US Attorney-General Pam Bondi informed President Donald Trump in the northern spring that his name appeared in the Jeffrey Epstein files, according to three people with knowledge of the exchange. Photo / Doug Mills, the New York Times
United States Attorney-General Pam Bondi informed President Donald Trump in the northern spring that his name appeared in the Jeffrey Epstein files, according to three people with knowledge of the exchange.
The disclosure came as part of a broader briefing on the re-examination of the case against Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, by FBI agents and prosecutors.
It was made by Bondi during a meeting that also included the deputy attorney-general, Todd Blanche, and covered a variety of topics. Bondi frequently meets with Trump to brief him on various matters, officials said.
Bondi and Blanche, both of whom previously served as lawyers for Trump, informed the President that his name, as well as those of other high-profile figures, had come up in their re-examination of documents connected to the case that had not previously been made public.
It is not clear how significant the references to Trump are.
But the briefing sheds light on private West Wing discussions at a moment when the President’s team is desperately trying to move on and quell the rebellion among those Trump supporters who feel that he — and some of his senior appointees — led them astray with campaign claims that they would make the files available.
Trump’s top two FBI appointees were among those who were adamant, before taking on their government roles, that there was more to uncover in the files.
And earlier this year, Bondi described the files as significant material to wade through.
Trump has already appeared in documents related to the investigation that have been made public.
He was a friend of Epstein’s until they had what Trump has described as a falling-out in the early 2000s.
At the White House in February, Bondi distributed a series of binders about the Epstein files that contained, among many others, the phone numbers of the some of the President’s family members, including his daughter.
“As part of our routine briefing, we made the President aware of the findings,” Bondi and Blanche wrote in a statement in response to questions about the briefing, which took place in May.
“Nothing in the files warranted further investigation or prosecution.”
Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, would not address questions about the briefing, but called any suggestion that Trump was engaged in wrongdoing related to Epstein “fake news” and said Trump had ejected Epstein from his club, Mar-a-Lago, for “being a creep”.
Trump previously denied that Bondi had told him that he is in the files.
During the week of June 7, the White House received an inquiry from ABC News about the May briefing, according to Administration officials.
A week later, an ABC journalist asked Trump during a quick gaggle with reporters if Bondi had told him his name appeared in the files.
He replied, “No, no,” and said she had told him about the “credibility” of various things in the files. He went on to claim that they contained material manufactured by Democrats.
Department officials have regularly informed some White House officials about developments in the inquiry.
Such communications are permissible under the law, although it is unusual for the attorney-general to brief the president on an active investigation or a potential investigation.
The existence of the references to Trump in the files that the Justice Department and the FBI reviewed caused some anxiety for officials who were faced with telling a president who has been known to berate his advisers over even seemingly minor issues when they relate to politically sensitive topics, according to multiple Administration officials.
The conversation between Trump and Bondi and Blanche was reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal.
One person close to Trump, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the matter publicly, said that White House officials were not concerned about the latest disclosures given that Trump’s name appeared in the first round of information that Bondi released.
Trump said in 2019, during his first presidency, when Epstein was charged with sex trafficking, that he was “not a fan” of his.
Epstein was found dead in his jail cell that year; some of Trump’s allies have maintained it was suspicious and possibly foul play, even as officials at the time said he died by suicide.
Yet the two men were indisputably friends for many years, part of overlapping power circles in New York City.
The two apparently became friends in the early 1990s and remained so into the 2000s.
In 2002, Trump told New York magazine that Epstein was a “terrific guy” and added, “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side”.
In 2003, according to the Journal, Trump signed a bawdy birthday card as part of a book that Epstein’s girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, was putting together for Epstein’s 50th birthday.
Trump has denied composing or drawing the card, and he has sued the Journal and the reporters on the byline for US$10 billion ($16.5b). The New York Times has not verified the Journal’s report.
Trump has said over the last decade that he threw Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago for behaving inappropriately with a guest’s daughter. It was unclear when that happened, but their rift was said to be in place by the time Epstein was first arrested in 2006.
Investigations like the ones that targeted Epstein often explore a wide range of tips, and materials gathered as part of such a case could include mentions of people extraneous to the allegations.
One woman who accused Epstein of assaulting her and later spoke to investigators has said she encountered Trump in Epstein’s office one day. (The White House has contested her account.)
In 2021, a federal jury convicted Maxwell of five counts, including the most serious charge, sexually trafficking a minor. When asked by reporters how he responded to her arrest in 2020, Trump confused his own allies by saying, “I wish her well”.
The question of why Trump isn’t releasing the Epstein files has roiled the President’s political base for weeks.
Trump said in the 2024 campaign that he would be inclined to do so, and he installed some who had promoted the idea of a conspiracy surrounding the Epstein crimes in top roles in his Administration.
In early July, after searching the files, the Administration abruptly announced that there was no “client list” of those to whom Epstein had helped supply young women, and that they were moving on from the review.
On July 7, the Justice Department and FBI released a memo declaring an end to the investigation. It said that Epstein had committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell in 2019.
Their decision to keep the remaining material out of the public domain, citing the privacy of Epstein’s young victims and witnesses, prompted a furious backlash from Trump’s supporters on the right that has yet to abate.
The memo fuelled further suspicion that something was being hidden and led to top Justice Department and FBI officials furiously accusing one another of creating the crush of controversy that was engulfing all of them.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush
Photographs by: Doug Mills
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