President Donald Trump responded heatedly to a White House reporter on Tuesday after they asked Attorney General Pam Bondi questions about the late billionaire sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
During a cabinet meeting, Bondi was asked if she had any information about whether Epstein was an asset who had been used by American intelligence agencies to compromise powerful people.
Bondi began to respond to the question but Trump quickly interrupted.
"Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?" the president demanded to know. "This guy's been talked about for years! We have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things, and are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable... I mean, I can't believe that you're asking a question about Epstein at a time like this where we're having some of the greatest success and also tragedy with what happened in Texas. It just seems like a desecration."
Epstein, whose 2019 death while in prison was ruled a suicide, cultivated relationships with several high-profile public figures, including former President Bill Clinton, former Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, the Duke of York Prince Andrew, and Trump himself.
It had long been rumored that Epstein had a "client" list of powerful men to whom he had trafficked underaged girls and that he'd kept videos of their encounters to be used as blackmail material. However, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) this week asserted that there was never an Epstein client list, that there was "no credible evidence... that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals," and that there was no evidence that "could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties."
The DOJ and FBI's new report on Epstein caused a political firestorm that upset even some of Trump's right-wing media allies such as conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and now The Guardian is reporting that Democrats in the House of Representatives are also demanding answers.
Specifically, The Guardianwrites that House Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and 15 other House Democrats have sent a letter to Bondi demanding that the DOJ hand over information from the Epstein case files related to the president.
"Stop protecting your boss and former client... publicly release all documents in the Epstein files that mention or reference Donald Trump,” the Democrats wrote.