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Sam Stein
One most trusted app based on August 2025 proprietary survey. Over 500,000 new listings every month based on average new for sale and rental listings. July 2024 to June 2025. Hey everybody, it's me, Sam Stein managing out at the Bulwark, joined by my man Tim. It's Friday. It's Friday.
Tim
Of which week got to get down on Friday?
Sam Stein
No, it's, it's. Oh my God. It's the end of January and we've, we. We've been pouring over these Epstein files. So the. The Department of Justice finally released, the Epstein files they've been pouring through. It's about 3 million files. Lots of videos, lots of pictures, stuff. I will admit I haven't made it through all 3 million. I'm working my way because I've been.
Tim
Live streaming in solidarity with Don Lemon, who is currently jailed as a victim of the regime. So, you know, you can only do so much.
Sam Stein
You can only do so much. But there's a lot to go through. We've gone through some of the better bits and Tim and I, we couldn't really settle on what is like a one here. And so I'm going to give Tim the option to do a dealer's choice. Let me just start with the sort of broad picture. It's disgusting. A lot of this shit is gross. The big picture takeaway is that indeed there were a lot of rich, well connected people who were hobnobbing with this dude who all kind of, you know, played footsie with him. Some clearly wanted to go to the island. Some did go to the island. And then they all fucking lied about it subsequently when they were asked about it. I mean, the people who were most adamant that this was a grotesque cabal of people hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein, they probably were hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein. And we're gonna get to that in a little bit.
Tim
Yeah. Can I just throw out one big picture thought on that as well, which is, did anybody not hang out with Jeffrey Epstein? Like, I'm disgusted by all of you, every rich male boomer. Now, I just presume that you are on Epstein island until you've proven to me otherwise, because it is just disgusting how many names are in this and how long they were still emailing him after it was known that he was a pedophile. Like, that is the thing that is the show. Shocking to me. You know, I was like, I have some unsavory friends, but if you get. If you get fucking convicted of fucking girls, young girls, children, and then you invite me to a soiree or invite me to put. You want to put your name. You want to sponsor my fundraiser? Like, no, no, lose my number. Lose my number. And you. I would think that that would be kind of a natural instinct for people. Lose my number. But it's the opposite. Apparently all of these guys are just like, yeah, great, no problem, Jeff. When do I get to come down to Little Saint Jeff's?
Sam Stein
Yeah, it's not just that. It's that some of these characters, and we will get into this, spent the last couple of years being like, oh, oh, this guy was the worst. And I knew it. I knew it. And he's grotesque. And anyone who cavorted with him should be in jail. And then it turns out they were emailing the guy and, like, doing fundraisers with the guy and hanging out with the guy. And so there's this famous Norm MacDonald bit where he's doing getting, you know, comedians and coffee with Jerry Seinfeld and talking about Bill Cosby, and he's like, oh, you know, the hypocrisy is the worst part. And Norm's like, actually, it's the raping.
Tim
Yes.
Sam Stein
In this case, the worst part is what Epstein did. It's not the hypocrisy. I just want to be clear. But there's some real hypocrisy here. All right, that being said, off my shoulders, dealer's choice, where do you want to start?
Tim
You know, anytime there's a story about Donald Trump's tiny dick getting bit, I think even if it's just an allegation, I think that's probably the lead for me. So I'd like to start with that.
Sam Stein
Well, we'll start with that. I'm going to set it up. These are allegations, and there's a lot of intrigue around this during the course of the day, because as part of the files that were posted, the DOJ released what looked like a compendium of complaints or allegations or tips of allegations made against Donald Trump. And it was with a little bit of a box that said, you sort of. Did they track them down? Who did they talk to? Did they lead to anything or not? Some of those boxes said, you know, the witness was unreliable. One of them, I think, was like, she proved to be crazy. The tipsters were. I mean, the tips are vile. I'm not going to read them. They're vile.
Tim
Why not?
Sam Stein
And they're. Well, they're not. I don't know if they're true either. Right. Like, but what is intrusive.
