President Donald Trump will not appoint a special counsel to review the Jeffrey Epstein case, the White House said Thursday, shooting down a move that several of his allies have advocated.
“The president would not recommend a special prosecutor in the Epstein case. That’s how he feels,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a press briefing when asked about calls for him to do so.
Some of Trump’s most prominent supporters, including Steve Bannon, far-right activist Laura Loomer and Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., had promoted the idea of Trump naming a special counsel to review the case.
The Trump administration has come under a firestorm of criticism since the DOJ and FBI issued a brief memo earlier this month saying they had thoroughly reviewed the Epstein case, that no one else was facing charges in the probe and they would not be releasing more information in the future.
That has not sat well with some of Trump’s most loyal supporters, given that Trump and members of his administration, including FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, have helped fuel conspiracy theories about the politically connected financier.
Epstein was found dead in a New York jail cell from suicide in 2019 while he was awaiting a trial on sex trafficking charges, and his social circle once included the likes of Trump and former President Bill Clinton.
Trump has urged his supporters to move on, chiding those who don’t as “weaklings.” “I don’t want their support anymore!” he wrote in a Truth Social post. He’s also started referring to the case as a “hoax.”
Leavitt was asked what exactly Trump thought was the hoax.
“The president was referring to the fact that Democrats have now seized on this, as if they ever wanted transparency on this, which is an asinine suggestion,” she said, complaining they didn’t “do a dang thing” when Joe Biden was president.
Other of the president’s allies have called for the DOJ to simply release the files in the case, an idea Leavitt also threw cold water on. She said that would have to be done by the DOJ, but if the material includes grand jury information, “a judge would have to approve it. That’s out of the president’s control.”
Trump had said during the campaign that he would make the Epstein files public, and Attorney General Pam Bondi had repeatedly pledged to make more information available.
A reporter asked Leavitt if Trump thought justice had been served in the case.
“The president believes that he directed the Department of Justice to do an exhaustive and thorough review and they did that. They all agreed, the FBI director, the deputy FBI director, the attorney general, on the memo they drafted and they released,” she said.
Trump said earlier this week that Bondi had given him a brief review of her findings earlier this month, and Leavitt was asked if he had any knowledge or understanding about information in the case that hasn’t been released.
“Not to my knowledge,” she said, adding that the “president has told the attorney general if they have any more credible evidence, they should release it.”
