The Epstein scandal. Trump orders prosecutors to investigate President Clinton's ties

US President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he would order an investigation into the ties of financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein with one of his predecessors in office, Bill Clinton, former Finance Minister Larry Summers, and JP Morgan and Chase banks.

He also criticized “weak Republicans” who demand the publication of the full files on the Epstein case.

“Now that Democrats are using the Epstein hoax – involving Democrats, not Republicans – to try to divert attention from the disastrous SHUTDOWN and all of their other failures, I will ask Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice, along with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein's connections and relationships with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, JP Morgan, Chase and many other individuals and institutions to determine what happened to them,” Trump wrote on his own social media platform, Truth Social.

He responded to growing doubts about his relationship with Epstein amid the release of the billionaire pedophile's previously unpublished emails, which suggested Trump knew about his former friend Epstein's abuse of minors. The president compared the case to the scandal regarding his links with Russians, which – as he put it – was a “swindle”.

“The documents show that these men and many others spent significant portions of their lives with Epstein and on his 'Island,'” Trump wrote.

In a separate entry, he criticized the “weak Republicans” who, together with the opposition, demand the publication of the full Epstein case files.

“Some weak Republicans have fallen into their (Democrats') trap because they are wimps and fools. Epstein was a Democrat and he is the Democrats' problem, not the Republicans'!” – he wrote.

He thus commented on the behavior of four Republican congressmen who, together with Democrats, signed a petition that will force a vote in the House of Representatives on a bill requiring the Ministry of Justice to provide full files on the Epstein case. The Trump administration says it has released all the documents it could. The vote will take place next week, but despite the expected success, the chances of the law being adopted are slim because it will also require 60 votes in the Senate and the president's signature.

Nevertheless, on Wednesday, thanks to an investigation conducted by the House of Representatives Oversight Committee, many previously unknown documents came to light, primarily Epstein's e-mail correspondence. Trump's name appears in a series of messages. In a 2011 correspondence with his partner Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein wrote that Trump spent “hours at his home” with one of his underage victims, Virginia Giuffre. Giuffre herself testified that Trump never behaved inappropriately towards her. In other emails, Epstein wrote that “Trump knew about the girls,” claimed that he “knew how pissed off Trump is,” and argued months before his death in 2019 that he was the only person who could bring him down.

The emails also show that Epstein advised Churkin, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, who died in 2017, on how to deal with Trump and also sought a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the same topic.

In addition to doubts about Trump, the emails shed new light on Epstein's contacts with a number of famous people from America and around the world. Epstein ran, among others, correspondence on various topics – including women and Trump's mental health – with former Obama administration finance minister Larry Summers. Previously released documents showed that guests on the plane or on Epstein's private island in the US Virgin Islands included former President Bill Clinton, Democrat-supporting billionaire Reid Hoffman, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and other elite representatives, including: from Israel, Great Britain or Norway. In most of these cases, their relationships had been known for years, although none of them was charged in this case. The exception was former British Prince Andrew Windor, who was sued by Giuffre.

As the Atlantic wrote on Friday, Trump privately told his advisers that he had been avoiding the press in recent days because he did not want to answer questions about Epstein. Since the disclosure of the new e-mails, the American president has twice organized ceremonies at the White House signing laws and regulations, but, contrary to previous practice, he did not allow journalists to ask questions.

From Washington Oskar Górzyński (PAP)

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