Tim
Look, again, everybody has right to their day in court, you know, innocent until proven guilty. I'm just saying, just like speaking for myself, if you. If you search the FBI for complaints and accusations, you know, about times that I was with Jeffrey Epstein and young children, that would come up with zero. There'd be zero of those. And for. And I think that would be true for most people. For Donald Trump, we've got seven at least. So that's kind of a lot for somebody, you know, including the aforementioned one where a friend told Alexis that she was approximately 13 to 14 years old. When this occurred. And a friend allegedly bit Trump while performing oral sex. The friend was hit in the face after she laughed about biting Trump. The friend said she was also abused by Epstein. Again, it's a complaint and allegation submitted to the FBI. Several of these were from, you know, a long time ago. Yeah.
Sam Stein
So what happened in the middle of the day was that this link, this file, just randomly disappeared from the Internet. Looked like it was taken down, unclear why, and then suddenly got put back up on the website. The DOJ has not explained what exactly happened. Now, there are actual emails involving Trump that suggest he was in and around Epstein way after he says that he kicked him out of the club and wanted nothing to do with him. We're talking about 2011, 2012, things like that. And there's one in particular that I could get to, unless you have more thoughts on this, that involves Kathy Rumler. But is there anything else you want to say about this? Specific lists of tips that they were investigating?
Tim
You know, there. There are a couple that seem a little. A little unlike over the top, you know, Sammy. So I don't know. I mean, maybe Sammy Sosa and Patti LaBelle were hanging out, but I think that does feel unlikely. So I guess seems like.
Sam Stein
It seems like one we probably could attract.
Tim
That I would throw that in there. But, you know, again, there are others that are pretty likely. Like, such as redacted reported she has a friend, Redacted. Who is personal assistant to Epstein from 86 to 92. They shared names of the guest at Epstein's parties. They included Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. You know, so again, I think that there are a lot of allegations out here. Once he becomes president, obviously, I think you get crazy. People start making wild allegations. But, like, there's an FBI file on Trump for his relationship to Epstein dating back to before he became a political figure. And I think that's very noteworthy. And I think it's very noteworthy that one of them is that he got his dick fit.
Sam Stein
Well, you're obsessed with getting to that anecdote. What's your larger takeaway about the Trump Epstein relationship?
Tim
I think that they were bachelors. Well, I guess Trump was married, but that didn't really stop. Still bachelor, because he's such a good dad and husband. This was before he brought in Melania, the immigrant who can barely speak English from out of the country to make her his third wife. But I think that they were buddies. They went to the same parties. They, they hung out. They both liked younger women. You know, there was a little Bit of competitive nature there. I think Epstein had some very disgusting predilections. I think the best you could say about Trump is that because of Trump's competitive nature and pride, you know, maybe he was not interested in the handouts that some of these other disgusting, gross fat body men who couldn't give girls for themselves were. And so instead of like taking the women that Epstein was raping, maybe instead he was being inappropriate and sexually harassing and assaulting the teenage to young 20s women, late teens to young 20s women that were at these parties and doing exactly what he admitted to on Access Hollywood tape, which is grabbing them against their will and, and, and sort of doing that himself. I think that's like the median likely outcome, like situation. I think that that is probably what was happening. Is it possible it was worse than that? Sure. Could it be much better than that? I don't see how it could be much better than that, seeing as Trump has admitted dysrexual harassment and assault already and has had dozens of credible accusations against him. And we see how much time they hung out together.
Sam Stein
Yeah, I guess that's where I sort of come down. What stands out to me is how it's just sort of taken as a matter of fact in all these emails that they're pals, but also more like Trump's kind of a pervasive and like, and like he's, you know, he's, he's, he's around with young women and like, of course he is. And no one's ever like, not Donald, like, yeah, right.
Tim
That couldn't be Donald.
