Getty ImagesUS President Donald Trump has said he will order an investigation into paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged links to major banks and several prominent Democrats, including former President Bill Clinton.
Trump on social media said he would ask Attorney General Pam Bondi and the FBI to look into Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Clinton and others “to determine what was going on with them, and him”.
Interest in Epstein’s relationships was renewed this week after US lawmakers released more than 20,000 pages of documents from his estate, including some mentioning Trump.
Clinton has strongly denied he had any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.
In addition to Clinton, Trump said he asked the Department of Justice (DoJ) to investigate banks JP Morgan and Chase, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who is also a prominent Democratic donor.
“Epstein was a Democrat, and he is the Democrat’s problem, not the Republican’s problem!” he wrote on social media.
“They all know about him, don’t waste your time with Trump. I have a Country to run!”
A spokesperson for JPMorgan Chase said the firm regrets “any association” they had with Epstein, and added that the firm “did not help him commit his heinous acts”.
Trump’s request comes ahead of the House of Representatives’ vote next week on whether the justice department should release all its files related to the investigation into Epstein, who died in prison in 2019.
Democrat Adelita Grijalva’s swearing in to the chamber on Wednesday triggered the move, after she immediately signed a discharge petition from calling for the release of the files.
Her signature was the 218th – the final signing needed to trigger a floor vote. Four Republicans joined with Democrats to call for the vote.
Documents released by the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday appeared to show correspondence between Epstein and the former US Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers from October 2017.
In one email, Summers gives Epstein his opinion of Trump early in his presidency, writing: “DJT is world s luckiest guy in terms of opposition, economy etc. still think his world will collapse”.
A representative for Summers told the Wall Street Journal in 2023 that the former treasury official and past president of Harvard University “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.
The documents also included email exchanges between Epstein and his long-time associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking.
In one email, sent in 2011, Epstein writes to Maxwell: “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump.. [VICTIM] spent hours at my house with him.”
Trump was a friend of Epstein’s for years, but the president has said they fell out in the early 2000s, two years before Epstein was first arrested. Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. While he was discussed in some of the messages released this week, he did not send or receive them.
On Friday, Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said it would be “huge miscalculation” for Trump to oppose the release of material related to Epstein.
Greene was among four other House Republicans – Nancy Mace, Lauren Boebert, Thomas Massie – who joined Democrats in signing a discharge petition calling for the release of the files.
“I truly just stand with the women, and I think they deserve to be the ones that we’re fighting for,” she told the BBC’s US partner, CBS News.