At Trump’s urging, Bondi says U.S. will investigate Epstein’s ties to foes : NPR

NEW YORK — Acceding to President Donald Trump’s demands, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday that she has ordered a top federal prosecutor to investigate sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to Trump political foes, including former President Bill Clinton.

Bondi posted on X that she was assigning Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton to lead the probe, capping an eventful week in which congressional Republicans released nearly 23,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate and House Democrats seized on emails mentioning Trump.

Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years, didn’t explain what supposed crimes he wanted the Justice Department to investigate. None of the men he mentioned in a social media post demanding the probe has been accused of sexual misconduct by any of Epstein’s victims.

Hours before Bondi’s announcement, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he would ask her, the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Clinton and others, including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and LinkedIn founder and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman.

Trump, calling the matter “the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans,” said the investigation should also include financial giant JPMorgan Chase, which provided banking services to Epstein, and “many other people and institutions.”

“This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats,” the Republican president wrote, referring to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of alleged Russian interference in Trump’s 2016 election victory over Bill Clinton’s wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Asked later Friday whether he should be ordering up such investigations, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One: “I’m the chief law enforcement officer of the country. I’m allowed to do it.”

In a July memo regarding the Epstein investigation, the FBI said, “We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”

The president’s demand for an investigation — and Bondi’s quick acquiescence — is the latest example of the erosion of the Justice Department’s traditional independence from the White House since Trump took office.

It is also an extraordinary attempt at deflection. For decades, Trump himself has been scrutinized for his closeness to Epstein — though like the people he now wants investigated, he has not been accused of sexual misconduct by Epstein’s victims.

None of Trump’s proposed targets were accused of sex crimes

A JPMorgan Chase spokesperson, Patricia Wexler, said the company regretted associating with Epstein “but did not help him commit his heinous acts.”

“The government had damning information about his crimes and failed to share it with us or other banks,” she said. The company agreed previously to pay millions of dollars to Epstein’s victims, who had sued arguing that the bank ignored red flags about criminal activity.

Clinton has acknowledged traveling on Epstein’s private jet but has said through a spokesperson that he had no knowledge of the late financier’s crimes. He also has never been accused of misconduct by Epstein’s known victims.

Clinton’s deputy chief of staff Angel Ureña posted on X Friday: “These 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.”

Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl, but was spared a long jail term when the U.S. attorney in Florida agreed not to prosecute him over allegations that he had paid many other children for sexual acts. After serving about a year in jail and a work release program, Epstein resumed his business and social life until federal prosecutors in New York revived the case in 2019. Epstein killed himself while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

Summers and Hoffman had nothing to do with either case, but both were friendly with Epstein and exchanged emails with him. Those messages were among the documents released this week, along with other correspondence Epstein had with friends and business associates in the years before his death.

Nothing in the messages suggested any wrongdoing on the men’s part, other than associating with someone who had been accused of sex crimes against children.

Summers, who served in Clinton’s cabinet and is a former Harvard University president, previously said in a statement that he has “great regrets in my life” and that “my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgement.”

On social media Friday night, Hoffman called for Trump to release all the Epstein files, saying they will show that “the calls for baseless investigations of me are nothing more than political persecution and slander.” He added, “I was never a client of Epstein’s and never had any engagement with him other than fundraising for MIT.” Hoffman bankrolled writer E. Jean Carroll’s sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against Trump.

After Epstein’s sex trafficking arrest in 2019, Hoffman said he’d only had a few interactions with Epstein, all related to his fundraising for MIT’s Media Lab. He nevertheless apologized, saying that “by agreeing to participate in any fundraising activity where Epstein was present, I helped to repair his reputation and perpetuate injustice.”

Bondi, in her post, praised Clayton as “one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country” and said the Justice Department “will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people.”

Trump called Clayton “a great man, a great attorney,” though he said Bondi chose him for the job.

Clayton, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term, took over in April as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York — the same office that indicted Epstein and won a sex trafficking conviction against Epstein’s longtime confidante, Ghislaine Maxwell, in 2021.

Trump changes course on Epstein files

Trump suggested while campaigning last year that he’d seek to open up the government’s case files on Epstein, but changed course in recent months, blaming Democrats and painting the matter as a “hoax” amid questions about what knowledge he may have had about Epstein’s yearslong exploitation of underage girls.

On Wednesday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released three Epstein email exchanges that referenced Trump, including one from 2019 in which Epstein said the president “knew about the girls” and asked Maxwell to stop.

White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt accused Democrats of having “selectively leaked emails” to smear Trump.

Soon after, Republicans on the committee disclosed a far bigger trove of Epstein’s email correspondence, including messages he sent to longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon and to Britain’s former Prince Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Andrew settled a lawsuit out of court with one of Epstein’s victims, who said she had been paid to have sex with the prince.

The House is speeding toward a vote next week to force the Justice Department to release all files and communications related to Epstein.

“I don’t care about it, release or not,” Trump said Friday. “If you’re going to do it, then you have to go into Epstein’s friends,” he added, naming Clinton and Hoffman.

Still, he said: “This is a Democrat hoax. And a couple, a few Republicans have gone along with it because they’re weak and ineffective.”