White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles confirmed that President Donald Trump’s name is in the Epstein files, claiming the late sex offender and Trump were “young, single playboys together.”
In wide-ranging interviews with Vanity Fair, Wiles also torched Attorney General Pam Bondi for her handling of the Department of Justice’s investigation into Epstein.
During the sit-downs, the Florida-born chief of staff, whom Trump calls the “ice maiden,” said she misjudged the importance of the scandal surrounding Epstein.
“Whether he was an American CIA asset, a Mossad asset, whether all these rich, important men went to that nasty island and did unforgivable things to young girls,” she said, “I mean, I kind of knew it, but it’s never anything I paid a bit of attention to.”
Wiles, who also managed Trump’s 2024 campaign, told Vanity Fair she has read what she described as “the Epstein file.”
The president “is in the file,” she said. “And we know he’s in the file. And he’s not in the file doing anything awful.”
She added that Trump flew on the deceased financier’s plane, nicknamed the Lolita Express, and that his name appears on flight logs.
“They were, you know, sort of young, single, whatever — I know it’s a passé word but sort of young, single playboys together,” she said of the pair.
Trump and Epstein ran in the same social circles in New York and Palm Beach and were photographed together multiple times over the years, including in 1992 and 2000. Epstein once told author Michael Wolff that he was Trump’s “closest friend.” Trump claimed he had a falling out with Epstein decades ago and kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago after the sex offender poached his spa workers.
Wiles’ newly published comments, made earlier this year, come as the controversy around Epstein — who died in prison while awaiting trial in 2019 — faces renewed scrutiny.
Last week, House Oversight Democrats released a new batch of photos from Epstein’s private estate, showing Trump and other prominent individuals linked to the late sex offender. And by Friday this week, the Department of Justice is required to release its files on Epstein in accordance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which the president signed into law last month.
Trump has maintained that he did nothing wrong, has not been accused of any wrongdoing and has repeatedly described the matter as a “hoax” perpetuated by Democrats.
After the Vanity Fair story published, Wiles took to social media to describe it as “a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.”
“Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story,” she wrote on X. “I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team. The truth is the Trump White House has already accomplished more in eleven months than any other President has accomplished in eight years and that is due to the unmatched leadership and vision of President Trump, for whom I have been honored to work for the better part of a decade. None of this will stop our relentless pursuit of Making America Great Again!”
A spokesperson for the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Independent. A White House spokesperson directed The Independent to Wiles’ statement on social media.
Wiles, who has developed a reputation as a skilled behind-the-scenes operator, also offered an unflattering assessment of Bondi’s handling of the Epstein matter. Specifically, she addressed Bondi’s decision to hand out binders labeled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” to conservative influencers in February, which turned out not to include new information.
“I think she completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the very targeted group that cared about this,” Wiles said about Bondi. “First she gave them binders full of nothingness. And then she said that the witness list, or the client list, was on her desk. There is no client list, and it sure as hell wasn’t on her desk.”
In February, Bondi told Fox News that the Epstein files were sitting on her desk. However, in July, the Department of Justice issued a memo asserting there was no proof of an Epstein client list and that there was not sufficient evidence to charge third parties.
Wiles, the daughter of a television sportscaster, also spoke about other members of the administration and their connection to the Epstein investigation.
“The people that really appreciated what a big deal this is are Kash [Patel] and [FBI deputy director] Dan Bongino,” she said. “Because they lived in that world.”
Both men faced backlash from the MAGA base after they poured cold water on conspiracies about Epstein — conspiracies they helped promulgate before joining the Trump administration earlier this year.
Wiles added that Vance understood the gravity of the Epstein scandal before most, noting that he’s “been a conspiracy theorist for a decade.”
In 2021, Vance tweeted, “What possible interest would the US government have in keeping Epstein’s clients secret? Oh…”
Vanity Fair also asked the White House chief of staff about an alleged birthday letter that Trump reportedly sent to Epstein in 2003. According to The Wall Street Journal, the letter was written inside a silhouette of a naked woman and included the phrase, “May every day be another wonderful secret.”
“That letter is not his,” Wiles said. “And nothing about it rings true to me, nor does it to people that have known the president a lot longer than I have.”
Trump has called the letter “fake,” and, in July, he filed a $10 billion defamation suit against the Journal and its parent company, among other defendants.
“I can’t explain The Wall Street Journal, but we’re going to get some discovery because we sued them,” Wiles added. “So we’re going to find out.”
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