(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Vanity Fair’s bombshell two-part profile of Trump Chief of Staff Susie Wiles included a myriad of candid and surprising quotes from the usually guarded powerbroker, but also a stunning admission about President Donald Trump’s relationship to convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein. Wiles spoke at length about the threat the Epstein scandal poses to the White House she runs, and at one point acknowledged that Trump had been on Epstein’s plane.
The bombshell report is based on multiple conversations writer Chris Whipple had with Wiles and other key figures in the West Wing. Whipple quotes Wiles criticizing Attorney General Pam Bondi’s handling of the Epstein Files, including giving MAGA influencers binders of useless documents.
“I think she completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the very targeted group that cared about this,” Wiles said of Bondi, adding, “First she gave them binders full of nothingness. And then she said that the witness list, or the client list, was on her desk. There is no client list, and it sure as hell wasn’t on her desk.”
Whipple then goes on to write:
Wiles told me she’d read what she calls “the Epstein file.” And, she said, “[Trump] is in the file. And we know he’s in the file. And he’s not in the file doing anything awful.”
Wiles said that Trump “was on [Epstein’s] plane…he’s on the manifest. They were, you know, sort of young, single, whatever—I know it’s a passé word but sort of young, single playboys together.” (Trump started dating Melania Knauss, whom he married in 2005, sometime in 1998. Virginia Giuffre, Epstein’s most prominent accuser, who died by suicide earlier this year, first met Epstein while she was a Mar-a-Lago spa worker in 2000. Trump and Epstein reportedly had a falling out in 2004.)
The bombshell revelation is yet another link made public in recent months between Trump and Epstein. A “bawdy” birthday card Trump wrote Epstein, along with a tranche of Epstein’s emails that mention Trump repeatedly, have all been made public recently as the Epstein Files scandal has escalated into a constant headache for the Trump White House.
The Department of Justice has until the end of the week to release the full Epstein Files, according to a recent law passed by Congress and signed by Trump.
