Inside trump's White House The Epstein files Are Causing a Freakout
By Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, White House reporters for The Times, are the authors of the forthcoming “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.” This article is drawn from reporting done for that book. On July 17, 2025, at around 6 o’clock in the evening, President Trump’s top officials filed into the White House Situation Room — the secure bunker where classified and high-stakes national security matters are discussed and decided. This was where President Barack Obama, along with Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the president’s national security team, watched the raid that ended with the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011. Now, however, Trump’s most senior advisers had gathered — without him — to figure out how to gain some measure of control over a very different kind of crisis threatening to engulf the presidency: the Epstein files. Ten days earlier, the Justice Dep...
