On Friday, November 14, while aboard Air Force One, the 79-year-old president brushed it aside in a clip shared by the White House. “You have to go into Epstein’s friends,” he said, pointing fingers at Reid Hoffman and Bill Clinton—but not himself.
Trump, who used to hang out with Epstein, has been name-dropping the LinkedIn co-founder (he’s 58) and the former president (79) while pushing for federal probes. This came right after the committee released over 20,000 documents.
In a long post on Truth Social that same day, Trump slammed the files as a total “hoax.” He claimed Democrats are hyping up emails that mention him just to distract from the government finally reopening after that massive shutdown. He even said he’s telling Attorney General Pam Bondi to get the Justice Department digging into Epstein’s connections with big names and organizations, including Hoffman and Clinton.
Bondi, 59, confirmed the investigation is already rolling.
One of the standout bits from the release is an email from February 2017, where Epstein supposedly called Trump “dangerous.” In a chat with then-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, just weeks after Trump’s first inauguration, Epstein reportedly wrote, per ABC News: “Recall ive told you,, – i have met some very bad people ,, none as bad as trump. not one decent cell in his body.. so yes- dangerous.”
There’s an old photo of the two of them together at Mar-a-Lago back in 1997.
When PEOPLE asked the White House about it, spokesperson Abigail Jackson backed Trump up, calling the whole thing a Democrat distraction tactic. “These emails prove literally nothing,” she said on November 13. “Liberal outlets are desperately trying to use this… to talk about anything other than Democrats getting utterly defeated by President Trump in the shutdown fight.”
She added that the administration is staying focused on delivering what Trump promised, like making America affordable again.
Epstein took his own life in a New York jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges involving minors—he’d pleaded not guilty. Trump had actually campaigned on releasing these files before seemingly changing his tune.
