Trump: No Special Counsel for Epstein Files

President Trump won’t recommend a special prosecutor in the Jeffrey Epstein case, his top spokeswoman said, adding that he sees no reason to further examine the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender.

“The president would not recommend a special prosecutor in the Epstein case. That’s how he feels,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday. The Justice Department said in a memo last week that there isn’t a “client list” of other participants in Epstein’s trafficking of young girls, and that additional files wouldn’t be released.

The decision to not release more information has angered some of Trump’s prominent supporters, including some Republicans in Congress, who think there are members of the global elite connected to Epstein who are being protected by the administration’s silence. During the campaign, Trump, who had socialized with Epstein in the past, said he would release additional details about the investigation. Some of his top officials, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, promised more transparency into the matter.

A poll by Quinnipiac University published on Wednesday showed nearly 36% of Republicans disapproved of the administration’s handling of the matter, and 40% approved.

Asked if the president would support releasing files from a grand-jury investigation, or other files on Epstein, who died in jail by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges of sex trafficking, Leavitt said “those are questions for the Department of Justice” and “that’s out of the president’s control.”

“If the Attorney General, Department of Justice and the FBI have more credible evidence in regards to Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, they should put that forward,” Leavitt said. “He has called on them to do that.”

Trump attacked his own supporters Wednesday who have called for the release of the Epstein files, saying on Truth Social that they are “PAST supporters have bought into this bulls—” and calling it a “hoax” and a “scam.”

“The president is referring to the fact that Democrats have now seized on this, as if they ever wanted transparency,” Leavitt said, noting that files weren’t released during the administration of former President Joe Biden.

The decision to not release the files has given Democrats fuel to accuse Trump and his allies of hiding something. “This is about years and years of international sex trafficking,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) said Thursday on the Senate floor. “None of this is a hoax. None of it is a scam. It’s insulting to the intelligence of the American people when Trump and Bondi say there’s nothing here to investigate.”

The Justice Department on Wednesday fired federal prosecutor Maurene Comey, who was involved in a number of high-profile criminal cases, including Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell. Asked if Trump signed off on the firing, Leavitt said it was made by the Justice Department. No reason was given for her firing, Comey told colleagues in an email on Thursday. She is the daughter of former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey, who became a prominent Trump critic after being fired during his first term.