Trump gets warning that White House official is leaking after 'hearsay' exposed to media

 President Donald Trump ought to be concerned about leaks coming from senior administration officials about the Jeffrey Epstein case, according to a conservative writer.

Alarmingly specific details about the matter, including full-throated personal disagreements, keep finding their way into media reports about the administration's handling of the case, and The Bulwark's William Kristol warned the president that evidence of a cover-up was creeping into view.

"It turns out everyone is interested in the Epstein files," Kristol wrote. "Which is why the White House is panicking."

Kristol pointed to a poll showing only 18 percent of Republicans believe the federal government has been open and transparent about the matter, while even fewer Democrats and independents do, and he said those results could fall even lower after Trump was caught in a lie about the case.

"Keep in mind, this survey was conducted before yesterday’s Wall Street Journal story revealing that Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy, Todd Blanche, told Trump in May that his name appears 'multiple times' in the Epstein files," Kristol wrote. "Trump claimed to reporters just a week ago that he hadn’t been told that very thing."

A reporter asked Trump last week whether Bondi had told him whether his name appeared in the files, and he said "no" twice and then claimed Barack Obama and James Comey had made up the files.

"Trump was not telling the truth," Kristol said.

Justice Department officials told the president the files contained what they called "unverified hearsay" about him and other individuals who socialized with the late financier, according to the Journal, but Kristol said that raised additional questions.

"The fact that the 'senior administration officials' recounting this meeting to the Journal wanted to emphasize that some of these references were 'unverified hearsay' is an attempt to minimize the significance of the report," he wrote. "But it of course raises the question of why the Justice Department apparently didn’t try to verify or falsify some of this hearsay."

Trump, of course, knows what he did or didn't do with Epstein, but Kristol said the administration's reaction to that meeting with the president was telling.

"We do know that after this meeting, all talk from the administration about making the Epstein files available ended," Kristol wrote. "It was in interviews in mid-May that FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, started publicly walking back their earlier promises to reveal new facts about the Epstein matter."

Justice Department officials told the president at that meeting the files couldn't be released because they contained Child sexual abuse material and victims' personal information, all of which Kristol said could have easily been redacted, but he said the most worrisome element of the report for Trump must be the final two paragraphs, which dramatically depicts a shouting match between Bondi and Bongino.

"So the attorney general and the deputy director of the FBI are screaming at each other," Kristol wrote. "A 'senior administration official' is telling the Wall Street Journal all about it. And the president is personally involved in decisions not to release information containing reports about his own behavior."

"Meanwhile, the public is paying attention," he added. "This is how coverups unravel."