President Donald Trump on Friday said he wants his administration to release “everything” in the Epstein files but urged caution in doing so, warning that people could get hurt in the process.
“We’d like to release everything, but we don’t want people to get hurt that shouldn’t be hurt,” he told Newsmax host Rob Finnerty in an interview at the White House. “I want to release everything. I just don’t want people to get hurt.”
The sit-down interview comes one week after Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche met with Jeffrey Epstein’s imprisoned co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, for nine hours over two days.
Maxwell was granted limited immunity for answering the Department of Justice’s questions, meaning her statements won’t be directly used against her in a new prosecution. However, the legal protection is not absolute. She is already serving 20 years in prison for trafficking underage girls.
When Finnerty asked Trump about what Maxwell said during the interview, Trump said he didn’t know because he hadn’t spoken to Blanche about her testimony yet.
Trump said he suspected Blanche, whom he praised as a “very talented guy” and a “straight shooter,” was interviewing Maxwell because he also doesn’t want people, presumably sexual abuse survivors, to get hurt in a complete release of the Epstein files.
While he is open to the release conducted cautiously, the president suggested there’s nothing in the files that could incriminate him in Epstein’s sex trafficking operation because the ones in control of the files were his political opponents.
“If they were going to use the files, they would’ve used it before my election,” Trump said, naming former FBI Director James Comey. “Unless they’re stupid, which to a certain extent, they are stupid.”
“They controlled the files for four years. So if they had something, they would’ve released it before the election,” Trump added, describing them as “evil people.”
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Trump was told by Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy in May that his name appeared multiple times in the Epstein files. Trump and Epstein were once friends, but they had a fallout, and Trump kicked Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago golf club in Florida two decades ago.
Earlier this week, Trump said Epstein “stole people that worked for me” at Mar-a-Lago, including victim Virginia Giuffre, who committed suicide in April.
Trump’s name appearing in the files doesn’t exactly mean wrongdoing, and the DOJ said nothing in the documents warranted further investigation or prosecution.
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“As part of our routine briefing, we made the President aware of the findings,” Bondi and Blanche told the Wall Street Journal in a joint statement.
Earlier Friday, it was reported that Maxwell was moved from a federal prison in Florida to a similar facility in Texas. It remains unclear why she was transferred. Maxwell was set to testify before the House Oversight Committee this month, but the date was moved back until after the Supreme Court decides on the pending petition in her criminal case. She argues her 2021 conviction should be tossed because of a 2007 plea agreement Epstein secured with federal prosecutors in Florida.
