Attorney General Pam Bondi informed President Trump in the 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 Mr. Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, by F.B.I. agents and prosecutors. It was made by Ms. Bondi during a meeting that also included the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, and covered a variety of topics. Ms. Bondi frequently meets with Mr. Trump to brief him on various matters, officials said.
Ms. Bondi and Mr. Blanche, both of whom previously served as lawyers for Mr. 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 Mr. 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. Mr. Trump’s top two F.B.I. 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, Ms. Bondi described the files as significant material to wade through.
Mr. Trump has already appeared in documents related to the investigation that have been made public. He was a friend of Mr. Epstein’s until they had what Mr. Trump has described as a falling-out in the early 2000s. At the White House in February, Ms. 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,” Ms. Bondi and Mr. 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.”