Donald Trump told police ‘everyone’ knew about Epstein, called Ghislaine Maxwell ‘evil’
New York: Donald Trump told Palm Beach police in 2006 that “everyone” knew about Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of minors and called Epstein’s close friend Ghislaine Maxwell “evil,” according to investigative records made public in the so-called Epstein files.
The revelations stem from a report documenting a 2019 FBI interview with former Palm Beach police chief Michael Reiter, who recalled a conversation he had with Trump in 2006 when the accusations against Epstein were made public.
“Donald Trump said [Reiter] The report states that he stated that “he expelled Epstein from his club.” [Palm Beach police] “To tell him, ‘Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone knows you’re doing this.'”
It is stated that Trump told the police that people in New York “knew that Epstein was disgusting.” Trump said Maxwell was Epstein’s agent and that “she’s a bad person and the focus should be on her.”
The report stated that Trump told Reiter that he had once been around Epstein “with young people” and that he had “gone off.” Trump “was one of the first people to call when people found out” [the police] We were investigating Epstein.”
FBI interview recording It is among millions of pages released by the US Department of Justice. It was revealed by and published for the first time. Miami Herald Journalist Julie Brown paved the way for the case with her 2018 investigation into Epstein before he was arrested on sex trafficking charges.
The record of Trump’s remarks is significant because it appears to corroborate his claim that he cut ties with Epstein before the criminal complaint and kicked him out of his Mar-a-Lago club.
But this contradicts some of Trump’s other claims, particularly that he had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes. Last year, she said she kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago because he “stole” the resort’s female staff — namely Virginia Giuffre, an Epstein survivor who died by suicide in Australia last year.
Meanwhile, Trump’s commerce secretary, billionaire businessman Howard Lutnick, was forced to admit that he visited Epstein’s private island, Little Saint James, in December 2012, despite previously claiming to have broken off contact with Epstein after a grisly encounter in 2005.
“I had lunch with him while he was on a boat going on a family vacation. My wife, my four children, and my nannies were also with me,” Lutnick said at a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday (Washington time).
“We had lunch on the island, that’s true. We left for an hour with all my kids, my nanny and my wife. To say there was something wrong with that in 2012 – I don’t remember why we did that.”
Lutnick and Epstein became next-door neighbors in New York in 2005. But Lutnick said at the hearing that after the initial neighborly meeting at Epstein’s home (which he had previously said was creepy) he remembered meeting Epstein only two other times: an hour-long meeting in 2011 and lunch on the island in 2012.
“I didn’t have any relationship with him. I had almost nothing to do with that person,” Lutnick said.
Lutnick is the former chairman and chief executive of financial services company Cantor Fitzgerald. He is not charged with any crimes related to sexual activity, but critics, including Republican congressman Thomas Massie, have called on him to resign for misrepresenting the extent of his relationship with Epstein.
Ro Khanna, the Democrat who led congressional efforts to release the Epstein files, implied there was a higher level of accountability in Europe than in the United States.
“If in Norway the princess no longer has the support to become Queen, and in the United Kingdom King Charles is now calling for a criminal investigation into his own brother, then in the United States Howard Lutnick should absolutely resign!” said X.
The latest revelations come as the Justice Department removed some redactions from the Epstein files under pressure from members of Congress after personally viewing the unredacted files.
These include the name of underwear billionaire Les Wexner, the former chief executive of Victoria’s Secret and Epstein’s biggest long-term client, who is listed as a possible “collaborator” on his website. an FBI memo It dates from five days after Epstein’s death in prison in 2019.
Others identified as possible collaborators in the memo include the late French model scout Jean-Luc Brunel, Epstein’s house manager Lesley Groff and Maxwell, as well as four others whose names have not been redacted.
Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse girls and is serving a 20-year prison sentence. His lawyer made a public appeal this week for Trump to clear his name in exchange for a pardon.
Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political correspondent in Canberra.Connect with: X or email.
