President Donald Trump’s former chief of staff claims the president is in the Epstein files—and on a list of the child sex offender’s associates.
“He’s in the files. A lot of people are in the files,” Mick Mulvaney said in a forthcoming interview with Al Jazeera, a clip of which was teased online.
“But if there was something in the files that [was] particularly damning about Donald Trump, the files would have been released by the Biden administration,” he said.
Trump—who Jeffrey Epstein once described as his “closest friend for 10 years,” according to biographer Michael Wolff—was sometimes photographed with him and welcomed him as a member of his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Epstein died by suicide in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Mulvaney speculated about why both Trump and Biden had refrained from releasing further information on Epstein.
“My guess is that it’s particularly damning of people on both sides of the aisle, which is why Trump doesn’t want to release it and why Biden didn’t want to release it either,” Mulvaney said.
Mulvaney, who was director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget during his first term and acting White House chief of staff from January 2019 until March 2020, recalled how Epstein used to attend Mar-a-Lago, but was kicked out, he said, “for being weird.”
“There’s photographs of them together,” Mulvaney said. “So if there’s a file somewhere, which I assume there is … I have to imagine his name is on the list someplace.”
Mulvaney’s remarks come as MAGA has been in a tailspin after the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation acknowledged earlier this month that Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial, rather than being murdered, and that no “client list” existed—both the subject of whirling conspiracies among Trump’s supporters. The news has led to calls for Attorney General Pam Bondi, who claimed in February that the list was “on my desk right now” awaiting review, to be fired.
Trump has waded into the fray, dramatically turning on MAGA fans Wednesday for “buying into bulls--t” on Epstein, portraying them as gullible “weaklings” and declaring he no longer wants their support. In an extraordinary rant on Truth Social, Trump doubled down on his claim that the files on Epstein were a Democratic hoax and denounced supporters who thought otherwise.
“My PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bulls--t,’ hook, line, and sinker. They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years,” he said.
The rant was emblematic of the frustration within the White House that its attempts to kill the issue have not worked. But it merely inflamed the crisis, fuelling suspicion that the administration is covering up the Epstein files.
Trump’s comments came as a Quinnipiac University national poll released Wednesday showed 63 percent of Americans disapproved of his handling of the files.
Republicans were nearly split, with 40 percent saying they support how the president has handled the files, 36 percent disapproving, and another 20 percent not offering an opinion.
“Trump was elected in 2016 partly on a pledge to ‘lock her up.’ Arresting and prosecuting powerful and corrupt people has been a core issue for MAGA since its inception,” conservative commentator Matt Walsh said on X. “That’s what the Epstein issue is about. And it’s why the base can’t and won’t just drop it.
