President Donald Trump called on the Justice Department on Friday to examine the relationships between deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and several prominent Democrats, including former president Bill Clinton, and Attorney General Pam Bondi quickly tapped federal prosecutors in Manhattan to take on the job.
It is not clear how the New York prosecutors will respond to the assignment. In a post on Truth Social, Trump pointed to three men — Clinton, former treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who is a prominent Democratic donor. All three had long-standing relationships with Epstein, which have been reported on for years.
In July, the Justice Department said it had examined its files on Epstein, and “we did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.” That statement would not bar a fresh investigation but points to some of the hurdles any such inquiry might face.
Trump also said the Justice Department should look at Epstein’s ties to JPMorgan Chase “and many other people and institutions.”
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday evening, Trump deflected when asked what Epstein meant when he said Trump knew about the girls, and he also suggested revelations could be coming about the others he had said should be investigated.
“I know nothing about that. It’s really what did he mean when he spent all his time with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers?” Trump said. “Epstein and I had a very bad relationship for many years. But he also saw strength because I was president, so he dictated memos to himself. Give me a break. You’ve got to find out what he knew with respect to Bill Clinton … all those people he knew, including JPMorgan Chase.”
Trump’s statements came after days of intense media focus on his own connections to Epstein that stemmed from the release of fresh documents from the House Oversight Committee.
Since the Justice Department said in July that it would not release more documents from the Epstein files, setting off a political furor, Trump has complained repeatedly that Epstein’s connections with those people and institutions deserve more scrutiny than his own relationship to the disgraced financier. At times he has suggested the story is an old one that shouldn’t still be getting attention. At other times, as in Friday’s social media post, he has tacked the other way, suggesting more attention, but focused on others.
Hours after Trump’s request, Bondi said on social media that Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, would lead the investigation. She called him “one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country.”
“As with all matters,” Bondi added, “the Department will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people.”
The U.S. attorney’s office in New York declined to comment.
The office indicted Epstein in 2019. The indictment alleged he had abused dozens of underage victims between 2002 and 2005.
At the time, the office interviewed a number of accusers, reviewed a large volume of records and put out a call for anyone with information about Epstein to come forward.
Epstein died in federal custody later that year before his case could go to trial, and his death was ruled a suicide.
About a year after Epstein’s indictment, the Manhattan prosecutors indicted his longtime confidante and romantic partner Ghislaine Maxwell for allegedly serving as his top enabler. Maxwell was convicted in 2021 and is serving a 20-year term in prison.
All but one of the prosecutors who handled those two cases have since left the office, including Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI director James B. Comey, who was fired this year. She has sued the government, alleging that her firing was improperly motivated by Trump’s malice toward her father.
On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump vowed to declassify Justice Department files related to Epstein, and questions about the administration’s transparency regarding the case have hovered over much of his second presidential term. Democrats — and some Republicans — have alleged that there has been a coordinated cover-up to keep a majority of the Epstein files secret.
Earlier this week, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee highlighted a 2019 email in which Epstein wrote that Trump knew about Epstein’s sexual abuse of underage girls — which Trump has denied — but never participated. The email was among thousands of pages of documents released by the committee.
The Oversight Committee release also included emails between Epstein and Summers, as well as references to Clinton.
Clinton flew on Epstein’s private jet, and Epstein donated to the Clinton Foundation. The former president has said that he knew nothing about Epstein’s crimes.
Clinton spokesman Angel Urena said in a statement that the emails released by the committee “prove Bill Clinton did nothing and knew nothing. The rest is noise meant to distract from election losses, backfiring shutdowns, and who knows what else.”
The documents released this week show two years’ worth of communication between Epstein and Summers, including conversations about ranked-choice voting and talking through Summers’s apparent romantic problems. Summers has said he deeply regrets his associations with Epstein. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
The Center for American Progress, a prominent Democratic think tank, where Summers serves as a nonpaid fellow, said in a statement Friday that it was reviewing its connections with the former treasury secretary.
“Larry Summers is a non-resident, uncompensated fellow at CAP. We are reviewing this week’s disclosures to determine appropriate next steps,” a spokesperson for the organization said.
Hoffman publicly apologized in 2019 for having solicited funding from Epstein for a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, calling Epstein’s behavior “abhorrent, horrific, and disgusting.” In a social media post Friday, Hoffman called for the release of all the Epstein files. “Trump should release all of the Epstein files: every person and every document in the files,” he wrote.
In 2023, a judge approved a $290 million settlement by JPMorgan Chase to women who said Epstein abused them. Epstein was a client of the bank from 1998 to 2013, which kept him on after his 2006 arrest on prostitution charges.
Trish Wexler, a spokeswoman for JPMorgan Chase, said in a statement that the bank regrets “any association we had with the man, but did not help him commit his heinous acts.”
“The government had damning information about his crimes and failed to share it with us or other banks,” Wexler said. “ … We ended our relationship with him years before his arrest on sex trafficking charges.”
Trump has said that he knew Epstein socially in Palm Beach, Florida, and that they had a falling-out in the mid-2000s, which Trump has attributed to a real estate deal and Epstein’s hiring employees away from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club.
Among the thousands of documents released by Congress this week was the account by Epstein that Trump knew about the sexual abuse of underage girls but never participated.
“Trump knew of it. and came to my house many times during that period,” Epstein wrote in an email to himself on Feb. 1, 2019, several months before he was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges. “He never got a massage.”
That account conflicts with Trump’s denial of ever knowing about Epstein’s solicitation of underage girls for prostitution before Epstein’s 2008 plea deal.
Natalie Allison, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Cat Zakrzewski, Jeremy Roebuck, Isaac Arnsdorf and Matthew Choi contributed to this report.
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