The Wall Street Journal alleged in a new “exclusive report” Wednesday that Attorney General Pam Bondi told President Trump in May that his name was among many of those mentioned in the Epstein files.
The WSJ was careful to note that “being mentioned in the records isn’t a sign of wrongdoing.” Trump was friends with the disgraced financier for years before the two had a falling out, so it should not come as a surprise that his name would appear in various Epstein documents.
According to the report, Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche informed the president that his name was included the Epstein files during a “routine briefing” in the White House that “covered a number of topics.”
Trump’s appearance in the Epstein files was reportedly not the focus of the meeting.
They told the president at the meeting that the files contained what officials felt was unverified hearsay about many people, including Trump, who had socialized with Epstein in the past, some of the officials said.
One of the officials familiar with the documents said they contain hundreds of other names.
They also told Trump that senior Justice Department officials didn’t plan to release any more documents related to the investigation of the convicted sex offender because the material contained child pornography and victims’ personal information, the officials said. Trump said at the meeting he would defer to the Justice Department’s decision to not release any further files.
In a statement to the Journal, Bondi and Blanche, said nothing they saw in the files warranted further investigation or prosecution. “As part of our routine briefing, we made the President aware of the findings,” they said.
“This is another fake news story, just like the previous story by The Wall Street Journal,” said White House communications director Steven Cheung.
During Trump and and former DOGE chief Elon Musk’s public feud over the “Big Beautiful Bill” last month, Musk stated flatly that the president is in the Epstein files.
“@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public,” the billionaire said in a now deleted post. “Have a nice day, DJT!”
In an ominous follow-up, Musk urged X users to “mark this post for the future. The truth is coming out.”
Musk later posted on X that he may have gone “too far.”
However, he has made many references to Epstein’s client list since.
Earlier this year, famed defense attorney Alan Dershowitz said that he knew “for a fact” that Epstein documents were being “suppressed to protect individuals.”
“We know there have been many false accusers who have accused innocent people for money and those records are being deliberately, willfully suppressed,” Dershowitz told GOP strategist Sean Spicer during an interview on his podcast in March. Dersh added that if an accusation is allowed out, evidence that “diminishes the credibility of the accuser” should also be allowed to air.
“We want total transparency on this. Every single document, no redactions,” he said. “I was falsely accused and I was able to prove it through documents and I want other people to be able to disprove false accusations through documents. But these documents are being withheld.”
Trump famously banned Epstein from his exclusive Mar-a-Lago Club in the 1990s after the financier hit on the teenage daughter of another member. And he was reportedly eager to help attorneys as they built a case against Epstein.
In 2018, Bradley Edwards, an attorney who represented a number of Epstein accusers, was asked about Trump during an interview with Derrick Broze of The Conscious Resistance Network.
“The only thing I can say about President Trump is that he is the only person who in 2009, when I served a lot of subpoenas on a lot of people, or at least gave notice to some pretty connected people that I wanted to talk to them, he is the only person who picked up the phone and said ‘lets just talk, I’ll give you as much time as you want, I’ll tell you what you need to know,’” Edwards said.
“Was very helpful in the information he gave and gave no indication whatsoever that he was involved in anything untoward whatsoever but had good information that checked out and that helped us and that we didn’t have to take a deposition of him,” the lawyer added.
In his 2020 book, Relentless Pursuit: My Fight For The Victims Of Jeffrey Epstein, Edwards claimed to have spoken to the president twice about his relationship with Epstein and Trump insisted both times it was primarily business related.