigation. After more people reported on the documents and there was more of a public backlash, the story changed again. The Justice Department said they were reviewing to see if anything was accidentally mistakenly tagged as duplicate and if they found something, of course they would publish it.

So fast forward to Thursday night where there were a thousand new pages uploaded, including some documents that it discovered were, quote, incorrectly coded as duplicative, and a few more documents related to prosecution memos that the Southern District of Florida determined could be published while protecting privileged materials. That said, we still know, based on looking at the serial numbers stamped onto these documents and the logs of files turned over to Galane Maxwell's attorney in her case, that there are still 37 pages, at least, that still haven't been published. Domenico, this is a story that is just not going away for the administration. And it comes when they have all kinds of other issues related to their base and possible disillusionment with respect to the war with Iran.

You know, it's one thing to be fighting a messaging battle on one front, but this is now two fronts that they're on. where do you see this going? Well, certainly this isn't going to go away anytime soon. You know, it's going to continue to be a thorn in the Trump administration's side. I mean, Trump would very much like this to go away, but there are a lot of people on both sides of the aisle who don't want that to be the case. And it's not necessarily because they're targeting Trump. You know, there are lots of men with power and influence who are named in these files, many of whom have not faced any consequences whatsoever. You have lots of victims who are continuing to speak out and are trying to make sure this story doesn't go away. And we're seeing the investigative committee in Congress that's looking

into this now subpoenaing more people in the Trump administration. So there are clearly going to be more hearings. We're going to hear more about this. And, you know, we heard more from, for example, the Bill and Hillary Clinton last week. And then in video that was released this week about that because of Bill Clinton being in pictures and things in the Epstein files as well. So this is something that spans a lot of people, a lot of pages, and a lot of different potential scandals. Yeah, Stephen, let's talk just a little bit about these depositions that Bill and Hillary Clinton did with the House Oversight Committee last week. Related to their links to Jeffrey Epstein. And in Hillary Clinton's case, the links are pretty tenuous.

the videos were released this week. Did you learn anything? There wasn't necessarily much new in there. I mean, Hillary Clinton said before, during, and after the deposition that she didn't know Epstein, never really met with him, and that they should be talking to people that did, like President Trump. Former President Bill Clinton seemed to have a lot more to say. He told the committee he was glad that they asked him to be there and acknowledged that he met and traveled with Epstein some. But he told the committee that initially he thought,

Epstein was a, quote, interesting man, but he said, there's nothing that I saw when I was around him that made me realize he was trafficking women. Clinton said he never witnessed Epstein abused young women or girls, nor did he discuss any sexual acts with him. Neither one of them have been charged with any sort of crime related to Epstein, like many of the other people that we've mentioned. Domenico, what do you make of the fact that the Clintons were asked to testify? Well, look, I mean, Republicans have had a long time. some would say obsession with the Clintons, and anytime they have an opportunity to bring them in front of an investigative body to be able to ask them questions related to this or anything else, it seems that they take the opportunity to go and do that. And I think that there's a lot of people who are questioning why they would go and do that, but not be talking to people who are close to, for example, the president of the United States, who is a Republican and also named in these files multiple times as well, if they're looking for. purely non-biased information that they can use to, you know, take their investigation in any direction

that that leads. Yeah. And Stephen, this makes me think of Howard Lutnik, the Commerce Secretary, who does appear in the files and has said a lot of things over time about Jeffrey Epstein and now has agreed to appear before the House Oversight Committee. So, remind us how does Letnik show up in the files? Well, he is also not accused of any wrongdoing related to Epstein and his crimes, but the release of these files showed that Lutnik had a deeper and longer relationship with Epstein than he previously disclosed to Congress. I mean, we knew that they were next door neighbors, and Lutnik had previously said they

cut ties in 2005 after one visit to Epstein's house. But looking at the files, you saw that he visited Jeffrey Epstein's private island in 2012 with family. And this was after Epstein had been a registered sex offender. There are other communications in the files over the years. So members of Congress have questions about Lutnik's credibility and truthfulness. The committee is not done. They also voted to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi. It was a bipartisan vote. What are they hoping to learn from her? Well, after the reporting on these documents that were withheld and others that we found that were removed and put back up. The Democrats on the House Oversight Committee sent a letter to Bondi demanding

answers about these documents. Also ahead of the Clinton deposition, Chairman Comer said he was looking into the reporting and hadn't really got an answer from the administration what was going on. And so you had the Oversight Committee where it was the Democrats and a few Republicans vote to subpoena Bondi to bring her in front of the committee to get their questions answered about these specific documents, but also just in general the way the Epstein files have been handled. In a statement sent to me today, a spokesperson for the Oversight Committee Democrats say that, quote, this White House cover-up is ongoing, and they say that they will get answers when Pam Bondi appears before the committee under oath.

So I just want to reiterate, this is not specifically about these documents and these allegations against Trump. there have been other issues, basically the entire time the Epstein files have been a thing before the Justice Department. You've got the files that were removed and put back up. You have redaction issues that were exposing victims' personal information. You had redaction issues where there were things that shouldn't be covered up or covered up. And you had the Epstein Files Transparency Act law give a deadline for the files to be released. The Justice Department missed that.

So overall, Congress has... is not very happy with the Attorney General and the Justice Department with all things Epstein. And does this stop with the Clintons and Bondi and Lutnik? Or is this committee going to keep issuing subpoenas? There are several other names that Chairman Comer mentioned. They are seeking interviews. These are people that have been in Epstein's orbit, that the files have kind of exposed how wide their communications were. people like Bill Gates and Kathy Rumler, the former Obama White House counsel. She resigned from her job as Goldman Sachs' top lawyer recently after the files showed she had a much deeper and wider communication and relationship with Epstein than she previously admitted. So we are getting there.

