Trump is in Epstein files, report says, but White House calls it fake news
A Florida judge, meanwhile, has denied a US Justice Department request to unseal grand jury transcripts about the late sex offender
US Attorney General Pam Bondi told President Donald Trump in May that his name appeared in investigative files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
The disclosure about Trump’s appearance in the US Justice Department’s records on the case threatened to deepen a political crisis that has engulfed his administration for weeks. Some Trump supporters for years have fanned conspiracy theories about Epstein’s clients and the circumstances of his 2019 death in prison.
The White House sent mixed signals following the story. It released an initial statement characterising it as “fake news”, but a White House official later said the administration was not denying that Trump’s name appears in some files, noting that Trump was already included in a tranche of materials Bondi assembled in February for conservative influencers.
Trump, who was friendly with Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s, appears multiple times on flight logs for Epstein’s private plane in the 1990s. Trump and several members of his family also appear in an Epstein contact book, alongside hundreds of others.
Much of that material had been publicly released in the criminal case against Epstein’s former associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison after her conviction for child sex-trafficking and other crimes.