President Trump has wrestled for weeks with escalating discontent among some of his most loyal supporters over his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Since taking office, top Justice Department officials had promised to release revealing documents on Mr. Epstein, a registered sex offender awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges before his death in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019. But in July, the agency essentially reversed course, stating that “no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted” and dismissing theories that Mr. Epstein kept a client list of prominent figures to whom he had supplied young women. The about-face incited anger and disbelief among those supporters of Mr. Trump who have long been fascinated by the case.
While Mr. Trump himself socialized with Mr. Epstein decades earlier, they had a falling out in the 2000s and there is no public evidence that the president was involved in any of Mr. Epstein’s illegal activities.
Nonetheless, Mr. Trump has ignored questions about Mr. Epstein and the ensuing fallout. He has brushed off the whole matter as a “hoax” without elaborating. And he has tried to divert attention to a host of other topics. But in a few instances, the president did address questions over the files, his relationship with Mr. Epstein and his handling of the matter.
Here’s an assessment of some of his defenses.
Attacking Political Opponents
What Was Said
False. The various investigations into Mr. Epstein did not occur under the tenures of James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, President Barack Obama or President Joseph R. Biden Jr. And what Mr. Trump meant in characterizing the files as “made up” by Mr. Comey and Mr. Trump’s Democratic predecessors is not exactly clear. But the Justice Department, in declining to release additional files, stated in an unsigned memo last month that the federal government held a trove of material — 300 gigabytes of records and physical evidence — related to the investigations.
Asked for evidence that the files were fabricated, a White House official offered none, saying only that Mr. Trump’s perceived rivals had shown themselves willing to pursue the president under false pretenses.
The local police in Florida began investigating Mr. Epstein in 2005 and referred the case to the F.B.I. a year later. In 2007, the U.S. attorney’s office for southern Florida, led by R. Alexander Acosta, who later served as Mr. Trump’s first labor secretary — agreed to what is known as a nonprosecution agreement. Under the deal, Mr. Acosta would not pursue federal sex-trafficking charges and Mr. Epstein pleaded guilty to lesser state charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution.
In February 2019, more than a decade later, the Justice Department announced that it would open an investigation into the plea deal. Federal prosecutors charged Mr. Epstein on sex trafficking charges in July 2019 and he was found dead in his jail cell a month later, with officials ruling it a suicide.
Those investigations took place under President George W. Bush and under Mr. Trump in his first term, not under Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden or Mr. Comey, who served as the F.B.I. director from 2013 to 2017. And many of the documents related to those events have already been released over 15 years — including during Mr. Trump’s first term. The events that have ensued are at odds with his assertion that the files are “made up.”
Lawsuits filed by Mr. Epstein’s victims and public interest in the case, generated in part by a Miami Herald investigation into the nonprosecution deal, prompted the release of thousands of documents.
In 2009, a judge unsealed the nonprosecution agreement. Another judge in 2015 ordered the release of more documents. The F.B.I. in 2018 began releasing heavily redacted files related to its investigation into Mr. Epstein. The Miami Herald, in its 2018 investigation, obtained and sifted through 10 years of public records, from police departments, the Florida Department of Corrections, the state attorney’s office, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department. In January 2024, a federal judge in Manhattan unsealed even more documents, including names of Mr. Epstein’s victims, associates and friends.
What Was Said
“You ought to be speaking about Bill Clinton went to the island 28 times. I never went to the island.”
— in remarks on July 25
This lacks evidence. There is no proof that Mr. Clinton made 28 visits to the Virgin Islands, where Mr. Epstein entertained friends and where he was accused of trafficking underage girls. Mr. Trump was most likely referring to flight logs that show Mr. Clinton traveling on Mr. Epstein’s plane to other locations around the world, not the Virgin Islands. And the same logs also show that Mr. Trump traveled on the plane.
Records released in 2019 show Mr. Clinton taking more than 20 flights over six trips on Mr. Epstein’s plane: a February 2002 flight from Miami to New York; a March 2002 round trip from New York to London; a five-leg trip across Asia in May 2002; a two-leg trip from Morocco to Portugal to New York in July 2002; a September 2002 multileg trip from New York to several cities across Africa, Paris and then London; and a multileg trip in November 2003 spanning Europe and China.
