← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, everyone, We've got breaking news on Jeffrey Epstein. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark. I'm here with Andrew Egger. Andrew, we've got emails that have just been released by the Epstein estate. They went to the House Oversight Committee and they're pretty intense emails. In fact, one of the stories headlines I saw was, you know, these emails raise new questions about Trump's relationship with Epstein and the victims. To me, these emails answer a few questions about Trump's relationship with Epstein and the victims. Let me just read a couple. This is the first email. It's on April 2, 2011. It is to Ghislaine Maxwell from Jeffrey Epstein. I want you to realize that that dog that hasn't barked is Trump victim, redacted, spent hours at my house with him. He has never once been mentioned. Police chief, et cetera. I'm 75% there. And then to Jeffrey Epstein from Ghislaine Mackill. I've been thinking about that. Okay, I'm going to go through all three of these emails, Andrew, but before I get to the second one, I want you to realize that that dog that hasn't barked is Trump. So it's. There's some grammatical errors in here that might make that hard to understand, but they're basically saying in the investigation that Epstein is undergoing, they hadn't heard anything from Trump yet. Right. Is that your reading?
- [01:29]
B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And long before Donald Trump. Again, this is 2011. So long before Donald Trump has arrived on the political scene at all. You. I mean, yeah, that's essentially what you have here, is the two main conspirators in this Jeffrey Epstein case basically saying to one another, sure is weird that Donald Trump hasn't been pulled into this whole thing yet. So, yeah, absolutely.
- [01:51]
A
And not only so he. They're saying, they're exchanges about how it's weird that he hasn't been pulled in. But they explicitly say then in the email that a victim whose name is redacted spent hours at my house with him, meaning Trump at Epstein's house with a victim. That is what is in this first email. Okay. This goes all the way back to 2011. Then you get to the second email, which. And this is where it gets sort of bizarre. I mean, the whole thing's bizarre, but this is especially bizarre. The author, Michael Wolf, who has been somebody who has reported on Trump, who's been a bit of an. Like, he's right sometimes, but sometimes he's also way off. Like, this is the same guy who alleged that Trump and Nikki Haley were having an affair at one point in one of his books, which I thought was insane. And so I always take this guy with like, a massive grain of salt. And in fact, I basically don't listen to him. But what's interesting is that he and Epstein are emailing here. So Epstein emails Michael Wolf and says a victim's name, which is, which is redacted. So victim's name, Mar A Lago, some kind of identifier, which is also redacted. Trump said he asked me to resign. Never a member ever. Of course, he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop. Okay, so because of the redactions, it makes it slightly unclear what they're. What they're saying or there's something in here that we can't see. But, but what is very clear is what Epstein is referring to is this Trump going public. Right. So. Oh, sorry. And I should have given the date. This is email 2. It is January 31, 2019. So we are now firmly in Trump's first term. And this must be. And maybe you can date this for me. Like, what's happening on Epstein's side of things in 2019.
- [03:48]
B
I believe I have this correct. This is. This is after Epstein has kind of crash landed back into the public public eye. Right. I mean, it was kind of 2018ish that all of these things sort of started bubbling back up. There was all of that talk about the plea deal that Epstein had weirdly gotten a decade prior. So the Epstein scandal is kind of in full force. We're in the midst of MeToo and all of that. And it just seems as though this is, again, Epstein sort of chewing over the question of Donald Trump's involvement in any of that stuff. And the, the, again, sort of inscrutable fact that he is not being more publicly tied to all of these things. The stuff you said about Michael Wolff, by the way, he's such a weird and interesting figure in all of this stuff. The kind of frame for thinking about him that I have sort of settled on over the years is like he sort of postures as a political journalist, right? I mean, that's kind of his main thing. He writes these books, he has these scoops. I just sort of think of him as like part of the cast of characters, right? I mean, he's, he's just a guy who knows all these guys super well, who's like emailing on the side with Jeffrey Epstein as you're about to get to in the third email especially. I mean, this will be very clear here, but, like, he was so prominent in Trump's first term because he wrote that book Fire and Fury, where Trump just let him hang out at the White House for, like, months on end. And he got all these scoops because of the amazing amount of access that he had. But that's the way I basically think of him, as, like, not necessarily a trustworthy person. None of these guys are trustworthy people. But just another kind of person player in this story.
