Officials in President Donald Trump’s administration have been prohibited from talking about Jeffrey Epstein, a White House source told NBC News Thursday.
“Trump himself has signaled that he doesn’t want members of his administration talking about the matter nonstop,” NBC News reported, citing a “person close to the White House” speaking on the condition of anonymity. “And White House aides have made it clear that no one in the administration is allowed to talk about Epstein without high-level vetting.”
Trump has desperately tried to move past coverage on his past relationship with Epstein, who died in 2019 awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. However, he’s been largely unsuccessful, particularly among many MAGA faithful, many of whom feel betrayed by the Trump administration’s refusal to release files on Epstein currently held by the Justice Department.
"The communications office has to be directly involved in every aspect of this," the senior administration official told NBC News. "Every 'i' must be dotted, and every 't' must be crossed through us. The questions are going to come, but whether we engage or not is part of the consideration.”
Another official said, “Things are, obviously, different with this one,” said a Republican operative familiar with the White House’s thinking. “This has blown a bit of a hole in MAGA, so reflexive defense mode, as we have often seen in the past, won’t always be the go-to. Part of the problem is that this issue has leaked into conservative media. In the past, they [White House] could expect certain interviewers to be friendly and stay on script; that’s not guaranteed with this one.”
Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, rolled out a presentation Wednesday alleging former President Obama of having “conspired to subvert the will of the American people” by falsely pursuing an investigation into Trump for allegedly colluding with Russia to win the presidential election in 2016. The presentation, however, has been described by critics as an attempt to deflect from Epstein, and an unsuccessful one at that, even among conservatives.
Trump’s past relationship with Epstein has been under fire in recent weeks following the explosive report from The Wall Street Journal that revealed new details about the relationship, suggesting it was more intimate than previously known. Trump also faces a mutiny of sorts among some House Republicans, with a handful of them pushing to unseal all Epstein files through legislation, much to the chagrin of House leadership.