Sam Stein
That doesn't make any sense. And in fact, so like there's this one email and, and this gets to two elements of the story. One is the just how widespread the sort of network of Epstein associates really is. And two is how Trump's character is just sort of a known fact. And it involves Kathy Rummler, who was the Obama White House counsel. So she worked for the Barack Obama White House. She was his top lawyer. She was also an advisor to Jeffrey Epstein and she was helping him kind of navigate really tricky press attention and issues related to that back in 2016. So this is not like that long ago. This is post. This is towards the end of the Obama era. This is March 2016. She's extent, she's exchanging emails with a guy, which is gross. Right. She knew who he was and he's a disgusting human being. And she's willing to do this. But secondarily, this is why this email surface today is they're talking About Trump, Epstein emails. He's like, Trump's likely to be asked questions about me and what's the ideal way to that we should talk about it. And she gives him sort of some anodyne talking point. You know, I, I knew Epstein professionally. It always, you know, positive dealings with him, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then EPST writes her and he says, supposedly a girl said that Donald had sex with her at my house when she was underage. She said she has a witness in 1993. Okay. At no point does Epstein say it's not true or like this. I, I'm telling you this doesn't make any sense. Or like we should like flatly deny this because it's absolutely, positively impossible that that would happen. It's like, yeah, I mean the implication is that, yeah, it could be true. I don't know.
Tim
Yeah, I have two thoughts on that. One is a separate batch of emails between Maxwell and Trump where she's talking about, I assume Virginia Giuffre, I don't know. But like they're talking about an unnamed girl that worked at Mar A Lago who said she was 15 and they're trying to strategize about how to make the point that she's 17. Not exactly sure what the benefit of that strategic like fib is, what they thought that they were gaining out of that. Maybe the crime, maybe the punishments, little worse legal adjacent. But again, they're talking about and like, and Maxwell's like, I thought you said we were to keep Donald out of this. And it's like they're not. And so like they're plotting on how to deal with him. Again, about another girl that is like in her teens, like at some, some part in her teenage years. The rumbler thing, what, what is happening with that? And like the only thing I ever knew about her is there was a big controversy during the Obama years about where the IRS was targeting conservative groups. And she was kind of complicit in that. At least at some level it was, you know, there are a couple mid level IRS people that sort of went down for this, like doing what you're not supposed to. What the Trump administration does openly now. But what previous to this was, you know, looked was looked was frowned upon, which is the administration targeting political folks. And so a couple of people at the irs, you know, end up falling for this. But like there's never really implication that Obama wanted this to happen. But Rummeler was involved in that. Like she like kind of approved a memo or something. I'm going from Memory so that we should go right. But like she saw a memo. So that's the only thing I ever knew about her. Because I, back then I was a Republican. I was consuming conservative stuff. How do you find yourself going from that to like giving Jeffrey Epstein advice on his sex crimes? Like what I. It's, it's, it's mind boggling.
Sam Stein
Baffling. It's baffling to me. It's baffling to me. And look, I guess in the, in the spirit of full disclosure, my wife was at the Obama White House counsel's office with, when Kathy was there. So like there's some relation but like I haven't called her up to ask.
Tim
Get her, she had the House get.
Sam Stein
Her on me, get her on the YouTubes. But like, you know, just from my own experience.
Tim
Did you know she was a backup executor of Epstein's will?
Sam Stein
I know this is crazy. And she's got corporate connections. She's been at the top of the legal industry, the political industry. And then to have this kind of weird side hustle where you're Jeffrey Epstein's like consigliere. I don't get it. It's one of the most perplexing things where smart people at the height of their powers, titans of their industry and we can get to others too decided like they kind of liked the guy or needed the guy. Like for instance in these files, and we know this because the White House clearly planted this story. There's this piece about how Bill Gates. The Daily Mail hairline. Jeffrey Epstein says Bill Gates caught sexually transmitted disease from Russian girls and then suggested secretly slipping Melinda antibiotics. New emails and DOJ release. Like, what is Bill Gates doing here? I don't, I, I just don't get it. These are smart people. They have a lot to lose. And maybe they're Huber Scott's.
Tim
And the Bill Gates thing makes sense to me why. Again, these are all allegations. But just assuming what you're seeing in the emails is true. It's challenging for a dorky guy like that to figure out an appropriate way to spend time with hot young women. And Jeffrey Epstein provides you is like a concierge to that he's a credible guy who could, who can, you can hang out with him. And they're also to be women around. Right. Like I think he makes, he makes something that's challenging that you want to do easy. I mean this is gross, but like that's got to be it, right? Yeah.