- [05:22]
A
Yeah. And because of his access, he also does get a lot of things right. Like, many of the things that were in his book were true, but other ones were, I think, either not true or certainly unsubstantiated. And he trades in a lot of gossip and a lot of incendiary stuff, although there's a lot of incendiary stuff to be had. And so sometimes you're never sure whether it's that you've got an unreliable narrator or just an insane group of people doing insane things that he's telling you about.
- [05:47]
B
And just to be clear, like, none of the things that we're talking about here is. Are things that Wolf is a narrator for at all. I mean, we're just talking about, like, factual information of these emails going back and forth between, you know, Wolf and Epstein and Maxwell. Like, this is just. There's just things that happen. They did email these things.
- [06:05]
A
That's right. This, and this is from Epstein's estate, which clearly got subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee, which the Democrats have put out. There are two Michael Wolff emails. I just. I want to linger on the second one, though, for a second again, because he says two things in here that are in these two lines. He says two things that are interesting. Trump said, he asked me to resign. Never a member ever. So this is around the time that Trump is trying to distance himself from Epstein by saying, I kicked him out of the club. Right. Because that has become the narrative that Trump has wanted people to believe, that he kicked Jeffrey Epstein out, that he. Yeah. Yes, he used to hang with Epstein. Nothing you can do about all the old footage of them together, but they had a falling out, he got mad at him, he made him go away. And this is what Trump supporters cling to as evidence that Trump's not a bad guy. Yes, we know Epstein was a bad guy. Yes, we know they hung out in their younger days. But Trump, because he's a standup guy, he broke it off with this guy before all this really bad stuff happened. And Trump didn't know about It. And Trump, of course, is denied knowing about it. So. So that is the first line. What it's referring to is Epstein saying, trump didn't kick me out. I was never a member there. Like, what's this garbage? And then he says, of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop. So one of the things we know about Epstein is that they were recruiting. Ghislaine Maxwell was recruiting these young girls at Mar A Lago. One of them was very sort of notoriously recruited at Mar A Lago. And so Trump in his years, because this is part of what seems to have happened, is that Trump did start to have these aspirations of higher office or a more national profile, and he did try to distance himself from Epstein, but Epstein saying, no, he knew, and he told us to stop eventually. So tell me what you make of this one.
- [08:07]
B
Yeah, well, and this is another thing that kind of plays into what you were saying is sort of like the MAGA line on this is that. Is that this is like a noble move on Trump's part to kind of cut off Epstein. And as you say, it's kind of important to that story that he cuts him off, like, because he's just getting kind of a creep vibe off of him. It's not because he has this actual knowledge of these actual crimes that are. That are taking place, you know, according, you know, with these girls that he has actually poached from Mar A Lago, that Donald Trump is in sort of like the pipeline of supplying the. These underage girls to Jeffrey Epstein. But, but, you know, but Trump didn't know about that. Trump just kind of got this bad vibe and was like, ah, maybe not. Maybe you're not welcome around here anymore. I mean, all of that, first of all, flies in the face of what Jeffrey Epstein is saying here. So that's kind of new information. But it also sort of flies in the face of the way that Trump himself has talked about the end of his relationship with Epstein in recent months, where it's. It was not like, any sort of suspicion of, like, creepy sexual behavior, but just the. This, like, weird, like, managerial protectiveness of, like, his assets, his people at his properties, that he was sort of mad as a property owner, that Epstein was. Was coming in and, you know, poaching these girls. And also, of course, it all flies very much in the face of the other main sort of insane piece of information we've gotten about Trump and Epstein's personal relationship in recent months, which is that birthday letter that he sent him. You Know, and I believe 2003, where he was talking about, you know, the, that the certain things in common that, that Trump and Epstein shared and the may every day be another beautiful secret, all sort of famously written on that hand drawn outline of a naked woman. So I mean, it's just, can I just say, like, to me it is, it is hard to know kind of what to do with information like this. Like these new revelations, like, you can't really call it like a smoking gun because that would imply like definitive proof of something that we didn't have proof of before. And really like, this is just like one more sort of insanely suspicious piece of a puzzle that's already like full of insanely suspicious pieces, right? Which is like Donald Trump seems to have had pretty extensive and like remarkably personal knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein's sexual habits and that he sort of saw them as like the glue that was holding their relationship together. Right. And like that stuff that we already have known like quite like quite well for like a long time. And so it's like, like, yes, these revelations are crazy. And it's like, it's, it's more, more wood on the fire. More wood on the fire. But also like, I just, I don't even really know how to characterize it, you know, because like you would think that all the wood that was already on the fire would add up to like a scandal that it would be impossible for this guy to ignore. But that doesn't seem to have been the case. He does continue to just ignore it. Right. So I don't know what you make of, of all of that. I just, I sort of struggle with these sort of new Epstein stories as they continue to come out.
