Already, and this is the Daily This is the Daily OS. Oh, now it makes sense.
Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It is Thursday, the seventeenth of July. I'm Sam Kazlowski.
I'm Lucy Tarsel.
Senior members of the Trump administration, including President Donald Trump himself, facing growing criticism from their own supporters after the Justice Department concluded that no document exists that lists every associate or client of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and that the disgraced financier died by suicide in jail. The members of
Trump's party don't believe Attorney General Pam Bondi's findings. Instead, they're calling on Trump to fulfill his campaign promise of releasing as much information as possible about Epstein's alleged high profile clients. It's a story that has stretched over a decade, and today we're going to break down what happened this week, why it's causing such a stir within Trump's own party,
and what this means for his administration going forward. Before we get into all of that, here's a quick word from our sponsor.
Sam, Before we get into the political fallout that you've outlined, let's start with the basics. If you've come in fresh to this story, who was Jeffrey Epstein and why are people so interested in documents about him?
Yeah, so this is a banker we're talking about. Jeffrey Epstein was a banker who was arrested in twenty nineteen on federal sex trafficking charges. His former girlfriend, Gallaine Maxwell, was charged with helping him abuse teenage girls over a number of years. Now. Epstein was found dead in his cell at a federal jail in New York City about a month after he was arrested, and he was waiting sentencing for further sex crimes, and investigators concluded he died
by suicide. Now, Maxwell, the former partner, was later convicted that trial and sentence herself to twenty years in prison.
So those are the two people at the center of this story. Obviously both of them had been convicted of a crime at one point or another. But there's a lot of other people associated with this story. Big famous names we've not been convicted of anything, but are attached to this story. Right.
It's a fascinating convergence of some of the biggest names in the world, not just Hollywood. A list celebrities, but members of the royal family from different countries, presidents, billionaires from all over the world, really people of power and of particular interest to observers is which of those people joined Epstein at his infamous private island where many incidents
of sexual exploitation are proven to have taken place. And in that is you know flight files from his private jet of who was accompanying him personally, It was dinner reservations, it was vps to parties, and all of that makes up what is referred to as the Epstein files. And the theory is that within these files could be links to some of the world's most prominent and powerful people who could then have some serious questions to answer for.
So when you say theory, who's theorizing.
This, Well, it's kind of evolved into what can only be described really as a conspiracy theory, and it is mostly popular on the far right. And the theory here is that Epstein was actually killed in prison as part of a cover up, and they also believe in this notion of the deep state, and that the deep state is guarding information about Epstein's rich and powerful friends, who they say could also be implicated on sex trafficking charges.
What do they say this the deep state is? Is it like the deep web?
Kind of? It's basically a level of power and a level a group of people running the world and running America which we as common citizens don't know about. Yeah, And it's probably one of the most well known and long standing conspiracy theories associated with the MAGA movement Make
America Great Again. And essentially Donald Trump positioned himself, especially in the lead up to his first term in office, as the person to deliver the reckoning and to rid America of this deep state, to expose those who abuse power, particularly in the democratic side of politics.
Is that like the drain the swamp stuff.
Exactly, it's drained the swamp stuff, and it's particularly targeted at say Bill and Hillary Clinton. There's been lots of implications that they were friends of Jeffrey Epstein, for example, And so there was this sense of Donald Trump basically saying to his supporter base, there's a really bad group of people you don't know about, and they're all tied together essentially through this one person.
So Bill Clinton, former US President, his wife Hillary, who was Trump's rival in the twenty sixteen presidential election, and then Trump is kind of feeding this idea to his supporters that those people are somehow involved in a major conspiracy that's also linked to this convicted sex offender.
And that you know, Jeffrey Epstein may have had evidence he was going to deliver to incriminate the Clintons, for example, was then not able to do so because he was dead killed in prison.
Yeah, okay, but based on what we've been led to understand by authorities, he died by suicide in prison.
Yes. So there's been a number of reports that have been released by the FBI and the Department of Justice that have led to that conclusion. The gray area is around whether there are still documents that are yet to be declassified and that we as the publicer, yet to actually get our hands on. And that really brings us to this week.
So there's a lot of conversation around declassifying documents. Is that a specific promise that Trump has made.
Yeah, it was really a core part of what he's promised his supporters in the last two elections, that he would drain the swamp, as you said, and uncover a lot of this story that would keep people accountable who are in power. And Lucy The really interesting turn that you need to know about to get to what we're discussing. Happened in the last couple of weeks. Is late last year.
Trump was asked on Fox News whether he would declassify documents about Epstein, presuming there are declassified documents, and he said, yeah, yeah, I would, But then he added, I think that less so now because you don't want to affect people's lives if it's phony stuff in there. And that was the first sense of us getting an idea that perhaps his view on the release of documents is changing.
Yeah, I mean there is a reason why organizations like the FBI and the CIA won't release certain documents until after everyone who was involved is dead, and even then they might be redacted like the JFK files, which I know was another thing that Trump was kind of trying to push up Hill to say, like, we should release all these documents. So then we also know that there's a difference between what is promised in a campaign and
what actually happens in government. What did the Trump administration do once he actually returned to office in January this year.
So in February, so only a couple of weeks after he got resettled back in the Oval Office. A group of far right influences were invited to the White House and they were given these binders marked the Epstein Files Phase one and declassified, and the binders contained documents that had largely already been made available to the public online. And the idea was essentially to fulfill that campaign promise and to ensure that he was delivering on his word.
