President Donald Trump, facing growing pressure to publicly release Justice Department files related to Jeffrey Epstein, said on Thursday night that he had asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek the unsealing of grand jury testimony related to the criminal prosecution of the notorious pedophile.
Bondi replied in a social media post, writing, “President Trump — we are ready to move the court tomorrow to unseal the grand jury transcripts.”
Trump’s announcement came hours after The Wall Street Journal reported that a “bawdy” letter bearing Trump’s signature was included in an album of letters Epstein received for his 50th birthday in 2003.
The letter was among the documents “examined by Justice Department officials who investigated Epstein” and his convicted procurer, Ghislaine Maxwell, “years ago,” the newspaper reported.
“Based on the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein, I have asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
“This SCAM, perpetuated by the Democrats, should end, right now!” the president added.
It is not clear that the Justice Department will be able to convince a federal judge in New York, where Epstein was investigated, to release the transcripts that indicted him in 2019 on child sex trafficking charges.
Grand jury transcripts are, as a rule, kept secret under federal criminal procedure rules, which provide limited, narrow exceptions.
It is also not clear that if the transcripts are released that they will satisfy critics of Bond’s recent decision not to release any more documents or evidence related to Epstein The transcripts would represent just a fraction of the evidence assembled by prosecutors and the FBI.
“Nice try @AGPamBondi,” Rep. Daniel Goldman, D-N.Y. wrote in a tweet on Thursday night.
“What about videos, photographs and other recordings? What about FBI 302’s (witness interviews)? What about texts and emails?” Goldman wrote. “That’s where the evidence about Trump and others will be. Grand jury testimony will only relate to Epstein and Maxwell.”
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, in a tweet called Bondi’s announcement “HUGE,” but also added, “I hope and expect this will be the first of several steps to let the public know what happened.”
Epstein’s case has spawned conspiracy theories among Trump’s MAGA base of supporters.
Those supporters have questioned the official finding that Epstein killed himself while in custody in a Manhattan jail in August 2019, a month after being arrested on the charges filed in the Southern District Court of New York.
They have also called for the release of what they believe is a “client list” maintained by Epstein, possibly for use to blackmail rich and powerful people in his orbit. And they have argued that other people should be brought to justice for his crimes.
Trump was for years a friend of Epstein, before the two fell out, and the secretive money manager also counted people, including President Bill Clinton and Britain’s Prince Andrew, in his social orbit.
Trump has blamed Democrats for the demands for the Epstein files to be released. But a growing number of Republicans, including his former vice president, Mike Pence, and GOP members of Congress, have said Bondi should release further material.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt earlier Thursday said Trump “would not recommend a special prosecutor” be appointed to review the handling of the criminal case against Epstein, despite calls from some of his leading supporters for that idea.
The FBI, in a memo released by the Justice Department this month, said that a “systematic review” of the Epstein case files revealed no incriminating ‘client list.’ “
“There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions,” the memo said. “We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”
The memo also supported the previous official ruling that Epstein had killed himself, and included a video with footage confirming that “from the time Epstein was locked in his cell at around 10:40 pm on August 9, 2019, until around 6:30 am the next morning, nobody entered any of the tiers in the” special housing unit of the Manhattan jail.
But Wired magazine earlier this week reported that “newly uncovered metadata reveals that nearly three minutes of footage were cut from what the US Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation described as ‘full raw’ surveillance video from the only functioning camera near Jeffrey Epstein’s prison cell the night before he was found dead.”
