On Thursday, a gang of social media influencers loyal to President Donald Trump walked out of the White House and quickly took to social media to brag about their haul: Each had been given a large white binder reading, “The Epstein Files: Phase 1.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi pledged earlier in the week to release what information the federal government had gathered on Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who died in prison awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019.
“What you’re going to see … is a lot of flight logs, a lot of names, a lot of information,” Bondi told Fox News, adding, “It’s pretty sick, what that man did.”
But the binders did not appear to contain any new information. A watermark across the front read “DECLASSIFIED,” but it was not clear whether any of the information inside had ever been technically classified.
Much of the information surrounding Epstein — flight logs, pages of his so-called little black book — has already been made public over the last several years thanks to lawsuits and various media outlets. A version of the files is even available for just $5 on Amazon.
Bondi has claimed that the FBI is withholding certain information about the Epstein case, and that she is still working to uncover it. In a statement issued Thursday, Bondi said that she “has requested the FBI deliver the remaining [Epstein] documents to the Department by 8:00 AM on February 28 and has tasked FBI Director Kash Patel with investigating why the request for all documents was not followed.”
She suggested the point of the binder stunt was to “shed light on Epstein’s extensive network and begin to provide the public with long overdue accountability” because the documents — despite being easy to google — had previously not been “released in a formal capacity by the U.S. government.”
One of the influencers, Rogan O’Handley, known as DC Draino online, livestreamed himself flipping through his binder’s contents, showing many pages of what appeared to be flight logs.
Over 100 pages of Epstein’s flight logs, with a few redactions, had been made public in December 2021 as part of the government’s case against Ghislaine Maxwell, who was found guilty of helping Epstein and sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022. Other documents were released over the last several years as part of a suit against Maxwell by a victim, Virginia Giuffre, who says she was recruited as a teen to provide sexual favors to Epstein and friends like Britain’s Prince Andrew.
Epstein’s black book of phone numbers and contact information was published by the now-defunct blog Gawker in 2015, revealing an entry for Trump. Flight logs published in the past have already revealed that Trump and former President Bill Clinton had flown on Epstein’s private jet in the past, along with supermodel Naomi Campbell, disgraced actor Kevin Spacey, and many more.
The MAGA influencers invited to the White House Thursday included Chaya Raichik, who runs the rabidly anti-LGBTQ LibsOfTikTok social media accounts; Liz Wheeler, a political commentator on the right-wing One America News Network; Jessica Reed Kraus, who runs the pro-Robert F. Kennedy Jr. HouseInhabit accounts; and Jack Posobiec, a Pizzagate conspiracy theorist who has used his considerable platform to spread false rumors in the past.
Another, Savanah Hernandez, downplayed the binders’ contents on X, saying that “this morning’s meeting is a part of the Trump admin’s push to bring independent journalists and media to speak directly to the highest members of the administration in an effort to be the most transparent admin in history.”
Kraus claimed on Instagram that Trump told the influencers gathered in the Oval Office that they were “the most trusted media now.”
She suggested the stunt was part of the White House’s ongoing efforts to wrest control of the press pool from the mainstream outlets that have covered the president and those around him for many decades and give it to handpicked social media influencers instead.
“Our inclusion has officially broken their monopoly over White House access,” Kraus wrote.
Over a span of decades, Epstein sexually abused girls as young as 14 from his various high-end properties in New York, Florida, New Mexico and his private Caribbean island.
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He carried out a slap-on-the-wrist sentence in 2008 that involved being housed in a private wing of a local jail, which allowed him to leave every day on “work release.” In 2019, he was arrested by the FBI, but less than two months later Epstein was found dead in his prison cell.