President Donald Trump had only been back in the White House for a mere 38 days when right-wing influencer Mike Cernovich was summoned to the West Wing.
Cernovich, 47, wasn’t surprised at the invite: as one of the original supporters of MAGA, he’d backed Trump for over a decade and earned his place among the 15 online flame-throwers who were ushered into the February 27 meeting. But he was taken aback at what happened inside, he exclusively told the Daily Mail.
Cernovich and the others had been told they would meet Vice President JD Vance and perhaps a few other officials as an informal welcome to Trump 2.0.
‘A bunch of people were invited, no one really knew the agenda,’ he said. ‘The purpose was to meet with administration officials.’
Yet once the meeting was underway, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, appeared with gifts. Administration sources told the Daily Mail that Bondi blindsided White House officials by arriving unannounced at the meeting and handing out white folders.
‘She walks in; she goes, “hey, I’ve got a surprise for you guys, here are the binders,”‘ revealed conservative commentator Rogan O’Handley, also known online as dc_draino, another one of the attendees.
O’Handley explained on his Instagram channel: ‘We were pretty excited because the night before [Bondi] said on Jesse Watters, “We’re going to be releasing Epstein stuff.” I was like, holy c***, we got the Epstein files.’
Earlier, Bondi even told Fox News that a list of Jeffrey’s Epstein’s clients was ‘sitting on my desk right now to review.’
The 15 influencers walked out of the White House following the meeting aglow with the supposed possession of juicy secrets, proudly displaying for the cameras their ring binders, labeled ‘The Epstein Files: Phase 1.’
‘Only 15 binders were printed, given to 15 independent journalists now included in a growing press pool,’ wrote Jessica Reed Kraus, another attendee, on Instagram.
‘Proof that a powerful shift is happening,’ she bragged. ‘Trump walked in and told us we are the most trusted media now. And that he counts our efforts as the reason he won.’
The elation of the MAGA-verse punditry was short-lived.
The ‘Epstein Files’ turned out to be nothing but a wholly redacted list of 254 ‘masseurs’, flight logs which had been available online since at least 2019, and Epstein’s redacted address book, equally well-thumbed.
One meeting attendee told the Daily Mail that they then found themselves on the defensive against critics who accused them of acting like ‘shills’ for the administration.
Five months later, a group of MAGA-friendly podcasters are feeling similarly duped by the White House, lamenting their lack of transparency around the investigation into the disgraced deceased pedophile.
The grumbling into their microphones has sparked a rare clandestine White House pressure campaign to try and tone down the festering criticisms.
Cernovich said the only way to resolve the rift was to release ‘the original search warrant applications’ for Epstein’s 2019 arrest, which he says Bondi ‘could have done already.’
‘This is more a job for an Inspector General,’ he said. ‘A real hard ass, by-the-book person who doesn’t have patience for nonsense, and can order everyone to testify under oath.’
Cernovich noted that the Justice Department does not need a court order to unseal the documents: ‘To me that’s sus. Why don’t we have this basic stuff?’
Indeed, the MAGA world fury is not dying down after Bondi’s Justice Department released a July 7 memo on their investigation.
The document stated that the DOJ was not a possession of an ‘incriminating’ Epstein ‘client list,’ had no credible evidence that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals and concluded that the convicted pedophile was not murdered in prison.
‘No further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted,’ the DOJ flatly declared.
Suffice to say, it didn’t go over well.
Tim Dillon, a popular podcaster who interviewed Vice President Vance on October 26 in the run-up to the 2024 election, said he was invited to a dinner last week with Vance, who told him that the 10,000 hours of video files in connection to the Epstein case were ‘commercial pornography’ and cannot be released.
Dillion claims Vance told him ‘they do not have videos of any powerful person in a compromising position,’ before remarking with skepticism, ‘That’s the party line that they’re going with?’
‘What I told Vance, I said, “If you don’t disclose everything, you’re done. Nobody will support you guys. You are fully and completely part of this coverup if everything doesn’t come out.” I think it paralyzes their presidency,’ said Dillon, adding, ‘[Vance] agrees with me.’
Conspiracy theorist and InfoWars host Alex Jones appeared on Dillion’s podcast on Monday to say that he, too, has been contacted by the White House.
‘I’ve had the White House call up and be like in the last week, “What do you want?”,’ Jones said.
Jones said he told a White House staffer, ‘I want you to do what you were elected to do,’ a reference to Trump’s campaign trail pledges for complete transparency in the Epstein investigation.
Dillon then replied: ‘They want this to go away… [But] it’s not going to go away until [they] disclose the information [they] have.’
The Daily Mail can also report that the White House reached out to Charlie Kirk, the highly influential leader of youth movement, organized under his non-profit organization Turning Point USA.
‘I am not minimizing this,’ Kirk said on his podcast on July 15. ‘I am just the messenger here. I am simply the interlocutor. The young men, and the Gen-Z audience that I represent, they are flaming mad about this stuff.’
Kirk explained the conservative people he speaks to refuse to drop the issue because ‘they want to go after the deep state of government.’
Trump, increasingly irritated at the fixation of erstwhile allies, picked up the phone to Kirk.
A day later, Kirk appeared to backpedal: ‘Honestly, I’m done talking about Epstein for the time being. I’m going to trust my friends in the administration, I’m going to trust my friends in the government to do what needs to be done, solve it, ball’s in their hands.’
On Tuesday, Attorney General Bondi announced that her deputy, Todd Blanche, would ‘in the coming days’ visit Epstein’s convicted accomplice and former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell at the federal low-security prison in Tallahassee where she is serving a 20-year sentence for her role in a sex trafficking ring.
Maxwell was sentenced in June 2022, and the Daily Mail reported exclusively last week that she is willing to reveal everything she knowns about Epstein. The Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee announced on Tuesday that they would issue a subpoena for her testimony.
But also on Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that he was sending the House home early for the summer on Wednesday to avoid holding votes on a bipartisan measure (sponsored by Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA)) to force the release of files related to Epstein.
On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that DOJ officials told Trump is May that his name appears in a ‘truckload’ of documents related to Epstein.
For his part, Cernovich told the Daily Mail that he had not been leaned on by anyone in the White House to stop talking about Epstein – and added that he would refuse to do so if asked.
‘No one has asked me to stop or tried to shape discourse,’ he said. ‘Whole thing is strange to me. Suddenly we are supposed to stop talking about Epstein? Suddenly, Democrats and Massie (who hates Trump, and did zero to try unsealing documents during Biden’s time) are saying they want the files. Bizarre all around.’
In a statement the White House told the Daily Mail: ‘We hold regular meetings and phone calls with influencers and new media individuals, which began at the start of the White House administration. We discuss a range of issues, including current news and stories that aren’t being covered.’
But Cernovich warned: ‘This might be the only issue where the MAGA base will truly assert itself. On about any other issue, Trump can drive the train wherever he wants. Not on Epstein.’