The Briefing with Jen Psaki
Walls are closing in on Trump as missing Epstein documents point to avenue of inquiry
28 Feb 2026
Chapter 1: What dubious dealings are associated with Donald Trump's commerce secretary Howard Lutnick?
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Subscribe to MS Now Premium on Apple Podcasts. We've got a lot of news to get to tonight. Today is the last day of early voting before Texas' primaries on Tuesday.
And on the Republican side of the primaries, Trump has thrown himself, well, he's thrown the entire thing, really, into chaos, flying down to the state today for a big rally, despite the fact that he hasn't chosen which Republican candidate he wants to back for the big Senate seat.
We're also following the big news that a top Trump ally who already owns CBS has now officially inked a deal to acquire the parent company of CNN. I'll talk to my former colleague and the former CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien about what that all means.
And we're following big new revelations tonight about the Trump administration's efforts to try to derail the Epstein investigation and downplay Trump's ties to the notorious sex trafficker. That's new reporting, and it's coming as a Republican-led investigation into Epstein spent the day questioning a different president, Bill Clinton, about his alleged ties to Epstein.
I'll talk to the reporter behind those new Trump revelations, as well as one of the Democratic members of Congress who was in the room during Bill Clinton's deposition in just a moment. So, like I said, we got a lot tonight. I want to start with this question. Hope you're sitting down. This is a tough one. You might need a pen and paper.
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Chapter 2: What new revelations have emerged regarding Trump's ties to Jeffrey Epstein?
Who is the most corrupt member of Donald Trump's cabinet? I know, it's like I handed you a bag of M&Ms and asked you to tell me which one is the most chocolatey, right?
But if one had to pick a cabinet member, excluding Donald Trump himself, who's engaged in the most outrageous self-dealing and influence peddling, the one whose personal conflicts of interest are most in need of oversight, if I had to ask you to pick one cabinet secretary, we'd have to go with this guy. The Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick.
Now, hear me out on this one, because I think a lot of what Lutnick has gotten up to in recent weeks has flown completely under the radar. For starters, there's Lutnick's role in the Trump administration's very own Bridgegate scandal. For years, the federal government's been involved in building a new bridge that runs between Canada and the United States, between Detroit and Windsor.
That Detroit-Windsor crossing, by the way, is the busiest land border crossing not just between our two countries, it's the busiest land border crossing in the entire world. More stuff goes across that land crossing than anywhere else. Trump himself was a big supporter of the project during his first term. It's called the Gordie Howe Bridge.
It's named after the legendary Canadian hockey player Gordie Howe, who played for the Detroit Red Wings. Again, a bridge between the two countries. Gordie Howe was that bridge. But the new bridge was going to compete against another bridge nearby that happened to be privately owned by a billionaire who collects toll money anytime anyone crosses it.
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Chapter 3: How are depositions from Bill and Hillary Clinton impacting the investigation into Epstein?
So that billionaire owner of the existing private toll bridge held a meeting a few weeks ago with the Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick. And within a few hours, all of a sudden, this bridge that Donald Trump liked, Trump was suddenly threatening to block that new bridge from ever opening to the public. The New York Times asked the Commerce Department for comment on the bridge decision.
They didn't respond. And in another universe, that would have been huge front page news for weeks. It's a scandal. This massive bridge between these two countries, these massive trading partners. For Lutnick, it was just Tuesday. Then there was the way Lutnick's family appears to be profiting from their bets against Trump's signature tariff policy itself.
So if you know anything about Howard Lutnick, you know that when he's in front of the cameras, big smiley guy, he's been one of the biggest cheerleaders for those tariffs. He even went so far as to embarrass himself by telling a member of Congress that Americans could avoid paying tariffs on imported bananas if companies would just, quote, build them in the United States. Build a banana.
Or a banana farm, I suppose is what he must have meant. But at the same time, Wired reports that in the lead up to the Supreme Court's widely anticipated ruling, which struck down those tariffs, Lutnick's family business was helping companies bet against the Trump policy.
A subsidiary of the business that was run by Letnick's two sons was reportedly buying up other companies' rights to sue for tariff refunds so that when the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs, as it was expected to do and as it eventually did, the Letnick family business would make a killing.
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Chapter 4: What role does Howard Lutnick play in the Trump administration's scandals?
A spokesperson for the Commerce Department told Wired that Lutnick has, quote, no insight or strategic control over the firm run by his two sons, end quote. But Congressman Jamie Raskin announced just today that he is demanding an investigation into the family's business practices. And that may not be the only way that Lutnick's family firm is benefiting from his role in the administration.
Politico reports that the Letnick family business has seen its revenues increase 25%, 25% since Donald Trump took office. And that rise in fortunes has reportedly even irked Trump himself, who apparently thinks his should be the only family profiting off his presidency.
Politico reports, quote, the president's been upset that Lutnick's family is profiting so aggressively off his popularity, and he confronted Lutnick directly about it during an episode at Mar-a-Lago over the winter holiday, said two people familiar with the exchange.
One of the officials familiar with Trump's thinking said the president reacts viscerally when someone else profits over Trump considers his own brand, end quote. OK, so there you go. That's the case. If you're unconvinced, everything I just mentioned is reason enough.
