Maggie Haberman Reveals Unverified Trump Nipple Abuse Claim Torpedoed Anti-Epstein Website: ‘That Was the End of That’

New York Times journalist and bestselling author Maggie Haberman cited a shocking unverified claim about President Donald Trump as a key reason his team scrapped a website intended to cool the uproar over deceased sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.

For weeks, Haberman and Swan have been dropping bombs from their book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump — including a stunning account of a Situation Room meeting on the release of the Epstein Files that veered into what the authors described as “the nipple materials.”

The book was finally released on Tuesday, and the stunning revelations just keep coming as journalists pore over the book and the authors hit the airwaves to break it all down.

Swan and Haberman were guests on Sunday morning’s edition of NBC’s Meet the Press with Kristen Welker, during which guest moderator Ryan Nobles asked about the book’s Epstein Files bombshells.

Haberman revealed that the nipple story pretty much kiboshed an idea for a website devoted to quelling the Epstein furor:

RYAN NOBLES: Yeah. Let’s talk now about the Epstein files. That’s been an issue that has been very difficult for the Trump administration. President Trump’s decision to move on from the Epstein files, that launched a series of top secret meetings in the Situation Room. Maggie, what do those moments reveal about how Trump’s top advisors handled that crisis?

MAGGIE HABERMAN: So you have to set this picture here, Ryan. This had been something that top officials in the Trump government–JD Vance, Kash Patel, the FBI director, Dan Bongino, the deputy FBI director—had spent years talking about how there was a secret cabal of pedophiles. And once they were in charge, they would open this up and make this visible. Trump, to be fair, had never actually really quite gone that far. He had talked about it more in 2015, but it kind of went away.

RYAN NOBLES: He certainly didn’t reject it, though.

MAGGIE HABERMAN: Yeah, I mean, as he often does, he sort of leaves it as an option. And there were a number of senior officials in Trump’s White House who didn’t understand what a driving force this was for the MAGA base, for Trump’s own base. Trump wanted nothing to do with any of this. He didn’t want anything out. He was snapping at people who would talk about it. And then he started attacking his own supporters and saying, “This is a hoax.” So we write about a series of meetings in the White House Situation Room, which is intended to deal with national security crises, with foreign wars, you know, with sensitive matters, but not usually matters about, you know, Epstein PR crisis comms. And there were several of these, but we zeroed in on a few. These start, the ones we write about, right after the White House has used all of its political capital on the One Big Beautiful Bill, which you know, was what they would’ve rather been talking about. Instead they find themselves–and it’s the top levels of government. JD Vance, White House chief of staff, attorney general, deputy attorney general, Kash Patel, you know, several lawyers. And that’s, like, half the crew who were in some of these, talking about how to get themselves out of this. And this goes on, and on, and on. And all it does is allow a greater clamor among Trump’s supporters, including this surreal meeting that we end up writing about, where they were planning on putting out some public-facing website with things old and new, and you know, they were discussing what universe it would be. And then somebody had looked up in that mock website they were setting up, Trump’s name. And up pops up this unverified, already public claim with an allegation that Trump, you know, was made second-hand, but it was about Trump. And that was sort of the end of that.

Watch above via NBC’s Meet the Press.

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