President Donald Trump has been busy rejecting any and all proposals from his team to address the uproar over his Justice Department’s closing of the case of Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender alleged to have run a blackmail operation targeting powerful figures, The Atlantic reported Thursday.
In a memo last week, the DOJ concluded that Epstein had, in fact, not maintained a “client list” of power people for blackmail purposes, and stated that no further information would be released on the matter, enraging many MAGA faithful.
Trump has attempted to appease his base by decrying theories around Epstein as a Democrat “hoax,” as well as by calling for transcripts from a grand jury related to Epstein to be released. Those efforts, however, have yet to quell the furor among some of his most loyal supporters, and according to several White House officials, Trump had rejected a number of proposals presented to him by his team.
“Any decision would ultimately come from (Attorney General Pam) Bondi and Trump together – or from Trump alone – and for days, the president was adamant about doing nothing,” Politico writers Ashley Parker and Jonathan Lemire write.
Trump was reportedly pitched with several ideas; call on the courts to unseal documents related to Epstein’s case, appoint a special counsel to investigate, have Bondi hold a news conference, or hold daily news conferences strictly on Epstein. All, according to the White House officials, were rejected.
“He’s being tested and doesn’t like it,” one White House official told Politico, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “He doesn’t want to talk about it.”
Trump had also reportedly “raged” privately among his team at MAGA influencers, who he alleged to have “grown famous” from their association with him, only to continue to press into the Epstein matter. An outside advisor “who is in regular touch with the West Wing” told Politico that Trump called the MAGA influencers “disloyal,” and that they had “forgotten whose name is above the door.”
