Speaker 1: Already, and this is the Daily This is the Daily OS. Oh,
Speaker 1: now it makes sense.
Speaker 2: Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It is Thursday,
Speaker 2: the seventeenth of July. I'm Sam Kazlowski.
Speaker 1: I'm Lucy Tarsel.
Speaker 2: Senior members of the Trump administration, including President Donald Trump himself,
Speaker 2: facing growing criticism from their own supporters after the Justice
Speaker 2: Department concluded that no document exists that lists every associate
Speaker 2: or client of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and that the
Speaker 2: disgraced financier died by suicide in jail. The members of
Speaker 2: Trump's party don't believe Attorney General Pam Bondi's findings. Instead,
Speaker 2: they're calling on Trump to fulfill his campaign promise of
Speaker 2: releasing as much information as possible about Epstein's alleged high
Speaker 2: profile clients. It's a story that has stretched over a decade,
Speaker 2: and today we're going to break down what happened this week,
Speaker 2: why it's causing such a stir within Trump's own party,
Speaker 2: and what this means for his administration going forward. Before
Speaker 2: we get into all of that, here's a quick word
Speaker 2: from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Sam, Before we get into the political fallout that you've outlined,
Speaker 1: let's start with the basics. If you've come in fresh
Speaker 1: to this story, who was Jeffrey Epstein and why are
Speaker 1: people so interested in documents about him?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is a banker we're talking about. Jeffrey
Speaker 2: Epstein was a banker who was arrested in twenty nineteen
Speaker 2: on federal sex trafficking charges. His former girlfriend, Gallaine Maxwell,
Speaker 2: was charged with helping him abuse teenage girls over a
Speaker 2: number of years. Now. Epstein was found dead in his
Speaker 2: cell at a federal jail in New York City about
Speaker 2: a month after he was arrested, and he was waiting
Speaker 2: sentencing for further sex crimes, and investigators concluded he died
Speaker 2: by suicide. Now, Maxwell, the former partner, was later convicted
Speaker 2: that trial and sentence herself to twenty years in prison.
Speaker 1: So those are the two people at the center of
Speaker 1: this story. Obviously both of them had been convicted of
Speaker 1: a crime at one point or another. But there's a
Speaker 1: lot of other people associated with this story. Big famous
Speaker 1: names we've not been convicted of anything, but are attached
Speaker 1: to this story. Right.
Speaker 2: It's a fascinating convergence of some of the biggest names
Speaker 2: in the world, not just Hollywood. A list celebrities, but
Speaker 2: members of the royal family from different countries, presidents, billionaires
Speaker 2: from all over the world, really people of power and
Speaker 2: of particular interest to observers is which of those people
Speaker 2: joined Epstein at his infamous private island where many incidents
Speaker 2: of sexual exploitation are proven to have taken place. And
Speaker 2: in that is you know flight files from his private
Speaker 2: jet of who was accompanying him personally, It was dinner reservations,
Speaker 2: it was vps to parties, and all of that makes
Speaker 2: up what is referred to as the Epstein files. And
Speaker 2: the theory is that within these files could be links
Speaker 2: to some of the world's most prominent and powerful people
Speaker 2: who could then have some serious questions to answer for.
Speaker 1: So when you say theory, who's theorizing.
Speaker 2: This, Well, it's kind of evolved into what can only
Speaker 2: be described really as a conspiracy theory, and it is
Speaker 2: mostly popular on the far right. And the theory here
Speaker 2: is that Epstein was actually killed in prison as part
Speaker 2: of a cover up, and they also believe in this
Speaker 2: notion of the deep state, and that the deep state
Speaker 2: is guarding information about Epstein's rich and powerful friends, who
Speaker 2: they say could also be implicated on sex trafficking charges.
Speaker 1: What do they say this the deep state is? Is
Speaker 1: it like the deep web?
