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A veteran national security blogger has criticized The New York Times over what she described as a notable omission in its latest long-form report on Jeffrey Epstein and the White House response to the Epstein files.
Marcy Wheeler, a longtime legal commentator who writes on the Emptywheel blog, pointed out on Thursday that the name “Melania” does not appear in Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s roughly 8,000-word piece. The article reportedly detailed the White House’s response to the Epstein files, but Wheeler argued that it avoided a personal Trump-Epstein connection that had previously been reported by the same newspaper.
According to Wheeler, the omission was “especially damning” because Haberman had co-written a July 2019 New York Times story that mentioned Epstein’s claim that he had introduced Donald Trump to Melania Trump. That earlier piece, co-bylined by Annie Karni and Haberman, included Epstein’s alleged statement about the couple’s introduction.
Wheeler strongly objected to the way the newer report framed the White House reaction to the files. “Instead, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan give us t—, a bulls– claim that the White House was panicked about the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files primarily because a woman had claimed Trump abused a girl’s nipples until they hurt,” wrote Wheeler.
Earlier this year, an FBI document from a 2019 witness interview stated that “Epstein introduced Melania Trump to Donald Trump,” a claim Melania Trump has pushed back against forcefully. She has maintained that she met Trump “by chance” at a 1998 party.
The first lady has also threatened multi-billion-dollar defamation lawsuits against journalists and authors who repeat the alleged Epstein connection. Those reportedly include biographer Michael Wolff and Hunter Biden.
Wheeler argued that The Times article included detailed reporting on other areas, such as the strategy of having acting Attorney General Todd Blanche interview Ghislaine Maxwell, while omitting the alleged Trump-Melania-Epstein connection.
Her criticism focused not only on the omission itself but also on what she viewed as a broader issue with the report’s narrative. Wheeler suggested that the article gave readers a detailed account of White House concerns while sidestepping a politically sensitive element involving the president’s personal history.
“With Maggie especially, it’s sometimes hard to tell whether she is deliberately crafting her narrative in service to clients, or whether she is just easily snookered by her sources,” Wheeler railed.
The criticism adds another layer to the ongoing public debate over the Epstein files, the Trump administration’s handling of the issue and how major news outlets choose which details to emphasize or leave out.
