{"id":362984,"date":"2025-12-23T03:07:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T03:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/362984\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T03:07:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T03:07:07","slug":"trump-complains-epstein-files-are-damaging-people-who-innocently-met-him-jeffrey-epstein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/362984\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump complains Epstein files are damaging people who \u2018innocently met\u2019 him | Jeffrey Epstein"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump has broken his silence on the release of the Jeffrey Epstein<\/a> files, complaining that people who \u201cinnocently met\u201d the convicted paedophile could have their reputations destroyed.<\/p>\n

In his first comments since the justice department began releasing the materials<\/a> on Friday, the US president on Monday expressed sympathy for prominent Democrats who have come under renewed scrutiny over their associations with Epstein.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like Bill Clinton<\/a>,\u201d Trump said of the former president, who featured prominently in the first batch of photos. \u201cI\u2019ve always gotten along with Bill Clinton; I\u2019ve been nice to him, he\u2019s been nice to me \u2026 I hate to see photos come out of him but this is what the Democrats \u2013 mostly Democrats and a couple of bad Republicans \u2013 are asking for, so they\u2019re giving their photos of me too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump, who had a long association with Epstein and for much of this year resisted the release of the files, was speaking to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida. \u201cEverybody was friendly with this guy,\u201d he claimed. \u201cBut no, I don\u2019t like the pictures of Bill Clinton being shown. I don\u2019t like the pictures of other people being shown \u2013 I think it\u2019s a terrible thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Bill Clinton\u2019s a big boy, he can handle it, but you probably have pictures being exposed of other people that innocently met Jeffrey Epstein<\/a> years ago and they\u2019re highly respected bankers and lawyers and others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump added that a \u201clot of people are very angry that pictures are being released of other people that really had nothing to do with Epstein. But they\u2019re in a picture with him because he was at a party and you ruin a reputation of somebody.\u201d<\/p>\n

He cited the example of Larry Summers, a Harvard professor and Democratic former treasury secretary who announced in November<\/a> that he would be stepping back from public life after email exchanges with Epstein came to light.<\/p>\n

Trump, who has tried to dismiss the Epstein files as \u201choax\u201d, also tried to cast them as a distraction from his own party\u2019s achievements. \u201cWhat this whole thing is with Epstein is a way of trying to deflect from the tremendous success that the Republican party has.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike, for instance, today we\u2019re building the biggest ships<\/a> in the world, most powerful ships in world, and they\u2019re asking me questions about Jeffrey Epstein. I thought that was finished.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact there is no end in sight. The Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA)<\/a>, passed nearly unanimously by Congress and signed into law by Trump, mandated the complete release of the Epstein files by Friday of last week. But the justice department has released only one batch of documents so far, prompting an outcry from survivors and members of Congress.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Clinton\u2019s spokesperson, Angel Urena, issued a statement<\/a> urging the justice department to release any remaining materials that refer to Clinton in any way, including photographs. \u201cSomeone or something is being protected,\u201d Urena said. \u201cWe do not know whom, what or why. But we do know this. We need no such protection.\u201d<\/p>\n

Urena said there is \u201cwidespread suspicion\u201d the department is \u201cusing selective releases to imply wrongdoing about individuals who have already been repeatedly cleared by the very same Department of Justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Epstein, a wealthy and well-connected financier, died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in what was ruled a suicide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump has broken his silence on the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, complaining that people who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-362984","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}