- [10:53]
C
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- [12:19]
A
Okay, well, I'm going to maybe disagree on this point about whether or not these have smoke and gun elements, because I think that they do. But before I do that, I just want to read the third email because I think it rounds out the conversation. That's okay, but here's something to know. So on the third email, which is sort of the, this becomes kind of the weirdest one, is from December 16, 2015, and it is again to Jeffrey Epstein from Michael Wolff. So this is a few years earlier than the email we just discussed. So Michael Wolf says to Epstein, I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you, either on air or in scrum afterwards. He doesn't use any of his, what, participles or, but okay, so then Jeffrey Epstein replies, if we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be? So this is Epstein saying to Michael Wolf, who somehow has inside information about what questions are going to be asked on cnn. How would we answer this for him if we wanted to send him a line about how he should answer this? And so it's part of what's so weird about this is Michael Wolf's role and Epstein confidant and Trump PR guy. Like, the guy is like, you know, somebody helping to craft the answer. And then comes the last email, which is to Jeffrey Epstein from Michael Wolff. I think you should let him hang himself. If he says he hasn't been on a plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you. Or if it really looks like he could win, you could save him generating a debt. Of course, it is possible that when asked, he'll say, Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime. Okay, Andrew, this is why, I don't know that when you say that's not A smoking gun. This is. Jeffrey Epstein has no reason to, in these private communications going back to 2015, even before, like, this is before the 2019, when it's like, actively big out in public and you can tell me if I have anything wrong in the timeline. Like, I'm sure he's being investigated and has been well investigated at this point. But the idea that Michael Wolfe knows he's going to be asked about him and that they basically are scheming to figure out how to blackmail Trump with this information and, or use it as a chit for future help, it's basically like. And, you know, we can get into the use of that word hang multiple times, like, let him hang himself. That means let him lie about his involvement, and then you are the one who can expose him. I'm sorry, is that not a smoking gun?
- [15:22]
B
I think I have to reevaluate this a little bit here. I think you're absolutely right. I mean, just something about, like, hearing you read it out loud just now.
- [15:30]
A
Yeah.
- [15:30]
B
Just to put this in a little bit more context, basically this is, you know, late 2015, Donald Trump is not president, not really even expected to become president. Right. I mean, they're obviously treating this in a, like, it's like, it's, you know, like a moonshot possibility that maybe it's worth like, considering strategically. But it's also pre. Me, too. It's before a lot of these sort of powerful men started to drop. And so the context here is basically that Epstein has successfully gotten out from under this scandal in the past. He's a few years removed from that plea deal that got him, like, the sweetheart charges, even after federal prosecutors were going over all of this stuff before.
- [16:09]
A
Thanks. Alex Acosta, who later became Trump's Labor Secretary. Go ahead.
- [16:14]
B
Exactly. Yeah. And so the question is sort of like, oh, well, now there's this guy running for President and like, maybe there's going to be this, this new spotlight placed on it. Right. And like, like, that could have, that could have negative, negative ramifications for me because I got away with this all more or less back, back in the day. And, and yes, like, if there's one thing that you cannot deny about that email, it is that Michael Wolf and Jeffrey Epstein, in their private correspondence with one another, both see it as obviously true that Epstein could, if he wanted to wield Trump's own behavior. I don't. I mean, on a plane, at the house, who knows? I. Maybe, maybe, maybe it's true. Like, it's not super clear from how that's constructed. It's not necessarily clear that Epstein is saying that Trump has been on the plane. Obviously we have the flight logs and everything like that.
- [17:02]
A
No, no, no, I think that that is what he's saying. He's saying, I think you should let him hang himself. If he says he hasn't been on the plane or to the House, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. I don't know what PR means exactly here, but he's saying, if he lies, if he says he's never been those places. I know he has. I have proof that he has. Yeah, like that's what they're saying.