But then in May there was a key moment that grabbed people's attention and Attorney General Pam Bondi, so the Attorney General, the key lawmaker in Trump's administration. She said there were quote tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children or child porn.
Whoa.
She even claims that the Epstein client list was quote sitting on her desk. The White House then quickly denied this and said everything that they had on Epstein had already been released to the public and there was nothing more.
To be revealed. Okay, wow, that's a pretty big admission. The Attorney General, who's the top legal official in the US, says I have this stuff, and then her boss effectively says, no, you don't have anything.
Exactly, and then her boss's ex best friend Elon Musk after they go through a bit of a bromance breakup. Yes, he takes to X formerly Twitter his app, and Musk tweeted, time to drop the really big bomb. Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT. So there was really starting to be more of a
sense of more to this story than initially thought. And then last week the Justice Department stated that Epstein did not have a list of clients and said no more files related to Epstein's case would be made public. There was this memo that was released by the FBI and the Justice Department together and it made clear that no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.
And the Justice Department is the department that Bondie heads up as the attorney General exactly.
So you have really a lack of essential message here across an administration, which and you have to give credit to the Trump administration, they've been relatively solid this term on staying on message across key leaders of the administration. Yeah, this was one of the really big moments where someone in Trump's inner circle has really deviated on quite a big issue.
Yeah, Yeah, I mean, the attorney general's a very important job. So that's very interesting. How did Trump's supporters react to this kind of flip backflip, flip backflip.
Yeah, and this is where this story really does get even more interesting than it was a couple of weeks ago, because we are seeing some cracks in the make America Great Again movement in the conservative side of the Republican Party. Some key Trump allies are very unhappy, and the focus has shifted to whether Trump is blocking the release of
the files because it is indeed incriminating for him. So there's one side of the Republican and conservative ecosystem that is basically saying that something sus is going on here and that Panmbondi's files that she's talking about need to be produced to the public. But there's a whole other side of the Maga ecosystem that's saying that Pambondi should lose her job because she's spoken out of turn, she's thrown her boss potentially under the bus, or she's just fabricating the entire thing.
Yeah wow, But it's not just kind of media and the broader Maga ecosystem. What have we heard from inside the White House.
Well, a lot of the blow ups that we've heard about from inside the White House over the last couple of days are in relation to Pambondi's handling of this case. So FBI director Cash Patel and his deputy Dan Bongino have apparently had this quote furious conversation. Dan Bongino hasn't gone back to work since that conversation about whether Pambondi
should have released the files or not. Cash Patel has said on x the conspiracy theories just aren't true, never have been, So he's remaining extremely loyal to the president, whilst clearly there's some splintering going on as well.
I think the one whose reaction I don't yet know is Trump himself. What's he said, Oh.
He's never short of a reaction. So firstly, it's important to say that Trump denies any wrongdoing at all, and he has consistently downplayed any relationship he had with Epstein. One thing I should also mention, though, is that there are these photographs. There are these photographs of Epstein and Trump together, and these have been around for many years, and Trump has always said that his photographed alongside thousands of people all the time, and he has business associates
going back, you know, four or five decades. He can't recall every person he's had an interaction with.
And Trump was a New York real estate guy to begin with.
It was his job to network. It was kind of the lifestyle of the rich and famous, a powerful group of people. Of course they would have crossed paths. Is the Trump narrative, and so Trump has he has defended his attorney general. It's been a little unusual. He said at a cabinet meeting, it was unbelievable and a desecration that people were still talking about this creep being Epstein. And he basically said, we should be talking about much
more important things. He referenced the Texas flash flooding, the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and across the Middle East as the more important issues to be talking about. And then he talked to Truth Social, his social media platform. On Saturday, he said, what's going on with my boys and in some cases gals. They're all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a fantastic job. We're on one team MAGA,
and I don't like what's happening. So defending his attorney general but clearly recognizing there's a bit of a splinter in the party.
Yeah, criticizing his own base.
Yeah, And it's kind of the first time he's really been frustrated with his own supporters. And it's a very divisive topic because it was a major campaign promise that helped mobilize the base, and it's led to a bit of a fixation by a lot of Make America Great Again influences over this deep state theory that we talked about, that there's this hidden list and now that Trump may be on the list, or the theory is that he might be on that list. He's gotten a bit of
a trap here. He promised to expose corruption and is now saying the evidence doesn't exist. And for those parts who are genuinely interested in the conspiracy theory, and we know how much of a whold conspiracy theories can have on political followers and observers, it's caused a bit of a credibility issue.
So what do we think will be the long term effects of this? Do we think people will just move on or will it kind of continue to expand.
It's early days in this one, but one thing I took note of yesterday was the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. So this is one of the most senior members of the Republican Party. He broke with the Trump administration's decision to keep the files secret. Slash say that there aren't files to look at, and he called on the DOJ to release the materials. Now, this is the first time that Mike Johnson has spoken out publicly in
opposition to the president. So there are some signs, Lucy that this story could be different to other chapters of the Trump administration.
Thanks for explaining that for us. Sam, all good and thank you for joining us today. That's all for today's Deep Dive. We'll be back again this afternoon with the headlines. Until then, have a great day. My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Kalkutin woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations.
We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.