President Trump lashed out Tuesday at a reporter for asking Attorney General Pam Bondi about Jeffrey Epstein during his Cabinet meeting, accusing the journalist of wasting time by focusing on the late sex trafficker.
“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy has been talked about for years. We have Texas, we have this, we have all the other things,” Mr. Trump said, referring to deadly flooding in Texas. “And are people still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable.”
Mr. Trump then asked Ms. Bondi if she wanted to “waste the time” answering the question posed by New York Post reporter Steven Nelson.
“I can’t believe you are asking a question about Epstein at a time like this, when we are having some of the greatest success and also tragedy with what happened in Texas. It just seems like a desecration,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Nelson asked Ms. Bondi to reconcile claims by Alex Acosta, the former U.S. attorney in Miami who had claimed that Epstein was working for U.S. intelligence agencies. Mr. Acosta insisted that he signed off on a sweetheart plea deal for the New York financier because he was told that Epstein belonged to U.S. intelligence agencies and he needed to “leave it alone.”
Mr. Acosta served as labor secretary during Mr. Trump’s first term but was forced to resign as part of the fallout over the Epstein plea deal.
Ms. Bondi said she has “no knowledge” that Epstein ever worked for intelligence agencies. She also said that video from the Manhattan jail where Epstein was being held on sex trafficking charges was “conclusive” that he committed suicide in 2019, which has long been disputed by conspiracy theorists and others.
She also insisted that there was no evidence of Epstein possessing an incriminating client list, saying that when she earlier said the files were on her desk, she was referring to the totality of paperwork associated with the Epstein case.
“I was asked a question about the client list and my response was ‘It’s sitting on my desk to be reviewed,’ meaning the file along with the JFK, MLK, files,” the attorney general said.
Epstein died in his jail cell in August 2019, weeks after his arrest on sex trafficking charges. At the time, Epstein was a convicted sex offender after pleading guilty in a Florida state court to one count of soliciting prostitution and one count of soliciting prostitution from a minor.