Speaker 2: Kind of? It's basically a level of power and a
Speaker 2: level a group of people running the world and running
Speaker 2: America which we as common citizens don't know about. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And it's probably one of the most well known and
Speaker 2: long standing conspiracy theories associated with the MAGA movement Make
Speaker 2: America Great Again. And essentially Donald Trump positioned himself, especially
Speaker 2: in the lead up to his first term in office,
Speaker 2: as the person to deliver the reckoning and to rid
Speaker 2: America of this deep state, to expose those who abuse power,
Speaker 2: particularly in the democratic side of politics.
Speaker 1: Is that like the drain the swamp stuff.
Speaker 2: Exactly, it's drained the swamp stuff, and it's particularly targeted
Speaker 2: at say Bill and Hillary Clinton. There's been lots of
Speaker 2: implications that they were friends of Jeffrey Epstein, for example,
Speaker 2: And so there was this sense of Donald Trump basically
Speaker 2: saying to his supporter base, there's a really bad group
Speaker 2: of people you don't know about, and they're all tied
Speaker 2: together essentially through this one person.
Speaker 1: So Bill Clinton, former US President, his wife Hillary, who
Speaker 1: was Trump's rival in the twenty sixteen presidential election, and
Speaker 1: then Trump is kind of feeding this idea to his
Speaker 1: supporters that those people are somehow involved in a major
Speaker 1: conspiracy that's also linked to this convicted sex offender.
Speaker 2: And that you know, Jeffrey Epstein may have had evidence
Speaker 2: he was going to deliver to incriminate the Clintons, for example,
Speaker 2: was then not able to do so because he was
Speaker 2: dead killed in prison.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, but based on what we've been led to
Speaker 1: understand by authorities, he died by suicide in prison.
Speaker 2: Yes. So there's been a number of reports that have
Speaker 2: been released by the FBI and the Department of Justice
Speaker 2: that have led to that conclusion. The gray area is
Speaker 2: around whether there are still documents that are yet to
Speaker 2: be declassified and that we as the publicer, yet to
Speaker 2: actually get our hands on. And that really brings us
Speaker 2: to this week.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of conversation around declassifying documents. Is
Speaker 1: that a specific promise that Trump has made.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was really a core part of what he's
Speaker 2: promised his supporters in the last two elections, that he
Speaker 2: would drain the swamp, as you said, and uncover a
Speaker 2: lot of this story that would keep people accountable who
Speaker 2: are in power. And Lucy The really interesting turn that
Speaker 2: you need to know about to get to what we're discussing.
Speaker 2: Happened in the last couple of weeks. Is late last year.
Speaker 2: Trump was asked on Fox News whether he would declassify
Speaker 2: documents about Epstein, presuming there are declassified documents, and he said, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I would, But then he added, I think that less
Speaker 2: so now because you don't want to affect people's lives
Speaker 2: if it's phony stuff in there. And that was the
Speaker 2: first sense of us getting an idea that perhaps his
Speaker 2: view on the release of documents is changing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there is a reason why organizations like
Speaker 1: the FBI and the CIA won't release certain documents until
Speaker 1: after everyone who was involved is dead, and even then
Speaker 1: they might be redacted like the JFK files, which I
Speaker 1: know was another thing that Trump was kind of trying
Speaker 1: to push up Hill to say, like, we should release
Speaker 1: all these documents. So then we also know that there's
Speaker 1: a difference between what is promised in a campaign and
Speaker 1: what actually happens in government. What did the Trump administration
Speaker 1: do once he actually returned to office in January this year.
Speaker 2: So in February, so only a couple of weeks after
Speaker 2: he got resettled back in the Oval Office. A group
Speaker 2: of far right influences were invited to the White House
Speaker 2: and they were given these binders marked the Epstein Files
Speaker 2: Phase one and declassified, and the binders contained documents that
Speaker 2: had largely already been made available to the public online.
Speaker 2: And the idea was essentially to fulfill that campaign promise
Speaker 2: and to ensure that he was delivering on his word.
