Top Senate Dems Demand Trump’s Chief of Staff Explain How She ‘Read the Epstein Files’

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) sent Trump Chief of Staff Susie Wiles a letter on Tuesday asking her to explain how she knew certain details of Trump’s relationship with convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.

Wiles made several eyebrow-raising comments to Vanity Fair in an explosive profile earlier in the month, including verifying that Trump was on Epstein’s plane – something Trump had denied in the recent past.

“In a recent Vanity Fair profile, you said you have read ‘the Epstein file’ and that President Trump ‘is in the file’; ‘was on [Epstein’s] plane’; and is ‘on the manifest.’ Please be kind enough to explain when and where and under what authority you gained access to this material, as requested below. It would be good to have your responses to the following questions by January 5, 2026,” the senators wrote to Wiles, adding some specific questions:

1. What were the materials in “the Epstein file” you referred to in your Vanity Fair interview?

2. Had material in the file you reviewed been presented to a grand jury?

3. When did you first gain access to “the Epstein file” and what was the schedule of your review of it?

4. For what purpose did you gain access to this information?

5. Did you share with President Trump any information contained in the file you reviewed?

6. Please describe your role in any process related to the review, redaction, withholding, or release of material in the “Epstein file,” including any processes involving the Department of Justice or Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The bombshell Vanity Fair report was based on multiple conversations writer Chris Whipple had with Wiles and other key figures in the West Wing. Whipple quotes Wiles criticizing Attorney General Pam Bondi’s handling of the Epstein Files, including giving MAGA influencers binders of useless documents.

“I think she completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the very targeted group that cared about this,” Wiles said of Bondi, adding, “First 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’t on her desk.”

Whipple went on to write:

Wiles told me she’d read what she calls “the Epstein file.” And, she said, “[Trump] is in the file. And we know he’s in the file. And he’s not in the file doing anything awful.”

Wiles said that Trump “was on [Epstein’s] plane…he’s on the manifest. They were, you know, sort of young, single, whatever—I know it’s a passé word but sort of young, single playboys together.” (Trump started dating Melania Knauss, whom he married in 2005, sometime in 1998. Virginia Giuffre, Epstein’s most prominent accuser, who died by suicide earlier this year, first met Epstein while she was a Mar-a-Lago spa worker in 2000. Trump and Epstein reportedly had a falling out in 2004.)

The bombshell revelation was yet another link made public in recent months between Trump and Epstein. A “bawdy” birthday card Trump wrote Epstein, along with a tranche of Epstein’s emails that mention Trump repeatedly, have all been made public recently as the Epstein Files scandal has escalated into a constant headache for the Trump White House.