President Donald Trump on Friday asked the Department of Justice to investigate relationships between notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and former President Bill Clinton, JPMorgan Chase, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, billionaire tech investor Reid Hoffman, and others.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said later Friday that she had appointed Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, to lead the investigation.
Trump’s statement comes as he faces renewed pressure over his own past friendship with Epstein, who killed himself in August 2019 after being arrested on child sex trafficking charges.
In a Truth Social post, Trump claimed that “Democrats are using the Epstein Hoax … to try and deflect from their disastrous SHUTDOWN, and all of their other failures.
Because of that, he wrote, “I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him,.
“This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats,” Trump wrote “Records show that these men, and many others, spent large portions of their life with Epstein, and on his ‘Island.’ Stay tuned!!!”
Bondi, the attorney general, in a post on X, wrote, “Thank you, Mr. President.”
“SDNY U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton is one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country, and I’ve asked him to take the lead,” Bondi wrote. “As with all matters, the Department will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people.”
“Trump should release all of the Epstein files: every person and every document in the files,” Hoffman posted late on X on Friday. I want this complete release because it will bring justice for the victims.”
“I want this complete release because it will show that the calls for baseless investigations of me are nothing more than political persecution and slander. I was never a client of Epstein’s and never had any engagement with him other than fundraising for MIT,” his post continued on X. “The call for an investigation is an obvious ploy to avoid releasing the files. Simply release all the files, and expose the people who had both deep and ongoing relationships with Epstein.”
“I will do everything in my power going forward to advocate for the release of the files, to get justice for Epstein’s victims, and to promote the values of truth our great country was founded on,” Hoffman said. “I refuse to bend the knee to Donald Trump and his slanderous lies.”
Trump’s post comes two days after he hosted business leaders, including JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, at a White House dinner.
A spokesman for JPMorgan, in a statement to CNBC on Friday, said, “The government had damning information about [Epstein’s] crimes and failed to share it with us or other banks.”
“We regret any association we had with the man, but did not help him commit his heinous acts,” said the spokeswoman, Patricia Wexler. “We ended our relationship with him years before his arrest on sex trafficking charges.”
Epstein had been a longtime customer of JPMorgan and also had been friends with former JPMorgan executive Jes Staley.
In 2023, JPMorgan, without admitting wrongdoing, settled separate lawsuits by victims of Epstein and the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands, who had accused the bank of facilitating and benefiting from Epstein’s sex trafficking of young women. The bank agreed to pay the group of victims $290 million, and to pay the USVI $75 million.
CNBC has requested comment from Clinton, Summers as well as from the White House and the DOJ, about Trump’s post.
In a 1997 photo, Jeffrey Epstein, left, and Donald Trump pose together at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
Davidoff Studios Photography | Archive Photos | Getty Images
Emails released by the House Oversight Committee this week show Epstein and others talking about Trump.
In a 2018 email thread about Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleading guilty charges related to hush money payments on behalf of Trump, Epstein wrote, “I know how dirty donald is.”
In another thread that same year, Epstein wrote of Trump: “its wild. because I am the one able to take him down.”
Trump also faces a looming vote by the full House of Representatives on a petition demanding the release of criminal investigative files about Epstein that the DOJ refuses to make public despite prior promises to do so by Attorney General Pam Bondi and other Trump administration officials.
Trump has denied having known about Epstein’s decades-long abuse of underage girls and young women.
The two men had a falling out in the early 2000s.
Among the email threads released Wednesday by the House Oversight Committee is one written in April in which Epstein told author Michael Wolff that Trump “knew about the girls.” The email does not explain what Epstein meant by that
In another email, written in April 2011, Epstein told his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell: “I want you to realize that the dog that hasn’t barked is trump.”
Epstein, in the same thread, said that a person whose name was redacted in the email but whom lawmakers identified as a victim of his “spent hours at my house with” Trump.
“He has never once been mentioned,” Epstein added.