Sam Stein
There's no way to look at it. One is you're married and you don't have to do that with the people.
Tim
Say not everybody's like you, okay?
Sam Stein
You're married, you have billions of dollars. Go pursue some other passion projects then.
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Sam Stein
Back to the the files themselves, there's other main characters throughout the file release. So we I'm we're not going to spend much time on this, but Steve Bannon comes up a fair bit like they had a really close relationship. And Bannon apparently has all this footage of Epstein and we don't know what the hell's going on with this. The other person who comes up a lot, a lot is Elon. Elon is in these files a ton and there's some question about how close he was to Epstein. And you know, you look through these files and it's highly suggestive of relationship that, you know, it wasn't a bad relationship, let's put it that way.
Tim
No, look at this. I mean, and there's the one where they're planning the island trip and Epstein asks how many people he'll need for the helicopter. Hell, he writes. Epstein says, probably just Tallulah and me. What day night will be the wildest party on your island. Okay, this is sent again in 2012. He's already been to jail for sex trafficking of minors, right? So, like, what do you think you're signing up for when you ask for the wildest party on the Pedo Island? I don't know.
Sam Stein
It's pretty gross. Now there's a Question about whether Elon actually went because there's another subsequent email saying, hey, sorry I missed you. The. For instance, a couple days. There's a shame, but there will be others. I'm here off and on. Elon writes to Jeffrey Epstein a couple days later after saying, logistics won't work out this time around. But, you know, years later, Elon claimed to, you know, have wanted nothing to do with Epstein, shunning Epstein, never wanted to visit the island, yada, yada, yada.
Tim
It turns out it's just he wants the helicopter there. This is where I get taught on all this. Like, this is not an accusation that any of these people slept with girls. But, like, right. You know, if you. Let's say that there was, you know, that something happened where, like, Keith Richards emails and texts got dropped, and Keith was throwing a lot of parties, and you were a teetotaler who said that you don't drink and do drugs, and you were sending an email to Keith, and you're like, yeah, it'll probably just be me and my girlfriend. What Day night will be the wildest party on your. You know, at your. At your house. I think it would be easy to presume that you would be doing drugs there if you want to go to the Keith Richards party. Like, he's known for drugs. Okay, okay. So, like, maybe some people went to Keith Richards party and didn't do drugs. I don't know. But I think it's a fair to assume that if you're, like, trying to get into the party, like, drugs are on the menu. Like, Epstein is known for trafficking young girls. Like, that's what he's. I was. He was known for in 2012. This isn't 1992. Like, he'd been to jail for it already. Right.
Sam Stein
And you're asking what the wildest party is? It's not like, oh, are you reading, like, great literature and listening to cool music? Like, what kind of Shakespeare are you gonna break out? I can't wait.
Tim
That's like, what, you know, you're signing up for. And different people are into different shit. You're emailing the pedo guy and asking him what the wildest party's gonna be. Do you think that Elon knew he was in the files when he said that Trump was in the files?
Sam Stein
I don't.
Tim
That's the.
Sam Stein
I. I don't get it. Again, I come back to this. Like, Elon made a big stink of this stuff, like, pedophilia rings and Trump being in the file, and Trump's a Pedo. He called Trump a pedo. And he must have known he was emailing Jeffrey Epstein directly.
Tim
Right?
Sam Stein
Like, how could you not? That's. This is the most confounding part for me is like, why would you say those things knowing fully well that this is hanging out over there? Could be released at any point in time. Don't get it.
Tim
Like, do I remember every person I emailed in 2012?
Sam Stein
You would remember Jeffrey fucking Epstein.
Tim
Surely it would be Jeffrey Epstein. I promise you. I remember everyone who I emailed asking them to give me a helicopter ride to their island. That is a memorable email. It's not as if it's like a 20 person cc, you know, you got added in.
