Having spoken with several sources inside the White House meetings today, I can report what I believe to be an accurate version of events regarding the release of the so-called ‘Epstein Files: Phase 1,’ which turned out to be a re-release of information that has mostly been known for several years.
One of the more intriguing details of today is that President Donald J. Trump himself was in a room with these binders containing Epstein’s flight and phone call logs. One of the pages even contained President Trump’s name, having been listed in Epstein’s phone book.
Again, that information is not new. But it is embarrassing for the White House, the vast majority of which is unlikely to have had any eyes on the documents handed to social media influencers who believed they were attending a simple series of policy briefings today.
Instead, Attorney General Pam Bondi and her team are being blamed very clearly in at least six conversations I’ve had this afternoon. Again, they gave no heads-up to either the influencers attending or White House staff about their intentions to distribute binders of information that contained little new information, frustrating both the administration and the general public.
Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna took to social media this afternoon to express her frustration at the situation, given she has been at the forefront of getting this information released to the public for years and, again, was not briefed in advance of the situation.
I understand that a number of high-profile figures met with social media influencers this morning in another White House initiative to integrate alternative media and voices into the Trump administration’s media distribution channels.
The morning meetings included stops by Vice President J.D. Vance and President Donald Trump. Social media influencers also had a quick tour of the Oval Office, where FBI Director Kash Patel, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, and other members of the Cabinet and senior administration officials were present. President Trump is understood to have handed out White House memorabilia such as Presidential Challenge Coins and pens.
As the group moved from the Oval Office, several of the influencers present held up their binders for the assembled press, most of whom were there to cover the British Prime Minister’s visit to the White House.
Only after this media moment were the social media influencers told that AG Bondi did not want the public to know about the distribution of the binders, a caveat that came too late. One of the sources I spoke to called the entire incident a “clusterfuck,” with many of them resenting the fact that social media influencers are getting the blame for not releasing more information when they were asked not to, but only after the assembled media had taken pictures and video of them.
Rather than a conspiracy by the social media influencers, this event looks to have been a failed attempt to curry social media favor by AG Bondi, who scrambled on Thursday afternoon to demand the FBI release more files. This despite her claiming that she had the Epstein client lists “on her desk” in an interview with Jesse Watters of Fox News this week.
The incident speaks more to a cock-up or blunder by the AG and her team than anything else. The National Pulse has also verified that little to no new information is contained in the binders, suggesting again that this was more of a failed public relations stunt.
N.B. I should note that I was invited to the White House, not for this event, but for the UK-US official meeting. I was unable to attend due to prior commitments.
