President Donald Trump insisted he knows "nothing about" his appearance in a newly released dump of Jeffrey Epstein photos on Friday as he minimized their significance as "no big deal."
The president was confronted by a reporter in the Oval Office on Friday, moments after he hosted members of the 1980 US Olympic men's hockey team to award them Congressional Gold Medals.
Asked about photographs released by the House Oversight Committee hours earlier that include Trump alongside Epstein, Trump replied: "I haven't seen it, but everybody knew this man; he was all over Palm Beach, he has photos with everybody. There are hundreds and hundreds of people that had photos with him. So that's no big deal."
"I know nothing about it," he added before moving on.
The response follows the committee's release of two batches of images drawn from a much larger cache of more than 90,000 photographs obtained from Epstein's estate. Some of the images published show Epstein alongside former President Bill Clinton, Steve Bannon, and billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
Trump appeared in several of the photos, one of which includes Epstein. Another shows Trump standing with a woman whose face has been redacted, while a third depicts him with six women, all similarly obscured.
Lawmakers say the broader trove includes "pictures of people engaged in sexual acts," though it remains unclear who appears in them.
The president has long denied having knowledge of Epstein's crimes, although his past association with Epstein is under renewed scrutiny.