Sam Stein
I would at least check before tweeting, did I email Jeffrey Epstein? Let me check the archives to make sure I don't have anything incriminating in there that might come out. But that's not even the worst one of these cases. The worst one is Howard. I want to play the video of Howard Lutnick talking to the New York Post about how he, you know, bravely shunned Jeffrey Epstein after walking in one time. Epstein was a neighbor. And how he took a moral stand against Jeffrey Epstein. And then we'll get to the emails after the fact that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again. So I was never in the room with him socially for business or even philanthropy. If that guy was there, I wasn't.
Tim
Going because he's gross.
Sam Stein
And so I look back at it as a gift. Yes, he gave me a gift of voice. So, yeah, that's my story.
Tim
A one and absolutely done.
Sam Stein
One and done.
Tim
One and absolutely done. And hell yeah, it's nice that there's somebody with, you know, it's just sort of clear morals in the Trump administration that has a moral compass that, you know, has red lines and they're like, you know, I got invited to one thing, realized you as a creep. Never again for me. I, I give you total dispensation for that. Howard Nutlik. That's somebody that is doing the right thing in my cabinet. Right, Sam, is how you played that.
Sam Stein
Let's put up the email. So here we have Howard Lutnick. We're landing in St. Thomas early Saturday afternoon and planning to head over to St Bart on Monday at some point. Where are you located? What's the exact locator for my captain? I need a captain. Does Sunday evening for dinner sound good? I have another couple with me on my boat and each of us have four children. Two 16s, two 14s, a 13, 12, 11 and a 7 year old. Thanks, Howard. And Epstein at some point responds to him. Hey, come Saturday or Sunday lunch, little St James on the map behind Christmas Cove. So no, no problems talking with Howard, organizing lunches with Jeffrey Epstein. And then in 2017, Lick had no problem taking $50,000 for Epstein for some cause. So he's fine with his money. I guess it wasn't the gift that he pretended or said it was to see the massage chair there in his house.
Tim
Why would you want to bring a child to Epstein Island? You're looking at this thing, these emails, like Letnick's emailing somebody, somebody's emailing Groff, Groff's emailing Epstein. I'm not going to give, not like the benefit of the doubt here. I mean like, why are you even involved in a chain like this? But like we don't actually know that he went to the island. God willing. He didn't bring up 214.
Sam Stein
Well, he certainly didn't have, have the moral repulsion that.
Tim
He certainly did not have the moral repulsion. No. His whole like I never, never again is certainly a no there. But the other thing that Epstein does, it's just important to think about always in the context of all these emails is like he's trying to put people together. You know, he's doing it like he's, he's trying to bring people into his clutches. And so like he's simultaneously doing two things. Right. Like, and both are, both groups are gross, but they're just obviously completely different levels of gross. Right. Like there are the people that like Epstein and want to hang out with him because they're interested in the girls. And then there's like another group of celebrities that Epstein like has like uses to like keep a halo of interesting things around. Like, oh, look, there'll be other rich guys and other celebrities around here. You should come and oh, Bill Gates will be here, Woody Allen will be here, Prince Andrew will be here, Clinton, Trump, you know, you never know. And so then there. So that is like happening across all these emails where he's like connecting not people that are not molesting the girls with molesting lesters.
Sam Stein
The most generous, innocent interpretation is that everyone was sort of like pretending to be associates with Jeffrey Epstein. He's like trying desperately to bring people together and he's just like networking. Yeah. And they're just like, yeah, yeah, I'll see at the island. And they're like rolling their eyes at the guy on the side that would be the most generous, but I actually don't think that's the case.
Tim
I don't want his 50k though.
Sam Stein
Yeah, I would not take the money.
Tim
The other weird thing, just one more thing about that 50k email, because, again, and just like, in the interest of fairness or not fairness, just in the interest of, like, it's hard to tell for the emails exactly what the result of all this stuff is, because you're just, like, looking at the exchange. But, like, the notable thing in the exchange is, like, Jeffrey being like, here's the 50k to John Paulson, who's another fucking rich banker guy, donor to Republican stuff. And here's 50k for me for this thing. Hope PR is okay. So he's like, not only is he aware that he's. He has PR baggage, but he's telling them he does. Almost giving him a pass to say no. You know, kind of like to go back and say, oh, sorry, bro. Like, I don't want to deal with the lawyers over here. You know, you could do that if you didn't want to be confrontational. They don't do it. They don't take. And so it's like, they know about all this. And that's the other thing. Like, sometimes you hear people that are. That defend this stuff and are like, well, it was weird. It was a weird story. And it was in Miami years before. Maybe people didn't know. It's like, they know. He knows. He puts it in there. PR is a problem. I'm a PR problem.