- [17:26]
B
Yeah. No, I think you're right. I mean, I think it's, it's. Man, this is insane. It's really, really quite insane. That. I mean, again, this is, this is pre Donald Trump as like plausible. I mean, he's doing quite well in the Republican primary at this time in late 2015. So like that he's obviously more of a political player than he used to be. But like the idea that this is like any sort of witch hunt thing just falls flat on its face. It's before that, it's before, you know, Democrats were not yet even taking Trump seriously as a public figure at this time. Right. Like it was, there was zero, zero sense of any like, oh man, we really gotta get this guy. It was like, haha, wouldn't it be funny if Republicans nominated him and threw the election to Hillary Clinton? You know what I mean? So like, yeah, I mean, it's just, it's all right there, isn't it? It's what a, what a time to be alive.
- [18:13]
A
I think this. So I'll just say my personal perspective is that these are hugely damaging for Trump. I think the people who are out there right now absorbing this information and then saying, you know, but are people going to care? Josh Holmes and Eric Erickson, they're all out there saying, oh, this is a distraction from Dems losing the shutdown, that, that, you know, they're bringing up Epstein again. And I'm, I'm just like, how morally compromised, how just like bankrupt have you become on the inside that you don't look at these emails and think, maybe I'm supporting a guy who was actively either a pedophile or who certainly was covering up for America's most notorious pedophile ring. Like the idea that this is just all politics or all a political distraction as opposed to. And I think for us, you know, one of the things about the Epstein case is that Trump has always been such a vile person, a bad person. And I think that this is one of those things that comes along that really emphasize like just how despicable he is, like how completely and totally morally bankrupt Donald Trump is. And I think it is hard for people who, especially people who post Donald Trump trying to overturn an election, jumped on board with him, be like, oh no, have I gone all in on this guy being a pedophile or being, you know, all in on this guy just being. People who hate him this much just have tds that if we get evidence that Epstein himself said that Trump was involved, I have to create, I have to act like it's a political dodge on the Democrats part as opposed to taking it as, you know what? This is too much, this is too wrong, it's too gross, it's too awful and Trump should resign over it.
- [20:08]
B
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, that's just people sort of in the commentary space. Right? I mean, the other thing we haven't even talked about, although obviously we've talked about it a lot in the past, is just the like unbelievable level of complicity in the active cover up of all of these things throughout the Republican government in D.C. right now. I mean, throughout, you know, the executive branch, you have all of these agencies that in theory, you know, are responsible for investigating this sort of thing that even had a mandate, you know, to, to investigate the Epstein case very thoroughly from Trump's own voters to get in there and just, you know, let the chips fall where they may, who have instead, as we have like reportedly seen or repeatedly seen through public reporting, have been tasked with like, you know, here's all the Epstein files. Let's go through and let's figure out every time Donald Trump's mentioned, you know, like straight from the President to Pam Bondi that we need to do that. Or over in Congress where Mike Johnson has kept the House, you know, out of session for months on end, very seemingly just in order to stop seating, in order to avoid ceding. You know, the, the, the one lawmaker who would, who would come in and be a 218th vote to, to force a vote to, to release these files. You know, the, the, the full, the full Epstein files that the government has. I mean, it's just everywhere you look, you are confronted by people who are not just sort of like rationalizing this stuff and not just sort of turning away and, and, and doing, doing like, well, shouldn't we pay. Be paying more attention to this other issue instead, but who are actively trying to help Donald Trump bury it Stop this stuff from coming out. Even these oversight files we are only getting because, you know, there were a couple Republican defections law on a, on a sort of long ago vote in the Oversight Committee to vote with Democrats to, you know, force the release of a lot of this stuff. And again, you know, we don't know if this is the extent of it. We don't know if this is the tip of an iceberg that we still don't have. We do know that Republicans continue to fight very hard to, you know, prevent future votes on, on more revelations. So yeah, I mean it's just the more, the more you scratch, the grosser it looks. And, and, and who knows how far into that process we are.
