The White House has pushed back against reports that president Donald Trump is among hundreds of names in documents relating to the late convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Mr Trump is facing a widening crisis amid a report claiming that his name appears in US justice department files about Epstein as Congress subpoenas testimony from Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
The White House sought to downplay the relationship between the US president and the disgraced financier while Mr Trump’s spokesperson denied an account in the Wall Street Journal that the president was told in May by attorney general Pam Bondi that he is named in the Epstein files.
The report says the president was told that many other high-profile figures were also named and states that being mentioned in the records is not a sign of wrongdoing.
RM Block
“The fact is that the president kicked him out of his club for being a creep,” spokesman Steven Cheung said. “This is nothing more than a continuation of the fake news stories concocted by the Democrats and the liberal media.”
Ms Bondi has also pushed back against a report claiming that Mr Trump’s name appears “multiple times” in US justice department files about Epstein, saying that “nothing in the files warranted further investigation or prosecution”.
“As part of our routine briefing, we made the president aware of the findings,” Mr Bondi and her deputy said in a statement.
A federal judge, meanwhile, on Wednesday denied a justice department request to unseal grand jury transcripts related to a criminal investigation of Epstein, the late sex offender and financier, in south Florida from the mid-2000s.
The judge said the request did not meet any of the extraordinary exceptions under federal law that could make them public. A similar records request is still pending in New York.
It is the first ruling in the Trump administration’s series of attempts to release more information after the justice department announced it would not be releasing any additional files related to the Epstein case, despite earlier promises from Mr Trump and Ms Bondi.
Also on Wednesday, a subcommittee in the US House of Representatives voted to subpoena the justice department for files in the sex-trafficking investigation into Epstein.
Three Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight voted with Democrats for the measure, sending it through on an 8-2 vote. Republican subcommittee chairman Clay Higgins said work to draft the subpoena was beginning. – Guardian, additional reporting: PA
