US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters on the South Lawn before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on July 25, 2025, in Washington, DC en route to Turnberry, Scotland.
Jim Watson | Afp | Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Friday deflected questions about his former friend Jeffrey Epstein as Epstein’s convicted sex offender accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell was set to meet with a top Department of Justice official in Florida for the second day in a row.
“I have nothing to do with the guy,” Trump said of Epstein, with whom he had socialized for years before falling out with the now-dead pedophile in the mid-2000s.
Trump instead said people should focus on others who, like him, had previously socialized with Epstein, among them former President Bill Clinton and ex-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who also served as president of Harvard University.
Asked if he was considering a pardon for Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence, Trump said, “I certainly can’t talk about pardons.”
“And they should speak about that because they don’t talk about them. They talk about me,” Trump griped before departing for a trip to Scotland.
Trump has faced growing pressure to release information about Epstein after the DOJ earlier this month reneged on promises by Attorney General Pam Bondi and top FBI officials to disclose files criminal investigators assembled in their sex trafficking probe of Epstein.

Trump last week ordered Bondi to seek the unsealing of grand jury transcripts related to investigations of Epstein and Maxwell, shortly after The Wall Street Journal reported he had sent a “bawdy” letter to Epstein in 2003 for the money manager’s 50th birthday.
“I don’t even know what they’re talking about. Now, somebody could have written a letter and used my name, but that’s happened a lot,” Trump said about the letter on Friday.
Maxwell, 63, was convicted in late 2021 of crimes related to procuring and grooming underage girls for Epstein to abuse sexually.
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