President Donald Trump’s name appears “multiple times” in documents reviewed by the Department of Justice during its internal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, according to a Wall Street Journal report published Wednesday afternoon. Senior administration officials said Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche informed the president of this during a private White House meeting in May.
Yet Trump has publicly claimed otherwise. On July 15, during a gaggle with reporters at the White House, an ABC News journalist asked him directly: “Specifically, did [Bondi] tell you at all that your name appeared in the files?”
“No, no, she’s—she’s given us just a very quick briefing,” Trump said, adding that Bondi had “really done a very good job,” handling the Epstein situation.
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The Wall Street Journal report confirmed that Trump’s name was among many found in the DOJ’s Epstein records, which officials characterized as containing hearsay and unverified claims about individuals who had associated with Epstein before his 2006 state-level conviction. The Justice Department concluded the material did not contain sufficient grounds for prosecution and opted to withhold it, citing both the presence of child sexual abuse material and the need to protect victim identities.
Bondi and Blanche told the Journal, “As part of our routine briefing, we made the President aware of the findings.” They said Trump agreed with the DOJ’s decision to withhold further disclosures.
Also on Wednesday, a federal judge in Florida denied the Trump administration’s effort to unseal transcripts from two grand juries convened in 2005 and 2007 as part of Epstein’s early federal investigation. The Justice Department had petitioned the court just days earlier, on July 17, to make the records public, arguing that the documents are “of significant historical interest and enduring public importance” given the government’s past handling of the Epstein case.
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In that filing, the DOJ wrote that “release of the requested materials will shed important light on the role of federal prosecutors and the grand jury system in an extraordinary case involving an infamous figure, alleged to have committed grave and repeated crimes”. They further argued that many of the usual reasons for grand jury secrecy “no longer apply,” especially given Epstein’s 2019 death and the public’s long-standing scrutiny of the case.
But U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg ruled that the court lacked authority under Eleventh Circuit precedent to grant the petition. “Eleventh Circuit law does not permit this Court to grant the Government’s request; the Court’s hands are tied—a point the Government concedes,” she wrote in a 12-page decision. Rosenberg also denied the DOJ’s request to transfer the case to the Southern District of New York, where Second Circuit precedent may allow greater flexibility.
The Justice Department has also said it is seeking a meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime associate who was convicted in 2021 of child sex trafficking and is currently serving a 20-year sentence.
Related: Wall Street Journal reports Trump once sent Jeffrey Epstein a 'bawdy' birthday letter
The administration’s reversal has enraged many of Trump’s supporters, who for years believed the Epstein files would expose Democrats and global elites. “Donald Trump is hiding something,” said Rep. Robert Garcia, a California Democrat and the gay ranking member of the House Oversight Committee. In a July 17 interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Garcia said, “He spent his entire campaign talking about releasing the Epstein files… instead, he’s betrayed his base and his promises.”
“This is here not because Democrats campaigned on it, not because we were talking about the Epstein files or what we thought were conspiracy theories,” Garcia continued, “but because Donald Trump made it central to his win.”
Also on July 17, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on X (formerly Twitter) that “if Trump was guilty of anything regarding Jeffrey Epstein, Democrats would have used it against him the past 4 years.” She followed the statement with anti-LGBTQ+ attacks, accusing Democrats of supporting “drag queen story time, naked men dancing in front of children at pride parades, and mentally ill men in girls and women’s bathrooms.”
The Journal previously reported that Trump once sent Epstein a lewd 2003 birthday letter. The note included a typewritten message surrounded by a crude drawing of a naked woman, with Trump’s signature positioned beneath her waist. Trump has denied authoring the note and filed a defamation lawsuit against the Journal and its parent company, Dow Jones.