Top Trump officials warned they are falling into MAGA's Epstein trap
Top officials will gather at Vice President JD Vance's residence to discuss the administration's strategy for the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, and a CNN analyst said they appeared to be conspiring in plain sight.
Vance will meet over dinner with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who met twice with Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, and panelists on "CNN This Morning" discussed the latest developments in the scandal.
"Vice President Vance will host key members of the administration to discuss whether or not to release the tapes of Jeffrey Epstein's co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell's interview last month," said host Audie Cornish. "The attorney general, FBI director and others will attend. At the same time, the House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas to nearly a dozen former officials as it broadens its investigation into Epstein files. Among those included, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Republicans are zeroing in on the former president for his documented association with Epstein in a subpoena to Mrs. Clinton. Republicans cited her hiring of Ghislaine Maxwell's nephew in her 2008 presidential campaign. We're going to bring in the group chat to talk about this."
"The thing that is confusing about this is if you're trying to tell the world that there's no longer a conspiracy, do you have a dinner where you all get in a room privately and talk about it?" she added.
CNN senior reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere agreed the meeting would not likely allay suspicions about President Donald Trump's relationship with the disgraced financier.
"Yeah, and talk about what they're going to release and what they're not going to release," Dovere said. "This does seem to be exactly the kind of thing that many of the people who will be in the room tonight at this dinner talked about before, as the things that government did to hide the Epstein files. Right, and it includes Kash Patel and JD Vance, who both of them spent quite a bit of time talking about releasing the files, releasing the files. So, look, they are now talking about what they are going to release and what they are not going to release, and they're doing it in a meeting that was not announced. Our colleagues reported about it, they found out about it."
"They're doing it behind closed doors, they're talking about what information they might there might be other than this, including this recording of the Maxwell interview," Dovere added. "This does seem to be the, like I said, the kind of thing that would feed the conspiracy thinking of exactly the people who are part of it now."
The subpoenas issued by the GOP-led oversight committee leaves out some notable names, according to Cornish and Democratic strategist Maria Cardona.
"Where's Alex Acosta, who actually was the one who originally negotiated the horrible [plea] deal with Epstein?" Cardona said. "Where is Bondi, where is Kash Patel – the people who have actually seen the files? If you're going to subpoena Bill Clinton, because of course, Republicans are like, oh, well, he was Epstein's friend. Guess who else was Epstein's good friend? Donald Trump. So this to me is, again, another distraction and another excuse for them to be able to say, 'Oh, look what we're doing, we really do want transparency.' That's just BS – they don't want transparency, they don't want anyone to testify that is going to be able to say that Donald Trump is in the Epstein files, period."
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