USA: Donald Trump wants to release more documents from Epstein files

US President Donald Trump has reportedly ordered the release of further documents from the Epstein file. "Due to the tremendous attention Jeffrey Epstein is receiving," he has asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to submit all "relevant statements" to the grand jury in the case, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform . He again described the affair surrounding the multimillionaire as a Democratic Party hoax.

The Department of Justice is prepared to file a motion to release the grand jury transcripts on Friday, Attorney General Bondi wrote shortly afterward to X. "President Trump – we are prepared to ask the court tomorrow to unseal the grand jury transcripts." The grand jury is a group of jurors who, after prosecutors have presented evidence, decide whether charges can be filed in a case.

Trump is currently under fire for his handling of the Epstein case – even among his supporters. During the election campaign, he promised to release the case files. So far, this hasn't happened.

Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his New York prison cell in August 2019. Officials said he committed suicide. He was accused of abusing numerous girls and young women and supplying them to celebrities. Trump's Attorney General Bondi and the head of the FBI , Kash Patel, had fueled speculation that Epstein had a secret "client list" containing prominent names from the Democratic Party and Hollywood. Some Trump supporters even spread the conspiracy theory that Epstein was killed by deep state actors, essentially a shadow government within his own country.

At the beginning of last week, however, the FBI announced that it had found no evidence of other prominent people's involvement. It also clearly ruled Epstein's death a suicide. A client list of the former multimillionaire containing the names of US elites does not exist. In February, Justice Minister Bondi, in a TV interview, responded to the question of whether an Epstein client list could really be made public: "It's currently on my desk for review." The US government later explained this as a misunderstanding: Bondi had suggested that she had the investigative files.

On Thursday, Trump then questioned whether the files in question even existed. "It's all a big hoax," he said at the White House. His predecessors, Joe Biden and Barack Obama—the latter long out of office when the Epstein case came to light—had fabricated the files with the help of former FBI Director James Comey . "And some dumb and foolish Republicans are falling into this trap." He called critics among his supporters "weaklings."