“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” President Donald Trump asked a reporter on July 8, amid flooding in central Texas. “This guy’s been talked about for years. You’re asking. We have Texas, we have this. We have all of the things. And are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable.”
Rekindled public interest in Epstein, and Trump’s frustration with the topic, followed the July 7 release of a Department of Justice memo announcing that the agency found “no incriminating ‘client list’” among its “more than 300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence,” even after the administration had alluded to the existence of such a list. The memo also, controversially, concluded that Epstein committed suicide in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City, that he did not blackmail prominent individuals, and that evidence was lacking to investigate “uncharged third parties,” further fueling anger among some of Trump’s supporters.
