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Less than a week after the existence of Donald Trump’s birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein was revealed, House Republicans have gone on early recess to try and block the release of the Epstein files. But the scandal regarding the president’s long friendship with the alleged sex trafficker keeps growing — because when two famous rich men like to party together for over a decade, the evidence lingers.

Earlier this year, when Justice Department officials reviewed scores of documents related to Epstein, they found Trump’s name multiple times, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. In May, Attorney General Pam Bondi even alerted the president that his name was in the files. That information contradicts Trump’s claim last week that Bondi never told him his name was in the Epstein docs.

“Did she tell you at all that your name appeared in the files?” an ABC News reporter asked Trump on July 15.

“No, no, she’s given us just a very quick briefing,” Trump said.

Per the Journal’s report:

In May, Bondi and her deputy informed the president at a meeting in the White House that his name was in the Epstein files, the officials said. Many other high-profile figures were also named, Trump was told. Being mentioned in the records isn’t a sign of wrongdoing. The officials said it was a routine briefing that covered a number of topics and that Trump’s appearance in the documents wasn’t the focus.

They told the president at the meeting that the files contained what officials felt was unverified hearsay about many people, including Trump, who had socialized with Epstein in the past, some of the officials said. One of the officials familiar with the documents said they contain hundreds of other names.

Trump’s name being in the files should not come as a surprise. Last week, Democratic senator Dick Durbin claimed that he was told that FBI agents reviewing the documents were advised to flag any mentions of the president. The Journal also reports that FBI director Kash Patel has been privately telling other government officials that Trump’s name is in the files.

The White House has flatly denied the Journal report with communications director Steven Cheung calling it “another fake news story, just like the previous story by The Wall Street Journal.” He was referring to the report last week that Trump sent Epstein a lewd, signed message to mark his 50th birthday in 2003, the year before their falling out. (But the administration was not able to deny the video footage CNN has now unearthed of the two of them together at a Victoria’s Secret fashion show in 1999.)

We don’t yet know the exact number or context of all the times Trump was mentioned in the Epstein files, only that he and other administration officials knew about it for months before the Justice Department announced there was nothing new the public needed to know.

This post has been updated.

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