Speaker 2: But then in May there was a key moment that
Speaker 2: grabbed people's attention and Attorney General Pam Bondi, so the
Speaker 2: Attorney General, the key lawmaker in Trump's administration. She said
Speaker 2: there were quote tens of thousands of videos of Epstein
Speaker 2: with children or child porn.
Speaker 1: Whoa.
Speaker 2: She even claims that the Epstein client list was quote
Speaker 2: sitting on her desk. The White House then quickly denied
Speaker 2: this and said everything that they had on Epstein had
Speaker 2: already been released to the public and there was nothing more.
Speaker 1: To be revealed. Okay, wow, that's a pretty big admission.
Speaker 1: The Attorney General, who's the top legal official in the US,
Speaker 1: says I have this stuff, and then her boss effectively says, no,
Speaker 1: you don't have anything.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and then her boss's ex best friend Elon Musk
Speaker 2: after they go through a bit of a bromance breakup. Yes,
Speaker 2: he takes to X formerly Twitter his app, and Musk tweeted,
Speaker 2: time to drop the really big bomb. Donald Trump is
Speaker 2: in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they
Speaker 2: have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT.
Speaker 2: So there was really starting to be more of a
Speaker 2: sense of more to this story than initially thought. And
Speaker 2: then last week the Justice Department stated that Epstein did
Speaker 2: not have a list of clients and said no more
Speaker 2: files related to Epstein's case would be made public. There
Speaker 2: was this memo that was released by the FBI and
Speaker 2: the Justice Department together and it made clear that no
Speaker 2: further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.
Speaker 1: And the Justice Department is the department that Bondie heads
Speaker 1: up as the attorney General exactly.
Speaker 2: So you have really a lack of essential message here
Speaker 2: across an administration, which and you have to give credit
Speaker 2: to the Trump administration, they've been relatively solid this term
Speaker 2: on staying on message across key leaders of the administration. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this was one of the really big moments where someone
Speaker 2: in Trump's inner circle has really deviated on quite a
Speaker 2: big issue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I mean, the attorney general's a very important job.
Speaker 1: So that's very interesting. How did Trump's supporters react to
Speaker 1: this kind of flip backflip, flip backflip.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is where this story really does get
Speaker 2: even more interesting than it was a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 2: because we are seeing some cracks in the make America
Speaker 2: Great Again movement in the conservative side of the Republican Party.
Speaker 2: Some key Trump allies are very unhappy, and the focus
Speaker 2: has shifted to whether Trump is blocking the release of
Speaker 2: the files because it is indeed incriminating for him. So
Speaker 2: there's one side of the Republican and conservative ecosystem that
Speaker 2: is basically saying that something sus is going on here
Speaker 2: and that Panmbondi's files that she's talking about need to
Speaker 2: be produced to the public. But there's a whole other
Speaker 2: side of the Maga ecosystem that's saying that Pambondi should
Speaker 2: lose her job because she's spoken out of turn, she's
Speaker 2: thrown her boss potentially under the bus, or she's just
Speaker 2: fabricating the entire thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah wow, But it's not just kind of media and
Speaker 1: the broader Maga ecosystem. What have we heard from inside
Speaker 1: the White House.
Speaker 2: Well, a lot of the blow ups that we've heard
Speaker 2: about from inside the White House over the last couple
Speaker 2: of days are in relation to Pambondi's handling of this case.
Speaker 2: So FBI director Cash Patel and his deputy Dan Bongino
Speaker 2: have apparently had this quote furious conversation. Dan Bongino hasn't
Speaker 2: gone back to work since that conversation about whether Pambondi
Speaker 2: should have released the files or not. Cash Patel has
Speaker 2: said on x the conspiracy theories just aren't true, never
Speaker 2: have been, So he's remaining extremely loyal to the president,
Speaker 2: whilst clearly there's some splintering going on as well.
Speaker 1: I think the one whose reaction I don't yet know
Speaker 1: is Trump himself. What's he said, Oh.
