Tara Palmeri is joined by attorney Michael Popok of Legal AF to break down the explosive new reporting from Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan — an excerpt from their book "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump" that pulls back the curtain on the White House's "summer of Epstein." While the administration publicly dismissed the Epstein story as a hoax and a "Democratic witch hunt," Haberman and Swan reveal that Trump's top officials were repeatedly huddling in the Situation Room — the SCIF normally reserved for national security crises — trying to contain the fallout. Tara and Michael walk through who was in the room (Todd Blanche, Susie Wiles, Kash Patel, JD Vance) and who wasn't (Trump himself, left outside the door; Bondi and Patel phoning in), and unpack the verbatim quotes that suggest someone was taking meticulous notes or recording — and the mole hunt that will follow. They get into Blanche's stunning plan to interview a convicted child sex trafficker, Ghislaine Maxwell, and dangle a pardon; Pam Bondi's chaotic binder rollout; the sworn FBI 302 alleging abuse by Trump; the redacted emails connecting Trump and Epstein through their lawyers; and why JD Vance, eyeing 2028, was the lone voice for transparency. Michael lays out the realistic odds of impeachment for Todd Blanche and others, while Tara connects the dots to the polling collapse, the "wag the dog" timing of the Iran escalation, and Michael Wolff's tapes and the missing contents of Epstein's safe. As Haberman and Swan write: Trump could break institutions and bend the world's richest men to his will — "but he could not, it turned out, make Jeffrey Epstein disappear." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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