Research from the USA shows how the Trump administration threatened to sink into chaos in the Epstein case. There was probably a lot of disagreement between Trump and his deputy JD Vance.
June 11, 2026, 8:29 p.mJune 11, 2026, 8:29 p.m
Finn Michalski / t-online
Trump’s years-long promise to release the entire files in the case of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein caught up with him right at the beginning of his second presidency. Trump’s right-wing conservative MAGA supporters in particular loudly demanded certainty. Research by the US media “New York Times” now shows how the case left nerves frayed in the White House and how Trump’s hand-picked cabinet plunged into internal trench warfare.
Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein can be seen in this undated photo from the Epstein files.Image: Archive Photos
In the Situation Room of the White House, where years before President Obama and his staff had monitored the operation and killing of Osama bin Laden, in 2025 high-ranking members of the Trump administration sat hunched over files from the Epstein case in which the criminal’s atrocities were described. So far, so good – if there weren’t a lot of witness reports in which the name Donald Trump keeps coming up.
“This is a huge problem,” JD Vance is said to have said at one of these crisis meetings in the summer of 2025. Participants in the meeting are said to have described him to the New York Times as “panicked”. He was afraid that the case could divide the MAGA base. He saw the solution in the offensive: radical openness.
He probably warned that the US Congress would force the release of the files anyway and that one therefore had to forestall this by publishing everything voluntarily – including the files that might contain incriminating material about the president himself.
Trump’s alleged fondness for nipples
Trump’s alleged preference for nipples was probably at the forefront of the discussions here. Released documents from a civil trial in 2024 are said to have shown that in the past, Trump had worked on a young woman’s nipples so aggressively by pinching and sucking that they looked “incredibly painful.” Vance appealed for this incident to also be made transparent.
Trump, on the other hand, probably didn’t want to know anything about it. According to the report, the president had an allergic reaction to even mentioning the name Epstein to him. He further tried using all means and his connections to prevent reporting on his involvement with Epstein.
When the Wall Street Journal wanted to publish a critical publication about Trump’s friendship with Epstein, Trump tried to prevent this at the last minute. To do this, he personally called Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul who owns, among other things, the Wall Street Journal. Without success. Next, Trump probably tried the medium’s editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, also without success. Trump then reportedly practically shouted at her over the phone that she hated America and threatened to sue her if the article was published.
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