There are more and more names, more and more people, and more and more questions that are coming forth. And the Oversight Committee is chugging along, although one of the people that the Republican majority, on the committee does not seem to want to hear from on this is Donald Trump. And I think a lot of people are wondering if there's going to be consequences for anyone stateside. We've seen that there were consequences for people in the UK, for example. We've seen people in the United States have to step down from certain positions. But we haven't seen anybody prosecuted or gone after by the Justice Department to have a case brought against them. And I think there's a lot of people wondering if there's going to be

any kind of movement toward doing that. Yeah. All right. We are going to take one more quick break, and then it's time for Can't Let It Go. And we're back. And it's time for Can't Let It Go, the part of the pod where we talk about the things from the week that we just cannot stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. And I'm just always on politics, I guess, because I'm going first because I can't let go of this. Senator Steve Daines of Montana waited until just mere moments before the filing deadline to withdraw his name from contention. And then after the deadline posted a video announcing it to the world. Serving the people of Montana in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate the past 13 years has been the greatest honor of my professional career.

I'm grateful to God for allowing me to serve. But after much careful thought, I've decided not to seek re-election. After much careful thought, he actually orchestrated a carefully timed event that made it so that his chosen replacement was the only Republican to jump into the race. And he did that just minutes before the announcement, just before the deadline. It was really fascinating. I have to say, as somebody who worked at a newspaper that was on the Jersey Shore and as someone with Italian ancestry, it always irritated me how the show Jersey Shore depicted Italian Americans and what people thought of the Jersey Shore or that the show The Sopranos, the way that it depicted Italian Americans. And where I'm going with this is that people in Montana very much do not like the show Yellowstone, but then stop acting like Yellowstone. I mean, this came out of a, like, right off of a Yellowstone script where it was an orchestrated political coup, essentially.

And, you know, really fascinating stuff for a state that I think most people don't see as that kind of politically cut throat. We know this isn't actually the first time this cycle that you have had somebody conveniently decide that they were no longer running right at the filing deadline. In Illinois, you had Representative Chui Garcia, a Democrat, do the same thing. But in that case, it was just orchestrated with the person that Chui Garcia wanted to run in his place. Another Democrat was so angered and outraged by that that they're launching an independent campaign to give voters a choice. Domenico, what can you let go of? Well, mine is also politically related. And it's the fact that I just can't let go of who Donald Trump is going to endorse in the Texas Republican Senate primary that is now gone to a runoff.

and they're facing 12 weeks of a potential primary that could cost $100 million and maybe even a Texas Senate seat, which is one that I think Republicans think should be fairly safe for them to win. But now Democrats have their candidate in James Talarico. He's already running to the middle for his general election campaign. And Trump, the day after the primary, put on truth social that he's going to endorse and that the other person should drop out. And all we've seen for the past few days is Ken Paxton, the state attorney general, saying he's not going to drop out of the race. Trump hasn't endorsed anyone. John Cornyn is the incumbent senator. We'll see.

And we'll see if maybe there's a landing spot for Paxton, if that's the direction he decides to go. Could there be an ambassad to somewhere, a special envoy to anywhere other than Texas? Or maybe Texas. Yeah. Well, you know, Oklahoma's going to have a Senate seat open up pretty soon, too. So, you know. Is Ken Paxon from Oklahoma? He has a property there.

I guess he could cross the line. Oh, yeah, there's going. He does have a property there. Well, there you go. Stephen, what can't you let go of? So this is a video, the CEO of McDonald's. He filmed a direct-to-camera kind of influencer video, trying the new big arch burger. And the bite that he takes out of it is like somebody who has never eaten a McDonald's burger before.

Did he try to use a fork in a knife? No, it was just a tiny bite. And it was not somebody that expressed a lot of jewelry. from this burger and it's actually kind of an older video but it's been gaining a lot of traction online from people Remixing it sort of clowning it and things and in the last week it led to the CEO of Burger King Film a video taking a big old bite out of a whopper and being like yeah, this is great and then you had a Wendy's burger and then you have all of these Everybody with a burger and a CEO is now doing these videos making fun of the McDonald's CEO trying to to eat this burger. And I'm sure there's a story in there about the downfall of a CEO influencer.

I'm sure there's also a video of maybe you want to practice eating burgers if you're going to be eating one on camera. But I can't let go. We now have a burger war with CEOs like TikToking each other into who can have the biggest, most enthusiastic bite of their several dollar concoction. There was a lot of talking and it's hard to talk with your mouth. Right? I mean, that could be part of the reason, but he did look like, oh, he was like, yeah, he's like, look at this thing. Like, it was a piece of art. Like, only McDonald's could do this. Well, they probably also staged it. They used, like, the people that they used to dress up the burgers for, like, print ads or for commercials. But those you can't eat. Where they, like, brush it and whatever. Like, they paint. They did take a bite. They use a tweezer with the sesame seeds on the bun just to get it just right. Okay, but I haven't actually seen. this video because I prefer not to be very online. How big was this burger? Like, would a normal

person have trouble fitting it in their mouth? The whole burger? Well, no, just like a bite. There's nothing that big about it. I mean, it's called the big arch. You have the big arch, the wopper. It's very evocative. How many pieces of meat? How many buns? Well, there's a two, there's a bun and there's toppings. You know, it just, I think he wanted to talk a lot and explain the burger and act like this is so great, but it's really, really hard to eat your food and talk about. But he did look like, ooh, look at how interesting it is that I'm holding a burger. All right, let's leave it there for today.

Our executive producer is Mathani Maturi. Our producers are Casey Morel and Brea Suggs. Our editor is Rachel Bay. Special thanks to Krishna Dev Kalimer and Dana Farrington. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Stephen Fowler. I cover politics.

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor. correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.