Speaker 2: He's never short of a reaction. So firstly, it's important
Speaker 2: to say that Trump denies any wrongdoing at all, and
Speaker 2: he has consistently downplayed any relationship he had with Epstein.
Speaker 2: One thing I should also mention, though, is that there
Speaker 2: are these photographs. There are these photographs of Epstein and
Speaker 2: Trump together, and these have been around for many years,
Speaker 2: and Trump has always said that his photographed alongside thousands
Speaker 2: of people all the time, and he has business associates
Speaker 2: going back, you know, four or five decades. He can't
Speaker 2: recall every person he's had an interaction with.
Speaker 1: And Trump was a New York real estate guy to
Speaker 1: begin with.
Speaker 2: It was his job to network. It was kind of
Speaker 2: the lifestyle of the rich and famous, a powerful group
Speaker 2: of people. Of course they would have crossed paths. Is
Speaker 2: the Trump narrative, and so Trump has he has defended
Speaker 2: his attorney general. It's been a little unusual. He said
Speaker 2: at a cabinet meeting, it was unbelievable and a desecration
Speaker 2: that people were still talking about this creep being Epstein.
Speaker 2: And he basically said, we should be talking about much
Speaker 2: more important things. He referenced the Texas flash flooding, the
Speaker 2: ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and across the Middle East as
Speaker 2: the more important issues to be talking about. And then
Speaker 2: he talked to Truth Social, his social media platform. On Saturday,
Speaker 2: he said, what's going on with my boys and in
Speaker 2: some cases gals. They're all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi,
Speaker 2: who is doing a fantastic job. We're on one team MAGA,
Speaker 2: and I don't like what's happening. So defending his attorney
Speaker 2: general but clearly recognizing there's a bit of a splinter
Speaker 2: in the party.
Speaker 1: Yeah, criticizing his own base.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's kind of the first time he's really
Speaker 2: been frustrated with his own supporters. And it's a very
Speaker 2: divisive topic because it was a major campaign promise that
Speaker 2: helped mobilize the base, and it's led to a bit
Speaker 2: of a fixation by a lot of Make America Great
Speaker 2: Again influences over this deep state theory that we talked about,
Speaker 2: that there's this hidden list and now that Trump may
Speaker 2: be on the list, or the theory is that he
Speaker 2: might be on that list. He's gotten a bit of
Speaker 2: a trap here. He promised to expose corruption and is
Speaker 2: now saying the evidence doesn't exist. And for those parts
Speaker 2: who are genuinely interested in the conspiracy theory, and we
Speaker 2: know how much of a whold conspiracy theories can have
Speaker 2: on political followers and observers, it's caused a bit of
Speaker 2: a credibility issue.
Speaker 1: So what do we think will be the long term
Speaker 1: effects of this? Do we think people will just move
Speaker 1: on or will it kind of continue to expand.
Speaker 2: It's early days in this one, but one thing I
Speaker 2: took note of yesterday was the Speaker of the House,
Speaker 2: Mike Johnson. So this is one of the most senior
Speaker 2: members of the Republican Party. He broke with the Trump
Speaker 2: administration's decision to keep the files secret. Slash say that
Speaker 2: there aren't files to look at, and he called on
Speaker 2: the DOJ to release the materials. Now, this is the
Speaker 2: first time that Mike Johnson has spoken out publicly in
Speaker 2: opposition to the president. So there are some signs, Lucy
Speaker 2: that this story could be different to other chapters of
Speaker 2: the Trump administration.
Speaker 1: Thanks for explaining that for us. Sam, all good and
Speaker 1: thank you for joining us today. That's all for today's
Speaker 1: Deep Dive. We'll be back again this afternoon with the headlines.
Speaker 1: Until then, have a great day. My name is Lily
Speaker 1: Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Kalkutin woman from
Speaker 1: Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is
Speaker 1: recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays
Speaker 1: respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations.
Speaker 1: We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries,
Speaker 1: both past and present.