WASHINGTON — President Trump avoided questions from reporters about the swirling Jeffrey Epstein controversy Friday as he signed legislation to better regulate cryptocurrency to strengthen dollar-backed “stablecoins” that can be used for quick financial transactions.
“The Genius Act, they named it after me,” Trump, 79, joked at the White House East Room ceremony attended by Republican congressmen, administration leaders like crypto czar David Sacks and industry figures — including the billionaire Winklevoss twins.
The bill, which stands for Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act, was sponsored by Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) to modernize what Trump called an oudated digital payments infrastructure.
Stablecoins allow users to avoid the volatility of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, but would-be buyers currently must trust the word of suppliers who say they’re backed by real-world assets such as dollars.
The legislation, which passed the Senate 68-30 last month and the House 308-122 on Thursday, orders the establishment of standards and oversight to enhance trust and consumer protections.
“It will unlock dollar dominance and update archaic payment rails with a revolutionary system,” Sacks said before Trump inked the bill.
Trump answered no reporter questions as his only scheduled public event of the day ended — ignoring inquiries about why Manhattan federal prosecutor Maurene Comey was fired Wednesday and his demand late Thursday to release grand jury testimony in the Epstein case.
Comey, who prosecuted Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell — securing a conviction and 20-year prison sentence — is the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey and was fired after an explosion of public interest in the case.
Trump has raged for the second consecutive week about continued focus on the Epstein case — even though his own officials, including Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, had revived the dormant controversy and teased explosive revelations, before declaring last Monday that no additional files would be disclosed.
In a stunning about-face, Bondi declared “no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted” and that there was “no incriminating ‘client list,’” despite her prior remarks suggesting there was — adding that despite “over one thousand victims” there was no “evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”
The memo concluded Epstein died by suicide in his jail cell on Aug. 10, 2019, but a DOJ-released surveillance video taken from near the cell was missing one minute of footage.
Trump, who associated socially with Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s, has complained about continued interest in the case, accusing Democrats of perpetuating a hoax against him — even though his own supporters initiated the transparency push under the belief that powerful men were being let off the hook for sex crimes against children.
Former President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and Microsoft founder Bill Gates are among the many prominent figures who interacted with Epstein — and in the prince’s case, allegedly had sex with the disgraced financier’s young victims.
