WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Pam Bondi is facing Democratic calls to testify before Congress following a newspaper’s revelation that she told President Donald Trump that his name appeared in the files of the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking investigation.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Bondi told Trump his name was among many high-profile figures mentioned in the files, which the Justice Department this month said it would not be releasing despite a clamor from online sleuths, conspiracy theorists and members of Trump’s base.
Trump’s personal ties to Epstein are well-established and his name is already known to have been included in records related to the wealthy financier, who killed himself in jail in 2019 as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges.
Sen. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, responded to the report by calling on Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“We need to bring Bondi and Patel into the Judiciary Committee to testify about this now,” Schiff said in a video posted on X.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the report but issued a joint statement from Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche saying that investigators had reviewed the records and “nothing in the files warranted further investigation or prosecution.”
“As par of our routine briefing, we made the president aware of the findings,” the statement said.
The mere inclusion of a person’s name in Epstein’s files does not imply wrongdoing and he was known to have been associated with multiple prominent figures, including Trump.
Over the years, thousands of pages of records have been released through lawsuits, Epstein’s criminal dockets, public disclosures and Freedom of Information Act requests.
They include a 2016 deposition in which an accuser recounted she spent several hours with Epstein at Trump’s Atlantic City casino but didn’t say if she met Trump and did not accuse him of any wrongdoing.
Trump has also said he once thought Epstein was a “terrific guy” but they later had a falling-out.
White House spokesman Steven Cheung on Wednesday said the reports were “nothing more than a continuation of the fake news stories concocted by the Democrats and the liberal media.”