President Donald Trump became panicked after realizing he would take a starring role in the Jeffrey Epstein exposé he’d been promising for years and moved to shut it down, his biographer said on a podcast published Tuesday.
Author Michael Wolff told the Daily Beast Podcast that Trump was initially "happy to ignore" the Epstein controversy until his own appointees began hyping up the release of the so-called "Epstein files."
The ensuing mess has put him "at war" with his own Department of Justice, the writer said.
Attorney General Pam Bondi had boldly told Fox News that she had "a list of Epstein's clients sitting on her desk," while FBI Director Kash Patel previously urged lawmakers to "put on your big boy pants, and let us know who the pedophiles are."
But the promises crumbled when the FBI announced there is actually no client list and that Epstein died by suicide in 2019—sending Trump's supporters into a rage.
"They were going to expose Epstein with no understanding that if they expose Epstein, it is very likely they are going to expose Donald Trump," Wolff explained. "So therefore they made a mistake by announcing that they were going to do this. Then Trump got p---ed at them for this."
The blowback has been swift and brutal. MAGA world — which believes the Epstein client list links politicians and other powerful people to the pedophile's crimes — erupted in outrage, with Trump's base demanding Bondi's head for failing to deliver. Right-wing influencers like Nick Fuentes burned their MAGA hats in protest.
Trump's relationship with Epstein remains a significant vulnerability. The convicted sex trafficker once told Wolff: "I was Donald's closest friend for 10 years." Trump himself said in 2002: "I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy... It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."
"Because of what ultimately happened to Jeffrey Epstein... it's a very precarious thing to be Jeffrey Epstein's closest friend, which Donald Trump is," Wolff noted. "So he wants to ignore this. He wants to just push this away."
Over the weekend, Trump attempted damage control with a lengthy Truth Social post downplaying the scandal and claiming the files were fabricated by Democrats like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. "We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and 'selfish people' are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein," he wrote.
But the post did little to calm the storm. According to Wolff, Trump's mood is "pure denial" as he wonders why his own supporters won't let the Epstein issue die.
