Controversy over the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files had dogged the Trump administration for weeks. So as Congress went on their typical August recess, President Donald Trump’s team began discussing ways they could finally get ahead of the story.
They debated in particular whether to release audio and transcripts from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, an Epstein associate who herself was convicted on federal charges stemming from his alleged sexual abuse of children, officials familiar with the matter told CNN.
They considered a number of things, including ensuring that victims’ names would be redacted and contemplating whether those redactions would fuel a backlash and allegations of a coverup.
“This wasn’t handled well,” one senior White House official said of the original roll out of the Department of Justice memo in July declaring no more materials would be released. “We’d like to take control of the narrative.”
On Friday, with the Justice Department scheduled to hand over files from the Epstein case to Congress, the administration published the Maxwell audio and transcript to the internet. The move rapidly drew media attention away from the FBI searches of Trump national security adviser-turned-critic John Bolton’s home and office and on to a subject that Trump had complained in the past was getting too much airtime.
The administration, officials said, was acutely aware of public attention on the case, and recently, many administration officials came to believe the story was beginning to die down. White House staffers passed around a CNN segment showing Epstein-related searches were down, multiple officials told CNN.
“Why would we give oxygen to this right now?” another White House official told CNN last week.
Some in the administration argued against moves that would resurface the Epstein story, and not all administration officials were on the same page on what information should be released, White House officials said.
Others, though, argued the White House needed to be more proactive in dealing with the fallout of the Epstein files, and they believed releasing the materials from the Maxwell interview would help them better control the narrative, officials said.
Another concern with publishing the transcript and audio was that many parts of it would need to be redacted, two White House officials told CNN. One of the officials said that Maxwell shared a number of names of victims that had never been made public.
“It’s hard to release audio that would have long sections bleeped out,” one of the officials told CNN.
The Trump administration decided earlier this month to move forward with publishing the materials, sources familiar with the decision tell CNN. In early August, the Justice Department was going through the materials and digitizing, transcribing and redacting the audio, CNN previously reported. The question then became a matter of timing, sources said.
On Friday, the story was likely to take center stage anyway. Facing a subpoena, the Department of Justice was set to deliver a tranche of Epstein-related documents to the House Oversight Committee. As it did so, the department posted the audio and transcripts. Not long before, Trump himself had called for transparency in the case and signaled his support for sending the files to the committee.
“I have said to Pam (Bondi) and everybody else, give them everything you can give ‘em,” Trump told CNN.
He added: “Innocent people shouldn’t be hurt. But I’m in support of keeping it totally open. I couldn’t care less. You got a lot of people that it could be mentioned in those files that don’t deserve to be.”
The Maxwell interview was not unhelpful to Trump – though critics have noted she had every incentive to say things that might benefit him, in hopes of getting a pardon. The Department of Justice gave Maxwell limited immunity to discuss her case, but did not promise any other benefits in exchange for her testimony, according to the transcript of the interview. Maxwell told Blanche that she never witnessed anything untoward in Trump’s friendship with Epstein and never heard of any allegations that he acted inappropriately.
But the move is very unlikely to end the controversy entirely. The House Oversight Committee said it is now reviewing thousands of pages for possible redactions – with an eye on making public everything it can.
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