Attorney General Pam Bondi assigns U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton to oversee the inquiry after Trump’s Truth Social post.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday said he will ask the Justice Department and FBI to examine Jeffrey Epstein’s relationships with former President Bill Clinton, JPMorgan Chase and several high-profile figures, including Larry Summers and Reid Hoffman, following the release of new emails that mention Trump and reignited questions around the long-running case.
Trump’s call comes as House Democrats push to force broader disclosure of federal files tied to Epstein and as the administration faces renewed scrutiny over what it has — and has not — made public. Bondi said she has tapped Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, to lead the effort. The move immediately drew attention from both parties, victims’ advocates and major institutions once linked to Epstein, setting up a politically charged inquiry that touches Wall Street, Silicon Valley donors and two former presidents.
In a morning post, Trump wrote that he would ask “A.G. Pam Bondi” and federal investigators to look into Epstein’s “involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions,” calling recent focus on the case “another Russia, Russia, Russia scam.” By midday, Bondi said the department would pursue the review “with urgency and integrity.” Later in the afternoon, officials said Clayton’s Manhattan-based office would coordinate initial steps. The outreach followed a midweek dump of more than twenty thousand pages of estate records to House investigators, including emails from Epstein that referenced Trump and discussed how reporters might ask about the men’s interactions. Trump has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.
Spokespeople for figures named in Trump’s post did not immediately respond to requests for comment. JPMorgan, which severed ties with Epstein years before his 2019 arrest, said the government “had damaging information” about Epstein’s crimes and failed to share it with banks, adding, “We regret any association we had with the man, but did not help him commit his heinous acts.” In 2023 the bank agreed to pay $290 million to victims in a class-action settlement and separately reached a $75 million settlement with the U.S. Virgin Islands. Summers, a former Treasury secretary, has previously said he regretted maintaining contact with Epstein after Epstein’s earlier conviction. Clinton’s office has said the former president flew on Epstein’s plane for foundation-related travel in 2002 and 2003 and had one brief visit to Epstein’s apartment with staff and Secret Service present.
The latest document release, made public by Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, included a 2011 exchange in which Epstein called Trump “the dog that hasn’t barked” and referenced a woman who “spent hours” at his home with Trump. Another 2019 message to author Michael Wolff asserted Trump “knew about the girls,” a claim whose context remains unclear from the fragments released. Republicans on the committee accused Democrats of cherry-picking records and noted that the woman referenced had publicly said she never witnessed wrongdoing by Trump. The Justice Department has said previously it conducted an exhaustive review of Epstein-related material and found no “client list” or credible blackmail evidence, a conclusion that angered some of Trump’s supporters who had pressed for full public disclosure.
Epstein, a financier with homes in New York, Florida and the Virgin Islands, died by suicide in a Manhattan jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges. His longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted in 2021 and is serving a 20-year sentence. Over the past two decades, court filings and reporting have detailed Epstein’s connections to wealthy donors, corporate leaders and politicians from both parties, fueling periodic bursts of public interest as new records surface. A Wall Street Journal review in 2023 documented meetings Epstein held with academics and officials after his 2008 plea deal in Florida, underscoring how his network persisted even after his initial conviction.
Bondi said Clayton’s office would begin by mapping potential lines of inquiry touching on financial relationships, travel records and communications. People familiar with the matter said any formal casework would follow standard procedures, including grand jury subpoenas if warranted. The administration also faces a legislative clock: House leaders are preparing a vote as early as the first week of December on a measure compelling the department to release its Epstein files, after a discharge petition reached the required signatures. Separately, the Oversight Committee subpoenaed Clinton in August for testimony on his early-2000s interactions with Epstein and Maxwell. No hearing date has been announced.
Outside government, survivors’ attorneys urged care to avoid retraumatizing victims as political fights intensify. On Wall Street, compliance teams revisited 2019-era reviews that followed Epstein’s arrest, when banks scrambled to examine historical transactions and correspondent relationships. “Institutions learned hard lessons about enhanced due diligence for high-risk clients,” said a former federal prosecutor who worked financial-crimes cases in New York. At the White House, aides framed Democrats’ release of selective emails as an attempt to distract from this week’s end to the record-long government shutdown, while critics inside Trump’s party called the president’s resistance to broader file releases a political misstep.
As of Friday evening, Clayton’s office had not announced subpoenas or interviews, and officials did not say whether the review would focus on specific potential crimes or a broader fact-finding assessment. The next public mileposts are expected on the Hill: a House Oversight update on document processing before Thanksgiving, followed by a possible floor vote the first week of December on forcing a wider release of files. Any prosecutorial steps would likely come later, after preliminary record-gathering and conflict checks inside the department.
Author note: Last updated November 14, 2025.