A report by the Wall Street Journal claiming that the U.S. Justice Department informed President Donald Trump in May that his name appeared multiple times in the Epstein files is “fake news,” the White House says.
A spokesperson for the president pushed back on the WSJ report, which cited “senior administration officials,” on Wednesday by calling the reports into the administration’s handling of the Epstein files “fake news.”
“This is nothing more than a continuation of the fake news stories concocted by the Democrats and the liberal media,” White House director of communications Steven Cheung said in an emailed statement to Reuters.
On Thursday, he posted on X, “The democrats are so moronic and crackbrained they never learn from their mistakes.”
“Instead of actually working for the American people, they are so consumed and obsessed with destroying this country because they suffer from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted their pea-seized brains,” he wrote.
According to the report, which the WSJ called an exclusive, Trump was informed by Justice Department officials, including U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, during a routine briefing in May that his name appeared in the files alongside hundreds of others.
Being mentioned in the files is not indicative of any wrongdoing.
(Global News nor any other news outlet has independently verified the reporting, as of this writing.)
The WSJ reported that the briefing was routine and that the Epstein files were not the focus of the meeting.
Officials reportedly informed the president that documents containing his name also included “unverified hearsay about many people” associated with Epstein. One department official told the WSJ that the documents contained hundreds of other names.
Trump was also reportedly informed that the Justice Department had no plans to release more documents related to the convicted sex offender’s case because they contained child pornography and personal information of victims.
The president agreed with the department’s decision to keep the material from view, the report says, marking a shift in a narrative that hinged on a promise to deliver the Epstein files in full to the public.
In February, Bondi said Epstein’s client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review.”
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In a statement to the WSJ on Friday, Bondi and the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, told the outlet that “as part of our routine briefing, we made the President aware of the findings.”
Trump told reporters last week that Bondi hadn’t told him that his name was in the files.
His administration announced its decision not to release the files on July 7 through a memo on its website, which stated that an exhaustive review of the documents “revealed no incriminating client list,” and that it found no more evidence that warranted public exposure or necessitated criminal charges against more individuals.
“We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties,” the note said.
It also stated that only a fraction of the material it reviewed would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial, as the seal “served only to protect victims.”
On Tuesday, following a wave of criticism from Trump’s allies — including Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who were pushing for the release of the files — Blanche announced that the Trump administration was reaching out to Epstein’s former accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for her involvement in Epstein’s underage sex trafficking ring.
“Justice demands courage. For the first time, the Department of Justice is reaching out to Ghislaine Maxwell to ask: what do you know?” he wrote.
Earlier that day, Bondi shared a statement written along similar lines.
“This Department of Justice does not shy away from uncomfortable truths, nor from the responsibility to pursue justice wherever the facts may lead,” it said, adding that Trump had granted her department permission to release “all credible evidence” in the Epstein case.
Last week, Trump sued the WSJ for US$10 billion after it published new details about a sexually suggestive letter the president allegedly wrote to Epstein for his 50th birthday.
The outlet said the note bore Trump’s signature and contained “several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker.”
“A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts,” it says, with the president’s alleged signature written in a “squiggly” font below her waist and a final line that reads: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
Trump denied the note was of his creation and, according to the WSJ, said the letter was “a fake thing.”
“I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women,” he added. “It’s not my language. It’s not my words.”
Trump and Epstein have been photographed together at events throughout the ’90s and early 2000s, including at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
The two men reportedly fell out over an alleged business dispute in 2004 — according to the WSJ — and before Epstein pleaded guilty to a 2008 charge for procuring prostitution.
This week, the Trump administration has been accused of attempting to distract from the fallout created by its handling of the Epstein files when it released hundreds of thousands of documents detailing intelligence on former Civil Rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.
Included in the files are leads pursued by the FBI following King’s assassination, as well as details of the CIA’s investigation into King’s focus on international anti-war and anti-poverty movements in the years before he was killed.
In a statement released on Monday, King’s two living children, Martin III, 67, and Bernice, 62, said their father’s death had been a “captivating public curiosity for decades,” but reiterated that the files were deeply personal and urged people to read them “within their full historical context.”
Meanwhile, civil rights leader Al Sharpton says the release of the King files is “not about transparency or justice,” but is merely a “distraction” from “the firestorm engulfing Trump over the Epstein files and the public unraveling of his credibility.”
Despite King’s children’s disapproval of the unsealing of their father’s file, other family members have expressed support for the Trump administration’s actions.
Alveda King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece, said she was “grateful to President Trump” for his “transparency.”
On Wednesday, Trump ordered the Department of Justice to investigate former president Barack Obama, after he claimed to have “irrefutable” evidence that Obama’s administration had acted treasonously by falsely accusing Trump’s campaign of having ties to Russia in an attempt to undermine his 2016 election bid.
Before the criminal investigation was announced, Obama responded to the allegations in a rare public comment, saying, “Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response.”
“But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.”
A day later, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard introduced intelligence she says details how “President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew was false.”
As of this writing, Obama has not responded to the Trump-ordered DOJ investigation or its subsequent claims of criminal misconduct.
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