President Donald Trump was informed by Attorney General Pam Bondi in May that his name was in the files of the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case, reported the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
Bondi and an associate "informed the president at a meeting in the White House that his name was in the Epstein files, the officials said. Many other high-profile figures were also named, Trump was told. Being mentioned in the records isn’t a sign of wrongdoing," reported Sadie Gurman, Annie Liskey, Josh Dawsey, and Alex Leary.
Trump was friends with Epstein for years, with some of the more salacious episodes of their friendship detailed in a separate WSJ report last week that Trump is currently filing a defamation lawsuit over.
At the time, Bondi reportedly also explained to Trump why they could not release the entirety of the Epstein files, an issue that has become a flashpoint for the administration in recent weeks after his base revolted in frustration that Trump and the Justice Department weren't delivering what they promised on reviewing the Epstein case.
"They told the president at the meeting that the files contained what officials felt was unverified hearsay about many people, including Trump, who had socialized with Epstein in the past, some of the officials said," according to the report, which noted that there were "hundreds" of other names in the files. "They also told Trump that senior Justice Department officials didn’t plan to release any more documents related to the investigation of the convicted sex offender because the material contained child pornography and victims’ personal information, the officials said."
During this meeting, the report added, Trump said "he would defer to the Justice Department’s decision to not release any further files."
Trump's administration, seeking to calm the fury, has moved to ask a judge to unseal grand jury information about the case, but this request was rejected earlier in the day.
White House communications director Steven Cheung denied the reporting in a statement to the Journal.
“This is another fake news story, just like the previous story by The Wall Street Journal,” he said.