- [22:15]
A
I mean, and let's just not forget as one additional major piece of this at the moment, Ghislaine Maxwell has been moved to a minimum security club fed type prison after meeting with Donald Trump's. No. Somebody from doj. The number two at doj, they are trying. And look, when I just read some of Trump, it was some of Trump's comments on this on July 28th on a pardon possibility for Maxwell, he said, well, I'm allowed to give her a pardon, but nobody's approached me with it. On Air force1 on July 29, Trump said he was upset, upset that Epstein was taking people who worked for me. The woman he said, were taken out of the spa, hired by him. In other words, gone. Okay, so that is part of what they're talking about. That dude that Epstein was recruiting at Mar A Lago. I said, listen, we don't want you taking our people. Asked if Guffrey was one of the employees poached by Epstein, he demurred, but then said he stole her. So weird. September 3rd, Trump called, called the demands for release of the Epstein files, a democratic hoax that never ends. On September 9, Trump told ABC about the birthday book drawing. It's not my signature and it's not the way I speak. And anybody that's covered me for a long time notice that's not my language. This is what he's been saying. He's been trying to be like, nothing to see here. Why are we still talking about Epstein? I'm not the one who signed the book. Even though that is clearly a lie. Like, that's a lie. Here's the one thing, Andrew, that I guess I want to ask you. That might not be a real fair question for you, but I'm going to do it anyway. One of the things I can't get over is like Christians like Mike Johnson, people who talk about their faith loudly as a defining characteristic. He's clearly, as you just noted, keeping Congress out of session in order to keep a vote from happening on the Epstein files. Because Trump has told him he absolutely doesn't want to see a vote on the Epstein files. Like, what do you think Mike Johnson's doing? How do people, if they know this stuff about Trump is in there, how can they cover for him? Like, how can they live with themselves covering for him? How can Pam Bondi do it? This is the one thing, and maybe I can't tell if I'm too cynical or not cynical enough. Cause there's this part of me that's always been like, you know, I bet he's lied about a bunch of things. I bet he was much more involved than we realize. But there must not be something really bad or these people couldn't possibly cover it up, could they? And then I go, what am I talking about? Yes, they could. Yes, they would. Even if, like, with these coming out. And like I said, I think they are, they are very damning. The most damning thing, because they come directly from Jeffrey Epstein. Do you think that someone like Mike Johnson, like, is there a point at which they say, I'm out, I can't cover it. I can't cover for it anymore, or not.
- [25:04]
B
A lot of that is, does depend, like, as you say, kind of on what the actual motivation is. And you could, you could sketch a couple of different pictures. One is that it's just all pure hypocrisy, that he just wants to be adjacent to power, like a lot of people do, and he's doing whatever he has to do to remain adjacent to political power. And that's just the thing that drives him. And all the other, you know, the faith stuff is window dressing and doesn't really factor into it, whatever that's possible. The other, the more kind of steel man possibility here. And this is true, I think of a lot of a lot of Christians, not even. Not just who are in positions of power, but just sort of like, who are Republican and have, you know, been on, you know, strapped to the Donald Trump rocket ship now for a decade, where they just, they just have this view that politics is always gross, politics is always a grubby thing. It's not quite like the main thing. And like, the big thing in politics is if you're going to, like, play as a Christian, the main thing is just like, stick with the Republican Party. Because the Republican Party is not hostile to religious liberty. It's not hostile to Christianity. Like, we believe the Democratic Party to be like the republic. Like Donald Trump, you know, that was a big theme for him. Anytime he would talk to believers on the campaign trail last year, he's like, democrats are coming to ruin your lives. And I'm. I'm the guy who's standing in the way, right? And so, like, from that starting point from politics is always gross. But, like, we need this fighter. You can ra. You can rationalize a fair amount, right? And, like, the problem is once you start doing those rationalizations, it becomes that much easier to do the next rationalization and the next rationalization and the next rationalization. And now we're a decade in, and you're looking around, you're like, holy shit. I am now sort of like, being asked to give, like, at least my tacit, but maybe actually my active, like, support to trying to sort of like, sweep this elite pedophilia scandal under the rug. And like, sometimes that's just the way, you know, people don't turn into drug addicts, like, sort of out on the street corner in like an afternoon, right? It's like a slow process of accommodation by which your life gets worse and worse and worse through a series of bad but, like, plausible and reasonable seeming to you at the time decisions, right? And then suddenly you look around and your life is, like, in shambles around you. I think that has happened politically to a lot of Christians in the.
- [27:12]
A
That's an excellent answer. That was an excellent and illuminating answer. Okay, Andrew, I don't know if you have anything else, but that is. That is the. That is what we have so far on Epstein. We don't have comment from the White House yet. I will be interested to hear what Republicans say, but I don't think this has anything to do with the shutdown. I don't think it is meant to be just a distraction. I think Trump may do something to try to distract from this. But I do think this is a bombshell story that is going to continue to develop and that is going to make life very difficult for Trump and Republican Republicans in the immediate term. Okay, Andrew, thank you for jumping on and doing this, guys. I'm going to go. I'm going to get this out fast. Then we're going to talk about it even more on TNL later. Go hit, subscribe. Subscribe to the feed. Check us out at Bulwark Plus. Thanks. We'll see you guys soon.