President Donald Trump’s White House is freaking out over reports that their secret conversations in the Situation Room were surreptitiously recorded — and will soon be published.
“Top White House officials believe New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan obtained audio recordings of Situation Room meetings for their forthcoming book, ‘Regime Change,’” reported Axios on Sunday. Because independent recording devices are not allowed in the Situation Room, the potential leak would be a major breach from protocol that would place many of Trump’s top officials under immediate suspicion.
"We're afraid some of our most sensitive conversations were being recorded," an administration source told Axios. "And we have no idea which ones."
The conversations apparently included the administration fretting about Trump’s involvement with the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, with one official suggesting that Trump pardon Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell in the hope that she could say things which take heat off the president. Another tape reportedly has Secretary of State Marco Rubio profanely criticize Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Tellingly, White House officials haven't disputed verbatim dialogue from the top-secret Sit Room talks, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying about Bibi's regime-change scenarios for Iran: ‘In other words, it's bulls———,’” Rubio reportedly said.
In addition to his friendship with Epstein, which stretched from the 1980s until the two had a falling out over a business deal in the 2000s, Trump is also accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old who he met through the convicted sex trafficker.
“In 2019, Jane Doe came forward and was interviewed by the FBI four times about her encounters in the early 1980s,” the Post and Courier reported. “This was the individual that Hillary Clinton referenced in her comments to the House Oversight and Reform Committee.”
Testifying before the House Oversight Committee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked why the Trump administration has refused to further their investigation into this account.
“And this latest example of the missing files about the allegations, and they are absolutely nothing more than allegations, but the FBI interviewed that witness four times,” Clinton said. “You don't interview a non-credible witness four times. You don't put into the FBI reporting 'protect this source' if you think there is nothing to it. So, of course, I would like to know, like every other American deserves to know, what is in those files and who is going to hold people accountable? Because the Justice Department seems to be either unwilling or incapable of doing so."
