‘Will Make Everything Public’: Trump After FBI ‘Removes’ His Name From Epstein Files
Just days after questioning the public’s “obsession” with the Epstein Files, Donald Trump now says he wants to make “everything” public about the case.
US President Donald Trump has said he wants to release “everything” related to the Jeffrey Epstein case, shortly after reports claimed that the FBI had “removed” his name from the recently reviewed Epstein documents.
His change in stance comes just days after he called the issue “pretty boring stuff” and questioned why his supporters were so interested in it.
Trump’s latest comments followed a Bloomberg report that alleged the FBI had deliberately excluded his name from documents related to Jeffrey Epstein.
As per the report, during a review of nearly 1,00,000 pages of files in March this year, around 1,000 FBI personnel were specifically told to flag any mention of Trump. This instruction reportedly came from Attorney General Pam Bondi, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
The redacted files were later sent to Bondi, who reportedly informed Trump in May that his name did appear in the records.
Before the Department of Justice and the FBI jointly concluded last month that no further release of files was “necessary or appropriate,” the team tasked with going through the files had already made several redactions.
Officials justified this decision by stating that Trump, at the time of the Epstein investigation, was a private individual and thus protected by privacy laws.
The Justice Department clarified that the review did not uncover any proof linking Trump to criminal activity, even though his name appeared in Epstein’s contact list and flight records.
Jeffrey Epstein was arrested in 2019 on charges of trafficking minors and other offences. He was later found dead in prison under controversial circumstances, which led to widespread speculation and conspiracy theories about high-profile figures who might have been associated with him.
“The entire thing is a hoax. They already checked the files. I was running against someone who managed those files. If anything was there, it would have been made public,” Trump said earlier this week.
As part of his campaign, Trump had promised to declassify government documents linked to Epstein. Pam Bondi, before being appointed as Attorney General by Trump, had also called for openness, asserting that only minors, victims, and cooperating witnesses should have their names withheld.
Likewise, FBI Director Kash Patel had told a Senate committee that the public would eventually be told the complete truth. On February 27, Bondi held a highly publicised event at the White House, introducing what was claimed to be the “first phase” of the Epstein file release. Attendees were given binders titled “The Epstein Files”, said to include newly declassified material.
However, the binders contained largely the same pages from Epstein’s “black book” that were already made public during Ghislaine Maxwell’s 2021 trial. The release brought no new revelations and included names like Donald Trump and Melania Trump, leading to accusations that the event was just a publicity stunt.
Now, many of Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) supporters are demanding the removal of Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, accusing them of breaking their promise to release the complete Epstein Files.
