White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was pressed Monday on a new Department of Justice and FBI report concluding there’s no evidence that Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender, kept a “client list” of powerful figures for blackmail purposes.
“There was material they did not release because, frankly, it was incredibly graphic and it contained child pornography, which is not something that’s appropriate for public consumption, but they committed to an exhaustive investigation, and they provided the results of that,” Leavitt explained when asked about the report. “That’s transparency.”
Epstein was found dead in a New York City prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, with his death sparking widespread theories of foul play given his closeness with a number of world leaders, celebrities, and politicians, including Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton.
A number of officials in Trump’s cabinet, including FBI Director Kash Patel, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, aggressively promoted theories around Epstein running a blackmail operation and pledged that the matter would be thoroughly investigated under Trump.
Back in February, Bondi told Fox News that Epstein’s client list was “sitting on (her) desk to review,” though according to the DOJ’s report Monday, no such list exists. At Monday’s news briefing, Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy pressed White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt about Bondi’s earlier claim.
“So what happened to the Epstein client list that the attorney general said she had on her desk?” Doocy asked.
“Yes, she was saying the entirety of all of the paperwork, all of the paper, in relation to Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, that’s what the attorney general was referring to, and I’ll let her speak for that,” Leavitt said. “But again, when it comes to the FBI and the Department of Justice, they are more than committed to ensuring that bad people are put behind bars.”
Leavitt then went on to go on a tangent about the Trump administration’s focus on reducing violent crime, and later, shut down all further inquiries related to Epstein.
“They promised an exhaustive review, that’s what they did,” she said. “For any further details, I would refer you to the Department of Justice.”
Epstein’s $77 million Manhattan townhome was raided shortly after his arrest in 2019, with investigators having collected hundreds of lewd photos and other evidence, including CDs with hand-written labels of phrases such as “Young [Name] + [Name],” drawing further speculation that powerful individuals may be implicated in Epstein’s alleged crimes.
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