Donald Trump on Friday directed the Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement with former president Bill Clinton, as well as other financial institutions, a move that Bondi quickly agreed to.
The late sex offender’s emails, which the House Oversight Committee released this week, contained correspondence mentioning people on both sides of the aisle — including the president himself — Trump named only Democrats as potential targets.
“Now that the Democrats are using the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans, to try and deflect from their disastrous SHUTDOWN, and all of their other failures, I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him,” Trump said in a lengthy post on his social media platform Truth Social.
“This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats,” Trump added.
Bondi responded to the post a few hours later, saying she was assigning the task to Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Clayton “is one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country, and I’ve asked him to take the lead. As with all matters, the Department will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people,” Bondi wrote on X.
A spokesperson for Clinton said the released emails “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 spokesperson said in a statement Friday evening.
None of the people Trump named in his post were ever accused of wrongdoing in the sex trafficking case against Epstein, who was charged with sexually abusing numerous teenage girls at his homes in New York City and Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump’s post comes after thousands of emails from the Epstein estate were released by the House Oversight Committee this week, including many that referenced Trump’s connections to the convicted sex offender.
Epstein referred to Trump, who was in his first term as president at the time, writing, “I am the one able to take him down”.
