Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein Files

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.