Sam Stein
Last bit is the actual. There's some real tangible news around Epstein's death that is in these documents. His cellmate, according to notes that were released, he said he told Epstein, quote, don't hang yourself up in my cell. Don't try to kill yourself in the cell. I don't want to wake up and find. To find you dead. According to the notes released, and Epstein said, according to the cellmate, don't worry, I'm never going to cause you trouble. Does give an indication that Epstein, that at least his cellmate thought Epstein may have been suicidal. Take that for what?
Tim
As the World Turns? I think the other news here, which maybe we should just lead with, is just what we learned about the handling of this, you know, like. Like, they fucked up the redactions. Shocker. They did. Like, they left many victims. Names appears in unrelected files and they scrambled to fix that. So, you know, this is not again. Once again, these guys are just total clowns. They leaked stuff to try to hurt foes like Bill Gates. Immediately you pointed this out on Twitter. Like, the first attacks, hits on Gates were landing, like, simultaneously, literally.
Sam Stein
They had two articles come out simultaneously when Todd Blanche was announcing the files. One was that Gates article, and another one was an exclusive from Fox News Online about how they had searched all the files and nothing incriminating had come up with. With regards to Trump. And Todd Blanche was quoted in the Fox News piece. He had previewed it for Fox News. I would have just tried harder from a PR perspective. It was a little hamfish.
Tim
Yeah. So they. They were working the back end, which. Which we all know. And I think the other interesting part is that Bondi is all in on the Don Lemon stuff today and not at all involved with this.
Sam Stein
I think she's had her fill with this shit. Yeah, she's done. Yeah, it's been her one one too many times. All right, well, look, here's a plea to the people who are watching this. It's 3 million files. Like, we're not going to be able to look through all of them. We're trying our best to get through all of them. If you see something interesting or noteworthy, just let us know in the comments. We'll take a look and try to follow up if need be. But help be our eyes and ears on this stuff because it's a lot of material to sift through. Tim, appreciate it. I'm glad you threw in a couple references to the image of Trump's dick being bitten. Thank you for that. It's gonna haunt me over the weekend.
Tim
It's kind of a small area to kind of hit, too, you know? So you really gotta really kind of be doing it purposely. It's not really an accident, you know, it's not like a cucumber situation.
Sam Stein
Could be a mini cuke. You never know. All right, on that note, subscribe to the feed. This is a ridiculous end to this video. Subscribe to the feed. Subscribe to the book. We'll talk to you later. Have a great weekend.
Podcast: Bulwark Takes
Date: January 31, 2026
Host(s): Sam Stein & Tim
Summary by: Podcast Summarizer
This fast-paced episode finds Sam Stein and Tim dissecting the explosive newly-released files from the DOJ on Jeffrey Epstein—a trove of some three million documents. The hosts wade through allegations, notable names, and the enduring hypocrisy among the powerful who maintained, or denied, ties to Epstein, even after his criminal record became public. The discussion focuses on several prominent figures—including Donald Trump, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and lesser-known yet influential associates—highlighting the culture of denial, complicity, and moral evasion at the pinnacle of American power.
The conversation is acerbic, biting, and darkly comic—in classic Bulwark fashion—blending moral outrage, gallows humor, and world-weary cynicism. Sam and Tim drop memorable zingers while expressing genuine horror at the breadth of elite complicity. The banter never detracts from the seriousness of the revelations but offers listeners some catharsis in confronting the grotesque, absurd reality of the Epstein files.
This episode doesn’t simply catalogue the latest revelations. It captures the profound moral rot and elite self-delusion at play in America's power structures, as exposed by the Epstein saga. The hosts’ incredulity is both a defense mechanism and a call to see these figures—and their self-serving narratives—without illusions.