President Donald Trump said Attorney General Pam Bondi has his blessing to release “credible” documents related to Jeffrey Epstein.
“Whatever is credible, she can release,” Trump said during a meeting with the Crown Prince of Bahrain in the Oval Office, after NOTUS asked whether he would allow Bondi to release more documents and put the controversy to rest.
“If a document is credible. If a document’s there that is credible, she can release,” he continued. “I think it’s, I think it’s good, but it’s just, really, it’s just a subject. He’s dead, he’s gone.”
Bondi triggered a firestorm in MAGA world last week when she said that there was no list of Epstein clients and that there were no further documents that the Department of Justice could release to the public — a stark departure from her previous comments.
“Child porn is what they were, never going to be released, never going to see the light of day,” Bondi said at a Cabinet meeting last week.
The saga has severely divided the MAGA base, putting some of the president’s most ardent supporters at odds with their leader, who has repeatedly and unsuccessfully urged them to move on.
“I lost a lot of faith in certain people,” Trump said, “because they got duped by the Democrats.”
Trump, whose administration initially pledged to release more information about the “Epstein Files” — even giving binders with supposed documents to MAGA influencers in February — has largely sought to move past the issue, to the chagrin of many in his base like Tucker Carlson and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday that Bondi should release anything she can to the public.
Conspiracies about Epstein — who died in federal prison while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges — and about other wealthy elites who may be complicit in his actions have swirled for years.
“It’s a hoax. It’s started by Democrats. It’s been run by the Democrats for four years,” Trump said Wednesday. “It was a hoax. It’s all been a big hoax. It’s perpetrated by the Democrats and some stupid Republicans. And foolish Republicans fall into the net, and so they try and do the Democrats’ work. The Democrats are good for nothing other than these hoaxes. … I call it the Epstein hoax.”
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CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated the day of Trump’s comments. He spoke in the Oval Office on Wednesday.