Long-time Trump adviser Steve Bannon and sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Donald Trump from office during his first term, according to newly released Epstein files.
In a text message exchange that began on New Year’s Eve in 2018, shortly after Democrats retook the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, the two men discussed Trump’s political position, with Bannon lamenting that the “WH,” a likely reference to the White House, has “zero plan to punch back.”
“He is really borderline,” Epstein responded. “Not sure what he may do.”
“I think it’s beyond borderline — 25 amendment,” Bannon added, a reference to the provision in the Constitution that allows the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to remove the president if they are deemed unfit for office.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Bannon suggests “we really need an intervention” regarding Trump.
Critics of Trump have frequently called for those around him to invoke the 25th Amendment, and senior officials at the FBI and Justice Department allegedly discussed the possibility during Trump’s first term.
Conservatives reacted angrily to the exchange online.
In a post on X, Trump’s first-term national security adviser Mike Flynn called on the DOJ to bring Bannon in for questioning.
“I agree completely,” former congresswoman and ex-Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene responded to the post. “Steve Bannon went to jail for Trump (I was there), but back on 1-1-19 (after Dems took the House) he was texting with Epstein about 25th amendment. Also, there is no excuse for having such a friendly relationship with Epstein, post conviction, 2018-19. None.”
The Independent has contacted Bannon’s representatives for comment.
Around this time, Bannon had been out of the administration for over a year and was working to make a documentary about Epstein.
In the six months before Epstein was arrested in the summer of 2019 on sex trafficking charges, Bannon also communicated with Epstein about media training, rehabilitating Epstein’s image, and even which lawyers to hire, according to an analysis of the Epstein files by The New York Times.
“I am a filmmaker and TV host with decades of experience interviewing controversial figures,” Bannon told the paper. “That’s the only lens through which these private communications should be viewed — a documentary filmmaker working, over a period of time, to secure 50 hours of interviews from a reclusive subject.”
The film was meant to “destroy the very myths he created,” Bannon added of Epstein.
Bannon has remained a loyal Trump ally, going to prison in 2024 on a contempt charge for refusing to cooperate in the congressional investigation into the January 6 Capitol insurrection.
The far-right podcaster has since advocated for Trump to seek an unconstitutional third term.
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