General Discussion

Nearly two months later, the tweet is gone, but the claim is relevant anew. The Wall Street Journal reported:

When Justice Department officials reviewed what Attorney General Pam Bondi called a ‘truckload’ of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein earlier this year, they discovered that Donald Trump’s name appeared multiple times, according to senior administration officials. In May, Bondi and her deputy informed the president at a meeting in the White House that his name was in the Epstein files, the officials said. Many other high-profile figures were also named, Trump was told.

.....What’s more, it was just last week when a reporter asked the president whether Attorney General Pam Bondi told him that his name appeared in the Epstein files. “No, no,” he responded.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:h7qtoo7nxqxarrsijohjhbw4/post/3lunsaomjz22h

Link to tweet

Trump acknowledged at that point — I believe for the first time — that he’d received a personal briefing on this case, which was notable in its own right, but the exchange appears even more important now.

Indeed, if the president was briefed on the investigation and told that his name did appear in the files, it would raise new questions about why the Republican felt the need to lie to the public.

What’s more, three days after the president made those on-camera comments, NBC News also reported that Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, relying on information from a protected FBI whistleblower disclosure, alleged that FBI personnel were instructed to “flag” any records that mentioned Trump as part of their handling of the Epstein files.