White House tightens its grip on Jeffrey Epstein messaging

Jeffrey Epstein is dead, but the White House can’t seem to kill his story.

WASHINGTON — Jeffrey Epstein is dead, but the White House can’t seem to kill his story.

President Donald Trump and his aides have settled on silence as a strategy to stamp out criticism of his refusal to release files detailing the federal government's investigation of Epstein, according to a senior administration official and Republicans familiar with the White House's thinking.

For weeks, stories about Epstein, the financier and pal to political luminaries who died by suicide awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in 2019, have been making headlines.

In a break from Trump’s usual crisis communications template — which emphasizes an all-hands-on-deck approach to defending him on television and on social media — the Epstein case has been met with more restraint from the White House.

Trump himself has signaled that he doesn’t want members of his administration talking about the matter nonstop, a person close to the White House told NBC News. And White House aides have made it clear that no one in the administration is allowed to talk about Epstein without high-level vetting, according to a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.