WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek the public release of grand jury testimony from the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein. The move, announced Thursday night, came amid growing calls from both parties for more information about the government’s investigation of the disgraced financier.

Trump, under intense pressure from his right-wing base after a Justice Department review found no evidence to support conspiracy theories about the sex trafficking case, ordered Bondi to “produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval,” in a social media post.

The president cited “the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein” for his directive, which falls far short of demands from some congressional Republicans and Democrats to make public all investigative files collected by the department and the FBI, not just testimony presented in federal court.

Bondi, a Trump loyalist accused by far-right influencers of abetting a cover-up, responded immediately with a post on social media that undercut the memo the department and FBI drafted this month declaring the case closed.

“President Trump — we are ready to move the court tomorrow to unseal the grand jury transcripts,” she wrote, quickly reversing course at his command. But it was not clear that she would succeed, because the secrecy of grand jury transcripts is highly protected.

Trump’s request came hours after The Wall Street Journal reported on a 50th birthday greeting it said Trump sent Epstein in 2003, including a sexually suggestive drawing, an expression of friendship and a reference to secrets they shared.

The president vehemently denied the report, which The New York Times has not verified. He warned Rupert Murdoch, the founder of News Corp., the paper’s parent company, that he planned to sue.

An angry Trump, referring to himself in the third person in a long Truth Social post, claimed that Murdoch had agreed to “take care of” the article but apparently lacked the authority to overrule the decisions of the paper’s top editor, Emma Tucker. He accused the Journal of publishing a “false, malicious and defamatory” report and referred to multimillion-dollar settlements he obtained from two other news organizations.

“President Trump has already beaten George Stephanopoulos/ABC, 60 Minutes/CBS, and others, and looks forward to suing and holding accountable the once great Wall Street Journal,” he added.

In 2019, Epstein was found dead by hanging in his cell at a Manhattan federal prison while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Two years later, a federal jury convicted his close associate Ghislaine Maxwell of five counts, including the most serious charge, sexually trafficking a minor.

Trump’s stated desire to address the “ridiculous” publicity around the case may not be enough to convince the judge to release the transcripts. Grand jury transcripts are, under federal guidelines, kept secret to protect crime victims and witnesses. They are typically released only under narrowly defined circumstances.

Even if the transcripts are made public, which might involve months of legal wrangling, the evidence represents a fraction of material collected in the investigation. Over the past several months, dozens of FBI agents and prosecutors with the Justice Department’s national security division were diverted from other assignments to review thousands of documents and a vast trove of video evidence, including footage from video cameras in the prison.

At a Cabinet meeting last week, Bondi defended her decision not to release most of the material to the public, saying that most of the video evidence was child sexual abuse material.

But that has done little to quell calls for transparency among some Trump supporters and members of Congress from both parties, who are exploring legislative options to pressure the department and the FBI to release more files and videos.

Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., has pushed for the release of more records. He dismissed Bondi’s move on grand jury testimony as a meaningless stunt.

“Nice try @AGPamBondi,” he wrote in a social media post. “What about videos, photographs and other recordings?”