President Donald Trump on Friday denied ever being briefed by Attorney General Pam Bondi that his name was in the Jeffrey Epstein files.
‘No, I was never briefed. No,’ he told reporters after he landed in Scotland to visit his golf courses.
But Bondi briefed Trump during a May 2025 meeting that his name was found in the Epstein documents ‘multiple times,’ according to reports.
Other high-profile individuals are also named in the investigation about Epstein’s sex crimes.
Just because the president is named in the files does not implicate him in any wrongdoing or connect him to Epstein’s child sex trafficking crimes.
The Wall Street Journal originally broke the news of Bondi’s briefing to Trump.
The Justice Department told the news outlet that Trump was made aware of the findings of the Epstein files as part of the ‘routine briefing.’
Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche have allegedly stated that the documents did not reveal anything that necessitates further investigation or prosecution.
‘As part of our routine briefing, we made the President aware of the findings,’ they told the Journal.
President Donald Trump denied being briefed his name is in the Epstein files
White House communications director Steven Cheung slammed the report as ‘fake news’ in a statement to the Daily Mail.
‘The reality is that the President removed him from his club for inappropriate behavior. This is merely a continuation of fabricated news stories by the Democrats and the liberal media, similar to the Obama-era Russiagate scandal, which President Trump was correct about,’ he mentioned when the report was released earlier this week.
Despite his efforts, Trump struggles to distance himself from inquiries regarding Epstein, who passed away in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting sex crime charges.
His death, ruled to be a suicide, sparked endless conspiracy theories that questioned how he may have really died and who among the rich and powerful would have benefitted from it.
The most recent questions came as Ghislaine Maxwell, the only person currently behind bars for Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring, wrapped a second day of meetings with the Justice Department.
Maxwell, 63, appears to be angling for a pardon from the president after she ‘didn’t hold back’ during secret questioning session.
Her attorney David Oscar Markus claimed that she spoke with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche about ‘100 different people’ related to Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring.
‘They asked about every possible thing you could imagine – everything,’ Markus claimed.
He also said Maxwell is being used as the ‘scapegoat’ in the entire Epstein case and has been ‘treated unfairly for the last five years.’
Her attorney said that they had not put in a formal request with the White House for a pardon for Maxwell following the conclusion of Day 2 of questioning.
But Markus didn’t rule out taking that action in the future, saying ‘things are happening so quickly.’
‘The president said earlier he has the power to do so, we hope he exercises that power in the right way,’ he said of a potential commutation.
Trump refused to rule out invoking his presidential pardon powers for Maxwell when asked on Friday morning.
‘I’m allowed to do it, but it’s something I haven’t thought about,’ he said.
Donald Trump, then girlfriend Melania Knauss, financier (and future convicted sex offender) Jeffrey Epstein, and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago in February 2000
Ghislaine Maxwell, 63, met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche
But, asked again about the matter later Friday, Trump, meanwhile, declined to talk about Maxwell and said ‘this is no time to be talking about pardons.’
‘I really have nothing to say about it. She is being talked to by a very smart man, a very good man, Todd Blanche. And I don’t know anything about the conversation. I haven’t really been following it,’ he said.
‘A lot of people are asking me about pardons. This is no time to be talking about pardons. But a lot of people have asked about pardons. This is just not the time to be talking about it,’ he added.