There are two people who say Mr. Clinton did visit the island. One of Mr. Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre, told a reporter in 2011 that she recalled seeing Mr. Clinton on the island, at a dinner after he left office. Doug Band, a former aide to Mr. Clinton, also said in a 2020 article that the former president visited the island in 2003. But in that article and in a 2019 statement, a spokesman for Mr. Clinton denied that he had ever visited it.
The same flight records show Mr. Trump taking at least eight flights on the plane: a round trip from New Jersey to Florida in April 1993; two separate flights from Florida to New Jersey in October 1993; a two-leg trip from Florida to Washington, D.C., to New Jersey in May 1994; a Florida to New Jersey flight in August 1995; and another Florida to New Jersey flight in January 1997.
Deflecting or Downplaying
What Was Said
This contradicts earlier statements. During his first term and the 2024 campaign, Mr. Trump expressed a greater interest in the files, questioned circumstances around Mr. Epstein’s death and pledged — though somewhat cautiously — to release more information if elected.
Appearing on Fox News in June 2024, when he was asked if he would “declassify the Epstein files,” Mr. Trump responded: “Yeah, I would. I guess I would. I think that, less so, because you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would.”
He added, “Certainly, about the way he died, it would be interesting to find out what happened there, because that was a weird situation, and the cameras didn’t happen to be working, etc., etc.”
Mr. Trump also discussed Mr. Epstein in a September 2024 interview with Lex Fridman, a research scientist and host.
“It’s just very strange for a lot of people, that the list of clients that went to the island has not been made public,” Mr. Fridman said.
“It’s very interesting, isn’t it? It probably will be, by the way, probably,” Mr. Trump replied, adding: “I’d be inclined to do the Epstein. I’d have no problem with it.”
What Was Said
This is exaggerated. Mr. Trump was most likely referring to recent polls that show a slight increase in support among Republicans, but polls show that overall approval has declined slightly.
For example, 90 percent of Republicans approved of Mr. Trump in a Quinnipiac University poll from mid-July, up from 87 percent in late June. And 88 percent of Republicans said they approved of Mr. Trump in a CNN poll from mid-July, also an increase from 86 percent in April.
But Mr. Trump’s approval rating has declined in recent weeks in a number of polls. An average of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics showed that his net approval rating had fallen to negative 7.1 percent on July 23, with 57.2 percent disapproving of his performance as president and 45.6 percent approving. His net approval had ranged from negative 3 to negative 5 percent a month earlier.
An average compiled by The New York Times also shows a similar trajectory: net approval falling to negative 10 percent in mid-July, compared to between negative 7 and negative 9 percent a month earlier.
Asked which poll Mr. Trump was referring to, the White House official simply asserted that “his approvals are at an all-time high.”
Flat-out Denials
What Was Said
This contradicts reporting. The Wall Street Journal reported in late July that Mr. Trump was, in fact, told by Pam Bondi, the attorney general, in May that his name appeared in the Epstein files. The New York Times and other news outlets confirmed that reporting. The Times reported that Ms. Bondi and Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, informed Mr. Trump that his name, along with the names of other high-profile figures, came up in documents that had not been made public.
What Was Said
“The Wall Street Journal printed a FAKE letter, supposedly to Epstein. These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don’t draw pictures.”
— in a social media post on July 18
This was false. Asked about a recent Wall Street Journal article that reported that he had drawn a naked woman as part of a bawdy birthday note to Mr. Epstein in 2003, Mr. Trump denied that he had done so and that he drew pictures at all. But as The Times previously documented, Mr. Trump regularly donated drawings to charities in the early 2000s.
Afterward, Mr. Trump conceded that he did, in fact, draw sometimes. But he continued to contest the subject matter of his doodles.
“Sometimes people would say, ‘Will you draw a building?’ And I’ll draw four lines and a little roof, you know, for a charity stuff. But I’m not a drawing person,” he said more than a week later. “I don’t do drawings of women, that I can tell you. They say there’s a drawing of a woman, and I don’t do drawings of women.”