The New York Times shared an eye-opening detail in a story on Wednesday: That Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), who had announced plans to support the discharge petition that would compel the Justice Department to release files connected to Jeffrey Epstein, had been summoned to a meeting at the White House, and that the meeting took place in the White House Situation Room.
Boebert, the Times reported, “was summoned to sit down with top Justice Department and F.B.I. officials, according to two people familiar with the matter. One of the people said the session included Attorney General Pam Bondi and representatives from the F.B.I. Director Kash Patel.”
CNN reported that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche had also participated in the meeting.
It is, needless to say, somewhat irregular for a political meeting of that sort to take place in the Situation Room.
BREAKING: CNN is reporting that Trump held a meeting in the Situation Room (Yes THE SITUATION ROOM!) with Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche, Kash Patel and Lauren Boebert over the House effort to force the release of the DOJ’s Epstein files!
They are panicking big time! They are literally… pic.twitter.com/tfvQ9M4z87
— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) November 12, 2025
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The petition would likely not get through the Senate, and Trump would veto it if it reached his desk. But the move would likely force lawmakers into a tough vote.
Trump, for his part, declared on Truth Social that the Democrats were “trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects. Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap.” It’s an ironic inversion of a common right-wing conspiracy theory trope in recent years, in which virtually any item in the news can be chalked up as “a distraction from the Epstein files.”
“There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!,” the president added.
Earlier in the day, a trove of documents, mostly emails, related to Epstein were released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. Per CNN, the emails show that Epstein stated “‘I know how dirty Donald is,’ referring to potential scandals that might come out about Trump in an August 2018 email to Kathryn Ruemmler, a former White House counsel under President Barack Obama. Epstein also emailed about Trump’s mental state with his personal attorney and Ruemmler in March 2018.”
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
