Trump tells Justice Department to seek release of Epstein grand jury testimony

President Donald Trump late Thursday told the Justice Department to seek the release of “all pertinent” grand jury testimony in the sex trafficking case against Jeffrey Epstein as he tried to tamp down growing political outcry over his administration’s handling of the files from the prosecution.

It was not immediately clear to which records he was referring. Federal grand jury testimony is by law confidential, and Trump said in a post on Truth Social that the release is “subject to court approval.” Records from a state grand jury that investigated Epstein in 2006 were released by a Florida judge in 2024.

Trump’s announcement came minutes after he said he would sue the Wall Street Journal over its Thursday evening report. The article said Trump contributed a drawing of a naked woman to Epstein’s 50th birthday album in 2003, an account that undercut his recent efforts to blow past a politically vexing chapter in his presidency.

Published Thursday evening, the report said Trump signed a hand-drawn outline of the woman, writing “Donald” below her waist. The letter was included in the album for Epstein and concluded with, “Happy Birthday - and may every day be another wonderful secret,” according to the Journal report.

“President Trump will be suing The Wall Street Journal, NewsCorp, and Mr. Murdoch, shortly,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The Press has to learn to be truthful, and not rely on sources that probably don’t even exist.”

The Wall Street Journal declined to comment on Trump’s lawsuit threat.

The account comes days after the Trump administration announced its decision not to release the files from the case against Epstein, who was was charged in 2019 in federal court with sex trafficking of minors. The choice not to release the files outraged parts of Trump’s base, which believe the government is hiding names of high-profile people involved in the criminal enterprise, and trusted the president to treat the case seriously in a broader fight against what they see as the corrupt elite.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said she would act Friday: “We are ready to move the court tomorrow to unseal the grand jury transcripts,” she wrote on X.

The grand jury testimony would make up only a fraction of the evidence amassed by federal authorities in their investigation - the material broadly referred to by Bondi and others as the “Epstein files.” Bondi said earlier this year that she was going to review a list of Epstein’s clients. Her department later said there was “no incriminating ‘client list.’”

The previous decision not to release the Epstein files has caused problems for Trump on Capitol Hill, as his efforts to slash $9 billion in federal spending were delayed in the House by congressional Democrats preparing to force a preliminary vote on releasing the Epstein files.

Trump, for years, has sued news outlets over what he has argued is unfair coverage. Many of his suits have been dismissed, including claims against CNN, the New York Times and The Washington Post over columns and coverage that tied his 2016 campaign to Russian interference. In his second term, Trump has had more success, reaching hefty out-of-court settlements with ABC and Paramount over coverage he claimed was false or unfair.

As the Wall Street Journal report circulated online Thursday evening, some prominent Trump allies who have been critical of the White House’s handling of the Epstein case in recent days rushed to defend the president.

“This is not how Trump talks at all. I don’t believe it,” Charlie Kirk wrote on X.

Even Trump’s ally-turned-critic Elon Musk, who previously posted that Trump was listed in the Epstein files and on Thursday night continued calling for his administration to release the files, downplayed the Journal report.

“It really doesn’t sound like something Trump would say,” Musk wrote in response to the reporting.

The Washington Post has not independently verified the letter described by the Journal.

The Journal’s report said pages from the leather-bound birthday album were examined by Justice Department officials who investigated Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, an Epstein associate who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for helping him sexually abuse girls.

The Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigations declined to comment on the accuracy of that allegation.

The fight over the Epstein files has presented a challenge for Trump in part because he and some of his closest allies have spent years inflaming public suspicions about the case.

Epstein died before his case was adjudicated - leaving many in the public wondering if other powerful people in his orbit were guilty of similar crimes. His 2019 death was ruled a suicide. The court records released in 2024 showed that Florida prosecutors in 2006 heard testimony that he had assaulted multiple teenage girls.

Trump spent decades socializing with Epstein starting in the late 1980s but has since distanced himself from the man and given a platform to his supporters who have theorized that prominent Democrats were involved in Epstein’s death. Those suspicions have landed on fertile ground, with a large share of the American public primed to mistrust government institutions.

Recent polling shows that a significant majority of Americans already believe the government is keeping information about the case from them - including large shares of Republicans. The polling also shows, however, that not many voters have been following the issue closely, although search traffic shows attention has increased sharply in recent days.

For nearly two decades, starting in the 1980s, Trump and Epstein, who were both wealthy businessmen, partied together at their homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach, often surrounded by models, cheerleaders and other beautiful women. In a New York magazine profile of Epstein in 2002, years before he was accused of criminal conduct, Trump said he had known Epstein for 15 years.

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Jeremy Roebuck, Maegan Vazquez, Natalie Allison and Emily Guskin contributed to this report.