White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said Attorney General Pam Bondi “completely whiffed” the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, suggesting she misread how intensely President Donald Trump’s core supporters cared about the long-promised disclosures and overhyped material that ultimately contained nothing new.
In an interview published Tuesday by Vanity Fair, Wiles spoke candidly about when Bondi staged a February rollout of binders labeled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” for a group of conservative social media influencers invited to the White House. The binders, handed to figures including Liz Wheeler, Jessica Reed Kraus, Rogan O’Handley, and Chaya Raichik, turned out to contain recycled information drawn largely from Epstein’s old contact lists, with addresses redacted and no new context.
“I think she completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the very targeted group that cared about this,” Wiles said. “First, she gave them binders full of nothingness. And then she said that the witness list, or the client list, was on her desk. There is no client list, and it sure as hell wasn’t on her desk.”
Bondi fueled expectations days earlier during a Fox News interview, when she said the Epstein files were “sitting on my desk” awaiting review. She repeatedly teased revelations while describing Epstein’s conduct as “pretty sick,” prompting backlash when the documents failed to deliver substantive disclosures.
ROBERTS: “The DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients? Will that really happen?”
BONDI: “It’s sitting on my desk to review.” pic.twitter.com/ze1KVn1PTE
— Tim Hogan (@timjhogan) July 7, 2025
A Justice Department memo released over the summer later concluded that there was no incriminating “client list” and no evidence sufficient to open investigations into uncharged third parties.
The episode unfolded as the administration faced mounting pressure from Trump’s base to follow through on years of promises to expose suspected elite wrongdoing tied to Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died in federal custody in 2019.
In November, Trump signed the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act, which gave the DOJ 30 days to release the majority of remaining records. That deadline falls on Friday, meaning the department is poised to release more files related to the disgraced and late financier.
Wiles said the internal effort to review the Epstein material was far broader than many outsiders assumed. As Vanity Fair reported, dozens of FBI agents at the New York field office were assigned to comb through the files. Some critics at the time speculated the review was mostly aimed at scrubbing Trump’s name.
“They were looking for 25 things, not one thing,” Wiles said, adding that she personally read what she referred to as “the Epstein file.”
Wiles minced no words about Trump’s name appearing in the records, but stressed that it does not appear in any incriminating way.
“He’s in the file. And we know he’s in the file. And he’s not in the file doing anything awful,” she said, describing Trump and Epstein as social acquaintances during the 1990s. Trump has acknowledged flying on Epstein’s plane and appearing on passenger manifests, although he has said the two later fell out. Trump has never been accused of any wrongdoing related to Epstein’s sex-trafficking activity.
Wiles also pushed back on Trump’s past claims that former President Bill Clinton visited Epstein’s private island, Little St. James, “supposedly 28 times.” “There is no evidence” those visits occurred, she said, adding bluntly, “The president was wrong about that.”
She also suggested that some senior officials had long overestimated what the files would reveal. She pointed to FBI Director Kash Patel, Deputy Director Dan Bongino, and Vice President JD Vance as figures who understood the political sensitivity of the matter but were shaped by years of speculation. Patel, she said, had spent years urging the release of the files based on an assumption that “turns out not to be right.”
The controversy deepened in July when Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, traveled to Florida to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime associate, who is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking. Wiles said the meeting was Blanche’s idea and that neither she nor Trump was consulted about Maxwell’s subsequent transfer to a less restrictive facility in Texas.
“The president was ticked,” Wiles said. “The president was mighty unhappy. I don’t know why they moved her. Neither does the president.”
After the article’s publication, Wiles publicly criticized Vanity Fair‘s framing, calling it a “disingenuously framed hit piece” that omitted context and exaggerated chaos inside the Trump White House.
COMER GIVES CLINTONS LAST CHANCE TO TESTIFY IN EPSTEIN INQUIRY BEFORE CONTEMPT
Bondi released a statement on X, calling Wiles a “dear friend” who “fights every day to advance President Trump’s agenda — and she does so with grace, loyalty, and historic effectiveness.”
“Any attempt to divide this administration will fail,” Bondi said. “We are family. We are united.”
