"Why did Trump try so hard to block the Epstein files release?”
Deadline: White House
Nicolle Wallace, MS NOW
4.5 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 25 February 2026
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hi there, everybody. It's 4 o'clock in New York. There is explosive brand new reporting, |
| 0:10.7 | new today on missing Epstein files and shocking testimony from a witness that has made an accusation |
| 0:17.1 | against none other than Donald Trump himself. It is reporting that suggests a cover-up inside the Trump Justice Department |
| 0:24.6 | and could be a possible explanation to a question that has dogged Donald Trump |
| 0:30.3 | throughout the entirety of his second term as president, the entirety really of the up-seen |
| 0:34.7 | scandal. |
| 0:35.8 | In the face of major public backlash, including from |
| 0:39.9 | deep inside his own political coalition. Why is Donald Trump working so hard to block the release |
| 0:45.5 | of the Epstein files? Our colleagues, Lisa Rubin and Michael Schnell, confirmed news first reported |
| 0:50.6 | by independent journalists, Roger Salenberger,berger and NPR that the Justice Department |
| 0:56.4 | has withheld files that contain allegations that Donald Trump sexually abused a person who was a |
| 1:01.9 | minor at the time. That is, despite the fact that the Justice Department is now legally mandated |
| 1:07.8 | to publicly release all of the Epstein files. NPR reports that more than 50 pages |
| 1:14.2 | of notes and memos about the FBI's interviews with this accuser are missing. A source who has |
| 1:20.2 | viewed the documents tells us this, quote, a woman interviewed by the FBI in July 2019 |
| 1:26.2 | about her Epstein allegations is the same woman who |
| 1:30.1 | alleged that Trump forced her to perform oral sex on him 35 years ago when she was 13 or 14 years |
| 1:37.9 | old, and he subsequently hit her. That allegation appears in a 2025 PowerPoint presentation, detailing each of the FBI's |
| 1:47.3 | Epstein-related investigations and a spreadsheet of unconfirmed tips that were called into the Bureau's |
| 1:53.5 | National Threat Operations Center. MS now can report that the FBI interviewed her four times. |
| 2:01.7 | A memo from only one of those four times, one of those four interviews, is publicly available. |
| 2:08.2 | In a tweet, the Justice Department denies that anything has been deleted, adding this explanation, quote, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Nicolle Wallace, MS NOW, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Nicolle Wallace, MS NOW and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

