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Susie Wiles, President Donald Trump\u2019s understated but influential chief of staff, criticized Attorney General Pam Bondi\u2019s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case and broadly defended the president\u2019s aggressive second administration in a series of interviews published Tuesday in Vanity Fair.<\/p>\n
Wiles told the magazine in a wide-ranging, revealing series of conversations that she underestimated the scandal involving Epstein, the disgraced financier, but sharply criticized how Bondi managed the case and the public\u2019s expectations.<\/p>\n
After the story was published, Wiles disparaged it as a \u201cdisingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSignificant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story,\u201d she wrote in a social media post. \u201cI assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wiles did not deny the comments that were attributed to her.<\/p>\n
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP\u2019s earlier story follows below.<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Susie Wiles, President Donald Trump\u2019s understated but influential chief of staff, criticized Attorney General Pam Bondi\u2019s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case and broadly defended the president\u2019s aggressive second administration in a series of interviews published Tuesday in Vanity Fair.<\/p>\n
Wiles told the magazine in a wide-ranging, revealing series of conversations that she underestimated the scandal involving Epstein, the disgraced financier, but sharply criticized how Bondi managed the case and the public\u2019s expectations.<\/p>\n
She also said Trump wants to keep bombing alleged drug boats in the waters off the coast of Venezuela until that country\u2019s leader, Nicolas Maduro, \u201ccries uncle.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Wiles at one point said she and Trump had a \u201cloose agreement\u201d that his retribution campaign would end before the first 90 days of his second term \u2014 but it continues well beyond the three-month mark.<\/p>\n
Trump tapped Wiles after she managed his winning 2024 campaign. She is the first woman to ever serve as White House chief of staff and is known for shunning the spotlight. It is rare for her to speak as extensively and openly as she did about the president to the magazine, which published its lengthy interview with her \u2014 and other members of the White House staff and the Cabinet. Wiles has been speaking to Vanity Fair since just before Trump took office last January.<\/p>\n
Asked about Epstein, Wiles said hadn\u2019t really paid attention to \u201cwhether all these rich, important men went to that nasty island and did unforgivable things to young girls.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said she has read the Epstein file and that Trump is \u201cnot in the file doing anything awful.\u201d He and Epstein were friends before they had a falling out.<\/p>\n
The Justice Department is facing a Friday deadline to release everything it has on Epstein after Trump, after objecting to the release, signed legislation requiring that the papers be made public.<\/p>\n
Wiles criticized Bondi\u2019s handling of the case, going back to earlier in the year when she distributed binders to a group of social media influencers that included no new information about Epstein. That led to even more calls from Trump\u2019s base for the files to be released.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think she completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the very targeted group that cared about this,\u201d Wiles said of Bondi. \u201cFirst 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\u2019t on her desk.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wiles, over the series of interviews, described the president behind the scenes very much as he presents himself in public: an intense figure who thinks in broad strokes yet is often not concerned with the details of process and policy. She added, though, that he has not been as angry or temperamental as is often suggested, even as she affirmed his ruthlessness and determination to achieve retribution against those he considers his political enemies.<\/p>\n
Trump, she said, has \u201can alcoholic\u2019s personality,\u201d even though the president does not drink. But the personality trait is something she recognizes from her father, the famous sports broadcaster Pat Summerall.<\/p>\n
\u201cHigh-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink. And so I\u2019m a little bit of an expert in big personalities,\u201d she said, adding that Trump has \u201ca view that there\u2019s nothing he can\u2019t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Venezuela, Wiles said Trump wants to keep the pressure on Maduro.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle. And people way smarter than me on that say that he will.\u201d Her comment, though, seemed to contradict the administration\u2019s position that the strikes are about stopping drugs and saving American lives, not regime change.<\/p>\n
She said the administration is \u201cvery sure we know who we\u2019re blowing up.\u201d<\/p>\n
The continued strikes and mounting death toll have drawn scrutiny from Congress, which has pushed back and opened investigations.<\/p>\n
Wiles described much of her job as channeling Trump\u2019s energy, whims and desired policy outcomes \u2014 including managing his desire for vengeance against his political opponents, anyone he blames for his 2020 electoral defeat and those who pursued criminal cases against him after his first term.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a loose agreement that the score settling will end before the first 90 days are over,\u201d Wiles said early in his administration, telling Vanity Fair that she does try to tamp down Trump\u2019s penchant for retribution.<\/p>\n
Later in 2025, she pushed back. \u201cI don\u2019t think he\u2019s on a retribution tour,\u201d she said, arguing he was operating on a different principle: \u201d\u2018I don\u2019t want what happened to me to happen to somebody else.\u2019 And so people that have done bad things need to get out of the government. In some cases, it may look like retribution. And there may be an element of that from time to time. Who would blame him? Not me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked about the prosecution of New York Attorney General Letitia James for mortgage fraud, Wiles allowed: \u201cWell, that might be the one retribution.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014-<\/p>\n
Barrow reported from Atlanta.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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