THE NEW YORK TIMES: Trump Epstein files: Attorney General told US President his name appeared in documents

Attorney General Pam Bondi informed President Donald 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 by FBI 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 informed the President that his name, as well as those of other high-profile figures, came up in their re-examination of documents connected to the case that had not previously been made public.

It’s 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 stubborn rebellion among those Trump supporters who are suspicious of efforts to shut down the case once and for all.

“As part of our routine briefing, we made the President aware of the findings,” Bondi and Blanche wrote in a statement in response to questions about the briefing. “Nothing in the files warranted further investigation or prosecution.”

Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, would not address questions about the briefing, but called any suggestion that Mr Trump was engaged in wrongdoing related to Epstein “fake news” and said Mr Trump had ejected Epstein from his club, Mar-a-Lago, for “being a creep.”

Department officials have regularly informed some White House officials about developments in the inquiry. Such communications are permissible under the law.

The conversation was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.

One person close to Mr Trump, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, said that White House officials were not concerned about the latest disclosures given that Mr Trump’s name appeared in the first round of information that Ms Bondi released.

Mr Trump said in 2019, during his first presidency, when Epstein was charged with sex trafficking, that he was “not a fan” of his. Epstein was found dead in his jail cell that year; some of Mr Trump’s allies have maintained it was suspicious, even as the Trump administration at the time said he died by suicide.

Yet the two men were indisputably friends for many years, part of overlapping power circles in New York City.

The two apparently became friends in the early 1990s and remained so into the 2000s. In 2002, Mr Trump told New York magazine that Epstein was a “terrific guy” and added, “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

In 2003, according to The Wall Street Journal, Mr Trump signed a bawdy birthday card as part of a book that Epstein’s girlfriend, Ghislane Maxwell, was putting together for Epstein’s 50th birthday. Mr Trump has denied composing or drawing the card, and he has sued the Journal and the reporters on the byline for $US10 billion ($15.4b).

Mr Trump has said over the past decade that he threw Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago for behaving inappropriately with a guest’s daughter. It was unclear when that happened, but their rift was said to be in place by the time Epstein was first arrested in 2006.

One woman who accused Epstein of assaulting her has said she asked investors to take a broader look at people in his circle, including Mr Trump.

In 2021, a federal jury convicted Maxwell of five counts, including the most serious charge, sexually trafficking a minor. When asked by reporters how he responded to her arrest in 2020, Mr Trump confused his own allies by saying, “I wish her well.”

The question of why Mr Trump isn’t releasing the Epstein files has roiled the President’s political base for weeks. Mr Trump said in the 2024 campaign that he would be inclined to do so, and he installed some who had promoted the idea of a conspiracy surrounding the Epstein crimes in top roles in his administration.

But in early July, after searching the files, the administration abruptly announced that there was no “client list” of those to whom Epstein had helped supply young women, and that they were moving on from the review.

Two weeks ago, the Justice Department and FBI released a memo declaring an end to the investigation. It found that Epstein had committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell in 2019, while he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges.

Their decision to keep the remaining material out of the public domain, citing the privacy of Epstein’s young victims and witnesses, prompted a furious backlash from Trump’s supporters on the right that has yet to abate.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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