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US attorney-general Pam Bondi has announced the Department of Justice will investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to a number of prominent Democrats as well as JPMorgan Chase, in response to a request from Donald Trump.
The president said on Friday that he would ask the DoJ and the FBI to launch sweeping probes into Epstein’s ties to the investment bank as well as figures including former president Bill Clinton, Lawrence Summers and Reid Hoffman.
Trump’s comment in a Truth Social post came as he tries to damp a furore over his own association with the late disgraced financier and sex offender, which flared up again this week following the release by Congress of a trove of documents related to Epstein.
The revelations, including emails in which Epstein said Trump “knew about the girls” who were being trafficked and “spent hours at my house”, have piled fresh pressure on the president and triggered a backlash even among some of his closest Maga allies.
“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 in the post.
“Records show that these men, and many others, spent large portions of their life with Epstein, and on his ‘Island’. Stay tuned!!!” he added.
In a post on X on Friday afternoon, Bondi said she had asked Jay Clayton, US attorney for the Southern District of New York, to “take the lead” in the investigation.
The move could exacerbate what SDNY prosecutors have described as an erosion of independence during Trump’s second term in a bureau historically known to take pride in its autonomy.
SDNY declined to comment.
Clinton, Summers, the former US Treasury secretary and a professor at Harvard University, and Hoffman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A JPMorgan spokesperson said the bank regretted “any association we had with the man, but did not help him commit his heinous acts” and that it cut ties with Epstein “years before his arrest on sex trafficking charges”.
The bank added that the US government “had damning information about his crimes and failed to share it with us or other banks”.
Epstein was a client of JPMorgan’s private bank for wealthy clients from 1998 until it cut ties with him in 2013, years after his 2008 guilty plea to soliciting sex with a minor.
The prolonged relationship has been embarrassing for JPMorgan, with details of its dealings with Epstein spilling out two years ago in a lawsuit against the bank by the US Virgin Islands, where the disgraced financier had a private island. JPMorgan agreed to pay $75mn to settle the USVI case.
Many Trump supporters expected all the documents related to Epstein to be released during his second term. Bondi in February told Fox News the list of the late child sex offender’s clients was “sitting on my desk right now to review”. But five months later the DoJ and FBI concluded there was no “client list” and no “credible evidence” that the convicted paedophile had “blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions”.
The call for fresh investigations is the latest instance of the president asking the justice department to prosecute his political opponents. Critics say this undermines the separation of powers in the US as well as the independence of the justice department — although the DoJ has rejected accusations of political interference.
However, the DoJ has obtained indictments against several Trump critics, including ex-FBI director James Comey, New York state attorney-general Letitia James and his former national security adviser John Bolton. They have all pleaded not guilty.
Charges against Comey and James were filed after Trump urged Bondi to take legal action against them in a social media post.
The FBI declined to comment on Trump’s post.
Additional reporting by Tabby Kinder and Kaye Wiggins
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