President Trump on Friday said he will direct the Justice Department to investigate Jeffrey Epstein's connections to former President Bill Clinton and others.
Why it matters: Trump's demand comes after House Democrats released a series of emails this week detailing Trump's connection to Epstein, a convicted sex offender.
- "Now that the Democrats are using the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans, to try and deflect from their disastrous SHUTDOWN, and all of their other failures, 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," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
- "These emails prove Bill Clinton did nothing and knew nothing," Clinton spokesperson Angel Urena told Axios. "The rest is noise meant to distract from election losses, backfiring shutdowns, and who knows what else."
- Summers and Hoffman did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment.
Driving the news: House Democrats on Wednesday released emails that suggested Trump knew more about Epstein's conduct than he has acknowledged.
The latest: Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday afternoon she assigned the probe to Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
- "As with all matters, the Department will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people," she wrote on X.
Zoom in: Summers served as Treasury Secretary from 1999 to 2001, and Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn.
- JPMorgan Chase in 2023 reached a $75 million settlement in a lawsuit alleging the bank assisted and benefitted from Epstein's sex trafficking. The bank did not admit wrongdoing.
What they're saying: "The government had damning information about his crimes and failed to share it with us or other banks," Patricia Wexler, a spokesperson for JPMorgan Chase, said. "We regret any association we had with the man, but did not help him commit his heinous acts."
- "We ended our relationship with him years before his arrest on sex trafficking charges," she added.
Go deeper: Epstein files become a fiasco of Trump's own making
Editor's note: This story has been updated with comment from JPMorgan Chase, Bondi and Urena.
