Bombshell explodes: Analyst says White House denials are 'mystifying'
POLITICO national political correspondent Adam Wren says if Epstein “wasn’t a crisis already, it is indisputably one now,” and it “threatens to swallow the news cycle and drastically complicate the GOP’s push to enact Trump’s agenda.”
Undeterred by threats of legal action from President Donald Trump, Wren said the Wall Street Journal “dropped a four-bylined bombshell” claiming Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy AG Todd Blanche told Trump in May that his name appeared multiple times in the Epstein files alongside many others, despite Trump denying any awareness of his name in documents since then.
Former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori reports “Right now, everyone should be asking whether the highest levels of the federal government … have been misleading the American public for weeks, if not months.”
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Trump is confident that, “They’re going to accuse me of some funny business,” according to a Republican close to the White House, who “personally heard” the president’s comments, according to Wren. Trump has tried to distance himself from convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, his friend of more than a decade, but admitted: “They’re going to f——— me anyways,” said the source.
Wren claims people in the White House are putting on a good face over the matter.
“Everyone has already seen pictures of [Trump and Epstein] together,” said one anonymous source speaking with POLITICO reporter Dasha Burns. “None of this reporting is new information. The government has long had these files. If there was really a ‘there’ there, it would have come out. The idea that Democrats wouldn’t have used this against Trump if there was really something to it is crazy.”
Trump “knows this is nonsense and he didn’t do anything wrong,” said a second anonymous source. “He was actually in a good mood this afternoon.”
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But, if there’s nothing there Wren said the White House’s handling of the Epstein ordeal “is mystifying.”
“Why not just let this news come out after Bondi briefed Trump, with his name among hundreds of others? Why tell the WSJ, as comms director Steven Cheung did, that its reporting was 'fake news' if, in fact, it was information known to the White House and is true? Why did Trump deny in an interview weeks ago that Bondi had briefed him on the matter?”
Rather than addressing the matter, DOJ spokesperson Gates McGavick told POLITICO Senior Legal Affairs Reporter Josh Gerstein: “This is a collection of falsehoods and innuendo designed to push a bullshit narrative and drive clicks.”
Meanwhile POLITICO reports MAGA sources remain puzzled by the lack of answers, wondering what does Trump’s name being “mentioned” really mean. Some MAGA lieutenants, including right wing influencer Laura Loomer, insist “President Trump is not a pedophile.”
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“If they’re making these claims against President Trump, they need to define what a ‘file’ is,” Loomer told POLITICO. “Are they trying to say that a file is somebody’s name in an address book? I have over 7,000 contacts in my address book. Some of those people in my address book have committed crimes. Does that mean I’m implicated in their crimes?”
“I look forward to seeing [Trump] sue every journalist and publication that is trying to imply that he is [a pedophile].”
Read the full POLITICO report at this link.
