Attorney General Pam Bondi informed President Trump in May that his name was among hundreds of people identified in the Jeffrey Epstein files that the president’s MAGA base and Democrats want released to the public.
The news, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, fueled accusations by Democrats that Mr. Trump is concealing the files to protect himself. Mr. Trump told reporters on July 15 that Ms. Bondi did not tell him his name was in the files.
“Trump told the press he was not informed that his name was in the Epstein files. Now we learn that this was a lie,” Sen. Adam B. Schiff, California Democrat, posted on X.
But Ms. Bondi indicated that Mr. Trump’s name, among many others, was not the focus of any criminal investigation and was not associated with wrongdoing.
She said the files contained “unverified hearsay about many people, including Trump, who had socialized with Epstein in the past,” an unnamed official told the newspaper.
Mr. Trump’s name has surfaced previously in court documents produced from civil lawsuits connected to Epstein’s crimes.
Those documents showed Mr. Trump traveled on Epstein’s private jet in the 1990s, on some occasions with his wife and daughter, and he was mentioned as having been seen with Epstein by witnesses in the civil case. But he was not accused of wrongdoing by any of the witnesses.
Epstein committed suicide in his jail cell in 2019 as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges. He’s accused of running a decade-long sex trafficking ring that involved girls as young as 14 whom he allegedly procured for himself and his wealthy associates.
Mr. Trump and Epstein were longtime friends before they had a falling out over a real estate deal in 2004. The president banned Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club in 2007 after Epstein reportedly propositioned the teenage daughter of a club member.
Mr. Trump promised to release all of the Epstein files when he began his second term, but Ms. Bondi said she’s constrained by court rulings sealing the files in the criminal cases of Epstein and his girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. Prior grand jury testimony from Epstein’s 2007 criminal case also remains sealed. Grand jury testimony is rarely made public.
Instead, Ms. Bondi is now seeking to interview Maxwell.
She was convicted on sex trafficking charges in 2021 and is serving a 20-year sentence in a minimum security prison in Tallahassee, Florida.
Mr. Trump has been frustrated by the prolonged attention to the Epstein files, which have overshadowed the achievements of his first six months in office.
He called accusations by Democrats that he’s purposely hiding the files “a hoax,” and he said Epstein’s criminal case files were compiled by his Democratic political opponents, including former FBI Director James B. Comey and former Presidents Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden, when they were in office.
“I would say that these files were made up by Comey, they were made up by Obama, they were made up by Biden,” Mr. Trump told reporters on July 16.
Pressure from the MAGA base has forced the House GOP to take action on the Epstein matter.
A House panel voted this week to subpoena Maxwell to answer questions about Epstein’s clients. A second House panel voted to subpoena the Justice Department to hand over the Epstein files.
Ms. Bondi said there is no client list and that the hours of Epstein’s videos depicting child pornography will never be released. Other files will also be withheld, she said, to protect the identities of Epstein’s many victims.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.