The crisis consuming Donald Trump's White House was not unfolding overseas or on a battlefield. It was unfolding inside the administration itself, where senior officials spent months wrestling with the political consequences of the Jeffrey Epstein files and the expectations they had helped create.
According to accounts detailed in 'Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump' by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, the issue became so destabilising that some of the administration's most senior figures repeatedly gathered in the White House Situation Room to discuss how to contain the fallout.
