WASHINGTON (AP) — The revelation that Attorney General Pam Bondi told President Donald Trump that his name was in the Jeffrey Epstein files has focused fresh attention on the president's relationship with the wealthy financier and the Justice Department's announcement this month that it would not be releasing any additional documents from the case.
But at least some of the information in the briefing to Trump, which The Wall Street Journal said took place in May, should not have been a surprise.
The president's association with Epstein is well-established and his name was included in records that his own Justice Department released back in February as part of an effort to satisfy public interest in information from the sex-trafficking investigation.
Trump has never been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein and the mere inclusion of someone's name in files from the investigation does not imply otherwise. Epstein, who killed himself in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial, also had many prominent friends in political and celebrity circles besides Trump.
It should have been no shock to Trump that his name would be found in records related to Epstein.
The February document dump from the Justice Department included references to Trump in Epstein's phone book and his name was also mentioned in flight logs for Epstein's private plane.
Over the years, thousands of pages of records have been released through lawsuits, Epstein’s criminal dockets, public disclosures and Freedom of Information Act requests. In January 2024, a court unsealed the final batch of a trove of documents that had been collected as evidence in a lawsuit filed by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre.
Records made public also include 2016 deposition in which an accuser recounted spending several hours with Epstein at Trump’s Atlantic City casino but didn’t say if she actually met Trump and did not accuse him of any wrongdoing. Trump has also said that he once thought Epstein was a “terrific guy,” but that they later had a falling out.
“I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him,” Trump said in 2019 when video footage unearthed by NBC News following Epstein’s federal indictment showed the two chatting at a party at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in 1992, when the now president was newly divorced. ”He was a fixture in Palm Beach. I had a falling-out with him a long time ago. I don’t think I’ve spoken to him for 15 years.”
The Justice Department stunned conspiracy theorists, online sleuths and elements of Trump's base this month when it released a two-page letter saying that a so-called Epstein “client list” that Bondi had once intimated was on her desk did not exist and that officials did not plan to release any additional documents from its investigation despite an earlier commitment to provide transparency.
Whether Bondi's briefing to Trump in May influenced that decision is unclear.
The Justice Department did not comment directly on her meeting with Trump but Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a joint statement that a review of the Epstein files showed that there was nothing warranting further investigation or prosecution.
“As part of our routine briefing,” the statement said, “we made the President aware of our findings.”
