President Donald Trump blasted a reporter who asked questions related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, suggesting that continuing to discuss the disgraced billionaire financier was a “waste” of time.
“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years,” Trump said. “Are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable. Do you want to waste the time?”
“I can’t believe you’re asking a question on Epstein at a time like this where we’re having some of the greatest success and also tragedy with what happened in Texas,” he continued. “It just seems like a desecration.”
Trump’s heated comments came after a reporter asked Attorney General Pam Bondi about a recent memo from the Justice Department and FBI that concluded that Epstein didn’t have a “client list” of high-profile co-conspirators and that his 2019 death in jail was a suicide. Epstein has long been the subject of speculation and conspiracy theories, particularly among those on the far right. Bondi started to respond to the reporter’s question before Trump jumped in.
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The Justice Department and FBI’s memo, first obtained on Sunday by Axios and ABC News, aims to put Epstein-related conspiracy theories to rest, stating that there is no evidence that he was murdered, engaged in blackmail, or kept a “client list.”
Before the memo was released, Bondi had said when asked about Epstein’s supposed “client list” in February that it was “sitting on my desk right now to review.”
After Trump slammed the reporter for asking about Epstein, Bondi responded to the initial question. She sought to clarify her remarks in the February interview, saying that she was referring to the case file on Epstein.
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