The U.S. Department of Justice was already aware in May of this year that President Donald Trump’s name appears in documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein lawsuit, according to sources speaking to The Wall Street Journal and CNN.
Attorney General Pam Bondi reportedly informed Trump personally of the news. It was supposedly a standard briefing in which other matters were also discussed. It is not entirely clear in what context Trump’s name is mentioned.
Bondi said that, in addition to Trump’s name, other high-ranking figures are mentioned in the court documents. She also said that no indications were found that Epstein kept a client list or that there were doubts surrounding his cause of death. These two points form the core of persistent conspiracy theories about the deceased sex offender.
The fact that Trump’s name appears in documents does not mean that he has done anything wrong. But it does fuel a media storm in which the American government has been in recent weeks. Part of Trump’s support base is angry about the way the president is handling the Epstein case.
Trump created his own media storm
The cause of that media storm is largely self-inflicted. Trump and Bondi promised before taking office earlier this year to make secret information about Epstein public. The Attorney General alluded to a client list and fueled doubts about his cause of death.
But once in office, it turned out that there were no client lists. And there are also no doubts about Epstein’s death, the ministry reported in a memo last week. That led to great indignation within a part of Trump’s support base, who increasingly see the president and his Attorney General as part of the conspiracy.
The distrust may be further fueled now that it appears that the president’s name was found months ago during a search of the court documents. The New York Times previously reported that currently a thousand FBI employees are working to intercept even more documents with Trump’s name in them. As a result, a lot of other work is being left undone.
The White House responded on Wednesday to the publication in The Wall Street Journal, the newspaper that first broke the news. The government dismisses the story as “fake news” that was fabricated by Democrats and the liberal media. Last week, Trump already filed a lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal following a publication about Epstein.
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