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By Peter Aitken
Politics Weekend Editor
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President Donald Trump told reporters on Friday that he had directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to give "everything" the Department of Justice (DOJ) has on the Epstein files to the House Oversight Committee should they request them.
"I'm in support of keeping it totally open. I couldn't care less," Trump said in an apparent change in stance after fiercely resisting their release earlier this summer.
Newsweek reached out by submission form to the DOJ for comment.
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Why It Matters
Epstein, a sex offender, died in a New York City jail in 2019 while awaiting sex trafficking charges. The disgraced financier had well-documented connections to powerful figures, and his death has long prompted numerous conspiracy theories.
Rumors of a "client list" have long circulated online, and during Trump's successful bid for a second term in 2024, he suggested that if voters returned him to the White House, he would release a list of people associated with Epstein.
However, Trump reversed course in June after Elon Musk, during a public war of words with the president, alleged that Trump had not yet released the files because he was named in them.
Trump's supporters continued to call for the release of files and grew critical of how his administration has handled the issue. In a lengthy message posted on Truth Social earlier in July, Trump hit back at MAGA voters, saying they have "bought into this ... hook, line, and sinker," calling them "weaklings," and then insisting, "I don't want their support anymore!"
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What To Know
Trump fielded questions on a range of topics in the Oval Office on Friday, including a question related to the potential request from the House Oversight Committee to see or release the Epstein files. Democrats have pushed for Trump to release the files, alleging, as Musk did in June, that Trump resisted over concerns that he was named in them.
"You got a lot of people that could be mentioned in those files that don't deserve to be—because he knew everybody in Palm Beach," Trump said. "I don't know anything about that, but I have said to Pam [Biondi] and everybody else, give them everything you can give them because it's a Democrat hoax."
Trump then mentioned former President Bill Clinton and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and their relationships with Epstein despite saying he didn't want to "bring that up" and claiming that "nobody every talks about that."
The DOJ released the first batch of files to the House Oversight Committee on Friday afternoon following Trump's comments, although Committee Chairman James Comer of Kentucky earlier this week indicated that should the committee receive the documents, he would expect to make some of them public.
"We're going to be transparent. We're doing what we said we would do. We're getting the documents," Comer told reporters, adding that he believed the White House would work with the panel.
One of the documents that will draw much attention and scrutiny will be the transcript of the recent interview between Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who was jailed for 20 years in 2022 for various crimes related to sex trafficking.
U.S. District Judge Richard Berman earlier this week denied the DOJ's request to unseal grand jury transcripts from the Epstein case, just weeks after Judge Paul A. Engelmayer rejected a similar request for grand jury testimony by Maxwell, arguing that they did not contain any significant information.
Trump alleged that Democrats have used the issue as a distraction in the face of his various accomplishments since returning to office in January, saying the Democrats "don't know what to do, so they keep bringing up that stuff."
Does Larry Summers Have Ties To Epstein?
Summers served as the president of Harvard University between 2001 and 2006, taking the post just months after wrapping up his tenure as treasury secretary for the final years of the Clinton administration.
In 2023, The Wall Street Journal published an article detailing the relationship between Epstein and Summers, with Summers seeking sizeable donations from the financier.
Harvard initially accepted millions from Epstein between 1998 and 2008, but following his conviction in 2008 for soliciting underage sex, the university stopped accepting money from him.
The Journal reported that Summers continued to meet with Epstein after Harvard stopped accepting money.
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