You don't think that everything I just mentioned is reason enough to believe that Howard Lutnick should face some tough questions from Congress right now. Then hold on. I got more for you. What I've got for you is what has become Howard Lutnick's single biggest liability of all. Never mind everything I just told you.
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Chapter 5: What allegations have been reported about missing documents related to Trump and Epstein?
He's been lying about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Back in October, Howard Lutnick was asked about the fact that he and Epstein had been neighbors in their swanky Manhattan neighborhood. And in response, Lutnick told the story of visiting Epstein's home in 2005, saying this.
And in the six or eight steps it takes to get from his house to my house, my wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.
So I was never in the room with him ever. Socially, for business, or even philanthropy. If that guy was there, I wasn't going because he's gross.
He's gross. Never. I will never be in the room with him socially, for business, or even philanthropy. Turns out that wasn't true. First, we got the revelation from the Epstein files that Lutnick and his family visited Jeffrey Epstein's island seven years ago. after Lutnick claims to have cut ties with him.
Then we learned that Lutnick also appears to have had longstanding business ties to Jeffrey Epstein, which is also extended well past the point that Lutnick claims to have cut ties with him. And now we've learned about this photo of somebody who looks an awful lot like Howard Lutnick with Jeffrey Epstein.
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Chapter 6: How is the political landscape shifting for Democrats in Texas ahead of the midterms?
And the interesting part about this photo is that it was mysteriously deleted from the Epstein files after they were initially released. It was only after people started pointing out that the photo had been removed that it magically reappeared in the publicly available files today. Because that's how your Justice Department works. Things just go missing and then they reappear.
Now, just let's be entirely clear here. This is about who should get fired from Trump's cabinet. any wrongdoing relating to Jeffrey Epstein, and he's denied any impropriety. But you'd think that given all of this, the photo, the business ties, the lies about when their relationship ended, you would think that maybe Congress might have deposed him by now as part of their investigation.
And that may still happen. Today, the Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna told Politico, quote, I believe we have the votes to subpoena him. One would hope that's true, given that Howard Lutnick is a sitting member of the current administration and is therefore directly subject to congressional oversight. It's not optional that members of the administration are subject to congressional oversight.
But so far, the Republican led committee has been much more focused on a president who was last in office 25 years ago, as well as his wife, the former secretary of state. Today, Republicans finally held their closed-door deposition with former President Bill Clinton. And so far, there have been no major revelations from that interview.
Chapter 7: What strategies are Democrats using to capitalize on Trump's unpopularity in Texas?
We will let you know if anything newsworthy emerges from that hearing. But the real question here is if Congress can force a former president to sit and answer questions about Epstein, what stops Congress from doing the same thing for a current president and multiple members of his cabinet who have ties to Epstein? If Bill Clinton can be made to testify about Epstein, why not Trump?
And I'm not the only one who seems to be asking that question. Just listen to what President Trump himself said today when he was asked about Bill Clinton's deposition.
I don't like seeing him deposed, but, you know. They certainly went after me a lot more than that.
I don't like him. I don't like him.
I like him. And I don't like seeing him deposed.
I don't like seeing him deposed. That's not Donald Trump, by the way, expressing newfound sympathy for Bill and Hillary Clinton, in case you were wondering. That's Donald Trump's fear that he's next.
As The Atlantic's Sarah Fitzpatrick reports in a blockbuster news story today, quote, Trump and others have expressed concern that this effort could set a precedent for Trump to be subpoenaed to testify under oath about Epstein.
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Chapter 8: What implications does the new media consolidation have for journalism in America?
According to four people familiar with the situation, as one administration official said, everyone's looking for an off-ramp.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what we're learning from this new reporting, because according to The Atlantic, not one, not two, not three, not four, but nine people, nine people familiar with information that was submitted to the FBI and the DOJ in recent years told The Atlantic that they were alarmed that many documents, including those that they say include references to Trump, were not made public.
Nine people with insight into the FBI's investigation of Epstein know that those materials relating to Trump exist and that they have been omitted from the DOJ's production of documents as required by law. This report also sheds light on how people inside the administration reacted when they realized the potential implications for the president.
Trump's prominence in the files, quote, surprised White House staff members who told us they were unprepared for the release, end quote. As one staffer told The Atlantic, quote, that freaked people out. That freaked out people. Nobody really knew what was coming.
The report also details how the administration appears to have targeted Republican Congressman Thomas Massey for his campaign to get the files released. Quote, some of Massey's key staff members were suddenly offered more prestigious jobs in the Trump administration or more lucrative jobs in the private sector.
The idea being that if Massey no longer had a full staff, he couldn't pursue ambitious legislation. But despite his relentless efforts to undermine this investigation, Trump's interest in keeping the files hidden remains a mystery, even to his closest allies.
The Atlantic reports that Trump, who's not exactly known for his discretion, does not detail even privately what precisely in the files might be so embarrassing to him and those close to him, four administration officials told The Atlantic. What the president has clearly said, often in a barking tone, is that he wants his aides and allies to make the whole thing go away.
But this issue is not going away. If anything, the hunt for answers about Jeffrey Epstein is just beginning. And neither the president nor his allies nor his cabinet secretary should assume that they will not end up in the hot seat. Starting us off tonight, Sarah Fitzpatrick. She's a staff writer for The Atlantic behind the remarkable reporting that broke late today. Sarah, welcome to the show.
Nice to see you again.
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