'Ghislaine Maxwell pardon not decided': Trump offers list of Jeffrey Epstein associates

US President Donald Trump on Friday offered to release a list of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein's associates.

“Focus on the former president of Harvard, some of the hedge fund guys, I’ll give you a list. These guys lived with Jeffrey,” Trump said.

When the reporters asked whether Epstein's co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell will get presidential pardon, Trump said he cannot talk about it and that "it's something I have not thought about."

There have been calls from Trump's own Republican party calling for transparency on the investigations into Epstein's crimes.

During the 2024 presidential run, Trump said he would make information in the Epstein files public. Weeks after Trump became president, the Department of Justice and the FBI released the "first phase of the declassified Epstein files" in February. But a group of influence who were invited to the White House were in for disappointment when they found nothing new in the 341-page document.

However, Trump's attorney general in May told him that his name also appeared in the files related to the probe.

Earlier in July, Trump took a U-turn and the Department of Justice said no more material would be released. The president even called out his own supporters for seeking transparency.

Trump was close to Epstein till the early 2000s, when they had a fallout over bid for a Florida mansion in 2004.

Billionaire Elon Musk, who has stepped down as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, has been criticising Trump, claiming his name appeared in the Epstein files and his administration's handling of the case a cover up. He went on to say that "many powerful people want that list suppressed."

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